Posts Tagged ‘Festivals’

The Wave | Italian Female Filmmakers Weekend 2022

 

THE WAVE celebrates its first edition this weekend at London’s Ciné Lumière in Kensington. The aim is to showcase the latest female filmmakers working in Italy today. Expect to see  some classics too and filmmaker Q&A sessions at some screenings which will offer the opportunity for some lively and thought-provoking discussions. Highlights from the programme include Alice Rohrwacher’s HEAVENLY BODY, Laura Bispuri’s SWORN VIRGIN and last year’s Locarno highlight MATERNAL from Maura Delpero.

THE WAVE | CELEBRATING ITALIAN FEMALE FILMMAKERS | programme here.

Brazil Indigenous Film Festival 22 – 24 October 2021

Inspired by the UN Climate Summit this first edition of the Brazil Indigenous Film Festival takes place in London’s ICA cinema on the Mall from October 22 -24, featuring a dozen or so features and shorts from indigenous filmmakers sharing their stories – both fact and fiction – from all over Brazil.

Twelve films, in six languages, from seven different groups will be showing in the three-day festivalbetween 22 – 24 October 2021. The programme is split into three strands: The Right toEarth combines work on different forms of Indigenous struggle – symbolic, practical, political, mythological – for the right to land; The Ritual Dimension documents and celebrates the Maxakali andKisedjê in rural Brazil, exploring their political rituals, and Orality, Film and History brings historical, social and philosophical perspectives from the Parakanã, Guarani–Nhandewa and Guarani–Kaiowácommunities.

A few highlights from the programme: Equilibrium, an ethno-media video art by Tupinamba journalist and educator Olinda Muniz Wenderley. The female filmmaker explores through an experimental narrative the connection of the Indigenous People with the Earth and their spirituality. Two animations explore colours of nature and traditions. The Celebration of the Spirits tells the saga of a Guajajara man, who, during a search for his lost brother, ends up on a voyage of self-discovery.

Other films to look out for are Tatakox, a hypnotic ritual film that documents celebrations evoking the spirits of dead children, and Nũhũ yãg yõg hãm: This land is our land!, winner of the Best International Film prize at this year’s SheffieldDoc/Fest.

The festival also presents two productions from Alberto Alvares: Dream of Fire, an interpretation of a dream – an omen of disease, according to Guarani Nhandewa traditions, and Tekowenhepyrun: The Origin of the Soul, is based on the belief that the soul is the connection between the body and the spirit. Alberto has had works exhibited in Arts Biennales and international film festivals.

FreeLandCamp a documentary by photographer and anthropologist Edgar Kanaykõ, portraying the massive 2017 demonstration organised by APIB, when diverse ethnic groups got together in the country’s capital, Brasília to demand their rights. Ava Yvy Vera: The Land of the People of Lightning, is a depiction of the Guarani–Kaiowá peoples’ struggle for land rights that gained international recognition after the release of a joint letter in 2012, protesting against the assaults and advances of Brazilian agribusiness.

The thought-provoking Zawxiperkwer Kaa explores the activities of the Guardians of the Forest, a group that has been fighting against illegal logging and working to protect the Awá-Guajá, one of the most threatened isolated Indigenous groups on the eastern coast of the Amazon.

This festival has the support of APIB, a national reference of the Indigenous movement in Brazil. Raising international awareness about Indigenous peoples as protagonists in the fight against climatechange and resisting the destruction of their traditional ways of living is urgently needed.

Festival Schedule:

Friday, 22 Oct @18h30 (Opening Night followed by a Q&A with festival curators and special guests)

Saturday, 23 Oct @16:20

Sunday, 24 Oct @16:20

Full programme can be seen here.

London Spanish Film Festival 2021

A chance to see a selection of recent Spanish films which may not get a general release in the UK. Most are UK premieres from new talent and established filmmakers

LA ISLA DE LAS MENTIRAS | The Island of Lies

dir. Paula Cons, with Nerea Barros, Ana Oca, Sergio Quintana, Celso Bugallo, Darío Grandinetti | Spain/Argentina/Portugal | 2020 | 93 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Galician and Spanish with English subtitles

In dense fog of a Christmas morning in 1921, a boat with 260 emigrants bound to Buenos Aires sinks off the coast of Sálvora, Galicia. Three courageous women row out in a bid to save as many people as they can. The tragedy captures the imagination of an Argentine journalist who investigate the many fatal coincidences that happened on the night of the shipwreck. | Fri 24 Sep | 6.30pm

 

UN EFECTO ÓPTICO | An Optical Illusion

dir. Juan Cavestany, with Carmen Machi, Pepón Nieto, Luis Bermejo | Spain | 2020 | 80 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Alfredo and Teresa, a married couple from Burgos, decide to take a deserved trip to New York. Shortly after their arrival Teresa starts to feel strangely uncomfortable. Then Alfredo’s pictures of monuments don’t match what they remember they saw. Cavestany’s film is a distinctive and daring take on tourism, globalised provincialism, the banality of a steady couple’s daily life… and much more. | Sat 25 Sep | 6.30pm

EL SUSTITUTO | The Replacement

dir. Oscar Aibar, with Ricardo Gómez, Pere Ponce, Joaquín Climent, Bruna Cusí, Vicky Luengo, Pol López | Spain | 2021 | 117 min | cert. 18 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

In 1982 a young father and hardened police officer moves his family from Madrid to a small Mediterranean sea town where he is to replace an inspector, murdered in mysterious circumstances. During his investigation, strange links between the inspector’s assassination, drugs and property speculation come to light. Based on real events, Oscar Aibar’s beautifully made thriller takes us to a happy retirement spot on the Mediterranean coast that Nazi’s gained possession of due to Franco’s regime and kept through the Transition | Sat 25 Sep | 8.30pm, Mon 27 Sep | 6.05pm

EL PLANETA | Planet

dir. Amalia Ulman, with Ale Ulman, Amalia Ulman, Nacho Vigalondo, Zhou Chen | USA | 2021 | 79 min | cert. 15 |London premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

A jobless young woman is forced to leave London and return home to live with her eccentric mother, after the death of her father. The wolf is at the door but they continue to live beyond their means in Gijon. El Planeta explores contemporary poverty, class awareness and female desires as well as mother-daughter relationships in post-crisis Spain all throughout with a charming and subtle sense of humour. | Sun 26 Sep |6.20pm

NIEVA EN BENIDORM | It Snows in Benidorm

dir. Isabel Coixet, with Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Anna Torrent, Carmen Machi, Pedro Casablanc | Spain/UK | 2020 | 117 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

After a long career at his bank Peter is “awarded” early retirement and sets off to visit his brother in Benidorm on a trip that doesn’t quite turn out as expected. A poetic take by veteran Isabel Coixet on Benidorm’s particular beauty, its gloomy side and its “unpoetic” real estate mafias as well as on love at an older age. | Fri 24 Sep | 8.35pm

CATALAN Strand

SENTIMENTAL | The People Upstairs

dir. Cesc Gay, with Javier Cámara, Griselda Siciliani, Alberto San Juan, Belén Cuesta | Spain | 2020 | 82 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Ana and Julio are a couple who seem to spend most of their time together arguing. Salva and Laura, on the other hand, never stop having sex.  Julio is extremely annoyed when Ana invites them for dinner for an eventful evening where secrets, fears and insecurities soon surface, spiced up by witty dialogue written by Catalan Cesc Gay. The result is a highly enjoyable and intimate comedy exploring the complexities of modern relationships. | Thu 23 Sep | 8.30p,

UN BLUES PARA TEHERÁN | Tehran Blues

dir. Javier Tolentino, with Golmehr Alami, Sina Derakhshan, Pezhman Dishad | 2020 | 80 min | cert. PG |doc | UK premiere | In Spanish, Persian and Kurdish with English subtitles

Javier Tolentino’s documentary debut  transports us to some of Iran’s most remote corners, discovering a truly sophisticated culture seen through the eyes of Erfan, a young Kurdish man who sings, writes poetry and dreams of being a film director. Tolentino is one of Spain’s most established journalists and film critics, now turned director.| Sun 26 Sep | 4.10pm

CHAVALAS | Girlfriends

dir. Carol Rodríguez Colás, with Vicky Luengo, Carolina Yuste, Elisabet Casanovas, Cristina Plazas, José Mota | Spain | 2021 | 91 min | cert. PG | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

After an initial stint as a professional photographer, jobless Marta finds herself having to go back to live with her parents in a suburban flat in Barcelona, where she grew up. There she reconnects with her childhood girlfriends Desi, Soraya and Bea, sharing the bond of their teenage years. Carol Rodríguez Colás’s first feature film is a sincere and tragicomic take on friendship. | Tue 28 Sep | 8.45pm

BASQUE strand

ANE | Ane is Missing

dir. David Pérez Sañudo, with Patricia López Arnaiz, Jone Laspiur, Mikel Losada, Luis Callejo | Spain | 2020 | 100 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Basque and Spanish with English subtitles

When Lide discovers her teenage daugher, Ane, is missing, she teams up with ex-husband, Fernando, to track her down. As the troubled Lide’s determination grows Fernando’s fear of Ane becomes more evident. Throughout most of the film Ane feels like a ghost and an oppressing and spectral unseen presence. A first feature for awarded shorts director David Pérez Sañudo,   moves seemlessly from from mystery to family drama and then to political thriller.

Preceded by the short:

QUEBRANTOS | Breaches

dir. Koldo Almandoz, Maria Elorza | Spain | 2021 | 7 min | doc | cert. PG | In Basque with English subtitles

Living with fear… Based o an interview on Euskadi Irratia Radio. | Tue 28 Sep | 6.30pm

NORA

dir. Lara Izaguirre, with Ane Pikaza, Héctor Alterio, Ramón Barea, Itziar Ituño | Spain | 2020 | 100 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish, Basque and French with English subtitles and English

Lara Izaguirre’s sophomore feature is a fresh and optimistic reflection on the road less travelled for a young Spanish woman prepared to put her self out there, and take a few risks. As the saying goes, “bad weather, good face” (in Spanish, “al mal tiempo, buena cara”). | Wed 29 Sep | 8.30pm

London Spanish FILM FESTIVAL 23-29 SEPTEMBER 2021

Les Enfants Terribles (2021) Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: Ahmet Necdet Cupur; Documentary with Zeynep Cupur, Mahmud Cupur, Nezahat Cupur, Ahmet Cupur; Turkey/Germany 2021, 92 mins.

Taking the title from Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1950 film adaptation of Cocteau’s play this reflection on the past is also a study of a family fighting tradition – and each other – in a world that has seen so many changes.

First time director Ahmet Necdet Cupur is back home in the village of Keskincek, twenty years after freeing himself from the stifling family set-up in south eastern Turkey. Three year’s in the making, the film revisits a bitter domestic battlefield: his brother and sister-in-law on one side; his old-fashioned parents on the other. Nothing changes, or so it seems.

Starting in January 2018 Ahmet makes contact with his sister Zeynep and her audio description of what’s going on with her parents hits a raw nerve: “Keep on writing, you have shown me exactly how your life is”. Now he’s back in situ with a camera to film the goings-on. Teenage Zeynep works in a cloth factory in the nearby city of Antalya but feels too young to be married off by her father who keeps her earnings for himself, whilst mostly loafing around all day. Her dream is to study and go to university, a plan, which both her parents object to, because she is a female.

The family is in a mess and forced to marry the kids off for financial reasons: brother Mahmut was made to marry Nezahat, so as to secure her dowry (known as a ‘mahr’), but the two have never slept together, Mahmut preferring a certain Birsen, whom we never meet. Meanwhile his rather has been trying to unlock his son’s mobile, to check what’s going on.

Mahmut is no spring chicken having already held down a job in Kuwait. But the family Imam Hüseyim Cupur, won’t grant him a divorce on any grounds. And now the village gossipers are out in force wondering if he is ‘a real man’. Zeynep is fully aware that the woman is always at fault in Turkish divorce proceedings, even her own mother won’t support her.

Election Day arrives and the whole family is forced to vote for the father’s choice.  Zeynep is particularly annoyed, since this candidate has been in office for donkey’s years and hasn’t made any changes for the better. She takes it all out on her religious mother :”You say, you are old and wise. But you are not, you have never read a book in your life”. But the complaint falls on deaf ears: “Good created us to live here, in our home. And the only book I am going to read is the Koran”.

Ahmet’s involvement certainly a certain tension in the family dynamics  – never has “the fly on the wall” been closer to the action. The tone is hyper-aggressive, with both parents and children vowing to kill each other. But in the end,

But despite the conflict, things do eventually move on for both kids, Ahmet delivering a positive, if not ‘happy’ ending. The young generation is slowly taking over: religion and patriarchy are on the back foot. Ahmet’s debut is a vociferous and direct testament. AS

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION | VISIONS DU REEL | NYON | SWITZERLAND | Shared Special Jury Prize Winner 2021

 

 

Bellum – The Daemon of War (2021) Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: David Herdies, Georg Götmark; Documentary with Bill Lyon, Fredrik Bruhn, Paula Bonstein, Aisha Lyon, Sweed, Karolina Bruhn; narrated by Johannes Anyuru; Sweden/ Denmark 2021, 87 min.

War is in the DNA of humans, always has been. The Romans were masters of conquering countries on more than one continent. Their motto was “War pays for itself, so soldiers do not need to be paid, there is always plenty to plunder”. Statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BC) was an early warmonger, ending his speeches in front of the Senate for years with the call for war: “Anyhow, I am of the opinion, that we should destroy Cartago”. After a few years, his peers got the message and the African city, capital of a kingdom, was indeed conquered.

This essay film from Swedish director duo David Herdies and Georg Götmark traces the history of war, present and future: veteran war photographer Paula Bronstein delivering some cruel images from Kabul.

But amidst the doom and gloom AI scientist Fredrick Bruhn has a surprisingly upbeat theory about the end of armed conflict, and US veterans Sweed and Bill Lyon are the living examples of survivors of the recent outings of the US war machine.

Not that far from Los Alamos in New Mexico, where Robert Oppenheimer and his team developed the first nuclear bomb in the State of Nevada (his prophetical warnings open the feature) is the location of the US Army’s Drone Operations and Training Base – AFB. Demonstrators with placards protest outside the gates, while veterans Sweed and co, cheer on every car leaving or entering the compound, making fun of the demonstrators. “I bet she borrowed the baby”, comments Sweed on a mother carrying her child.

Later we listen to Sweed and his friend Bill Lyon talking about their active service experience that destroyed people rather than buildings. In training, the drones attacked the simulated town of Kandahar, creating the atmosphere of an arcade game. The images are not just circles any more, but human forms, the intention is to blur the lines between the lines between practice and real actions. But for the veterans, the question is just survival: “When your compound has been hit, you are either dead, or you go back to sleep. For most people this is crazy, but I loved it. It was boring when you get home.”

Meanwhile Bronstein shows the photos of the Kabul victims she asks a boy to give her a smile. He refuses. Paula explains” I want to put some beauty into my photos, some life. To make the victims human. Meanwhile AI developer Fredrik Bruhn is hopeful about the future: “We are twenty years away from the point, when a computer can build the next generations of AI himself, he will replicate human brains, but goes much further than the 500 billion synapses of our brains. I do not see that we can have a world without war, as long as humans are in control. But robots do not have our DNA inheritance, they do not need to act like us. In the end the question will be about human existence, or the survival of digital humanity.

Bellum is perhaps too complex for its limited running time. But it certainly shows the existential question flagging up the need to write humankind out of the script. The documentary is dedicated to Bill Lyon, who, like Sweed, passed away. AS

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMP | VISIONS DU REEL 2021

Backyard Village (2021)

Dir.: Marteinn Thorsson; Cast: Laufey Eliasdottir, Tim Plester, Soley Eliasdottir, Eyglo Eliasdottir, Sara Dögg Asgeiersdottir, Johann Gunnarson; Iceland 2021, 92 min.

Icelandic director Marteinn Thorsson (XL) has adapted Gudmundut Oskarson’s script about grief and how not to deal with it in this zany and often bizarre tragic comedy, set in what can only be described as the back of beyond. Iceland’s hostile terrain and freezing weather lend an icy chill to the tricky human interactions, Thorsson steering his ‘ship of fools’ through to a surprising ending – narrowly avoiding self-parody,.

Colour comes from a few brightly painted wooden huts near a spa where Bryna (L. Eliasdottir) fetches up needing psychiatric help more than physical rehab. Equally disturbed is her next door neighbour, middle-aged Mark (Pelster) from England, who knocks on her door, looking for paprika (yes, it’s a weird one). Both bear the scars of family trauma: Bryna at odds with her mother for leaving when she was only five. Mark is a lone traveller dealing with a recent bereavement. Awkward conversation and a meal cooked by Mark in his self-catering ‘chalet’ allow the two to get to know one another. But their lack of knowing themselves makes it impossible for them to engage in a meaningful way. The next morning the two set off to a remote spot where Mark’s son was discovered after a two-year police search. Meanwhile Bryna’s mother has declared her ‘a missing person’ unable to reach her by ‘phone.

Later, back at base, Johanna (S. Eliasdottir) and sister Gunnhildur (E. Eliasdottir), are livid at Bryna’s sudden disappearance and concerned for her wellbeing. Mark turns up on the scene anxious to defend Bryna with a sudden intrusion that forms the quirky catalyst for a Chekovian showdown of as each desperate character revisits the past.

The feature’s shifting, twisting mood from drama, comedy and outright farce keeps us guessing in an unsettling scenario inflamed by surreal settings, DoP Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson’s stunning camerawork reflecting the magnificent terrain where humans strive to make sense of their existence in an absurd tragic-comedy. AS

Santa Barbara International Film Festival

 

Rascal (2020) Vilnius Film Festival (2021)

Dir/scr: Peter Dourountzis | Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Ophelie Bau, Sebastien Houbani | France, Thriller. 96′

Rascal is a an everyday story of a psychopath played with hard-eyed nonchalance by Pierre Delardonchamps.

There’s nothing sensationalist about the story of Dje. The title might suggest a cheeky playfulness but this couldn’t be far from the truth. Not without charm when he wants something, Dje he can also being quietly menacing as he goes with the flow living by his wits, casually violent if he needs to be. In fact, ‘casual’ sums up a man who never gets worked up about anything. This homeless opportunist is none too shabby in his stylish anorak. A recidivist bottom-feeder who gets by on the streets of Limoges, where we first meet him on a train, rudely intruding on the privacy of his neighbour in a train carriage. But that’s the most harmless trait in his repertoire of antisocial behaviour.

Peter Dourountzis’ first feature takes a detached view of his psychopathic protagonist seen through the steely lens of DoP Jean-Marc Fabre. Limoges is seen as a joyless urban centre where danger lurks at every turn as Dje slips unnoticed in the crowd until he spots an unsuspecting female glance and returns it with a smirking stare. What follows could be a seduction or something more deadly but it mostly occurs off camera, and some women can be extraordinarily accommodating to this enigmatic stranger who is never there when the going gets tough. Of no fixed abode he has no identity papers. Meanwhile, street signs in bus shelters warn women to be vigilant. There’s a killer on the loose. But why would anyone suspect Dje with his boyish looks and clean complexion?.

Rascal was originally made as a short film, Dourountzis cutting himself plenty of slack with the textured script that plays to our fertile imagination and works in a subplot about Dje connecting with an underground network of homeless misfits who offer him room in their squat. Here he meets Maya (Ophelie Bau Mektoub, My Love) and the two have a thing for a while until Dje loses control and needs to move out of the spotlight and back into the shadows. MT

EUROPEAN DEBUT COMPETITION  | Best Actor: Pierre Deladonchamps | AT VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL | 18 MARCH – 6 APRIL 2021 |

 

 

 

 

People We Know Are Confused | Vilnius Film Festival (2021)

Dir.: Tomas Smulkis; Cast: Milda Noreikaite, Gabija Jaraminaite, Arunas Sakalauskas, Paulius Markevicius, Dainus Svobanas, Jolante Dapkunaite; Drama, Lithuania 2021, 102 min.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the Lithuanian way. 

Founded in 1387, Vilnius is still shifting on the fault-lines of its turbulent past according to debut filmmaker Thomas Smulkis, who has made this resonant, unworldly feature debut with a distinct cinematic voice.

Over four summer days Smulkis distills the essence of a modern capital in flux through the surreality of three bewildered inhabitants calling it home – for the time being. An airy feeling of serenity wafts through the summery settings in the limpid light of the Northern hemisphere softened by Sigita Simkuaite’s stylish hues of eau de nil and taupe. Nature plays a signicant part here and Smulkis’ dazzling eye for detail captures everyday life on the streets in unexpected and eerily serendipitous ways.

Goda (Jaraminaite) is the most straightforward of the trio, even though her glorified existence is anything but stable. Will she be able to see the gilded trap she has built for herself? We first meet her overladen with designer shopping bags making her way into a chic apartment in a smart part of town. Goda lives alone so why are a pair of men’s shoes in the hallway? Her sister has invited a colleague to stay, although she lives somewhere else. Clearly Goda is put out, to say the least, calmly asking the stranger to leave via  email. But he stays on oblivious taking his leave on his own terms while she wanders round displaced and uncomfortable longing to regain the peace of her sanctuary.

In another part of town, medic Juste (Norakaite) and her partner and co-worker Paulius (Markevicius) are also going through a confusing time. Paulius has been offered a flat in a high rise block outside the city, but Juste does not want to live “in the middle of nowhere”. They carry on oblivious until a negative pregnancy leaves her relieved at the result. The two cycle off, and at the lights Paulius has a something unexpected to say.

In their stylish urban kitchen Vytas (Sakalauskas) placidly asks his wife of twenty years for a divorce. Later he visits his old flame Audrius (Svobanas), who is dying of cancer. A literal and metaphorical car crash sees Elena (Dapkunaite) quietly reflecting on how her ife carried for so many years in tacit denial of an emotional truth that has always been obvious for everyone concerned.

DoP Vytautas Plukas pictures these characters silently reeling in the face of calm contradiction. Vilnius reflects the silent chaos in the rubbish-strewn building sites of the centre: the character of the old city has changed forever, the capital will soon look like any other metropolis in Europe as the past is gently aid to rest – without reflection. Mostly relying on an ambient soundscape, the occasional score by Lina Lapelyte makes a weird intrusion into this perplexed but passionless world. A sensitive and aesthetically mature debut feature. AS

SCREENING AT VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Human Rights Watch Festival 2021 | Women have their say

Opening this Thursday 18 March, this year’s HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL  kicks off with The 8th about Ireland’s women-led campaign to engineer the impossible – to overturn the 8th Amendment, a constitutional ban on abortion.

In Belly of the Beast two women wage a near impossible battle against the US Department of Corrections to expose modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

Mujer de Soldado reveals a deeply moving picture of female solidarity among four Peruvian women, who are bringing charges of historical rape against their abusers.

And in the Closing Night film on 26 March Unapologetic new talent Ashley O’Shay spent four years chronicling the lives of two young, black, queer women within the Black Lives movement in Chicago. In Ashley’s words: Unapologetic serves as a blueprint to that moment (last summer)…. I hope you walk away feeling inspired, and hopeful, and righteously rageful at the systems that have failed women.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | Tickets go on sale February 18 and can be purchased via the Human Rights Watch Film Festival or Barbican Cinema On Demand.

Five Films for Freedom | BFI Flare 2021

During the FLARE LGBTIQ+ BFI’s annual celebration of all things gay five festival films have been selected to screen free internationally from 17-28 March

Five Films For Freedom 2021 sees filmmakers exploring emerging sexuality, trans-activism, homophobia and genderless love at a time when people may have been adversely impacted by the pandemic.

In a new twist for 2021, audiences will be invited to nominate their Five Films Favourite via a British Council web poll, the winners will be announced via British Council social media channels prior to 28 March. Voting opens 17 March via the #Five FilmsForFreedom homepage.

The FIVE FILMS FOR FREEDOM campaign has been going since 2015 and over 15 million people from more than 200 countries have engaged with it particularly in places where homosexuality can be prosecuted and, in some cases, punishable by death.

Five Film For Freedom programme 2021:

 

Bodies of Desire (India/Dir. Varsha Panikar & Saad Nawab/3 mins), directed by Varsha Panikar and multi-award-winner Saad Nawab, uses Indian poet Panikar’s work as the basis for a visual, poetic film capturing four sets of lovers in a sensual celebration of genderless love and desire.

Land of the Free (Sweden/Dir. Dawid Ullgren/10 mins) – Ullgren’s tense Swedish drama follows the fictional David and friends as they celebrate his birthday with a nightly swim at the beach. The good mood swiftly changes after two straight couples walk by and laugh – was the laughter directed at them, or something else? Who owns the truth of exactly what happened?

 

Pure (USA/Dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris/12 mins) is the fictional debut from 2020 Directors Guild of America Student Film Award winner Natalie Jasmine Harris, centring on a young Black girl grappling with her queer identity and ideas of ‘purity’. The film is written, produced and directed by Harris – a filmmaker passionate about the intersection between filmmaking and social justice.

Trans Happiness is Real (UK/Dir. Quinton Baker/8 mins) – a moving documentary from first-time filmmaker Quinton Baker – sees transgender activists take to the streets of Oxford, England to fight anti-trans sentiments using the power of graffiti and street art.

Victoria (Spain/Dir. Daniel Toledo/7 mins) follows a bittersweet reunion between a trans woman and her ex, sparking tension and long buried resentment. Directed by award-winning filmmaker, Daniel Toledo, Victoria also features acclaimed trans actress, writer and director Abril Zamora (The Life Ahead, The Mess You Leave Behind).

All films will be available to view from 17 – 28 March 2021 via the British Council Arts YouTube channel as well as being part of the BFI Flare digital programme on BFI Player and associated platforms.

Archipel (2021) IFFR 2021

Dir.: Felix Dufour-Laperriere; Documentary with FlorenceBlain Mbaye, Mattis Savard-Verhoeven; Canada 2021, 72 min.

Canadian director/writer/producer/editor Felix Dufour-Laperriere has created a visually striking portrait of his hometown Montreal (Quebec) with only a few real names and an assortment of mostly animated super-imposed images making any attempt at categorisation near impossible. One could call it a journey into poetry, music and live action held together by the voice-over of the two nameless narrators: a woman and man trying to communicate.

 

 

We never leave the titular Archipelago: old maps, footage and pictures give us an idea of times gone-by: people dominate, working, playing and wandering around in the delta. Names mentioned are Pierre Vallieres, a Quebec separatist politician and Jacques Verron, a reformist doctor. With animation and live-action correlated, we do not always know if this is a dream, even though the change of framing is a further point of reference guiding us, but also threatening to engulf us in this labyrinth of images. The score of Feu Doux underlines a semi-narrative of stream of consciousness and magic. Cryptic, often poetic, musings are like signs in a watery jungle landscape. The Saint Lawrence River keeps the boundaries in place and a native Innu-Aimon poem strikes a poetic and artful tone too hard to define in this multi-dimensional adventure composed of myriad art forms. It certainly  transcends any filmic reference, exuding a timeless quality which is both beguiling and discombobulating. Words may dominate, giving us some directions, but overall the enigmatic Archipel does not want be to classified, just to be watched like an seamless adventure; wild, untamed and free. AS

Rotterdam Film Festival | 2021

The Dog Who Wouldn’t be Quiet | El Perro que no calla (2020)

Dri: Ana Katz | Argentina, Drama 73′

A dreamy absurdist meditation on life with man’s best friend seems well-pitched for this time when many increasingly rely on their pets – particularly dogs – to see them through loneliness and crisis. Screaming kids are part of life but not everyone tolerates a barking dog. But our canine friends can often highlight the general mood better than humans.

In her offbeat debut feature Argentinian filmmaker Ana Katz offers a gentle lowkey reflection of the life and times of Sebastian and his canine companion, that gradually opens out to touch on wider concerns. Set in a community struggling to survive economic turndown, Sebastian is struggling to hold down a job but his dog Rita spends her lonely days howling, much to the annoyance of his neighbours. Watching calmly and intelligently as Sebastian deals with the negative comments  about her at his place of work, the realisation dawns that he will have to leave his job. But on a walk through the surrounding countryside, the decision is made for him. And this is delicately conveyed in a series of black and white sketches that carry a poignant sorrowful message.

The dog’s anxiety ripples out into a widespread ‘cri de coeur’ expressing the collective concern of a population lacking in agency and forced into passive endurance of their uneventful daily lives.

Essentially this is a series of episodes in Sebastian’s life as he goes from place to place gamely looking for work, while also playing an active part in his mother’s days with her sophisticated friends. This all culminates in a romantic meeting on the dance-floor and a family of his own.

A comet disaster, shown again in drawing form, provides an ecological watershed and the film’s lowkey Sci-fi twist that sees the Earth’s atmosphere become contaminated above ground level. Sebastian, who is now working in a farming collective, is forced to adapt to the confusing changes, including wearing a glass bubble mask (you can appreciate the social resonance here). This new normal situation becomes a routine that Sebastian and his fiends will have to accept. But it somehow is the making of him.

Filming in black-and-white film with an inconsequential original score, this is a promising debut that doesn’t quite manage to hang together despite some strong ideas, and the comedy angle is amongst them. Ana Katz get some naturalistic performances from her cast, and Daniel Katz makes for a likeable Sebastian in the central role. Rita is rather underwritten, and it’s a shame her role is so truncated as she could have provided the link to bringing the narrative together and garnering empathy from dog lovers everywhere. MT.

ON CURZON HOME CINEMA | 21 MAY 2021

ROTTERDAM FILM FEST | WINNER – BIG SCREEN AWARD 2021

Black Medusa (2021) Mubi

Dir: Ismael & Youssef Chebbi | Drama, Tunisia, 95′

The Black Medusa Nada is in some ways emblematic of her home town of Tunis in this enigmatic fantasy thriller portrait of contemporary North African womanhood.

In this first feature Tunisian filmmakers Ismael and Youssef Chebbi are clearly supportive of their embittered main character – who choses not to communicate verbally – investing her with the power to hit back at the male-dominated Arab society where she has grown up in the aftermath of the revolution. Nour Hajri makes for a mesmerising Nada – the aptly named Black Medusa – who modestly goes her about her daily routine before diving into the nighttime shadows to prey on unsuspecting suitors.

Nada’s modus operandi is a ritual of revenge unfolding over nine. First, she poses as a sympathetic confidante to her male suitors – then she stabs them viciously, and seemingly with impunity. But her murderous behaviour soon rouses the suspicions of her workplace colleague Noura, who discovers a knife used in the attacks, and die is cast.

Underwritten characters and a slim but suggestive premise are clearly the result of the filmmakers budget constraints in a feature shot at lightening speed, and scripted in only two weeks. Enigma somehow works to their advantage here but not in the way they had anticipated with Nada serving the narrative as a beguiling counterpoint to the film’s much stronger (and in some ways more interesting) character – Tunis itself, gradually emerging in the nocturnal odyssey through this intriguing capital.

Stylistically brave in its striking black and white beauty and eclectic soundscape, the film makes for a slow and sinuous study of the nighttime antics of urban Tunisians in a voyeuristic expose of this classic coastal city with its ancient medinas and modern architectural flourishes and broad palm-fringed boulevards that will eventually lead to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.

The directors meld Noir and Giallo styles satisfyingly in a memorable revenge thriller that serves as a sophisticated showcase to a siren-like capital city where a serial killer is on a voyage of discovery to liberate herself from the past. MT

ON MUBI FROM 25 January 2022

 

 

 

Liborio (2021) Mubi

Dir: Nino Martinez Sosa | Dominican Rep Drama 99′

A violent hurricane in the tropical jungles of the Dominican Republic in the early years of the 20th century is the catalyst for transformation deep in this debut feature from Nino Martinez Sosa.

And the focus for change is Olivorio ‘Liborio’ Mateo who takes refuge in a cave only to reappear much later as a messianic figure and force for positive change and healing in his local community. Will this Jesus-like figure bring lasting hope or is he just another false prophet?.

An age old question and one Nino Martinez Sosa explores with some ingenuity in his lively feature debut that shines a light on this largely unknown episode of history. His film imagines a bright and self-determining future for an impoverished farming community in the South of his homeland. And one that serves as a metaphor for our world today where injustice continue despite social and economic advancement, and it will always be thus.

Since Jesus came down from the Cross, people everywhere have being looking for redemption and positive change – through cults, sects and new-fangled religions. Based on local history, Liborio is another figure who captures the collective imagination of his community, and from the time he reappears after the storm his prophecies and healing powers enrich his group of followers who have, up to this time, been dominated by Catholic doctrines. He retreats with them into the mountains to start a commune in the name of freedom, but faces still opposition from invading US marines after the 1916 American invasion when tensions developed into an armed struggle.

Atmospherically lensed by Oscar Duran (who honed his skills on Sexy Beast) this highly sensory tale takes the form of seven scenes showing how Liborio (a luminous central turn from Vicente Santos) inspires the locals with his teachings amid hostility from Catholic believers, much as Jesus got a bad rap from the prevailing Jews in Palestine; the shadow of colonialism eventually making its presence known in the shape of the soldiers.

Today in the Dominican Republic ‘Liborism’ is kept alive in ritual, prayer and song connecting this dramatised history to the present, and is here brought to us by Martinez Sosa’s illuminating historical drama. MT

Rotterdam Film Festival | premiere | this year’s festival kicks off on 26 January 2022

The Edge of Daybreak (2021) IFFR 2021

Dir: Taiki Sakpisit | Thailand, Switzerland | Drama, 116′

Four decades of political turmoil and violent history unfold in this deeply visual monochrome meditation whose intimate focus is the family tragedy at its core.

A thematically rich feature debut for Thai filmmaker Taiki Sakpisit who has made quite a name for himself as a director of shorts to create an impressive body of work linked to his country’s history. He now takes on a much more ambitious project that traces back to the distant history of his homeland in a film that scratches at the edges of Gothic fantasy taking it roots from reality.

Experimental in nature and strangely beguiling carries with it a palpable tension as turmoil in running high in its Bangkok setting. A prominent government figure is spending his final hours in safety before fleeing into exile. In the chiaroscuro shadows DoP Chananun Chotrungroj’s roving voyeuristic camera alights on a naked body and we are led to believe by the film’s narrator this incident is connected to the family who inhabit a decrepit riverside mansion steeped in a mysterious past.

Days are marked out by silent rituals. Pailin, the mistress of the house, is recovering from a traumatic accident involving her daughter Ploy. Wordlessly moving around in spellbound somnambulant state she is one of the female protagonists with little agency, suppressed by her stultifying surroundings in a story that serves as a metaphor for the suffering of the Thai people who have undergone years of repressive regimes and brutal trauma.

Sakpisit directs with confidence keeping his distance from his mysterious protagonists while maintaining a focus on the females, and evoking a creeping sense of dread with an ominous soundscape to create an artistic response to his country’s legacy of militarisation and impunity.

This is a narrative which very much connects to the global concern that psychosis and traumatic stress disorder can be passed down to later generations into the collective consciousness eventually becoming endemic in the nation’s heart and soul.

 

Rotterdam Film Festival | FIPRESCI Award 2021

Suzanna Andler (2021) IFFR 2021

Dir: Benoit Jacquot | France, Drama, 88′

A romantic chamber piece for Charlotte Gainsbourg to strut her stuff and she makes a soigné star in YSL, faux fur and high-heels in this sophisticated drama from Cesar winning Benoit Jacquot (Farewell My Queen, Eva).

Set in a sumptuous seaside villa in Cannes – reminding us to get our skates on for this year’s revised July festival – it muses on the constantly changing dynamics of love and fidelity, and the continuing fascination for women of a certain age by younger men.

The young guy in this case is Michel (Niels Schneider most recently seen in Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats). Gainsbourg plays forty something Suzanna Andler who describes herself to the estate agent showing her the villa, as “the most cheated-on woman in the Riviera”. Her millionaire husband Jean (who never appears, but speaks to her over the ‘phone from Chantilly where he also has a lover) will spend two weeks there with the family, she will then be joined by Michel keeping a low profile, naturellement.

Jacquot bases his script on a 1960s play by the famous French novelist, director and actor Marguerite Duras (he worked as her assistant in the early 1970s), set back in the day when it was ‘de rigueur’ to have a lover to compensate for the confines of the marital bed, and here cleverly escapes the strictures of the stage with an evocative seaside soundscape, the lush villa is a character in itself, and a beachside walk with the third character Julia Roy (who also appeared in Eva) as her daughter, Monique.

Staying faithful to the original, this is elegantly performed and delightful to watch, its discursive love story playing out amid gentle lulling waves and seagulls on a spring day on the Riviera, distilling the essence of this magical part of France. MT

Rotterdam Film Festival 2021 | LIMELIGHT STRAND

Pebbles (2021) IFFR 2021 | Tiger Award 2021

Dir: P S Vinothraj | Drama, India 74′

Drought is a killer in Southern India. And the village of Arittapatti is suffering. Women keep calm and patiently carry on – roasting rats to feed the family – but the men are full of rage, against themselves and the environment.

Powered forwards by a seething debut performance from Karuththadaiyaan, who plays the central character Ganapathy, this first feature from P S Vinothraj – essentially a two hander – is as much a social portrait of rural India’s patriarchal society as a anti-buddy movie about a father and his young son (Chellapandi, also a non-pro).

Forget solidarity. The desiccated landscape has reduced humanity to desperation, Ganapathy’s wife fleeing from his domestic abuse to her in-laws in a neighbouring village. Furious and determined to get his back – she is his possession, after all – Ganapathy drags his sons on the 13 km journey across a wasteland, Walkabout style, in the searing heat of the hottest day of the year.

In an odyssey Punctuated by occasional violent outbursts, and intensified by a handheld camera, what we remember most about Pebbles is the silence: this is actually a meditation on the miracle of nature and also the cruelty of man towards the environment, seen largely through the eyes of Chellapandi, a calm and thoughtful boy who refuses to give in to his father’s draconian  dominance and physical abuse preferring to marvel instead at their  their journey through this ravaged but characterful landscape. At one point they are followed by a stray puppy, the father kicks it away but Chellapandi befriends it and takes it home, he’s emerging a nature boy and the hero of the film.

Despite a dysfunctional relationship with his father the two are inexorably drawn together, the father’s negative energy fuelling the boy’s positivity and resourcefulness. It’s an intriguing study of how opposites continue to stick together somehow complimenting each other in the face of all odds.

Minutely observed and captured on the widescreen, and by use of drones, this wonderful feature, over a year in the making, is an arthouse gem that fills the viewer with a feeling of calm contemplation. A tribute to the patient resourcefulness of poverty-stricken people all over the developing world. MT

Rotterdam Film Festival 2021 | TIGER COMPETITON WINNER 2021

 

The Year Before the War | Gads Pirms Kara (2021 IFFR

Dir.: Davis Simanis; Cast: Petr Buchta, Inga Salina, Girts Kesteris, Lauris Dzelzitis, Eduards Johansons, Edgards Kaufelds, Gints Gravelis, Uldis Silins, Daniel Sidon, Janis Putnins; Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic | 2021, 95 min.

This stylish third feature from Latvian historian and now filmmaker Davis Simanis is a tour-de-force artfully imagining the final events of 1913 before the outbreak of war. Shot in black-and-white and combining the aesthetics of early cinema with a surrealist twist, it is a ravishing odyssey of ideas and their main protagonists seen through the eyes of nascent revolutionary Petr on his peripatetic journey through a Europe in turmoil. Romantic passion, world revolution, psychoanalysis, and seduction: Simanis’ inspired drama bubbles with ideas in a caldron of change heralding the 20th century when Europe and the world would be transformed forever.

We start the journey in Riga on New Year’s Day 1913. A young fisherman drowns himself in an icy lake “he wants to be with the fish, who know the secret of death”. Meanwhile Petr (calling himself Hans), a doorman in a posh hotel, is fired on suspicion of revolution ideas.

With the arrival of Spring Petr has made it to Switzerland, shooting his newly acquired gun into the air with a triumphant flourish. Somehow he wanders into the “Lebensreform” sanatorium where patients are  dancing around naked to escape the ravages of TB and psychosomatic illness.

Petr meets the philosopher Wittgenstein (Silins); and later, at a séance, Alma (Salina), who could  be the future spy Mata Hari. Alma is an emotional woman, full of wild and passionate expression and we see her before an audience in a cinema tent, where Biograph pictures are being shown. Alma will reappear in later episodes, emerging as an increasingly enigmatic seductive figure for Petr.

In June, our hero visits Prague and decides to enlist, running into Trotsky (Gravelis) at a political rally. Later in July, the trigger happy Petr visits Vienna where his gun comes in handy for more attacks on the establishment, shooting at a well known politician. Later, in London he will be hailed a hero as more political enemies come under fire. But by August he is already tired of all the killing.

Summer draws to a close and Petr, now in Riga, sees Alma again. He also has a brush up with Lenin (Dzelzitis). Moving to Prague in September, he visits Freud (Kesteris), who, not un-surprisingly, diagnoses Petr with an Oedipus complex, after he expressed his desire to kill his father (who has died in the meantime). The narrative gets more unhinged, with an orgy, an empty coffin and forays to government offices. At a demonstration we spot Schicklgruber (Kaufelds), who tries to break up the anarchist meeting.

All good things come to an end, and finally, Petr must face the music. Winter is once again closing in and Lenin reappears to give him instructions for the planned revolution. The film draws to a close on New Year’s Eve in Riga where Alma begs him to leave and let her die. We somehow jump forward to the Great War, where symbolically Petr satisfies his gnawing hunger by boiling and eating a human hand. He is called by his comrades Petr Ivanovitch, but still insists on being called Hans. By now he is a prosecutor in a Stalinist system, condemning dissidents to death, he “cannot see any meaning at all”.

A visual triumph for DoP Andrejs Rudzats and PD/Kristina Jurjane whose black and white camerawork leads us on a magical journey  brimming with intrigue. The second half of the feature could easily have been scripted by Kafka. Sidon, who makes a guest appearance is able to re-imagine the atmosphere of the Golem series, and Jurjane is equally brilliant at re-building cities, as we have seen in the cinema of German Expressionism. There is so much to be admired that – for once – an extra thirty minutes of this stunningly torrid rush of imagination would be most welcome. AS.

Rotterdam Film Festival | BIG SCREEN COMPETITION.

 

Madalena (2021) Mubi

Dir: Madiano Marcheti | Thriller Brazil 85′

More transexuals are killed in Brazil than anywhere else in the world and this sobering thought provides the touchstone to Madiano Marcheti’s assured feature debut that premiered exactly a year ago at Rotterdam’s film festival’s 50th celebration.

Madalena is a murder mystery that is never solved. We see a broken body lying in a field of lushly swaying soya, but we never discover much more – this is not a crime procedural or a whodunnit. What Madalena does provide is a haunting and unsettling snapshot of the cultural and societal references that support intolerance in this deeply religious, patriarchal and macho part of rural Brazil that remains connected and influenced by the modern world and yet at the same time, tethered in the past. In this sense the setting (where the director himself grew up) is very much a character that influences what has gone before. In this eerie tropical landscape, ostriches strut like creatures out of a Sci-fi thriller and drones trawl the skies patrolling the vast acres of farmland. Meanwhile monsters are being bred in the frivolous disco-dancing, vape-smoking, body-conscious urban hinterland, and they’re called men.

Capturing the vast open skyscapes and deathly silences of the spooky agrarian setting Marcheti stealthily explores the aftermath to Madalena’s death through three protagonists who are unknown to each other as they gradually become aware of her disappearance. The details are left unclear and we never find out how the death eventually leaks out into the news.

Club hostess Luziane calls round at Madalena’s simple village home several times, her mother pressurising her to borrow money, but Madalena is nowhere to be found. The narrative then shifts to body-builder Cristiano who works for his land-owning father, spending his time smoking drinking and injecting himself with hormones. He can’t forget what he’s seen in the soyafields, so he takes his friend Gildo back to where he originally saw the body but it’s a hostile and inhospitable terrain that keeps its secret well hidden.

In a mellow and soft-centred finale it’s left to trans woman Bianca and her girlfriends to pack up Madalena’s possessions as they share memories of happier times with their friend. Marcheti never passes judgement on his characters, they are merely there to serve the narrative – but none is particularly likeable, leaving us to reach our own conclusions on this sinister story and the hostile and unknowable place where it all unfolds. MT

NOW ON MUBI I TIGER COMPETITION

Friends and Strangers (2021)

Dir/Wri: James Vaughan | Cast: Emma Diaz, Victoria Maxwell, Fergus Wilson, Greg Zimbulis | Australia, Comedy drama 82′

Sydney is the setting for this filmic breath of fresh air from promising newcomer James Vaughan exploring displacement and modern ennui with a humorous touch seen through the eyes of an easygoing young Australian. For fans of Joanna Hogg – this might appeal.

Setting off with a jaunty piano soundtrack the film opens with a rather awkward but entirely convincing conversation by two directionless millennials Alice (Diaz) and Ray (Wilson) who are set adrift in the holidays and discussing their putative travel plans in the balmy urban confines of a leafy Sydney’s suburb. Eventually they fetch up camping in a caravan by a lakeside. But the story’s focus then increasingly turns to Ray as his summer adventure broadens.

Defined by its freewheeling style and naturalistic performances (Wilson is particularly good) Friends and Strangers avoids a structured narrative playing out as a series of amusing vignettes that riff on the theme of wanderlust and endless travel for millennials before the constraints of Covid came along. Much of Alice and Ray’s time together is interrupted by members of the older generation adding context to their aimless behaviour and accentuating the solipsistic nature of the young characters un-centred existence. They say a lot but actually mean very little, and there is no real focus to their interactions. Maybe their whole style of language and dialogue results from their inherent lack of direction or need to do anything at all, dictated by the vague unpressurised lives they lead.

Cleverly observed and unhurried in its gentle style Friends and Strangers derives its humour from the fact that nothing really happens in their freewheeling laissez-faire lifestyle. Perceived slights and vague mood changes accentuate their lack of purpose and often arise out of the characters’ need to overthink situations, because nothing of real consequence ever happens as the days stretch out into a pointless void. Vaughan has certainly perfected millennial dialogue with its ubiquitous interpolations of ‘like’ and ‘kind of’ peppered everywhere. And dramatic heft – and texture – arrives in the scenes where Ray finds himself filming a wedding video for a wealthy art collector at an uptown house where the mounting stress levels are much more in tune with modern urban life – adding an hilarious Mr Bean twist to proceedings.

Dimitri Zaunders’ camera occasionally swings into widescreen mode giving us an enjoyable travelogue of Sydney’s sites and monuments not to mention some less crowded beaches and gorgeous modernist villas, where the Mr Bean accident occurs.

Slim but highly entertaining while it lasts, this is an ‘amuse bouche’ of a film that shows Vaughan as an acute observer of life, and a real talent in the making with a promising career ahead of him. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 NOVEMBER 2021 | TIGER COMPETITION 2021

Mighty Flash (2021)

Dir: Ainhoa Rodrigues | Spain, Fantasy Drama 90′

Life in Southern Spain hasn’t changed much for the God-fearing and deeply suspicious repressed but dying to burst out from their in rural communities in Extremadura. And women are the keenest to break free. Or at least that’s the impression we get from Ainhoa Rodriguez’ deliciously dark and delightfully observed first feature that unfolds with a cast of non-pros on the widescreen and in intimate – often voyeuristic – closeup.

Mighty Flash is an amusing story of country folk and their sexual frustrations and ethnographical portrait of a remote group of people, spiced up with magic realist touches. These country dwellers may be cut off from the rest of Spain but they are as thick as thieves amongst themselves, supporting one another and sharing tales of farming exploits, folklore and strange happenings in the surrounding countryside – not to mention vicious social gossip. Like Dickens’ Mr Micawber they are constantly waiting for something to turn up, not just the Second Coming or the Madonna at the local Semana Santa processions. 

Isa records suggestive messages to herself that speak of strange events: “A mighty flash of light will appear above the village, which will change everything”, she hears herself say. “It is magnificent. We will all get a headache, we will lose our memories and we will disappear.” Cita is a deeply unsatisfied with her life and one morning leaves her warm matrimonial bed and heads to the church to pray, all dolled up in a mini dress and blow-dry. This naturally sparks criticism and wagging tongues amongst the other women: “nothing will come of her” they chunter conspiratorially. 

Although the womenfolk are frustrated in the deadbeat backwater, the men seem more contented with their daily grind. Nothing happens but actually everything happens. High hopes are met with unrealised dreams. But the tone here is drole and upbeat, always positive, never bitter.

Loneliness has no place in this community, despite its lack of potential. Days are fraught with the social round. All done up in pearls and fur coats – not to mention high heels – ladies lunch together and talk of sexual desire and personal fulfilment – and their dissatisfaction with the menfolk is fully realised in scenes enlivened by surrealist flourishes. María mourns her deceased husband, Paco. Sometimes, someone hears a sound that escapes everyone else. Can it be real or just a fantasy.? Female imagination catches fire while the men simply hunker down with their mates and animals – especially the little goat farmer who describes tricking a female goat into bringing up a kid from another litter.

Cleverly observed, pert and well-paced with its punchy electronic soundtrack and touches of magic realism deftly woven into the narrative, Mighty Flash is a real one off. Working hard – and successfully – to build a bond of trust with her cast Rodriquez’ first feature fizzes with intrigue behind its zipped-up facade. A brilliantly observed portrait of modern Spain that could be from the dark ages. Ironic, inspired and in the delicate spirit of Victor Erice. MT

NOW ON MUBI | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | TIGER COMPETITION | VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL | EUROPEAN DEBUT COMPETITION Best Director: Ainhoa Rodríguez

 

 

 

The Cemil Show (2021) Rotterdam Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Baris Sarhan; Cast: Ozan Celik, Nesrin Cavadzade, Alican Yücesoy; Basar Alemdar, Fuat Kökek; Turkey 2020, 106 min.

This first feature by Turkish writer/director Baris Sarhan is an inventive spoof, combining ‘old’ footage of classic Turkish B-pictures with a Kafkaesque setting in a modern shopping mall. Charisma alone is not enough on to justify the film’s generous running time, and so much of the playful impact is lost as The Cemil Show strains to entertain for nearly two hours on a wafer thin story.

So the plot is simple: Cemil (Celik) is a security guard in a maze-like mall where he holds down his mundane day job desperate to be an actor. When one his favourite films is due for a re-make, Cemil throws himself into rehearsing the role of his hero, the monster villain Turgay Göral from the original outing. Full of hope he then heads off for an audition, but leaves empty-handed, disillusioned and angry.

There is a silver lining when Cemil discovers Göral (Kökek) is still alive, although very much down on his luck. He then discovers his hero’s daughter Burcu (Cavadzade) is working in the same mall, and has set her heart on Zaher (Yücesoy), the draconian staff manager. A bittersweet but rather weak ending sees Cemil watching old films with his hero Göral (Alemdar), the monstrous villain in all his films.

All said and done, The Cemil Show is a charming romp with its stylish retro B-picture extracts. DoP Soykut Turan gets a chance to show off a variety of skills, his grainy black-and-white images contrasting impressively with the more baroque colour sequences of the parallel action. Sarhan is a talented newcomer who would excels with a more disciplined approach to his filmmaking. AS

BIG SCREEN COMPETITION | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2021

I Comete: A Corsican Summer (2021) IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival

Dir: Pascal Tagnati | France, Drama 124′

Warm, light-hearted and drôle : this free-wheeling cinema verite take on Corsican village life dances away from a formal narrative capturing the gentle offbeat nature of the Mediterranean island in summer. The first feature film from Corsican ‘theatre-maker’, actor and author Pascal Tagnati plays out in a series of quirky inconsequential vignettes – some of them quite risqué – that picture the locals at play, swimming, flirting, arguing (and even crying) as they enjoy the sumptuous scenery of this hilly island paradise at a time where villagers get together to enjoy the last days of the summer holidays.

Beautifully composed and refreshing, Tagnati’s observational approach cleverly combines drama and fiction, relying on a natural soundscape of birdsong and breeze, occasionally traditional folksongs are heard in the distance, sung in Corsican dialect (which sounds a bit like Italian, unsurprisingly), culminating in the heartrending ‘La mort de Filicone’.

I Comete is very much a collaborative effort between Tagnati and the local villagers in a cast of predominately non-pros – apart from the major roles – ad-libbing most of the way, it certainly offers an essence of the island and its people for those who’ve never been there, it works as an accidental travelogue stimulating an interest to discover more about the place. Franje, appears to be the only black resident of the village, and the kids make an older character the butt of their jokes although he seems a kind and resourceful type, and we feel quite sorry for him in his undeserved role as the ‘village idiot’. In other more downbeat moments Theo reflects on the possibility of the less happier times in his life, and Lucienne talks of freedom.

At the end of the day, the Corsicans are just like everybody else in Europe where daily life centres on friends, football, infidelity and fertility, family traditions probably loom slightly larger here than in Northern Europe but the pace is certainly slower, Tagnati lulling us into a pleasant reverie about his home, that brims with a sense of national pride and a collective joie de vivre. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 1-7 FEBRUARY 2021 | TIGER COMPETITION | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

Nulle Trace (No Trace) Slam Dance Festival 2021

Dir.: Simon Lavoie; Cast: Nathalie Doummar, Monique Gosselin; Canada 2020, 103 min.

Canadian writer/director Simon Lavoie borrows heavily from Bergman and Tarkovsky for this sketchy story about civil war in an unknown country. Using odd formats, like a 11:8 ratio, Lavoie’s feature relies on the stunning black-and-white photography of his DoP Simran Dewan – but you cannot rely on images alone to carry a film, however enigmatic.

Filmed in Quebec, Canada No Trace opens with a four-minute close-up of rails, filmed from the moving handcar, which is owned by ‘N’ (Gosselin), who looks like a trapper from a Western. She later emerges a hardened people smuggler who is guiding Awa (Doummar) and her baby daughter. N is afraid the child’s crying might alarm the guards at the border. But all goes well, and Awa will eventually meet up with her husband. But N loses her vehicle – and soon – her way in the forest where she later meets Awa, who has ben raped. N also finds the body of Awa’s husband, and her daughter who has been burned on the sticks.

The two survivors are hostile, with Awa, a Muslim, constantly praying. Lavoie wisely leads leaves the final stretch of his feature open-ended  fitting for a film with such a flimsy narrative.

A heavy, menacing score underlines the tone of gloom and doom and the threatening atmosphere, the screen goes blank for a time without any explanation and sometimes garbled language replaces proper dialogue. Nulle Trace is dressed up as arthouse fare, the title ironically symbolic of the lack of artistic coherence. AS

NULLE TRACE OPENS SLAMDANCE FESTIVAL 2021 FEBRUARY 12-25 PARK CITY UTAH.

The Man Without a Past (2002) Now on Prime Video

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Dir\Writer: Aki Kaurismaki: Cast: Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Sakar Kuosmanen; Finland/France/Germany 2002; 97 min.

Like many auteurs of his generation, Aki Kaurismaki is entirely self-taught. After a working life spent as a postman and film critic amongst other things, he turned his hand to film-making in the eighties and has been incredibly successful in his endeavour, producing his own films and distributing them through his own company Alphaville, and even showing them at his own arthouse cinemas in Finland. Often working with his elder brother Mika, they have shaped the face of Finnish cinema, crafting one-fifth of the Finnish film industry’s total output since 1981.

In love with the past and Finland’s lugubrious hard-drinking working classes, often down on their luck – anything post 1980 does not interest Kaurismaki visually and he made this retro look his trademark. The Man Without a Past sees him create another antihero, this time the director doesn’t even give him a name, in the credits he is just ‘M’.

M (his beloved Markku Peltola) arrives one Spring evening in Helsinki, with a small suitcase. Resting on a park bench he nods off and is attacked by three young men, who leave him for dead. Coming round in a rain-soaked stupor, he makes his way to A&E where retrograde amnesia is diagnosed. Discharged from hospital and homeless, he makes his way to a container site where he rents a place to rest his head from a conman called Antilla (Kuosmanen). The geezer exploits those down on their luck. His ‘fierce’ dog Hannibal turns out to be submissive, snuggling up with M on his bed. All this plays out with Kaurismaki’s classic blend of eccentric situational humour which is light on dialogue and heavy on innuendo.

M can’t remember a thing about his life but when he catches sight of a couple of metal workers down near the port he feels a strange affinity to their daily grind, leading him to believe he was a welder in a former life. Turning to the Samaritans for help, he falls in love with Irma (Outinen) and a new lease of life. Soon he’ part of a swing band with the local Samaritans, and manages to secure some welding work. But his luck turns sour when he gets caught up in a bank robbery and this brush with the police leads to his identification. It soon emerges he was married, but his wife divorced him on account of his gambling. When M travels back to his home town by train he finds her living in their former marital dwelling with a boyfriend. M is only too relieved he doesn’t have to fight it out with his rival, returning back to Irma in Helsinki and eventual revenge.

Kaurismaki’s classic absurdist humour is an acquired taste and The Man Without a Past is one of the best examples. When M cooks dinner for Irma in his container, she asks politely “Are you sure, I can’t help”. His deadpan response is: “I think it’s ruined already”. Later when an electrician has helped him connect his container to a power source, M asks how he could return the favour. The man answers matter of factly: “If you see me lying in the gutter face down, turn me on my back”.

Kaurismaki is best compared with Preston Sturges and his comedies of the 30s; his heroes are like the actors Buster Keaton used to preferred, “they can’t raise their voice, their only reaction are furrowed brows”. DOP Timo Salminen, who shot nearly all of Kaurismaki’s films, shows Finland as a morose country where suicide, poverty, hunger and alcoholism is rife. All this is borne, (according to the director) “out of the change in society from a mainly agricultural country, to an industrialised one – many feel rootless and alienated from the country, in a place where high rise blocks and unemployment kill the soul. ” This, and his beloved band music, are the touchstones of his film career that started in 1991.

The Man Without a Past won the Grand Prix at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Kati Outinen best actress. AS

 

Ivana the Terrible (2019) Locarno

Dir.: Ivana Mladenovic; Cast: Ivanka Mladenovic, Gordana Mladenovic, Modrae Mladenovic, Kosta Mladenovic, Luca Gramic, Anca Pop, Andrei Dinescu; Serbia/Romania 2019, 86 min.

Director/co-writer Ivana Mkadenovic (Soldiers: Story from Ferentari) describes her latest, a fictional autobiography, or docu-fiction hybrid is very much in the vein of this year’s IDFA winner Radiograph of a Family although far more satirical in nature. The past and the present collide in Kladovo, Serbia, near the border to Romania, where Ivana also ‘stars’ as a histrionic millennial jilted by her Romanian lover and suffering the after-affects of PTSD. Her family, friends and former lovers play the other roles.

We first meet Ivana on a train going back home to Serbia for the summer, where we get to experience just how terrible she really is. Freed from her work commitments, she accepts the mayor’s invitation to become the face of a local music festival, and finds herself the latest citizen to be honoured with an award acknowledging the bond of friendship between Serbia and Romania. It just so happens that the Trajan (Friendship) Bridge over the Danube connecting Serbia and Romania, and where Tito and Ceausescu once famously met, is also in Kladovo, on the Serbian side, adding all sorts of bilateral connotations to the narrative, along with the generational conflicts.

Far from triumphant, Ivana’s return puts the cat amongst the pigeons on all front , escalated by her fragile state of mind. To make matters even worse (or somehow better, as it turns out), Ivana’s relationship with a much younger guy is soon the talk of the town (the general consensus being that she should settle down and start a family), but this gossip soon confers a kind of celebrity status on the petulant woman, her erratic behaviour becoming par for the course. Her behaviour certainly challenges social stereotypes in the traditional community. And the arrival of Ivana’s friend (portrayed by Romanian-Canadian singer-songwriter Anca Pop – to whose memory the film is dedicated) is a another game-changer, further enhancing her bad-girl status in the village, and there is much consternation among the old-fashioned local womenfolk when an offer to have their private parts form the basis of a local sculpture is not well-received, to say the least.

Eventually Ivana gets a lift with Anca and Andrei back to Bucharest, stopping on the way to listen to some poets reading on the Friendship bridge. Another dimension to this (un)happy merry-go-round comes in the shape of a story from the Second World War when over a thousand Jews came to Kladovo where they were to be escorted by boat to the safety of Palestine. But the ship never came, and the Jews lost their lives during the ensuing Nazi occupation of the town. MT

ARTEKINO | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

Let the Sunshine In (2020) **** Mubi

French Filmmaker Claire Denis is one of the most innovative pioneers of independent cinema and fiercely committed to her singular vision. Growing up the daughter of a civil servant in various African countries, she eventually went home to France and fell in love with cinema in the Cinematheque, Paris. Making films seemed inevitable and after studying at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC) she embarked on a career that would see her working with Jacques Rivette (who became the subject of her 1990 documentary Jacques Rivette, Le Veilleur), Dušan Makavejev, Roberto Enrico and Costa-Gavras and Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. Through the musician John Lurie she met Jim Jarmusch and worked with him  on Down by Law. But it was with her debut feature Chocolat that she made it to the international stage in 1988. The film was selected for Cannes and the César awards, it also got her together with Agnès Godard who became her regular director of photography for all her films.

So far Claire Denis has made six documentaries and no fewer than 17 feature films, such as Nénette et Boni for which she is awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1996. Beau Travail, is one of the most stark and contemplative French films about war, standing alongside Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanite. It was chosen for Venice line-up in 1999. Set amid racial conflict in a Francophone African state, Isabelle Huppert plays a coffee plantation owner desperately trying to save her crop, her family and her life in Denis’ 2009 outing White Material.

Clearly race and post-colonial themes feature heavily in her work, but Denis has also dabbled in genres – Bastards was a thriller, 35 Shots of Rum a fantasy drama about a father and daughter in Paris. Trouble Every Day reflects the emotional anguish of a loved up but warring married coup, starring Béatrice Dalle and Vincent Gallo it screened at Cannes Film Festival in 2001. Denis has also worked several times with Juliette Binoche, most recently in her critically acclaimed sci-fi outing High Life (2018) and previously in her insightfully playful comedy Let the Sunshine In. where she plays a spirited and intelligent woman trying to find love with a series of unedifyingly pompous losers. Robert Pattinson will join Denis for the The Stars at Noon (2021) which follows American traveller (Margaret Qualley) through Nicaragua during the 1980s revolution, based on the novel by American writer Denis Johnson. Her next project Stars at Noon in set in 1980s Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution when a mysterious English businessman and a headstrong American journalist strike up a romance as they find themselves involved in a dangerous labyrinth of deceit. MT

CURZON release NOW ON MUBI 

Filmography

High Life, 2018 Un beau soleil intérieur, 2017 Le Camp de Breidjing, 2015 Contact, 2014 Voilà l’enchaînement, 2014 Les Salauds, 2013 Venezia 70: Future Reloaded, 2013 Aller au diable, 2011 White Material, 2010 35 rhums, 2008 Vers Mathilde, 2005 L’Intrus, 2004 Vendredi soir, 2002 Vers Nancy (Segment du film Ten Minutes Older: The Cello), 2002 Trouble Every Day, 2001 Beau travail, 1999 Nénette et Boni, 1996 Nice, very Nice (segment from A propos de Nice, la suite), 1994 J’ai pas sommeil (I Can’t Sleep), 1994 U.S. Go Home (Collection : Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge), 1994 La Robe à cerceau (from Monologues, with Chantal Akerman), 1993 Keep It for Yourself  + Figaro Story, 1991 Jacques Rivette, le veilleur. Part 1 : la nuit (Cinéaste de notre temps), 1990 S’en fout la mort (No Fear, No Die) 1990 Man No Run, 1989 Chocolat, 1988 Le 15 Mai, 1969

Unidentified (2020) ****

Dir.: Bogdan George Apetri; Cast: Bogdan Farcas, Dragos Domitru, Vasile Muraru, Ana Popescu, Kira Hagi, Andrei Aradits; Romania/Latvia/Czech Republic 2020, 123 min.

Very much in the style of the classic French crime thrillers of the 1970s, Unidentified is a modern version of Yves Boisset’s Un Condé, tackling  racism and misogyny in one fell swoop in a tightly plotted murder story. Unidentified is the sophomore feature of Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri who also wrote and edited and co-produced drawing from his experiences of working in New York.

It sees scuzzy minor Detective Florin (Farcas) down on his luck, and in need of a scape goat to his appease his boss, Commissar Sef (Muraru). The sacrificial lamb soon fetches up in the shape of Roma security guard Banel (Domitru) whose been unlucky enough to have two major disasters occur during his checkered career, both seemingly connected to insurance fraud with Banel aiding and abetting the perpetrator, the owner of hotel where he was working.

Not that Florin is is squeaky clean from the personal probity angle either. Behind with his car repayments and mortgage, and he badgers his friend Mircea (Aradits) to give him more time to pay off his debts. But money worries are not the only thing getting the obsessed detective down. In Oleg Mutu’s fluid widescreen camerawork, we watch him on a hillside, overlooking a hotel and parking lot, spying on his fiancée Stela (Popescu) who is cheating on him with a married man. It’s hardly surprising given the way Florin neglects her and always seems to be in a bad mood. But what the hell? He hatches an ingenious plan to get rid of both of them in a double murder – the perfect crime. It will involve getting to know Banel and organising for him to work in the hotel where Stela hangs out. It’s got to be meticulously planned, so it looks like an accident: He invites Banel to his home, and makes him touch a beer bottle, which he will later use as a Molotov cocktail to kill Stela. So off he goes to meet Banel in the parking lot of the hotel at nine pm. But in that classic but always effective dramatic device – things don’t go according to plan for Florin. Not during the crime but afterwards, when his boss Sef picks holes in his story.

Apetri is certainly a master storyteller, overlaying his story of detective obsession with the serene score of none other than Chopin’s delicate piano music. Helicopter shots show Florin driving around manically, chasing his prey on a murderous mission. Even at two hours plus, Unidentified keeps us in its grip in exploring a psychotic law enforcement officer, crumbling before our eyes. And apparently there’s more to look forward too, Apetri’s  feature is the first of a trilogy set in small town Romania. AS

Special Jury Award, International Competition | Warsaw Film Festival 2020 | Rendezvous with French Cinema 2021

 

 

The Father | Bashtata (2019) Oscars 2021 | Glasgow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Vlachanov | Bulgaria Drama 87′

The Father is the third collaboration for Bulgarian auteurs Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. This superbly scripted psychological drama follows in the wake of The Lesson (2014) and Glory (2016/7) and explores a son’s attempts to rescue his father from the hands of an unscrupulous psychic healer.

Fraught with darkly piquant humour this comedy will resonate with anyone experiencing similar issues with their own ageing parents, the judicious mixture of farce and satire intertwining to deliver an enjoyable watch while skewering the situation down to a tee.

The Father in question is a dreadful dominating demon. Vasil (Ivan Savov) has no respect for his respectable married middle-aged son Pavel (an appealing Ivan Barnev) who is almost diminished to a blithering idiot in his presence, despite being a successful businessman.

During his wife Valentina’s funeral, Vasil behaves in a disgraceful manner by asking Pavel to take some final photographs of his mother’s corpse in its coffin. When Pavel refuses, Vassil berates him in front of the assembled mourners and insists on doing it himself, belittling Pavel in the process, who later deletes the macabre snaps.

But it doesn’t end there. Vasil becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife is trying to contact him from beyond the grave (by mobile) and decides to consult with a local medium, Dr Ruvi, involving Pavel in the process. Pavel feels responsible for his father, while not liking him terribly much: thoughts of getting back to his wife and business are subsumed by those of guilt; somehow he feels drawn into Vasil’s web of madness, unable to extricate himself from the parental ties that bind. Very much in the same vein as Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Vasil exerts the same vulnerable power as Bruce Dern’s paternal figure. Clearly Vasil needs protecting from the strange requests made by Ruvi, but in helping him, Pavel takes on an irritating and undignified mission.

Pavel is also consumed by latent anger and constantly back-footed by his father’s unreasonable demands. Meanwhile Vasil become more and more absurd and desperate – the interplay between the two men providing a rich vein of humour. This entertaining two-hander (we never actually meet Ruvi or Pavel’s wife) cleverly sees Pavel emerging as the ultimate hero of the piece, Grozeva and Valchanov adding plenty of textural grist to the duo’s convincingly volatile relationship. MT

NOW SCREENING AT GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE | THE FATHER IS BULGARIA’S OFFICIAL ENTRY TO THE OSCARS 2021

CRYSTAL GLOBE WINNER | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Camouflage (1976) Barwy Ochronne | Kinoteka 2020

Dir/wri: Krzysztof Zanusssi | Cast: Piotr Garlicki, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Christine Paul-Podlasky, Mariusz Dmochowski, Wojciech Alaborski | 106min  Comedy Drama  Polish with subtitles

Krzysztof Zanusssi’s Camouflage is a satire worthy of Lubitsch, set in a summer camp in the mid Seventies, where progressive professor Jaroslaw Kruszynaki (Garlicki) is battling it out with old hand and party faithful, Jacub Szelestowski (Zapasiewicz).

The pawn between the two kings is student Jarek, whose paper in the linguistic completion is original but does not tow the party line. When the deputy dean arrives for the prize-giving ceremony, all hell breaks loose: the Dean is bitten, chaos reigns and the police are called in.

Zanussi’s attack on the meritocracy based on party affiliation and nothing else, plays like out like an absurdist comedy, revealing corruption, disillusionment and confusion. Reality is always close by: Poland’s filmmakers of that era were competing with each other for major prizes at home and abroad: and while the more diffident amongst them gained support from political bureaucrats, the more adventurous found adulation and prizes in Venice and Cannes – doubt where Zanussi belonged. Since the censors could hardly fault his clever narrative construction – open to interpretation – they accused him of “mocking the system” in quoting Lenin, when Jacub argues “most important is the selection of staff”. Zanussi eventually gave in, changing ‘staff’ to ‘people’.

As a director whose style was more humorously subversive than Wajda with his dramatic frontal attacks; he employs down-to-earth characters who are very much aware of being totally compromised by the socio-political situation they find themselves in. They do not revolt openly but try just to survive with as much self-respect as possible. Zanussi never denounces his characters, but shows their reaction to the intellectual oppression of the state in relation to what they have to lose: in this way he is a humanist who accepts that the older one gets, the more there is to lose. Above all, Camouflage is witty and extremely subtle and a highlight of this canon. A great choice for a weird year! AS

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 2020 

UK Jewish Film Festival 2020 – ONLINE

The UK Jewish Film Festival presents an online edition from 5 – 19 November 2020 exploring Jewish and Israeli life, history and culture.

Festival screenings will take place on their own secure streaming platform available throughout the UK: watch.ukjewishfilm.org. Films will premiere at specific dates and times across the Festival and remain available to watch for a set period – download the film schedule here. Tickets are limited for each film so we encourage advance booking to avoid disappointment.

To ensure the best possible cinema-at-home experience, take a look at  viewing guide for ways to watch as well as our FAQs page. For support to watch the Festival with existing viewing setups, contact the box office and support team throughout the Festival duration (5th-19th November): +44(0)203 405 0710; 12pm-8pm, Sunday-Thursday; 12pm-5pm, Friday; 6.30pm-8:30pm, Saturday.

FULL SCHEDULE AVAILABLE ONLINE 

 

Marek Edelman…And There Was Love in the Ghetto (2020) Kinoteka 2020

Dir: Jolanta Dylewska, Andrzej Wajda | Cast: Aleksandra Popławska, Adriana Kalska, Maria Dejmek, Maria Semotiok, Kamilla Baar Kochonska; Katarzyna  Wajda, Mateusz Wajda, Patricya Rojecka, Julia Sierakwoska; Poland/Germany 2019, 79 min.

Jolanta Dylewska and veteran director Andrzej Wajda worked together on this wistful ‘behind the scenes’ story of cardiologist Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. Edelman talks to the camera about his recollections of love in the ghetto, the romantic vignettes re-imagined by actors and intercut with archive films from the 1940s and contemporary shots from the inside of the Ghetto.

Marek Edelman (1909-2009) was also a political activist in the Polish Solidarity movement, a founder member the Jewish Labour Youth organisation before the Second World War, and later in the Ghetto. He became a cardiologist after 1945, and continued to oppose Zionism after the war, writing a letter of Solidarity to the Palestinians.

His first affair involved Dola (Poplanska) who was a nurse at the Bersohn and Bauman hospital in Warsaw, where Edelman worked. One evening, she invited young Marek into a room, telling him she could inject both of them with morphine so that they could make love. Shy Marek, who was immune to morphine, excused himself, and ran away. Later, Dola met a “Volksdeutscher” (sort of second class German) called Jozefow, who worked for Germans in the Ghetto, and the two fell in love. Dola’s husband, the couple had been divorced for a long time, was suffering from Tuberculosis and Jozefow arranged for him to live in countryside, where he brought food, which Dola fed to the invalid, before making love to Jozefow.

Mrs. Tennenbaum was a doctor at the hospital, and was lucky to get “a white card” which meant, that she was safe (at least for the time being) from deportations to the death camps. But her seventeen-year-old daughter Deda had not such luck, and her mother committed suicide, instructing her colleges in writing not to resuscitate her, but give the White Card to her daughter. Her friends honoured her wish, but Deda fell in love with a young man, and whilst they were living outside the Ghetto, with an American nurse, their lovemaking was so boisterous, that informers betrayed them to the Germans. Edelman does not know, when they were deported.

Tosia was a young woman of very middle-class background. She fell in love with a health inspector, and got pregnant. They got caught up in a round-up, when she was in her sixth month. They were dragged to the “Collection Point” near the hospital, where the Jews were forced into the wagons before deportation to the death camps. An Estonian guard wanted to shot her, but her boyfriend put her hand on her belly. The guard shot through his hand, and he was later executed, but Edelman does not know where Tosia was killed.

Hindusia Himmelfarb (Sierakowska) looked like a model Aryan: she had long blond hair and blue eyes – but she went with the children in her charge to the gas chambers. Others gave her the chance to escape the Ghetto, but she could not leave the children. Edelman comments, that her sacrifice was greater than Dr. Korzak’s – because he was an old man and she a young woman.

Pola Lifszyc was a life puppeteer, who entertained 300 children twice a week, making them happy, transporting them into another world. But Pola was worried about her very sick mother. Her boyfriend Janek, who had a rickshaw, was with her, when she learned, that her mother had been taken to the “Collection Point”. She asked Janek to take her there, and he watched helplessly, as she jumped from the rickshaw and joined her mother entering the wagon.

Edelman was not just a bystander: he watched the deportations, and tried to save friends, which he dragged out of lines into the back windows of the hospital. One day, he was looking for his friend Zoria, whom had saved already three times. But on this particular day, a woman with diamonds, asked him, to save her daughter. “I was tempted, because the diamonds meant, that I could save more people”. But Edelman decided against it, and waited for Zoria – but he failed to save her his time.

There was love in the Ghetto is heart breaking, because there are no happy endings. And we can imagine Edelman staying at the gate of the “Collection Point” to wait for friends he would try to save. The three levels work very well together: particularly the re-enactments in the contemporary Ghetto hit very much home: it could happen today. AS

Screening at  KINOTEKA | The Polish Film Festival in London, Kinoteka.org.uk

‘Til Kingdom Come (2020) IDFA 2020

Dir.: Maya Zinshtein; Doc with Pastor William Boyd Bingham IV, Yechiel Ecksyein, Yael Eckstein, Pat Robertson, Pastor John Hagee; Israel/UK/Norway 2020, 72′.

Maya Zinshtein and her writer Mark Monroe take an in-depth look into the unlikely bond between Evangelical Christianity and the Jewish State in America.

This is represented by US organisations CUFI (Christians United for Israel) and The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCT). The relationship between President Trump, who relies heavily on Evangelic Christians, and Benjamin Netanyahu, whose key support comes from orthodox, radical Settlers in Israel, had triumphant results: Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem and declared in January 2020, that Israel could not only legitimately hold on to everything they conquered in war but also occupy the Palestinian West Bank, “because it says so in the Bible”.

We meet Pastor William Boyd Bingham IV in the forest outside the small community of Binghamtown, Kentucky. Here just over a third of the population barely surface the breadline and child poverty stays at 49%. The Pastor takes out an automatic weapon and starts shooting practice. No doubt which side he is on: “We are the people who brought Donald Trump to power, and he pushes our agenda.” Like his father and grandfather, he is part of the evangelical Church and an active member of the IFCJ. The organisation was founded in 1963 by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and is now led by daughter Yael. The fellowship has donated over a million USDs to good causes in Israel. Naturally, the focus is the young – he even calls it indoctrination -, who are told that “Jews are better than us, and you need to except that.” His viewpoint rides roughshod over the Scriptures standpoint that Jesus will re-appear in Jerusalem, leading to a seven-year war and finally the battle of Armageddon witnessing the destruction of all but a few Jewish believers who must then join Christianity. 

Higher up the food chain, Evangelicals like Vice President Pence and Foreign Secretary Pompeo are less concerned with biblical texts, but ‘real politik’. Meanwhile nearer home, at the banquet of ‘Friends of the IDF’ in the Beverly Hill Hilton, casino magnate and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson saw the IFCJ donating major funds to the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces). Meanwhile,  President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Lara Friedman, claims that the state of Israel has written off all Jews in the USA who oppose Trump and his policies.

This detail-laden documentary adds further grist to the mill of donations to Jewish causes to the detriment of Palestinian ones.  On a visit to Israel with his flock, the gun-toting Pastor Bingham IV opines: “There has to be more accessibility for the church in politics. That’s God’s plan”. He is thankful Yael Eckstein pays his church a visit as she swings through streets where shops and houses are boarded up. Meanwhile, on the Church-funded Radio WMIK, an announcer is appalled “that bombs were thrown near to children… in Israel”. 

In this sobering and depressing Zinshtein and Monroe show a bleak picture of funding and support – the bleakest part focusing on the  Kentucky Bible Belt who dream of eternal redemption. AS

CHICAGO FILM FESTIVAL  2020 | IDFA 2020        

Kinoteka (2020) Celebrating Polish Cinema | November 2020

KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival will be celebrating nearly a month of Police cinema in its new fully online programme for the 18th edition of the festival. Expanding on this year’s earlier postponed programme, the screenings roll out on 12 November with the gripping love triangle debut IRON BRIDGE from Monika Jordan-Młodzianowska. The celebration will continue to work with its partners at the Czech Centre and UK Jewish Film Festival through winter right  into next Spring.

NEW POLISH CINEMA Showcasing all that contemporary Polish cinema has to offer from Borys Lankosz’s smart genre blend of film noir and thriller DARK, ALMOST NIGHT to Jacek Borcuch’s complex moral drama DOLCE FINE GIORNATA which features a standout performance from Krystyna Janda that earned her the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival. Also featured are Małgorzata Imielska’s touchingly honest ALL FOR MY MOTHER and the family-friendly ROCK ‘N’ ROLL EDDIE.

12.11 | Iron Bridge | Monika Jordan-Młodzianowska

13.11 | Black Mercedes | Janusz Majewski| UK Jewish Festival in partnership with PCI

14.11 | Dark, Almost Night | Borys Lankosz

20.11 | Dolce Fine Giornata | Jacek Borcuch

21.11 – 24.11 | Charlatan | (Agnieszka Holland) In partnership with Made in Prague 2020 On/Off Festival & Czech Centre

27.11 | Mr Jones | Agnieszka Holland

28.11 | All For My Mother | Małgorzata Imielska

06.12 | Rock’n’Roll Eddie | Tomasz Szafrański 

DOCUMENTARIES EYE-OPENING STORIES FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE

Diverse, historical and contemporary portraits of Polish life are presented this year. Themes of  isolation in a seemingly all-connected world are explored in Pawel Ziemilski’s IN TOUCH, Japanese students’ struggle with learning the Polish language in Bobik Matiej’s OUR LITTLE POLAND and there is a bold account of the romantic intimacy amidst the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto with Jolanta Dylewska’s MAREK EDELMAN… AND THERE WAS LOVE IN THE GHETTO.

19.11 | Our Little Poland |Bobik Matiej

26.11 | Marek Edelman… And There Was Love In Ghetto | Jolanta Dylewska

03.12 | In Touch | Pawel Ziemilski

RETROSPECTIVES UNDISCOVERED MASTERS

A chance to discover subversive, satirical masterpieces afresh including Krzysztof Zanussi’s  subtle but fierce critique of Communist Party politics in CAMOUFLAGE, Marek Piwowski’s THE CRUISE which is widely regarded as Poland’s first ‘cult’ film and Wojciech Marczewski’s silver bear-winning film SHIVERS.

12.11 – 6.12 | Shivers | Wojciech Marczewski

12.11 – 6.12 | Camouflage | 1977 | Krzysztof Zanussi

12.11 – 6.12 | The Cruise | 1970 | Marek Piwowski

EXTENDED PROGRAMME

The festival’s extended programme takes in socially-distanced film screenings and events into the new year including MISTER T. from filmmaker Marcin Krzyształowicz, which elegantly mixes post-war politics, vodka and basement jazz in a beautifully photographed look at the absurdities of the communist state.

Venue TBC | Mister T (Marcin Krzyształowicz)

Venue TBC | Charlatan | (Agnieszka Holland) In partnership with Made in Prague 2020 On/Off Festival & Czech Centre

OFFICIAL TRAILER

 

Luxor (2020) ****

Dir/Wri: Zeina Durra | Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Janie Aziz, Michael Landers | Drama, 85′

A war zone doctor’s inner turmoil gradually surfaces in this serene second feature from British director Zeina Durra (The Imperialists are Still Alive!).

Never before has heartache appeared so muted and contemplative than in Andrea Riseborough’s portrait of post-traumatic stress disorder. She plays Hanna, a thirty-something aid worker who has just completed a stressful tour of duty in a wartorn corner of the Middle East. In Luxor, she finds herself physically and emotionally depleted, quietly contemplating her next move in the gentle faded splendour of the legendary Winter Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile.

The genteel location is the stuff of dreams providing solace and a sanctuary for exhausted minds, damaged souls or simply those seeking a seasonal break in Eygpt’s pleasant climate. Luxor also lends a luminous spiritual dimension of this portrait of midlife crisis. A professional woman who has seen things “no human should have to witness” finds herself slipping down a path of increasing melancholy bordering on misery with the gradual realisation that normality and nurturing is now the order of the day, rather than more frontline trauma. Recuperating on quiet days of solitude amongst the ancient sites, she comes across a lover from a more light-hearted era. The passage of time – some twenty years it soon emerges –  has not dimmed the candle she once held for Sultan (Karim Saleh), an archaeologist from America. Quite to the contrary, it now burns even brighter leaving the void inside her soul crying out to be healed rather than temporarily satisfied.

Surrounded by the pharaonic tombs and towering temples, Luxor is very much the star turn. The peaceful city exudes a majestic energy empowering the film with an ethereal feeling of calm beneficence. Hana’s hotel companions, predominantly female, are genial and considerate, the only awkwardness comes after a one night stand she meets in the bar (played gamely Michael Landes) and provides a twist of humour rather than annoyance. Durra keeps dialogue to a minimum focusing on mood and feeling to sublime effect. Days spent reconnecting with her ex-lover soon expose a desperate longing that sees Hana quietly dissolving into tears, a raw nerve he unwittingly triggers in moments that are palpable in their intensity. 

Riseborough is gloriously lowkey at first, her perfect manners and placidity belying the simmering turmoil that gradually makes her more inhibited. She gives an understated physical performance, all blue-eyes, loose limbs and creamy complexion. Luxor has echoes of Columbus its scenic settings and philosophical discussions providing the peaceful backdrop for Hana’s story to unravel. And although the final scenes feel trite in contrast to the film’s thematic concerns the redemptive journey has been a beautiful and illuminating one. MT

NOW AVAILABLE online from next week | LUXOR PREMIERED AT SUNDANCE and KVIFF 2020 | KVIFF Competition returns in 2021

Corn Island (2014) Simindis kundzuli | Georgian Retro | DocLisboa 2020

Director: George Ovashvili   Writers: Roelof Jan Minneboo, Nugzar Shataidze, George Ovashvili

Cast: Ilyas Salman, Tamer Levent, Mariam Buturishvili, Ylias Salman |  Drama, Georgia 100′

Corn Island could take place anywhere. The brooding fable is set in remote islands that surface annually from the bed of the river Enguri in Eastern Georgia, enriching them with nutrients and making them ideal farmland for seasonal crop-rearing by nomads. In the silence of a serene summer an old man and a young girl  settle in this mist-clothed island paradise where they fish and cultivate the earth as isolated gunfire mingles with birdsong in the distance. Few words are exchanged but a sinister undertone persists and a watchful vigilance that seems to presage doom.

Georgian auteur Ovashvili’s multi-award winning second feature was nominated for an Oscar in the Academy Award Foreign Language section the following year, echoes the recent conflicts that have taken place in the Caucasian States. His debut drama, Gagma napiri (2009), was also inspired by these events. Corn Island is a quiet, sensory affair that succeeds in building a considerable dramatic punch through subtle performances, clever camerawork that makes good use of the changing natural light and rich tones of yellow, blue and gold and well-paced storytelling with an atmospheric occasional score. This simple but profound tale is elevated by the events taking place at its margins and yet never does its narrative succumb to the outside world making the human story all the more powerful and profound.

This season Georgian farmer (Ylias Salman) and his granddaughter (Mariam Buturishvili), are here to spend the summer, the age-old topic of school work their only desultory conversation. Army officers pass by on the distant riverbank. The girl swims in the crystalline water in a dreamlike midnight sequence auguring her sexual awakening and, as if by chance, the next day a wounded soldier is washed ashore sparking friction between the threesome and a passing boat of Russian guards patrolling the river for signs of trouble. In these heavenly surroundings a palpable tension gently smoulders between the girl, the farmer and the soldiers sparked by fear, sexual frisson and danger. When the girl flirtatiously throws water on the soldier the pair chase into the fully grown corn. This small kingdom and wains when finally tragedy strikes from an unexpected source leaving us with to ponder our existence and our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. MT

CORN ISLAND | DOCLISBOA 2020 | GEORGIAN RETROSPECTIVE

Lovers (2020) ** Venice 2020

Dir: Nicole Garcia | Drama, France 102’

Venice Film Festival is hot to trot with a selection of eclectic new European arthouse titles but this pale rider is one of the least convincing.

All dressed up with nowhere to go Lovers looks slick and sassy enough but plays out with a passionless pipe and slippers banality despite a starry cast and Nicole Garcia’s talent to amuse as a seasoned filmmaker.

The story unfolds in three chapters in Paris, Mauritius and Geneva. Catering student Lisa (Stacy Martin) is in lust with her chef boyfriend Simon (Pierre Niney), who has a sideline in drug-pedalling to wealthy Parisians: “I’m only doing it for us” he opines, as they roll naked in their fashionably taupe sheets although the sex is pretty much lifeless.

When one of Simon’s clients dies of an overdose, the two make an escape plan, but Simon disappears leaving Lisa to marry Benoit Magimel’s stout and successful bon viveur Leo, who has a chain of luxury hotels and a penchant for vintage wine. A pregnancy is not on the menu but the couple plan to adopt “a little black one” in Mauritius. But as luck would have it Simon is still the captain of Lisa’s heart although she enjoys Leo’s money and masterfulness.

Lush locations abound in Christophe Beaucarne’s elegant visuals. The interiors are straight out of House and Garden, and you notice every detail because the love story is so tepid in comparison. Lisa pines for Simon and they can’t stop following one another, but Leo is no cowering cuckhold and eventually puts his designer clad foot down. What ensues is instantly forgettable because fail to care for these lacklustre individuals and their trivial love triangle. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

Undergods (2019) Bfi Player

Dir Chino Moya | Fantasy drama 

A murky home invasion thriller echoing Harry He’s Here to Help is one of the dread-drenched mini-dramas interlocking this dystopian deep dive into dysfunction from award-winning Spanish-born filmmaker Chino Moya.

Screening at Fantasia Festival 2020 the film is set in a post apocalyptic urban industrial wasteland that looks like Belgium or Northern France (recalling that title sequence from Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Banishment). Undergods is long on atmosphere, rather short on surprises, deftly reworking well-worn themes of alienation, loneliness and paranoia in suspense-laden mood piece that feels relevant yet surreal. It certainly packs a spooky punch, recommended watching for those twilight hours. MT

NOW ON BFI Player Premiered at FANTASIA FESTIVAL | Montreal Canada

 

Proxima (2019) **** Rotterdam Film Festival 2020

Dir: Alice Winocour | Wri: Alice Winocour, Jean-Stephane Bron | Cast: Eva Green, Lars Eidinger, Matt Dillon, Sandra Huller | Sci-fi Drama 107′

Proxima is Alice Winocour’s most ambitious film to date and certainly her most unique and cinematic. It depicts the struggle of an ordinary mother (Green) who is an outstanding engineer and cosmonaut. Melding docudrama with a moving love story, Proxima is full of haunting images heightened by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ethereal score, all enveloped in a gripping storyline: Will a woman deeply attached to her young daughter make it into Space and back.

Green’s female engineer Sarah is at the heart of Proxima. She is a luminous presence – fragile tough and strangely otherworldly. Given the opportunity to join the European Space Agency’s Mars probe mission along with other seasoned spacemen – including Matt Dillon’s macho but golden-hearted leader – she takes the plunge. What starts out as matter of fact preparation for the long term mission soon becomes a fraught and increasingly affecting exploration of what is means to love, to be a parent, to meet professional goals, and to thrive and appreciate our own planet. Proxima is a ground-breaking and beautiful film as much about our life here on Earth as is about this perilous journey into the unknown.

The Parisian-born part Russian director, who has Russian blood, avoids melodrama until the final remarkable scenes. And she doesn’t stint on detail when describing the gruelling physical and emotional preparations for space travel. The final titles include a roll-call of famous cosmonaut mothers – because the crucial twist here is that Sarah must leave her daughter Stella (a determined Zelie Boulant) for six months to join the mission. Convincingly shot on location in the ESA facilities in Cologne and in Star City near Moscow, Winocour spent two years researching and writing the script (with regular Jean-Stephane Bron). It shows how motherhood can thwart ambition particular when along comes a small, needy child. And it cuts both ways – Sarah often being driven to tears of doubt and remorse rather than her toddler Stella – kids are tough! And this element gives the drama its rich emotional underbelly.

Green is convincing both as the highly driven scientist and the tender-hearted parent who may lose her life. Lars Eidinger is a lowkey but supportive presence as the astrophysicist dad. There is a subtle suspense at play throughout this remarkable journey and the moving love story at its core. MT

NOW AT UK PICTUREHOUSES| ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2020 |

Shady River | Rio Turbio (2020) *** FID Marseille

Dir.: Tatiana Mazu Gonzalez; Documentary Argentine 2020, 81 min.

Amongst the wealth of stories coming out of South America at the moment is this unique and visually arresting first feature unearthing an alarming history of exploitation and repression in a Patagonian mining town.

Argentina’s Tatiana Mazu sets a combative tone to her documentary essay which takes the form of seven books, and shows a woman with rifle (the director herself?), ready to push back against old stories of witchcraft. Clearly these are a feisty bunch who don’t take kindly to a macho culture where women were forbidden to enter the underground labyrinth, which is ironically ‘female’ and talks in a women’s voice

The mine was run until 2002 by Sergio Taseli, a local asset stripper, who embarked on several high cost local projects such as the Roca-Belgrano Sur Railway, which were never completed, Taseli collecting his share of the profits beforehand.

But accidents do happen, and we see the photos of the victims. In 2004 fourteen miners died underground after a collapse. Children play amongst the wreckage in old 8mm family films, and Mazu makes use of plans, etchings, drawings, and blueprints to add grist to the grim story. It also emerges she once built a bomb with her chemistry set, intending to create havoc with the establishment.

Then there is the story of Clara who had a sex change operation, and went on to study electro mechanics. After graduating she could only find work as a secretary in the mining company offices. Nowadays, she is one of the few women working underground. But the exploitation continues: after a strike, the leaders were dismissed, and the rest of the workers had to take on their work load.

The oppressive nature of the mine is reflected in deadly silence and stark images, both In colour and black-and-white: Nature Was raped and it’s jewels torn away, crevices appearing everywhere, dark lakes and endless rows of pre-fabricated huts. There are shades of Tarkovsky in the water and the dour surroundings where industrial waste proliferates. Editor Sebastian Zanzotera takes credit for the montage of striking images that lead us into a maze of death and patriarchy.

Mazu takes us to a hidden world, far away from everything, where the newsreel images of Buenos Aires or a Miss Argentine competition seem to be from another universe all together.

FID Marseille 2020 | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 

Locarno Film Festival 2020 | 5-15 August 2020

Locarno Film Festival is still going ahead in its discreet lakeside setting but will be a more streamlined initiative, devised by Artistic Director Lili Hinstin, largely for the locals, as was this year’s Karlovy Vary, with a section entitled FILMS AFTER TOMORROW: twenty feature-length projects that were delayed in their completion, due to the pandemic. It’s unclear whether these films will be presented half-finished or whether they are a potted version of the blueprint for the full feature.

All this remains to be seen. That said, there’s twenty of them, in a suspended state, competing for the 2020 Pardo. These are the feature length projects that the selection committee, headed by Artistic Director Lili Hinstin, has chosen for The Films After Tomorrow, the strand of Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films that has been conceived to offer proper support to filmmakers who had to put production on hold because of the lockdown.

The International selection
The following are the 10 international projects selected:

These the 10 projects from Switzerland:

Meanwhile Locarno Film Festival’s OPEN DOORS section (10 full-length and 10 short films) will be available for viewing worldwide, exclusively online, during the Festival from 5 through 15 Augustwebsite of the Locarno Film Festival The complete list of full-length films selected is as follows:

Apparition (Aparisyon), by Isabel Sandoval – Philippines/USA– 2012

Atambua 39° Celsius, by Riri Riza – Indonesia – 2012

Clash (Engkwentro), by Pepe Diokno – Philippines – 2009

Memories of My Body (Kucumbu Tubuh Indahku), by Garin

Nugroho – Indonesia – 2018

Sell Out!, by Yeo Joon Han – Malaysia – 2008

Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay, by Antoinette

Jadaone – Philippines – 2011

Songlap, by Effendee Mazlan and Fariza Azlina Isahak – Malaysia – 2011

Tender Are the Feet, by Maung Wunna – Myanmar – 1973

The Masseur (Masahista), by Brillante Mendoza – Philippines – 2005

What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love, by

Mouly Surya – Indonesia – 2013

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2020 5 -15 AUGUST 2020 

Las Ninas Bien | The Good Girls (2018) Mubi

Dir.: Alejandra Marquez Abella; Cast: Ilse Salas, Flavio Medina, Paulina Gaitan; Mexico 2018, 93 min.

Alejandra Marquez Abella’s flawed sophomore feature is a social anthropologist’s dream: based on characters by Guadelupe Loaeza, a group of bitchy competitive Mexican wives whose the crowning glory is having Julio Iglesias for dinner. Sofia, leads the cast of mere cyphers in an episodic narrative that drains out patience even with the modest running time.

Sofia (Salas) is desperate to deny her Latin American heritage. Sending her three children off to summer camp, she warns them “don’t hang out with Mexicans”. A European background is what she and her female rivals long for. In the social whirl, Sofia’s parties are epic productions,  funded by her husband Fernando (Medina) whose   family is of Spanish heritage. Everything is a competition for Sofia, the smallest bum note could lead to a loss of face among her female friends. But we are in the early 1980s, and the Mexican Peso suddenly bottoms out. As Sofia and her circle rely on imported goods, this is a major catastrophe all round. So when credit cards get politely refused and the servants don’t get paid, doom is imminent. To make matters worse, Sofia’s arch rival, the noveau-riche Ana Paula (Gaitan), is still quids in. Her default-position is resigned acceptance, but with the Peso tumbling further, even this seems beyond the pail.

Salas is always brilliant, cool and contained, she carries the film as much as possible. DoP Daniela Ludlow succeeds in conjuring up this lush environment of petty mini-me’s in meltdown, keeping everything close and personal, despite the widescreen format. As a chick-flick study of vanity and self-deceit this is promising but lacks emotional depth and an absorbing dramatic arc. AS

NOW ON MUBI

The Portuguese Woman | A Portuguesa (2019) **** Mubi

Dir.: Rita Azevedo Gomes; Cast: Clara Riedenstein, Marcello Urgeghe, Ingrid Caven, Joao Vicente, Alexandre Alves Costa; Portugal 2018, 136 min.

A languid and painterly reflection on art, feminism and beauty and the latest drama from award-winning filmmaker Rita Azevedo Gomes whose debut A Coleccaio Invisivel was based on a 1924 novella by Robert Musil, a contemporary of Stephen Zweig.

Although the timeframe is ambiguous, the setting is Europe – possibly Sintra – somewhere between the 17th/18th century. The film opens with “Unter den Linden”, sung by Ingrid Caven, who accompanies the narrative like a Brechtian chorus as we meet the recently married Lord Von Hutten (Urgeghe) and his wife, the titular Portuguese woman (Riedenstein) whose year-long honeymoon has been brought to an abrupt end when Von Hutten is called to battle by the rather combative Bishop of Trento (Costa): “War is made of debt, and peace is the conduit of corruption and vice”.

When Von Hutten finally returns to his wife and child, who are living in his decrepit castle, she has been enjoying a lengthy visit from her cousin Dom Pero Loboto (Vicente), whose stay has given rise to local gossip, and murderous jealousy on the part of the conquering soldier.

Lavishly mounted and sumptuously captured by DoP Acacio de Almeida whose intense images bring to mind the paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gomes cleverly transforms Musil’s mysticism, his metaphors for humankind’s failure to retain traditional values, above all love, into landscapes shrouded in mist where the derelict castle represents a refuge from the outside world of strife. Manoel de Oliveira regular Agustina Bessa-Luis comes up with some brilliant dialogue pieces performed with languorous resonance by a superb ensemble cast. In the style of Oliveira, Gomes draws from literature and the world of art to create intentionally static scenes enriched by transcendental poetic realism in this enchanting and magical drama. MT

NOW ON MUBI | VIENNALE 2019 | 24 October – 26 November 2019

 

       

Parasite (2019) **** In Black and White

Dir: Bong Joon Ho | Cast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Chang Hyae-jin, Park So-dam, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jung Ziso, Lee Jung-em, Jung Hyeon-jun | Drama | Korea 131′

The black and white cut of this wickedly thrilling upstairs downstairs social satire Korean-style seems even more resonant, relevant and appealing in its monochrome format.

This scabrous story is the latest in a line of hits from the South Korean master along with The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. But this time the gloves are off as Boon Joon offers up shameless social reality and makes no bones it, dishing the dirt on the rigid class system in his homeland.

Thematically rather too similar to last year’s Plane d’Or winner Shopkeepers to offer any big surprises about South Korean life, this is nonetheless startling in its candour. The characters are ordinary people making their way as best they can. But this is a flashier film that wears its satire on its slick sleeve for all to access, and there’s nothing subtle about its social message. The ‘parasites’ are sharp individuals who cunningly see their way to the main chance. Bong Joon calls the film “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.” Yet in the natural world, parasites live off their hosts, depending on them for survival, but often causing disease or harm. This certainly was the case in The Servant, but does it happen here?

Head of the family Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) lives with his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) in a squalid slum, grafting a living by preparing cardboard pizza boxes. Through his backstreet contacts, young Ki-woo inveigles himself into a wealthy household of a captain of industry Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun) where he is tasked with tutoring his teenage daughter Da-hye (Jung Ziso). Her mother Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a typically vacuous trophy wife who prances around their pristine modernist mansion all day, doing a spot of shopping when she occasionally ventures out with . Without giving any clues away, the Ki-woo’s entire family are drafted into the vast mansion, taking various guises, and booting out the old guard. As the narrative spools out with a series of plot twists, the tension gradually mounts and the gulf between rich and poor is ramped up to the maximum. No one comes out a winner after a lavish garden party where they all take part in some form or another, as blood mingles with the champagne.

Winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 and four Academy Awards in 2020, including the Oscar for Best International Feature, this is a confident and entertaining drama that beats as it sweeps, its production values as smooth as silk and laced with a dread-laden score. The kids give as good as the adults performance-wise and leave us pondering which is best: North Korea with its oppressively restrictive communist regime or the South with its dog eat dog capitalism based on the law of the jungle? MT

PARASITE WON THE PALME D’OR 2019 | ACADEMY AWARDS FOR BEST DIRECTOR, BEST MOTION PICTURE, BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY, BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE.

NOW in Black and White COURTESY OF CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE | IN CINEMAS from 24 July 2020

 

 

 

Villa Empain (2019) **** MUBI

Dir: Katharina Kastner | Doc, Belg/France/Ger/ 25′

Katerina Kastner’s impressionistic documentary debut captures the essence of the Villa Empain, one of the most beautiful architectural masterpieces of Art Deco in Brussels. In 1930, at the age of 21, Baron Louis Empain commissioned the building of a private mansion in 55 acres on the prestigious Avenue de la Nation which was later on renamed as Franklin Roosevelt Avenue.

Using the finest materials available in those interwar years (marble, bronze and precious wood), the luxurious house consisted of four polished granite facades, surrounded by a large garden with a pergola and swimming pool. A collector and curator, Louis Empain eventually decided that the property was better served as a museum of decorative and contemporary art, and it was donated to the Belgian Nation in 1937. But the Second World War changed everything and the villa languished until 1943, when it was requisitioned by the German army, eventually becoming an embassy for the USSR in peacetime when Empain recovered his property in the beginning of the sixties, before reselling it in 1973. For nearly ten years it was rented to the TV channel RTL then falling to semi-rack and ruin during the 1990s. It was eventually saved by a wealthy family who set up the Boghossian Foundation in 2007, transforming the building into an East West cultural centre and guaranteeing the revival of its fortunes.

Shot in 16mm this is a sensual creation that resonates with the passage of time, showcasing the the house’s former glory through its trials and tribulations to its present reincarnation. The clever editing brings an eerie and fleeting sense of human presence drifting through the empty rooms and light-filled gardens where leaves swirl and valuable materials shimmer in shafts of sunlight. This short but ravishing documentary takes us on a dreamy distant journey to the coast where the family once enjoyed beach holidays in a space reflected by evocative fantasies and haunted by the war years. A century of memories recorded in a treasured place in time. MT

COMES TO MUBI ON 15 JULY 2020 |

Good Manners (2017) **** MUBI

Dir: Juliana Rojas/Marco Dutra | Brazil, France | Fantasy Drama | 135′

Good Manners is a lyrical werewolf fantasy fable that explores class, sexuality and unconditional love in contemporary São Paulo.

Handling its tonal shifts with a deftness as light-hearted as its female-centric cast Good Manners is another example of the fresh and inventive filmmaking coming out of South America at the moment. It follows a young Black woman (Clara/Isabél Zuaa) who takes a job as a home help for an expectant single mother (Ana/Majorie Estiano) who is a member of Brazil’s privileged ‘nouveau riche’.

Ana spends her time shopping and exercising in her high rise luxury condo that soon becomes Clara’s home. After a sensuous pregnancy massage, Ana starts to trust Clara implicitly giving the woman all her bank details even though Clara fails to produce satisfactory references from her landlady Dona Amélia (an amusing Cida Moreira). Alarm bells ring, but it soon emerges that Clara is not the one to be wary of. Ana has some pretty strange secrets and bizarre habits which are gradually revealed in this rather slow-burning drama enriched by clever use of hand-painted scenery for the backdrop of Sao Paulo, and pleasant musical interludes to tell its beguiling story.

Clara and Ana soon enjoy a tender relationship that is refreshingly free from jealousy or resentment. One night they kiss so passionately that Clara’s lips bleed. This signals a growing intimacy between the two that is not so much a  a lesbian awakening, as a growing closeness and dependency due to Ana’s vulnerability that feels entirely natural in her current state. This is another clever way of signalling sexual fluidity, but something more unsettling then starts to take place when Ana scratches her companion’s shoulder, again drawing blood.

Ana’s backstory is clearly a troubled one and she is saddened by the recent break with her family who continue to finance her life, despite “a mistake” on her part which remains a mystery but appears – in delicately rendered pastel drawings – to involve a one-night-stand with a rather hirsute cowboy lover. Clara is enchanted by a musical box containing a tiny dancing horse that plays a tune that will haunt the rest of the film. Then Clara discovers large hunks of meat in the ‘fridge and, during the Full Moon, Ana sleep-walks into the street, her eyes turning a ghastly yellow. When Clara follows her one night she is terrorised to find Ana killing a cat and drinking the blood.

All this seems to unfold without sensationalism, the directors handle the blend of genres with graceful aplomb making this feel more like a fairy story rather than full on horror fare. Ana’s horrific gory birth scene takes on Alien proportions but the alien here is a rather sorrowful baby werewolf – and we feel for him, rather than fear him. With Ana’s death, Clara moves back to the poverty of her favela – cue musical interlude – again, more like a scene from Les Miserables than true Brazilian favela squalor. The little boy Joel is adorable, even when he transforms to a tot werewolf during the full moon when he is taken to ‘the little bedroom’, a secure place with chains and fluffy toys.

All in all, GOOD MANNERS is graceful, softly crafted horror movie that has more in common with ‘Jackanory’, with its brightly coloured ‘beanstalk’ garden, than the terror inspired by Lon Chaney’s werewolf outings, but it nonetheless exerts a thrilling tension. Rui Pocas’ cinematography evokes vibrant images in the interiors and the CGI used for the transformations is just about convincing. Ultimately a story about the power of a mother’s transformative and unconditional love rather than a tale of destruction and woe. If there’s one criticism, GOOD MANNERS rather outstays its welcome at 135 minutes, but certainly hooks us into its spell until the grand finale. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 10 JULY 2020 | LOCARNO 2017 REVIEW

 

 

 

The Garden Left Behind (2019) *** SXSW 2020

Dir.: Flavio Alves; Cast: Carlie Guevara, Ed Asner, Michael Madsen, Miriam Cruz, Tamara M. Williams, Anthony Abdo, Alex Cruz; USA/Brazil, 88 min.

Brazilian-born first time director/co-writer Flavio Alves, granted asylum for political reasons in the USA, has created a moving but structurally erratic portrait of a Mexican transgender woman, who lives with her grandmother as an undocumented immigrant in New York. Shot elegantly in the Bronx and Brooklyn by DoP Koshi Kiyokawa with support of the local transgender community, The Garden is carried by debutant Carlie Guevara in the central role.

Tina (Guevara) is walking along a deserted street at night when she is accosted by a carload of belligerent men shouting insults. Walking towards the camera, we sense trouble for Tina, but Alves cuts to tell her story in flashback. Tina lives with her grandmother Eliana (Cruz) in a small apartment, making money as a Uber driver. Her gender reassignment has been an expensive process, psychiatrist (Asner of ‘Lou Grant’ fame), supporting her through the different stages of the treatment. Tina has a longstanding boyfriend, Jason (Kruz), who is still ashamed to be seen with her in public, particularly in their favourite bar, tended by Kevin (Madsen). Her best friend Carol (Williams) drags Tina into the local activist scene which becomes the main focus of the feature. Support characters include a strange young man, Chris (Abdo), he seems to be negatively obsessed by Tina, scowling angrily at her during shopping trips to the local supermarket. The day-to-day scenes are strongest, we see Tina buying Eliana a new hoover, and her lovemaking scenes, to which grandma listens attentively. Both Guevara and Cruz give understated, naturalistic performances, newcomer Guevara is particular convincing, looking backwards to a past she hardly remembers, whilst being afraid of the future. Unfortunately, Alves decides on a shock-horror ending, and one which is amply telegraphed at that.

Raising the profile of escalating violence towards the transgender community, features like the The Garden Left Behind are certainly worthwhile, if not vital. In times of unrest,  these vulnerable members of society often suffer disproportionately, along with other minorities, and Alves succeeds by only featuring local members of the community – which should be a given, but is not part of the Hollywood standard. It is therefore disappointing the filmmaker lets everyone down with a melodramatic ending, attempting to tug on heartstrings in a double whammy of “revelation”. Guevara and the transgender community deserve a more subtle approach that feels real in today’s developing crisis. AS

SXSW AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER 2020
     

Pearl of the Desert (2019) **** Krakow Film Festival 2020

Dir: Pushpendra Singh | Doc with Moti, Nijre and Anwar Khan Manganiyar |  India/South Korea | 82′

A young Indian boy from the lower caste Muslim Manganiyars is forced to sing traditional songs in celebration of his masters in this simple but enchanting ethnographical documentary from sophomore filmmaker Pushpendra Singh (The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs). 

The Thar Desert is vast region to the North of the Indian subcontinent, a natural barrier between Rajasthan and Pakistan’s Sindhi province which forms a vibrant natural backcloth to this fascinating coming of age story of oral history driven forward by its haunting ballads that tell of love, life and hardship (“Oh opium, you made me sell my jewellery”). The Manganiyars Muslims are a people well-known for their folk music which is handed down through the generations and supported by wealthy local Rajput benefactors (jajmans) in caravan towns. Although traditionally Muslims, these troubadour singers often tour around to perform during Hindu festivals invoking the Hindu God Krishna at ceremonies for birth, death and marriage.

Singh follows a straightforward narrative structure interweaving her film with delightful hand-drawn inter-titles that explain the origins and activities of these ancient people who also play instruments such as the bowed Kamaicha; a hand drum or Dholak, and a Khartaal or type of Indian castenet. The instruments are described in the film’s second act which also introduces dancing that feels dervish-like in style. The final act sees Moti leaving his village and travelling to make a studio recording for an Australian radio programme covering a music festival. He has finally found a ‘stardom’ of sorts in these celebrity-driven days.

The crux of narrative surrounds the Manganiyars status as ‘beggars’ a title that sits badly in today’s climate and humiliates young Moti, the central character, despite the pride he feels in his singing and in his cultural traditions. But there is no bitterness here as the Manganiyars feel a natural compulsiveness to sing and can use their vocal skills and treasured heritage to earn decent money and support their families. Singh works with DoP Ravi Kiran Ayyagari to create a vivid and lyrical cinematic gem that is informative, enjoyable to watch and beautiful to look at, its nighttime scenes in the desert are particularly alluring. MT

PEARL OF THE DESERT won the GOLDEN HEYNAL for BEST DocFilmMusic | KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | 31 MAY – 7 June 2020

 

 

Cannes 2020 | The Official Selection | 73rd Festival de Cannes 2020

Cannes Festival grandees announced the fifty six competition titles that should have screened during this year’s 73rd Celebration from 12 – 23 May 2020, had it not been for the Covid 19 Crisis: these films will be released in cinemas and other festivals during the remainder of 2020/21. 

There are some much anticipated films in this list – although the usual strand of Un Certain Regard comes as part of the main programme this along with the newcomers, comedies and documentaries. There are no Italian films because naturally they are now saving themselves for a showing at Venice in September.

Summer Of 85, François Ozon (France), 1h40′

Ozon is true to his provocative style in this Normandy-set story of love and passion between two young boys at the height of the 1980s. Scored by hits from Bananarama and The Cure, the film releases on 15 July 2020.

DNA, Maïwenn (Algeria, France), 1h30′

This follow up to Mon Roi, sees the director reliving her own Algerian heritage, Fanny Ardant playing her mother, Marine Vacth her sister and Louis Garrel as her best friend in a film fraught with memories and melodrama.

Love Affairs, Emmanuel Mouret (France), 2h

Passionate stories of love and tenderness seen through the eyes of an eclectic cast including Vincent Macaigne, Emilie Dequenne and Camelia Jordana

Rouge, Farid Bentoumi (France), 1h26′

Bentoumi’s sophomore feature looks at the human aftermath of an ecological scandal in Algeria.

Gagarine – Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh (France), 1h35′

In this promising debut drama a teenager shares his name with the well-known cosmonaut who was the first human to travel to outer space.

Spring Blossom, Suzanne Lindon (France), 1h13′

Arnaud Vallois (Beats per Minute) stars in this rites of passage drama that allows the director to reminisce on her teenage hood suffused with delicate memories of films, music and plays on the era.

Vaurien, Peter Dourountzis (France), 1h,35′

The human face of a serial killer is captured in this impressive debut drama that stars Ophelie Bau (Mektoub My Love).

My Best Part, Nicolas Maury (France), 1h48′

Nathalie Baye is back in a central role in this tortured debut that sees her self-mocking son desperate not to lose the love of his life.

A Good Man, Marie-Castille Mention Schaar (France),

Making her debut in the Official selection Mention Schaar tells a love story with insight, humans and universal appeal, and one that will set tongues wagging.

Teddy, Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma (France), 1h48′

A werewolf movie styled by the Boukherma Brothers’ “Grolandish’ atmosphere experienced in the first film Willy and featuring ‘man of the moment’ Vincent Macaigne

Slalom, Charlène Favier (France),

Jeremie Renier stars in this vertiginous thriller about things that go downhill between a trainer and his protegee.

Médecin De Nuit, Elie Wajeman (France), 1h40′

Once again Vincent Macaigne takes centre stage as ‘patron saint of the broken’ dashing round Paris on a mission to heal in Elie Wajeman’s third feature.

Josep, Aurel (France) | Josep, Animation, 1h20′

Jump-cut animation, alternating stills and animated images make this first film from cartoonist Aurel stand out from the crowd. It tells the lesser known story: that of the Retirada, an era when refugees of the 1939 Spanish War made an Exodus to France.

Ibrahim, Samuel Guesmi (France),

The ever popular theme of father/son relationships is the crux of this debut drama that will resonate with at least half of the audience.

9 Jours À Raqqa, Xavier De Lauzanne (France) | Documentary

We all know how the Kurds have suffered, and continue to suffer in Syria where they form the largest ethnic minority. This is a film about the feminist point view, seen from the gaze of Leila Mustapha, the Kurdish mayor the Former Islamic State capital.

Cévennes, Caroline Vignal (France), 1h35′

Caroline Vignal is back for the first time in 20 years since her feature Girlfriends  (2020) in a film described as an anti-love affair comedy based on the theme “the important thing is to travel, not to arrive”.

Les Deux Alfred, Bruno Podalydès (France),

Technology gets the better of two brothers in this moving yet upbeat comedy that stars Sandrine Kiberlain.

The Big Hit, Emmanuel Courcol (France)

Drama staged in prison is nothing new. But this film sees Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot staged in way that’s entertaining for all.

The Speech, Laurent Tirard (France)

A tender comedy about love and lost love based on the novel by French writer Fabrice Caro.

L’origine Du Monde, Laurent Lafitte (France)

Origine du Monde is a 1966 painting by Gustave Courbet. Laurent Lafitte’s debut as a director takes it as his inspiration for a daringly dark comedy.

Home Front, Lucas Belvaux (Belgium)

The past comes back to haunt the veterans of the Algerian war in this drama set in a small close-knit village that stars Gerard Depardieu, Catherine Frot and Jean-Pierre Darroussin.

El Olvido Que Seremos, Fernando Trueba (Spain)

Trueba combines colour and black and white to rep present and past, in this historical epic of childhood’s paradise lost, shot in Colombia and based on a sonnet by Jose Luis Borges.

Ammonite, Francis Lee (UK), 2h (below)

Fossilised coldness and human love and tenderness coalesce in this historical drama based on the life of palaeontologist Mary Anning, from God’s Own Country director Francis Lee.

Mangrove, Steve McQueen (UK), 2h04′

In the first of his Cannes Film competition hopefuls, McQueen returns to the subject of racial tension in the UK with this story of Notting Hill’s Caribbean locals and their fight for respect in the face of putative Police harassment.

Lovers Rock, Steve McQueen (UK), 1h08′

His second film is a more stylish trance-like drama that explores the Swinging Sixties through music.

Limbo, Ben Sharrock (UK), 1h53′

There are echoes of Ulrich Seidl and Roy Andersson to Ben Sharrock’s bittersweet second film that looks at the refugee problem on one island in Scotland.

Another Round, Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark), 1h55′

Danish Dogme filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg explores midlife identity crisis through a series of thoughtfully crafted broken characters in this tense and unsettling film. Regulars Marie Bonnevie, Thomas Bo Larsen, and Mads Mikkelsen join the star-studded cast.

Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Denmark) | Animation,

The other Danish film in this year’s selection is an animation that follows an Afghan family through Russia to Europe.

Sweat, Magnus von Horn (Sweden),1h40′

The Swedish director follows The Here After (Directors’ Fortnight, 2015) with a timely saga that addresses the taboo subject of loneliness through the portrait of a social influencer and fitness coach.

Pleasure, Ninja Thyberg (Sweden),1h45′

Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg expands her Cannes Canal+ award-winning short into a full blown female portrait of becoming a porn star in the world of men.

Enfant Terrible, Oskar Roehler (Germany), 2h14′

Reiner Werner Fassbinder had a short but prolific career as a filmmaker during the 1980s. Oskar Roehler takes a deep dive into the director’s quixotic personality in a film that explores the crazy world of this highly creative genius.

In the Dusk, Sharunas Bartas (Lithuania), 2h05′

Bartas uncovers a valuable story from his native Lithuania that mines the dramatic potential of the First World War, putting the focus on small countries crushed by larger ones –  in this case the USSR – to create a timely portrait of oppression that threatens and fascinates at at the same time.

February, Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria), 2h05′

A journey from childhood to adulthood is explored in this ethereal and elliptical drama from the award-winning Bulgarian director.

Heaven: To The Land of Happiness, Im Sang-soo (Korea), 1h40′

This social satire on the South Korean modern day commercialism is given a dollop of slapstick and stars Cannes veteran Min-Sir Choi.

Peninsula, Yeon Sang-ho (Korea), 1h54h

A fast-paced genre piece from the director of Train to Busan offers thrills and spills in a sci-fi outing to make John Carpenter proud.

True Mothers, Naomi Kawase (Japan), 2h20′

Marmite filmmaker Naomi Kawase brings another offering to Cannes in this sensuous humanistic tale of adoption and motherhood set in her native Japan.

The Real Thing, Koji Fukada (Japan),

Fukada follows Harmonium with this epic odyssey fraught with emotion in the style of the K-list contemporaries Kore-eda, Kurasawa and Kawase.

Aya And The Witch, Goro Miyazaki (Japan) | Animation

Goro Miyazaki follows in the footsteps of his father with this digital animation  that quails away from manga and into the realms of the great Studio Ghibli. Ostensibly a childhood tale with its idiosyncratic adult undertones and disturbing often surreal characters, this is a very much anticipated film.

Souad, Ayten Amin (Egypt)

A wonderfully exquisite coming-of-age story that fluidly follows the hopes of dreams of young Egyptians born of tradition, but looking forward to the modern world in sumptuous Alexandria where so much potential is waiting to flower in the realm of Egyptian filmmaking.

Passion Simple, Danielle Arbid (Lebanon)

Based on the best-seller by Annie Ernaux, Passion tracks the doomed relationship between a powerful Russian diplomat and a woman whose raisin d’être is gradually corroded behind her rose-tinted view of their love. Laetitia Dosch (Jeune Femme) stars

Here We Are, Nir Bergman (Isreal)

A love affair between a father and his autistic son carries us into a different world haunted by melodrama, poignant lows and illuminating highs. Always surprising and ultimately moving.

The Death Of Cinema And My Father Too, Daniel Rosenberg (Isreal)

The final days of a parent are intensely personal and sensitively sketched out in this acutely poignant Israeli study of the end of life.

Broken Keys, Jimmy Keyrouz (Lebanon)

A pianist tries to escape his persecuted Middle-Eastern town where radical Islam holds sway. The emotional power of music speaks for itself here in a drama that seeks to denounce religious dogma in favour of humanity.

Beginning, Déa Kulumbegashvili (Georgia)

After her short film Invisible Spaces was nominated for the Palme d’Or in 2014, Kulumbegashvili offers up a study of oppression that contrasts tradition with the changing face of Georgia.

Should The Wind Fall, Nora Martirosyan (Armenia), 1h40′

From Armenia comes this impressive debut that mesmerises both visually and in its pervasive atmosphere of tension. Gregoire Colin plays an engineer in charge of the airport opening in Nagorno Karabakh, the self-proclaimed Caucasian Republic.

Striding Into The Wind, Wei Shujun (China), 2h36′

Another complete surprise arrives from China – but this is a good one and very welcome in its refreshing inventiveness.

The Billion Road, Dieudo Hamadi (Democratic Republic of Congo) | Documentary

A bright but streetwise documentary that sees a group of men fighting for their rights in the modern day Rep of Congo.

Casa De Antiguidades, João Paulo Miranda Maria (Brazil), 1h27′

The light and magnificent beauty of Brazil is magically captured in this extraordinary film that shows through a lyrical story of loneliness and disenfranchisement how countries and places own us, rather than the other way round.

Septet: The Story Of Hong Kong, Ann Hui, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam, Johnnie To, Hark Tsui, John Woo, Woo-Ping Yuen (Hong Kong),

A film that speaks for itself through a variety of local filmmakers.

The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson (USA) (below)

An international cast of stars get together in this unpredictable drama that assembles a series of vignettes telling the history of cinema.

Last Words, Jonathan Nossiter (USA)

Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, Nick Nolte and Alba Rohrwacher are the barnstorming stars in Jonathan Nossiter’s latest, an imagined drama about the relevance of film and survival. A film that had a particular resonance in these days of pandemic and crisis.

John And The Hole, Pascual Sisto (USA)

A coming of age thriller from Ignacio Inarittu’s regular scripter Nicolas Giacobone, the action plays out in the titular hole.

Falling, Viggo Mortensen (USA)

Viggo Mortensen is the star of his directorial debut that sees a traditional dad moving in with his gay son. Laura Linney and David Cronenberg also star.

Soul, Pete Docter, Kemp Powers (USA) | Animation

A musician who loses his passion for music must reinvigorate his craft through the helpful soul of a child.

The Truffle Hunters, Gregory Kershaw, Michael Dweck (USA) | Documentary

The white truffle of Piemonte is prized by chefs and connoisseurs all over the world. And this documentary charts the history of its fascination and the secret that holds its persistent hunters in thrall.

Nadia, Butterfly, Pascal Plante (Canada)

From Canada comes a drama that tackles the thorny subject of Olympic has beens. What happens when top swimmers are forced finally to throw in the towel? Katerine Savard plays a former bronze medal winner in this valedictory exploration of physical prowess from Quebec director Pascal Plante. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 12 – 23 MAY 2020 

This is Not a Movie (2019) **** Canada Now | Curzon Home Cinema

Dir.: Yung Chang; Documentary with Robert Fisk, Amira Hass; Canada/Germany 2019, 106 min.

Canadian director/co-writer Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze) creates an energetic portrait of British war journalist Robert Fisk (*1946), who has chronicled conflict zones from Northern Ireland to the Syrian atrocities. After more than five decades in the field, and now living in Beirut since 1976, Frisk is seven times winner of the British Press Award’s International journalist of the year.

Alfred Hitchcock’s highly romantic drama Foreign Correspondent, was the kicker that started Fisk’s fascination with journalism. Growing up in Maidstone, Kent, he is fluent in Arabic after working in the devasted cities of Syria and the occupied West Bank. His father was a soldier in the Great War and refused to execute an enemy soldier “the only action my father undertook, with which I could identify”.

After starting with the Sunday Express he later changed to The Times, which he left after the Rupert Murdoch takeover, and has now found a home at the Independent, covering wars for the digital edition. Fisk interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times between 1993 and 1997. In the first article, he called Bin Laden an Anti-Soviet mountain warrior on the road to peace. The “mountain warrior” must have been impressed by the journalist, because he tried to convert him to his cause. Fisk also covered the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, when the Israeli Army turned a blind eye to the Falange soldiers who massacred Palestinians in refuge camps. On the ‘phone to his current editor, Fisk has to explain why he made the reference in his report. Losing his patience, Fisk tells the man he should look it up on Google and try to make the connection.

Director Chang is as much a purist as is Fisk. When asked in an interview about his position in the question of film versus digital, he admits:”there is a grain, a quality and a depth to the image that is unmatched in digital video.” Some images were shot in 16mm by DoP Duraid Munajim, but did not make it into the final cut. But the still photos shot during the production are in 35 mm.

Fisk has always challenge the objectivity of “balanced” journalism, his viewpoint is visible throughout his work when he tries to interrogate all sides of the conflict. Whether in Homs, Aleppo, Douma or Palestine, he “is neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer”. In contrast to the mainstream media, he gives voice to the unrepresented. Both Chang and Fisk share a passion for travelling, and being taken out of their comfort zone. The dirctor is full of admiration for his older counterpart: “We started when Fisk was around seventy-two. But he is still active, still thinking and still writing incendiary articles and cracking forward-thinking stories. This had to be an active story.” AS

HEADLINING CANADA NOW | CURZON HOME CINEMA | 12 JUNE 2020

We Are One Global Film Festival 29 May until 7 June 2020

WE ARE ONE GLOBAL FILM FESTIVAL

In the light of unprecedented times for the international film industry We Are One: A Global Film Festival has been programmed to go ahead from May 29 until 7 June 2020 featuring a 10 day digital programme from 21 major film festivals for audiences to enjoy for free around the world.

We Are One: A Global Film Festival will run on YouTube.com/WeAreOne. The free film festival will not only provide entertainment during the crisis but also opportunities for organisations to receive donations: the World Health Organisation (WHO); UNICEF, UNHCR; Save the Children; Doctors Without Borders, Leket Israel, GO Foundation and Give2Asia, among others. Audiences will be able to donate to COVID-19 relief efforts through a donate button or link on every film page.

We Are One Festival White logo

The Dead and the Others (2018)| New Brazilian Cinema | Mubi

Docudrama | 114’ | Brazil/Portugal

Brazilian cinema is entering a new era in the wake of the country’s unprecedented political turmoil. Several new films are now available online along with this look at the Directed by Palme d’Or winner João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, The Dead and the Others is a haunting docudrama based on their experiences of living for nearly a year in Pedra Branca, a village inhabited by the indigenous community of the Kraho people in Northern Brazil. The Kraho very much want to continue their way of life and traditions in their rural community, striving to be self-sufficient. Their plight connects with a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Fifteen year old Ihjãc has been suffering from nightmares since he lost his father and in the opening scene he walks through the rain forest in the light of the moon. A distant sound of chanting comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall. It is now time to organise the funeral feast so his father’s spirit can depart to the village of the Dead and mourning for him can come to an end. Although his baby son Tepto was born in the local hospital, Ihjãc still spends most of his life with his family in the remote forest and although the village elders are urging him to fulfil his duty to undergo the crucial process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc escapes back to the local town to avoid the transition. There, far from his people and culture, he faces the reality of being an indigenous native in contemporary Brazil.

With its themes of loss, displacement and cultural identity this eerie and woozily impressionistic piece that has a poignant urgency in its message, glowingly conveyed in vibrant, high contrast cinematography. MT

NEW BRAZILIAN CINEMA | UN CERTAIN REGARD JURY PRIZE 2018 | LET IT BURN

Robert Siodmak | Master of Shadows | Blu-ray release

Dresden 1918, Robert Siodmak left his upper-middle class, orthodox Jewish home in this epicentre of European modern art, to join a theatre touring company. He was 18, and this was the first of many radical changes that would see him becoming a pioneer of film noir, and directing 56 feature films fraught with (anti)heroes who are morose, malevolent, violent and generally downbeat (spoilers).

Robert Siodmak began his film career in 1925, translating inter-titles. Later he learnt the editing business with Harry Piel. In 1927/28 he worked under Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt (Das letzte Fort) and Alfred Lind. But MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (1929/30) (left) would transform his professional life forever. Together with Edgar G. Ulmer, he would direct a semi-documentary, social realist portrait that pictured ordinary Berliners, far away from the expensive “Illusionsfilme” (escapist films) of the UFA. The idea was the brainchild of Robert’s younger brother Curt (born in Kracow), who would become a screen-writer and director of Horror/SF films, and follow his brother and Ulmer to Hollywood – along with the rest of the team: Billy Wilder, Eugen Schüfftan, Fred Zinnemann and Rochus Gliese (later art director for Murnau’s Sunrise). Robert Siodmak, Ulmer and Giese would also be part of the “Remigrants”, film makers, who would return to Germany after 1945.

People_on_Sunday_2 copyMENSCHEN AM SONNTAG was filmed on a succession of Sundays in 1929. Subtitled “a film without actors” – which is misleading, since the actors – non-professionals – co-wrote and co-produced the film, had already returned to their day jobs when the film was premiered in 1930. The five main protagonists spend a weekend near a lake in a Berlin suburb: Wolfgang (a wine seller) and Christl (a mannequin) meet for the first time at the Bahnhof Zoo by accident on Saturday morning, Christl had been stood up. On the same evening, Erwin (a taxi driver) and his girl friend Annie have a violent quarrel, tearing up each other’s photos. As a result, Erwin and his friend Wolfgang travel with Christl on the following Sunday to the Nicolas Lake. And here on the ‘beach’ Wolfgang meets Brigitte (a vinyl record sales assistant), the four spend the day together; intercut with images of the forlorn “stay-at-home” Annie. The final scene returns the quartet to the heart of the metropolis: four million waiting for another Sunday. MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG is a chronicle; a document shot against the narrative UFA style of the day. There is no story, just interaction. Even in the complex narratives of his films Noir, Siodmak would always be the bystander, the person who observes much more than directs.

Inquest_2 copyINQUEST (VORUNTERSUCHUNG), Robert Siodmak’s third feature film as a director, produced in 1931, is his first ‘Kriminalfilm” (thriller). The student Fritz Bernt (Gustaf Fröhlich), has a three year-long affair with the prostitute Erna – he also receives money from her. After falling in love with his friend Walter’s sister, Fritz wants to leave Erna. Out of cowardice, he sends Walter to her flat to break the news. But Walter sleeps with Erna’s flatmate and goes for a drink afterwards. When Erna’s body is found the next morning, Fritz is the main suspect. In charge of the inquest is Dr. Bienert (Albert Bassermann), who happens to be Walter’s father. The denouement is a surprise. In many ways, INQUEST is a “Strassenfilm”, Kracauer’s definition of films where the middle-class protagonist is in love with a sexy prostitute, but goes home to roost, marrying a bourgeois girl of his own class. Some of the main scenes of the film are shot in the staircase of the house where Erna lives, the shadowy lighting clearly foreshadowing Siodmak’s Noir period. Sexuality is the enemy of bourgeois society here, and Bassermann’s Dr. Bienert is a blustering patriarch, who would sacrifice anyone to save his son.

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THE BURNING SECRET (BRENNENDES GEHEIMNIS) is based on a novel by Stefan Zweig. Shot in 1932, it was to be Siodmak’s last German film for 23 years. In a Swiss Sanatorium, the twelve-year old Edgar (H.J. Schaufuss) is bored, and pleased to befriend Baron Von Haller (Willi Forst), a racing driver. But he does not know that Von Haller is using him to get close to his mother (Hilde Wagner). Soon Edgar gets suspicious, the two adults always want to be alone. He surprises them in flagrante and runs home to his father, although he does not give his secret away. When his mother arrives, he looks at her knowingly, but stays ‘mum’. Siodmak has sharpened the edges of this coming-of-age story, the novel concentrating more on romantic and psychological aspects. There is real violence between Edgar and Von Haller, and the lovemaking of the adulterous couple, which Edgar interrupts, is more vicious than affectionate. When the film was premiered in March 1933, Siodmak was already living in Paris, and Goebbels denounced the film as un-German, not surprisingly, since both the author of the novel and the director of the film were Jews living abroad in exile.

Hatred_1 copyWhen Siodmak shot MOLLENARD (1937) in France, it would be the penultimate of his French-set features. (In 1938, he would finish “Ultimatum” for the fatally ill Robert Wiene; and in the same year he is credited with “artistic supervision” for Vendetta, directed by Georges Kelber). MOLLENARD (HATRED) is the nearest to a film Noir so far: it is a fight to the death between Captain Mollenard (Harry Baur) and his wife Mathide (Gabrielle Dorziat). Captain Mollenard is a gun runner in Shanghai, he is shown as a hero, a good friend to his crew. When he returns to Dunkirk and his wife and two children, illness renders him powerless to his vitriolic wife, who tries to turn the children against him. Mollenard attempts to use his strength to re-conquer his wife, but fails, unlike during his days in Shanghai. The son takes the side of his mother, the daughter tries to drown herself, but Mollenard saves her. In the end, his crew carries the dying man out of the house, he would end his life where he was most happy – at sea. MOLLENARD is a contrast between utopia and dystopia for the main protagonist: the sea, where he is free (to commit crimes), and the bourgeois home, where he is a prisoner of conventions. He is unable to survive in this which cold, emotionless prison. MOLLENARD is seen as his greatest film in France, a dramatic version of Noir.

Snares copyPIÈGES (1939) was Siodmak’s last French film before emigrating to the USA – and his greatest box-office success of this period. Whilst most of Siodmak’s French films featured fellow emigrés in front and behind the camera, PIÈGES only has the co-author, Ernst Neubach, as a fellow emigré– the DOP, Ted Pahle, was American, and the star, Maurice Chevalier, already an legend was very much a Frenchman: Siodmak had established himself. (A fact, which would count for nothing at the start of his US career.)  PIÈGES is the story of a serial killer who murders eleven women in the music-hall world of Paris. The police, whose main suspect is the night-club-owner and womaniser Fleury (Chevalier), chooses Arienne (the debutant Marie Dea), to lure the murderer into the open. But Arienne falls in love with Fleury’s associate Brémontière, only to find out that he is the murderer. In the end the gutsy Arienne (Dea is a subtle antithesis to the French heroines of this period) has to risk her lift to save her husband Fleury’s. There are more than a few clues to the later “Phantom Lady” in PIÈGES.  Eric von Stroheim is brilliant as a mad fashion czar who has lost his fortune and adoring women.

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SON OF DRACULA (1943) was already Robert Siodmak’s seventh film in Hollywood, his first for Universal. Scripted by his brother Curt, SON OF DRACULA was a great risk for Robert, it was his first outing in the classical Horror genre, not to mention the great ‘Dracula tradition’ started by Ted Browning in 1931. The film is set in the bayous of Louisianna, where Katherine Caldwell has inherited the plantation “Dark Oaks” from her father, who died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. She gives a party, and entertains Count Alucard (Lon Chaney jr.) an acquaintance  from her travels in central Europe. She discards her fiancée Frank and marries Alucard. Frank shoots the count, but the bullet passes through him, killing Katherine. In prison, Katherine visits him as a bat, turning into her human form (a first in film history), and asking Frank to kill Alucard, so they can live together forever as vampires. Frank grants her wish, but also burns her in her coffin. SON OF DRACULA is pure gothic horror, but suffered from Lon Chaney jr. being miscast in a role created by Bela Lugosi as his Alter Ego. Strongest are the scenes in the bayous, where the evil still lurks after the death of Katherine and Alucard: everything seems toxic, the spell of the vampire lives on.

Cobra_Woman_1.jpg_rgb copyCOBRA WOMAN (1943) was Robert Siodmak’s first film in colour, shot in widescreen Technicolor. Its star, Maria Montez, an aristocrat from the Dominican Republic, whose real name was Maria Africa Garcia Vidal de Santo Silas, would later gain cult status after her early death at the age of 39 from a heart attack in her bathtub in Paris. Maria plays Tollea, who is whisked away just before her wedding to Ramu, to her birth island where her evil twin sister Naja (also played by Montez) holds sway. Ramu and his helper Kado follow her, but Tollea has decided to sacrifice her love for Ramu to become the new ruler of the island, so as to prevent an eruption of the volcano provoked by Naja’s sins. COBRA WOMAN is pure camp, Siodmak said “it was nonsense, but fun”.

Phantom_Lady_1 copyIn 1943 Siodmak was on a roll: he would make four film that year, and PHANTOM LADY (1943) was also the most important of his American period to date: the first of a quartet, which would form with The Spiral Staircase, The Killers and Criss Cross, the classic Noir films of their creator.

PHANTOM LADY is based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich (William Irish), a prolific writer, whose novels and short stories were the basis for twenty films Noir of the classic period. They also provided the basis for Nouvelle Vague fare. Pivotal in Woolrich’s novels is the race against time. Scott Henderson, an engineer, is accused of murdering his wife. He proclaims his innocence, but is sentenced to death. His secretary Carol “Kansas” Richman (Ella Raines) is convinced he is not a murderer, and together with inspector Burges, she sets out to find the real culprit. Henderson’s alibi is a woman with a flamboyant hat, he meets in a bar, and spends the evening with, while  his wife was murdered – but they promised not to reveal their identities. The mystery woman  is illusive and when Carol tries to unravel her identity, the barman, who to denies having seen her at all, is run over by a car shortly after interviewed by Richman. Another witness, a drummer (Elisha Cook. Jr.), is also murdered, before Richman corners Franchot Tone, an artist, and Richman’s best friend as the murderer: he had an affair with Richman’s wife. German expressionism and Siodmak’s customary near documentary style dominate: New York is a bed of intrigue, where shadows lurk and footsteps signal danger. The majority of scenes could be watched without dialogue, particularly Cook’s drummer solo, which fits in well with the impressionist décor. With PHANTOM LADY, Robert Siodmak had found his (sub)genre.

Christmas_Holiday_10CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (1944), based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, has a most misleading title and is perhaps Siodmak’s most exotic film Noir. Lt. Mason, on Christmas leave, is delayed in New Orleans, where he meets the singer Jackie Lamont (Deanna Durham) who tells him her real name is Abigail Manette, and that her husband Robert (Gene Kelly) is in jail for murdering his bookie. In a long flashback, we see Robert’s mother trying to cover up her son’s crime. After Jackie leaves Mason, she is confronted in a roadhouse by Robert who has escaped from jail. Before he can shoot her, a policeman’s bullet kills him. Like “Phantom Lady”, CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY is photographed again by Woody Bredell, New Orleans is a tropical, outlandish setting and the film has much more the feel of a French film-noir than an American. Siodmak uses Wagner’s “Liebestod” to frame the love story of the doomed couple.

THE SUSPECT (1944) is one of Siodmak’s less convincing Noirs. Philip Marshall (Charles Laughton), a sedentary middle-aged man, is driven out by his heartless wife Cora, and falls in love with the much younger Mary (Ella Raines). Philip becomes a different person, and thrives with his new love. But Cora finds out about the couple and threatens Philip with disclosure, which would have ruined him professionally. He kills first Cora, then his neighbour Gilbert Simmons, who blackmails him. Inspector Huxley has no proof against him, and Philip could start a new life with his young wife in Canada, but he decides to stay and give himself up, just as Huxley had predicted. Shot entirely in a studio, THE SUSPECT lacks suspense, and is only remarkable for Laughton’s brilliant performance.

The_Strange_Affair_of_Uncle_Harry_3 copyTHE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY (1945) features a semi-incestuous relationship between brother and sister: John “Harry” Quincy (George Sanders) lives a quiet life in New Hampshire with his sisters Lettie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and Hester. When he meets the fashion designer Deborah Brown (Ella Raines), he falls in love with her. Lettie is jeaulous, and feigns a heart attack. Harry wants to murder her, but Hester drinks the poison intended for Lettie, who is convicted for Hester’s murder, but does not give away the real culprit, since she knows that her death will prevent Harry from marrying Deborah. To mollify The “MPAA code agency”, Siodmak found a new ending: Harry wakes up at, having only dreamt the events; producer Joan Harrison resigned from the project in protest. Lettie is a psychopath in the vein of the murderer in Phantom Lady and Olivia de Havilland’s murderous twin in The Dark Mirror. But there is more ambiguity to the narrative than is obvious at first sight: there is a vey clear resemblance between Lettie and Deborah – they might have been exchangeable for Harry. THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY is one of the darkest Noirs, because all is played out on the background of a very respectable family, in small town America.

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THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1945) is Siodmak’s most famous Noir, a classic because of its old-dark-house setting and the woman-in-peril theme. In a small town in New England, handicapped women are being murdered. Helen (Dorothy McGuire) is watching a silent movie in town, where a lame woman is strangled. Helen then hurries home, to look after the family matriarch Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), who is bedridden. Since Helen is mute, she is in mortal danger: the killer lives in the house. When Helen finds the body of Blanche, who was engaged to Albert Warren (George Brent), after having left his half-brother Steve, Helen suspects Stephen and locks him in the cellar; then she tries to phone Dr. Parry, but she cannot communicate. Too late she finds out that Albert is the killer, who chases her up the spiral staircase, but his mother gets up and shoots him, causing Helen, who lost her voice after witnessing the traumatic death of her parents, to cry out loud. Very little of the background to the narrative has been mentioned: the theme being eugenics, a concept the late President Theodore Roosevelt was very keen on. Albert Warren has taken this concept a step further; he kills “weak and imperfect” humans because he believes his father would be proud of him. Like T. Roosevelt, Albert’s father was a big-game hunter. In his mother’s bedroom is a poster with a Teddy Roosevelt lookalike and the initials “TR” above an elephant’s tusk. Considering the Nazi Euthanasia programmes, this aspect of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE has often been neglected by critics.

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THE DARK MIRROR (1946) reflects Hollywood’s interest in Freud. Two identical sisters, Terry and Ruth Collins, both played by Olivia de Havilland, are suspected of murder, when one of the women’s suitors is found dead. Inspector Stevenson is fascinated by the two woman, but would not have solved the crime without the help of Dr. Elliot, a psychoanalyst. He finds out that whilst Ruth is a very adjusted and loving person, Terry is just her opposite: a ruthless psychopath, who fabricates clues, to make Ruth look like the murderess, whilst at the same time is planning to kill her sister, before Dr. Elliot is able to expose her. Siodmak deals with the “Doppelgänger” theme, which was explored as early as in the silent film era of expressionism, by using Freudian theory to explain the perversity of the “evil” sister: rejection, confusion and lastly alienation let her spin out of control, allowing only “herself” to survive. Unlike in The Spiral Staircase, the interior is totally unthreatening, which makes Terry’s murderous lust even more terrifying.

TIme_Out_of_Mind_2 copyTIME OUT OF MIND (1946/7) is more melodrama than Noir. Chris Fortune (Robert Hutton), the son of a heartless and ambitious shipping tycoon, falls in love with the servant girl Kate (Phyllis Calvert). But in 19th century New England, this was not the social norm. Kate encourages Chris to marry a lady of his class, who turns out to be a beast and drives Chris more into alcohol dependency. Chris fancies himself as a composer, but only Kate believes in his talent. The Noir aspect is the family constellation: Chris is obviously weak, and his overbearing father (Leo G. Carroll) rules over his life. More to the point, Chris’s sister Rissa (Ella Raines) seemingly protects her younger brother, but is in reality totally obsessed by him. She represents the semi-incestuous theme running, not only through Siodmak’s, noir films.

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CRISS CROSS (1949) is perhaps Siodmak’s most personal Noir. Reworking elements of The Killers – and casting Burt Lancaster again in the role of the obsessed lover -, CRISS CROSS is the story of an “amour fou”, its emotional intensity on par with Tourneur’s classic Out of the Past. Steve Thompson (Lancaster) is still in love with his ex wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), who now lives with the gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). But when the two of them meet in a bar, the whole things starts up again. Dundee surprises them, Thompson comes up with an excuse: he needs Dundee’s help for an armed car robbery. But Dundee is suspicious: he and his gang kill Thompson’s partner and wound him after the robbery. When Anna goes missing with the money, Dundee suspects the couple have double-crossed him. Dundee has Thompson abducted, but Thompson bribes his captors and finds Anna. She is terrified by the thought that Dundee will find them and wants to abandon the wounded Steve, but Dundee arrives and shoots them both, before running towards the police. The final scene, when Anna’s and Steve’s bodies fall literally into each other, bullets flying as the police siren’s grow louder, is the apotheosis of everything that’s gone on since the scene in the bar. From then on, in true Noir fashion, all is told in flashbacks and voice-over narration. Anna is the quintessential Noir heroine, telling Steve: “All those things which have happened we’ll forget it. You see, I make you forget it. After it’s done, after it’s all over and we are safe, it will be just you and me. The way it should’ve been all along from the start”. CRISS CROSS is my personal favourite: dark, expressionistic, melancholic and wonderfully doomed.

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THE GREAT SINNER (1948/9) is an awkward mixture of high literature and low-brow melodrama. Based partly on Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Gambler” and some autobiographical details of this author, Siodmak struggles to bring this expensive “A-picture” to life. The stars Gregory Peck (Fedya) and Ava Gardener (Pauline Ostrovsky) – in the first of three collaborations – do their best, but Christopher Isherwood’s script is a hotchpotch of the sensational and sentimental, tragic events unfold fast and furiously, logic and characterisation falling by the wayside. Told in a long flash-back, Pauline receives a manuscript from the dying writer Fedya, in which he tells the story of their first meeting in 1860 in Wiesbaden. Then, Fedya met Pauline on a train journey from Paris to Moscow, but follows her to the casino in Wiesbaden, to study the effects of gambling on the whole Ostrovsky clan. When Pitard, a gambler and friend of Pauline, steals Fedya’s money, the latter tries to save Pitard from his fate, and gives him the money so he can leave the city. But Pitard loses in the casino and shoots himself. Strangely enough, Fedya, who has fallen in love with Pauline, also becomes addicted to gambling – but telling himself, that he wants to win the money, so that Pauline’s father can pay back his debts to the casino owner Armand, and thus free Pauline from the engagement to the ruthless tycoon. But after some early success, Fedya looses heavily, tries to in vain to pawn a religious medal, which belongs to Pauline; finally, he wants to commit suicide, before he looses consciousness. Recovered, he finishes his novel and Pauline forgives him. In spite of a strong supporting cast including Ethel Barrymore, Melvin Douglas, Agnes Moorehead and Walter Huston, THE GREAT SINNER flopped at the box-office, having cost 20 m Dollar in today’s money, it lost 8 m Dollar. Siodmak, according to Gregory Peck, did not enjoy the responsibility of the big budget production, “he looked like a nervous wreck”.

The_File_on_Thelma_2 copyWith THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON (1949) Siodmak returned to the safe ground of Noir films. Thelma (Barbara Stanwyck) is unhappily married to Tony Laredo (Richard Rober), but is attracted to his animalistic sex-appeal. When she discusses burglaries at her wealthy aunt’s house, where she also lives, with assistant district attorney Cleve Marshall (Wendell Correy), the two fall in love. When the aunt is killed, and a necklace stolen, Thelma is the main suspect, because Tony has been away to Chicago. Thelma is put on trial, and Cleve pays her lawyer and plans the trial strategy with him, even though he has learned about Thelma’s past, and is convinced that she is the murderer. The aunt’s butler has seen a stranger at the crime scene, but did not recognise him. Thelma, who knows that the person is Cleve, does not give his name away. She is aquitted and wants to leave town with Tony, when Cleve confronts them. Tony beats Cleve up and the couple flee, but Thelma causes an accident on purpose, in which both are killed – but not before she has confessed to the murder. In spite of this, Cleve’s career and marriage is ruined. THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON is a neat reversal on Double Indemnity, which also starred Stanwyck as the Queen of all femme fatales. But here, Thelma and Cleve really love each other, and Thelma pays for her crime with her life, and Cleve will be ostracised by society for a long time. Whilst Wilder’s couple was evil from the beginning, Siodmak gives his lovers a much more human touch. THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON was Robert Siodmak’s last American Film Noir. He would later direct two more films, which are in certain ways close to the subgenre; but he would never again achieve the greatness of his American Film Noir cycle, even his directing output would run to another 18 films.

The_Crimson_Pirate_3In the THE CRIMSON PIRATE (1951/2) Siodmak was reunited with Burt Lancaster, who also produced the film. Set in the late 18th century in the Caribbean, Captain Vallo (Lancaster), is a pirate, who tries to make money from selling weapons to the rebels on the island of Cobra, lead by El Libre (Frederick Leicester). On the island, Vallo falls in love with El Libre’s daughter Conseuela (Eva Bartok). Later he has to rescue her father, and support the revolution – even against the wishes of his fellow pirates, who do not see the reason for such a good deed – since it is totally unprofitable! In a stormy finale with tanks, TNT, machine guns and an outstanding colourful airship, our hero, now in drag, wins the revolution and Consulea’s heart. What is most surprising is the humour and lightheartedness of the production. Everything is told tongue-in-cheek, the action scenes are overwhelming and Lancaster (the ex-circus acrobat) dominates the film with his stunts. It seems hardly credible Robert Siodmak, creator of gloom and doom, dark shadows and even darker hearts, would be responsible for such an uplifting and hilarious spectacle, 15 years before Louis Malle’s equally enchanting “Viva Maria!”. Ken Adam, the future “Bond” production designer, earned one of his first credits for this film.

It will never be absolutely clear why Robert Siodmak decided to leave Hollywood after he finished THE CRIMSON PIRATE, to work again in Germany (with a one-film stop in France, so as to repeat his journey of the thirties backwards). In the USA, he was offered a lucrative six-film deal and had shown with his last film, that he could now also handle big productions successfully. There are rumours of pending HUAC hearings, because of his friendship with Charles Spencer Chaplin, but Siodmak himself never mentioned these as a reason for the return to his homeland. Rather like Fritz Lang and Edgar Ulmer, it can only be assumed that “Heimweh” was the reason for Siodmak’s return. True, he lived in Ascona, Switzerland, but he worked nearly exclusively in Germany. What he, and other “Remigrants” did not reckon with, was the political and cultural climate in the Federal Republic of Germany. When these directors had left Germany, the Nazis had just started the transformation of the country. But in the early fifties, the democracy of the country was not chosen, but forced on the population by the Allies. Old Nazis were still in many powerful positions, and the majority of the population still grieved, full of self-pity, about their defeat. The Third Reich, and particularly the Holocaust, were more or less Taboo, both in daily life and in all cultural referenced. The film industry also suffered from the lack of a new beginning; even Veit Harlan, director of Jud Süss, was allowed to restart his career. It is no co-incidence that neither Lang or Ulmer produced anything notable after their return.

The_Devil_Strikes_at_Night_4 copyThe same can be said for Robert Siodmak, with one exception: THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT (NACHTS WENN DER TEUFEL KAM), which he directed in 1957 was, deservedly, nominated for the “Oscar” as “Best foreign film”. Set during WWII in Hamburg, the film tells the story of the serial killer Bruno Lüdke (Mario Adorf). When caught by inspector Kersten (Claus Holm), the latter’s superior, the Gestapo Officer Rossdorf (Hannes Messmer) points out that another man had already been ‘convicted’: Willi Keun (Wolfgang Peters), a small-time party member, had “been shot whilst escaping” – without informing the population about the murders, since just a monstrous criminal did not fit in with ruling ideology of the Aryan supremacy. Both, police man and Gestapo officer, now have the difficult task to start to convince the authorities that a German serial killer was on the loose for over a decade. Both will be sent to the Eastern front, to cover up the case. The film is based on real events, Bruno Lüdke (1908-1944) was mentally retarded, but may have confessed to more murders than he actually committed – to clear up unsolved murder cases. Siodmak re-creates the atmosphere of his best Noir films: the city is darkened, the image dissolves from an omniscient perspective to a particular one – particularly in the scene where Lüdke is caught in the headlights of a car. Fear and excitement permeate like a black stain throughout. Kesten’s obsession with the case create a fragmented world, where the images seem to splinter. Chaos rules, and nobody seems to be safe: the hunt for Lüdke, which frames the film, is shown like a haunting parable on the destructive nature of the 3rd Reich. Unfortunately, Siodmak fell short of this standard in the other 12 films directed in West Germany between 1955 and 1969.

The_Rough_and_the_Smooth_1In 1959 Siodmak worked in the Elstree-Borehamwood studios, to direct THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH, based on the novel by Robin Maugham. Robert Cecil Romer, 2nd Viscount Maugham, nephew of Somerset Maugham, was the enfant terrible of his family. Socialist and self-confessed homosexual, he was a very underrated novelist: The Servant, filmed in 1963 by Joseph Loosey, with Dirk Bogarde in the title role, is one of the classics of British post-WWII cinema. THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH shows similarities: Mike Thompson (Tony Britton), an archeologist, is engaged to Margaret (Natasha Parry), the daughter of his boss, who finances his work. Mike feels trapped in a loveless relationship, and falls for Ila Hansen (Nadja Tiller), a young and attractive woman. But she has a secret: not only is she in cahoots with the tough gangster Reg Barker (William Bendix), but there is a third man in her life, who has a hold over her. After Barker commits suicide, driven by Hansen’s demands, the latter tries also to blackmail Mike and Margaret. The ending is quiet original. There are very dark undertones, particularly for the late 50s, when Ila comments: “I don’t cry much, I have been hurt a lot”. THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH is a subversive film considering the context of its period. The camera pans over stultified Britain of the last 50s, where there seems to be no middle-ground between boring respectability and outright perversion. When the two worlds collide, the conflict is fought on both sides with grim, violent determination. With THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH, Siodmak, would, for the last time, come close to his American Noir films, for which he was called “Prince of the Shadows”: referring not only to the quality of the images, but also to a society, where, to quote Brecht, “we are only aware of the ones in the light, the ones in the shadows, we don’t see”. Robert Siodmak made sure that the ones in the shadows played the major roles in his Films Noir career. Andre Simonoviescz ©

MASTER OF SHADOWS | A RETROSPECTIVE OF ROBERT SIODMAK

Masters of Cinema home video release of CRISS CROSS; Robert Siodmak’s influential film noir masterpiece; to be released on 22 June 2020.

 

 

 

Only the Animals (2019) Netflix

Dir.: Dominik Moll; Cast: Damien Bonnard, Bastien Boillon, Laura Calamy, Denis Menochet, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Roger ‘Bibesse’ N’drin, France/Germany 2019, 116′.

German born director Dominik Moll has been sadly neglected of late. Best known for his psychological thrillers Harry He’s Here to Help and Lemming and the hilarious News from Planet Mars (which never got a UK release) he came to Venice last year with one of the best features in the Venice Days line-up . Adapted from Colin Niel’s 2014 novel of the same name, this is an intense non-linear study of human behaviour, showing greed and possessiveness as the motivator that drives us all forward in the belief we are in love.

Most of the action takes part in a remote snowbound part of the French Massif Central, but the drama opens in the port city of Abidjan in Ivory Coast. There Armand (N’drin) sets in motion a sort of Ariadne trail, with one woman paying with her life for the sins of others. Armand is a small time grafter who finds photos of Marion (Tereszkiewicz) on the net, setting her up as bait for the French farmer Denis (Menochet), who is married to insurance saleswoman Alice (Calamy).

She has fallen for one of her clients, Joseph, an unstable farmhand in Denis’ employer who has been disturbed by hallucinations since the death of his mother: “I only talk to the animals”, he tells Alice. Meanwhile back in Abidjan, Armand has succeeded in making Denis fall for Marion, extracting the first tranche of the money transfers from the farmer. Armand, who nicknames Marion ‘Armandine’ – even though he has never met her – then invents a precarious story making Denis fall into the trap of wanting to rescue Armandine – whatever the cost. But the real Marion in in a relationship with Evelyne (Tedeschi), who shares a holiday home with her husband Guillaume just down the road from Alice and Denis.

This is a complex plot, intricately put together by Moll and his co-writer Gilles Marchand (who worked with him on Harry). Suffice to say it keeps up absolutely glued to the screen, enthralled by a seductively simmering plot line, Patrick Ghiringhell’s camerawork providing plenty of visual thrills including panoramic images of the magnificent mountain region and the lively African port city. A spine-tingling score of strings primps the moments of tension.

The saying “money makes the world go round”  has never been so true, and in this particular drama it is spot on: internet and money transfers connect every part of the globe. And every character wants a part of the action. Apart from Joseph, who leaves no clues to his disappearance from the scene in this enigmatic mystery thriller. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX
https://youtu.be/5HYJ6CjOzi8

IFFR – We Are One

With over 20 other major film festivals, IFFR is joining WE ARE ONE: A Global Film Festival, running from 29 May to 7 June. The online event features films from each festival and will raise money for Covid-19 relief funds. IFFR has chosen to support the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a global organisation determined to save the lives of refugees.

29 MAY to 7 JUNE 2020

Cannes 2020 | Festival update

The 73rd Cannes Film Festival is not the only celebration to be postponed by the 2020 pandemic that has derailed the film calendar sending some editions online.

This is the first time Cannes has been cancelled since the Second World War, although it was also curtailed in May 1968 due to the student uprising. To think that 75 years ago we were celebrating the end of hostilities across the World, it now seems inconceivable that a human tragedy of such enormity could once again intervene.

In an interview with the trade magazine Screen Daily, festival president Thierry Fremaux spoke of plans to announce an Official Selection of films that would have taken part this year. That will hopefully come at the beginning of June 2020. All these films are scheduled to be released theatrically sometime between now and 2021, and have remained faithful to Cannes, rather than moving on to Venice or San Sebastian .

The Film Market will still go ahead with sales companies showing their Cannes 2020 slated films to buyers and professionals in a virtual line-up. But as for the Main Competition, rumours continue to circulate about possible collaboration with future festivals such as Venice, Toronto, San Sebastian and Zurich.

As for the real live festival this year’s President of the Jury, Spike Lee, intends to make back to head up next year’s 74th Edition.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | 12 -23 MAY 2020

A Paris Education | Mes Provinciales (2018) **** DVD

Dir.: Jean-Paul Civeyrac; Cast: Andranic Manet, Diane Rouxel, Jenna Thiam, Gonzague van Bervesseles, Corentin Fila, Valentine Catzeflis, Sophie Verbeck, Christine Brucher, Gregori Manoukov; France 2018, 137 min.

Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s passionate cocktail of Sex, cinema and politics is a seductive distillation of what it means to be French. Based on the novel Lettres Provinciales by Blaise Pascal, it follows the adventures of Etienne who arrived from Lyons to study filmmaking in Paris, Saint-Denis, leaving his family and friend Lucie (Rouxel) behind. Shot in ravishing black-and-white by Pierre-Hubert Martin, A Paris Education feels very much like La Maman et la Putain by Eustache, transported into contemporary times.

Etienne (Manet) is a shy, immature young man – and extremely naïve – he’s looking for a mother/father figure. Shacking up with a new flat mate Valentina (Thiam), he soon falls under the spell of the enigmatic Mathias (Fila), a fellow student and troubled provocateur who would rather criticise than actually put himself out there and make a film. Then there is Jean-Noel (Bervesseles), who is just the opposite: caring and balanced – Etienne’s two new friends could not be more different. Yet he seems to be more passionate about Mathias than anybody else – even though he hardly knows him. Meanwhile Valentina moves to Berlin and is replaced by fierce eco-warrior Annabelle (Verbeck). Etienne tries to get close to this vulnerable woman but she falls for Mathias, until his violent outbursts jeopardise their love, Mathias turning his aggression on himself; Etienne has lost both his friends – and he is literally picked up by Barbara (Catzeflis), who was only briefly introduced to him by Annabelle in the flat.

Etienne appears vulnerable but he is primarily a non-committal, both in love and work. He sails through the film like a ship without a flag: his only constant concern is to make films, people come second in every way – with the exception of Mathias. Even his relationship with his parents (Brucher/Manoukov) is far from straightforward. When they visit him in Paris he seems embarrassed and aloof. The endless discussions with his friends and co-students seem to be a way to avoid growing up, and also full-time work. In a sad epilogue, we see him gradually withdraw from Barbara: how can he commit when he only loves himself.

Music plays a central part in this affecting drama; editor Louise Narboni has worked in opera, and Bach and Mahler dominate (particularly his 5th symphony that scored Death in Venice), and underline how marginalised Etienne has become since leaving provincial life made him a big fish in small bowl.  In Paris his lack of real identity and commitment turn him into Musil’s titular hero in A Man without Attributes. A Paris Education is a tour-de-force of art and psychology, and for once, the running time of over two hours is appropriate. AS

NOW ON DVD FROM 11 MAY 2020  

Wolves at the Borders (2020) *** Visions du Reel 2020

Dir: Martin Pav | Doc, Czech Republic 78′

Wolves are back in the Czech Republic. And their return is causing ructions in the rural population. In his no holds barred look at the social history of man’s relationship with beast, filmmaker Martin Pav examines whether wolves still have a place in a world where drought and climate change is already wreaking havoc on the farmers particularly the vast forested areas of the Czech Republic. Wolves are, at least, a threat that can be controlled.

From an ecological point of view wolves have as much right to exist as humans, but as a voracious predator of livestock, and humans too – if given a chance, they are posing a serious threat now that their numbers are once again growing.

Not everyone is in agreement over how to tackle the wolf issue. Jan Sefc, a livestock farmer, shows how his flock of sheep is being depleted by wolves, as he throws a armful of maimed dead lambs into a rubbish bin. The wolves don’t eat the new borns, they just maul them to death, adding insult to the injuries inflicted. The problem is how to protect them. How do you build a shelter for 3000 sheep? And they don’t only kill lambs and sheep, deer are being heavily predated. “Tt’s like having a pedophile in a kindergarten” he says. For now he manages to keep the wolves at bay by monitoring the area in his truck, but he can’t be there all the time. Mayor Tomas Havrlant supports his view and is determined to gain the support of the government in this growing concern.

But conservationist Jiri Malik takes a different view, and is more concerned with water conservation in the region, seeing drought as the main enemy of farming and food production. He argues water is key to the survival of crops and the next generation. He is working on ways to improve irrigation.

Wolves have been predators in the Czech Republic since the Benedictines first arrived in the 13th century with the motto: “Pray and Work” (Ora et Labora). Records tell of attacks on humans, and the Monks civilising effects allowed the local population to protect themselves with barriers at a time when folklore was dominated by tales of wolves, synonymous with the Devil. The only punishment back then was to be cast out into the wilderness. Gradually wolves were almost entirely exterminated by the mid-18th century.

But they soon found their way back. In Czechia and neighbouring Poland and Slovakia wolves were still being culled up until the 1970s, when they were shot during the hunting season, and still harboured a fear of humans. These legendary beasts can grow to six feet tall, and now, like the foxes in the Britain, they have started to challenge man. Their population is growing again and the farmers are angry. So the Mayor has decided to file a suit against the State to gain protection for the farmers and the local economy, and encourage young people to stay in the region.

Jiri Malik feels that anything that encourages beauty, diversity, stability of an ecosystem: such as wolves, is good. Anything that goes the other way, is bad. Why don’t the farmers guard their sheep, like shepherds did in ancient times?. And this is very much the view of small-holder Lenka Stihlova who takes the wolves side of the dilemma arguing for a modus Vivendi with the animals.

With its sinister occasional score of strings and measuring detached approach, Wolves at the Borders presents a convincing case for each side in this age-old endeavour: how to live in harmony with the animal kingdom. MT

VISIONS du REEL 2020 | STREAMING

 

 

 

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (2020) *** Visions du Reel 2020

Dir: Sascha Schöberl | Germany, Doc 84′ 

The cult of beauty and celebrity coalesce in this deeply unsettling documentary that looks at Beijing-based plastic surgeon Dr Han and his permanent quest for perfection, not only for himself but for his clients. The film once again connects to the narrative of live-streaming, a big business in China, as we saw in Present, Perfect (2019) the Tiger Award winner at Rotterdam last year.

In her sophomore feature, German filmmaker Sascha Schoberl makes no judgement on Han’s own self-focus. This is not a case of a little nip and tuck here and there, done discretely for women of a certainly age. Dr Han’s patients are young slim, and business orientated, and their surgery is plain for all to see.

Live fashion photos of the Dr Han in various natty outfits decorate the walls of his practice. In the firmament of China’s burgeoning plastic surgery industry, he is a star. Nor does the director question his unusual professional approach, allowing a roomful of spectators to attend the and record the live surgery on their mobile phones. The patient, a young Chinese model who undergoes the procedure without general anaesthetic, has given permission because this is all part of the process of monetising live-streaming, And it cuts both ways. The participants all garner something from the process, although why the camera looks at the patient’s face rather than the operation itself, is unclear. Clearly her stoicism – and tacit endurance – adds to the compelling nature of the footage. 

But beyond achieving beauty, girls in China are really looking to make money from the process of improvement surgery. And this is made possible and achievable thanks to Chinese massive social media platforms WeChat and Weibo who attract millions of followers to experience the surgery – live-streamed from the operating theatre to art fairs via fashion shows, and the private homes of this vast nation – they will use their mobiles not only as a form of contact and entertainment, but also to finance their lives. 

Drone footage hovers over Beijing’s vast tower blocks in the opening scenes as the camera descends on Dr Han’s substantial headquarters in the centre of the Chinese capital. Dr Han goes through his spiel encouraging and mentoring as the women congregate to attend the breast enlargement operation for a young flat-chested model whose sole aim, apart from achieving her desired breast size, is to create a platform where she can showcase her assets and make money from garnering followers on social media. The only slight criticism here is a lack of backstory: who are these girls, what are their personal stories, and how about some more clarity on Dr Han?

The procedure completed, the good doctor is not relieved that things have gone well, and that the patient has emerged fit and fulsome; he is clearly dismayed not to have attracted more followers, just click bait. Meanwhile, the enhanced model is pouting happily in her white bed holding a bunch of flowers for her followers delights, having been forced to look chipper throughout the procedure, her face having being filmed continuously by another woman encouraging her to smile, despite her nervousness.

Being a woman is highly competitive business all over the World, as increasingly so. Intelligence and personality are clearly not enough, and surgeons like Dr Han have cottoned on these women’s susceptibility and panders to their vanity and insecurity. A compelling film that questions beauty as a simultaneously essential yet vain element of society in the era of selfies. MT

Visions du Reel 2020 Online | April – May 2020, Nyon, Switzerland 

 

Blind Chance (1987) | Now on Blu-ray

PRZYPADEK (BLIND CHANCE) 1987 | was Krzysztof Kieslowski’s most direct attack on the authorities, produced in 1981, it was shown only “underground” for six years. A sort of Sliding Doors narrative, it is one of the few films that manages to be deeply affecting right from its opening sequence. It tells the story of Witek Dlugosz (Boguslaw Linda), born in 1956 in Posen. His father had participated in the uprising and moved to Lodz, where Witek went to school and started to study medicine. After his father died with the words “you don’t have to do what you don’t want to”, Witek decides to take a gap year, and takes the train to Warsaw. The three endings hinge on whether or not he catches his train. Version one sees him leaving the station, and arriving in Warsaw, where he starts a career as a party functionary. In the second variation, he misses the train, than fights with a railway policeman, and becomes a fervent opponent of the system. In the last version, he again misses the train, but meets a friend from university. The couple get married, and Witek lives a life faraway from strife and politics.

When, at the end, Witek has to fly to Libya for work reasons, he changes his mind at the last minute in a decision that has disastrous consequences. Kieslowski said in an interview that the last scene was proof “that the plane is waiting for all three ‘Witold’s’. All their lives end in the plane. The plane is waiting for him all the time. But, really, the plane is waiting for all of us”. Ironically, when BLIND CHANCE was invited to the Cannes Film Festival in 1987, to be shown “out of competition”, Kieslowski enquired, why the film was not to be shown ‘in competition’. Gilles Jacob, artistic director of the festival, answered in a letter that he feared the film would not be understood by the audience. So Kieslowski cut some political scenes from the film and sent the new copy back with the label “For the French censors” – which failed to change Jacob’s mind. Last year the digitally remastered BLIND CHANCE was shown in the Classics Strand at Salle Debussy during the 67th Cannes Film Festival, proudly introduced by Kieslowski’s daughter.

NOW ON BLURAY VIA ARROW FILMS | EARLY WORKS BY KIESLOWSKI

 

Claire Denis Tribute (2020) Visions du Reel 2020

French Filmmaker Claire Denis is one of the most innovative pioneers of independent cinema and fiercely committed to her singular vision. Growing up the daughter of a civil servant in various African countries, she eventually went home to France and fell in love with cinema in the Cinematheque, Paris. Making films seemed inevitable and after studying at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC) she embarked on a career that would see her working with Jacques Rivette (who became the subject of her 1990 documentary Jacques Rivette, Le Veilleur), Dušan Makavejev, Roberto Enrico and Costa-Gavras and Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. Through the musician John Lurie she met Jim Jarmusch and worked with him  on Down by Law. But it was with her debut feature Chocolat that she made it to the international stage in 1988. The film was selected for Cannes and the César awards, it also got her together with Agnès Godard who became her regular director of photography for all her films.

So far Claire Denis has made six documentaries and no fewer than 17 feature films, such as Nénette et Boni for which she is awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1996. Beau Travail, is one of the most stark and contemplative French films about war, standing alongside Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanite. It was chosen for Venice line-up in 1999. Set amid racial conflict in a Francophone African state, Isabelle Huppert plays a coffee plantation owner desperately trying to save her crop, her family and her life in Denis’ 2009 outing White Material.

Clearly race and post-colonial themes feature heavily in her work, but Denis has also dabbled in genres – Bastards was a thriller, 35 Shots of Rum a fantasy drama about a father and daughter in Paris. Trouble Every Day reflects the emotional anguish of a loved up but warring married coup, starring Béatrice Dalle and Vincent Gallo it screened at Cannes Film Festival in 2001. Denis has also worked several times with Juliette Binoche, most recently in her critically acclaimed sci-fi outing High Life (2018) and previously in her insightfully playful comedy Let the Sunshine In. where she plays a spirited and intelligent woman trying to find love with a series of unedifyingly pompous losers. Robert Pattinson will join Denis for the The Stars at Noon (2021) which follows American traveller (Margaret Qualley) through Nicaragua during the 1980s revolution, based on the novel by American writer Denis Johnson. MT

VISION DU REEL | 17 APRIL – 2 MAY | AVAILABLE ON FESTIVALSCOPE.COM

Filmography

High Life, 2018 Un beau soleil intérieur, 2017 Le Camp de Breidjing, 2015 Contact, 2014 Voilà l’enchaînement, 2014 Les Salauds, 2013 Venezia 70: Future Reloaded, 2013 Aller au diable, 2011 White Material, 2010 35 rhums, 2008 Vers Mathilde, 2005 L’Intrus, 2004 Vendredi soir, 2002 Vers Nancy (Segment du film Ten Minutes Older: The Cello), 2002 Trouble Every Day, 2001 Beau travail, 1999 Nénette et Boni, 1996 Nice, very Nice (segment from A propos de Nice, la suite), 1994 J’ai pas sommeil (I Can’t Sleep), 1994 U.S. Go Home (Collection : Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge), 1994 La Robe à cerceau (from Monologues, with Chantal Akerman), 1993 Keep It for Yourself  + Figaro Story, 1991 Jacques Rivette, le veilleur. Part 1 : la nuit (Cinéaste de notre temps), 1990 S’en fout la mort (No Fear, No Die) 1990 Man No Run, 1989 Chocolat, 1988 Le 15 Mai, 1969

Transit (2018) **** Curzon Home Cinema

Dir/Writer: Christian Petzold | Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese | Drama | Ger |

Christian Petzold’s tale of love during wartime captivates with a romantic allure that feels timeless yet very much rooted in the 1940s. Unlike his 2014 drama Phoenix, this is a more ephemeral film – a noirish mystery thriller with modern credentials that imagines a believable yet imaginary scenario: there are no guns or soldiers on parade and the costumes are ‘classic’: don’t expect a clear cut finale because TRANSIT captures the essence of transience: we’re never quite sure of what will happen next.

Franz Rogowski – Europe’s answer to Joaquin Phoenix – gives a charistmatic tour de force as German refugee Georg who is escaping the Nazis in Marseille with another escapee, a writer called Weidel who dies on route. Taking his papers, which include a manuscript and a letter from an Embassy assuring him a visa, Georg has secured an identity and an escape route – but his plans are soon to change when a mysterious woman crosses his path and the two become linked by a extraordinary twist of fate.

Petzold fleshes out his sinuous storyline with some convincing characters: there’s a conductor on his way to Caracas, a Jewish woman who is stuck with her employers’ two dogs and the enigmatic Marie (Petzold’s latest Paula Beer), who is searching for her husband. Georg becomes obsessed by Marie but cannot reveal the truth of is own identity which must remain a mystery to her. This intoxicating love affair thrives on this sense of enigma and shadowplay.

The starving wartime Europeans escaping their homelands for a new beginning feel very much like today’s refugees, looking for a stable existence in this saraband for lost souls, who may even just be fleeing from themselves in a time of uncertainty. Franz Rogowski (the interloper in Happy End) shares a potent onscreen chemistry with Paula Beer’s beguiling Marie. This is a moving, memorable and thematically rich addition to Christian Petzold’s war-themes tales: Phoenix; Barbara and Jerichow  . MT

NOW ON CURZON HOME CINEMA | BERLINALE 2018

State Funeral (2019) Mubi

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa | Doc, Ukraine

Ukrainian Director Sergei Loznitsa shows how the Russian Communist dictator Joseph Stalin still held his citizens in thrall at the mammoth funeral to commemorate his death. State Funeral concludes Loznitsa’s historical trilogy that started with The Event and was followed by The Trial.

Sixty six years after his death Stalin still exerts a cultish fascination in the West. According to the Yale Professor of History Timonthy Snyder, Stalin killed more people (including Ukrainians) than Hitler killed Jews – 27 million were murdered and 15 million starved to death during his regime (mentioned in the film’s end credits) – but he is still revered by many who espouse Communist ideals in contemporary society.

Expressing a strong opinion is not Loznitsa’s style. He merely ponders the aftermath of one of modern history’s bloodiest dictators with this sombre and dignified documentary that makes used of Danielius Kokanauski’s cleverly edited archive footage to reflect the extraordinary pomp and ceremony that continued for four days and brought the Russian nation to a complete standstill as it wallowed in a sea of mass mourning, the droning voice of the loudspeakers recounting the grim details surrounding the father-like Stalin’s demise.

There is a bizarrely hypnotic quality to this wordless documentary that mesmerises for over two hours as we contemplate the massed crowds moving like silent waves around the casket covered with a shroud the colour of dried blood, known as ‘Kremlin Red’. We can make out the dictator’s children Vasily and Svetlana amongst the morass of floral tributes. Clearly they were numbed by the shock of their father’s sudden death on 5 March 1953 after a massive stroke, in his mid seventies.

Officials are seen relaying the casket on a bier surrounded by a forest of blood and bandage coloured flowers, the lid is removed to reveal the waxy face of the embalmed Stalin as a silent sea of mourners drifts by to the solemnity of a symphony orchestra and massed choir. The restrained remembrance ripples out into the countryside beyond Moscow where millions gather to pay their respects.

After three days of mourning the casket is finally closed and taken on a horse-driven vehicle to Red Square where it will remain on longterm display in the Lenin mausoleum until it is finally sealed in the walls of the Kremlin, eight years later.

The final act is one of inflated speeches and puffed up orations. Nikita Khrushchev is one of the speakers, he would go on to succeed Stalin as first secretary of main Communist Party Committee. Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria are also in attendance. Loznitza once again triumphs with this remarkable endeavour that exerts a mysterious power over the audience, captivating despite a 135 minute running time. MT

NOW ON MUBI

The Green Fog (2018) **** Now on Vimeo

Dir.: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson; USA 2017,63 min.

Guy Maddin’s’ love letter to San Francisco and Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a montage of clips from features shot in around the Californian coastal city: around one hundred or so – no new material was filmed. Aesthetically, Green Fog settles somewhere in between Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) and another Maddin/Johnson collaboration, Forbidden Room from 2015. There’s no real narrative to speak of, but Green Fog will appeal to those who like their film history served with a dizzy twist of the insane.

Oblique and opaque, Green Fog shows an overbearing obsession with Hitchcock: morbid and melancholy, we follow Scottie and Judy on a drive through the city, morphing into a hell-raising ride, where love turns to disillusionment. Novak and Stewart are played by various actors: Faye Dunaway, Susan Saint James, Gina Lolabrigida; Anthony Franciosa and Dean Martin. As one actor melds into another, one forgets that they look different in this headlong rush, on foot and in automobiles, as they’re drawn to the Golden Gate Bridge and oblivion.The film’s quotes range from the thrilling (The Lady from Shanghai, 1947) to the downright bizarre (Confessions of an Opium Eater of 1962 and So I married an Axe Murderer of 1993), via obscure gems such as Obayashi’s Take Me Away! 1978, and Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983). The common thread is their Vertigo locations; if not directly then metaphorically. The titular fog, which saturates Judy from the neon street sign, re-appears throughout: under water, most menacingly in a hospital corridor. And there are even in the clips from The Great Fire, – which was started by a film fan no less.

Hitchcock’s obsession with voyeurism is celebrated in many scenes, from surveillance rooms, to men gazing at the screens, unsure of their targets – rather like Rock Hudson, on being quizzed “what are we looking for, Sir?” by a tape operator, to which Rock retorted: “I don’t know, but at this point I’ll take anything”. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas from The Streets of San Francisco are frequently found in their search for more contemporary perpetrators. Green Fog is a ghost story, a collage of landscapes and rooms (echoing Un Chien Andalou) which are haunted by loss and death, their doom underpinned by a Hermannesque score from Jacob Gavchik. Despite of the gravity of it all, Maddin still manages to be playful and impish throughout. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON VIMEO

 

In Touch (2018) *** Kinoteka

Dir.: Pawel Ziemilski; Documentary; Poland/Iceland 2018, 61 min.

Pawel Ziemilski finds an ingenious way to tackle the timely topic of distance relationships in a challenging new documentary which won the main prize at IDFA in 2108.

Since the 1980s, the Polish town of Stare Juchy (Old Blood) has seen its population dwindling with most of the young moving to Iceland, of all places. Desperate to stay in touch, those left behind resort to electronic methods of communication. And Skype seems to be the most popular. But it’s not as simple as it seems. Gradually a different modus vivendi takes hold as the emigres adapt to their new environment, become influenced by the change of language and social set-up. Most of them will never return.

But In Touch goes beyond a study of citizens chatting to relatives and friends on a screen. Ziemilski records images of the landscape in both locations and then literally projects the footage via electronic means onto a vast canvass, a sort of moving art installation that keeps the communities in touch with each other, and their environment – rather like google Earth on a grandiose scale. Ziemilski can even project absent family members into a life-size Easter meal, or show a distant daughter painting her mother’s nails in another country. A goalkeeper on the Polish pitch tries to save shots not only from the Icelandic strikers, but also from opponents elsewhere. Sounds amazing? But – and it is a big but – the whole concept fails to convince because we never find out exactly who we’re dealing with, or how they feels about the situation. Brief, subjective, person-related information would have been so much more effective than just pictures: Greta putting her Icelandic co-workers down, telling her friend in Stare Juchy that she went for a job interview at the airport, and hoping she’ll get the job “since only Icelandic girls seem to be working there”.  

The sheer variety of these visual devices is extremely impressive, opening up new ways of enabling interaction by reconfiguring the conception of spaces, and exploring the topic in formally imaginative ways. But the concept is undermined by the plethora of sub-approaches, which often reduces the outcome as pure gimmickry.

All very imaginative in theory, but the human interaction feels impersonal and lacks real  intimacy. In Touch would work far better in the formal confines of an art gallery where visitors could drift in and out. As a cinematic experience it is often too limited by its formalism, which strangles the human touch. AS

Showing 24 March @ 8.30pm at the ICA as part of KINOTEKA | The Polish Film Festival in London, Kinoteka.org.uk

  

Cinema Made in Italy 2020 | 4 – 9 March 2020

The focus is on women in this decade long celebration of Italian cinema that takes place from 4 – 9 March at Cine Lumiere in London. A rich and eclectic mix of the most recent films come under the spotlight including Liliana Cavani’s cult classic thriller The Night Porter (1974) starring Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde.

The six day event opens on 4 March with Ginevra Elkann’s playful comedy If Only (2019) that won critical acclaim at last year’s Locarno Film Festival.  Also to look forward to is Guido Lombardi’s road movie Volare that sees a young boy reconnected with his father returning from prison and Igor Tuveri’s stylish crime drama 5 is the Perfect Number starring Tony Servillo as a hitman in 1970s Naples. 

IF ONLY (Magari) | Director: Ginevra Elkann | Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Alba Rohrwacher, Milo Roussel, Ettore Giustiniani, Oro De Commarque, Céline Sallette, Benjamin Baroche, Brett Gelman, Luigi Catani | 100 mins

Alma, Jean and Sebastiano are three tight-knit siblings who live with their mother in Paris. One day they are packed off to Italy to spend the rest of the school holiday with their unconventional and completely broke father, Carlo(Riccardo Scamarcio), who they haven’t seen for two years. Instead of taking them on the skiing trip they had been promised, Carlo whisks them off to a rundown coastal cottage. They are joined by his bohemian co-writer and lover Benedetta (Alba Rohrwacher), and what ensues is a shambolic Christmas package to remember, complete with a first crush, acts of teenage rebellion, but also tender moments of reconciliation.  This semi-autobiographical film by accomplished producer and first-time feature director Ginevra Elkann received critical acclaim when it opened the Piazza Grande section at last year’s Locarno International Film Festival.

Ginevra Elkann studied film directing at the London Film School. She began her film career as assistant director on Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged and was also a video assistant on Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. She is an accomplished producer and distributor (respectively, at Italian companies Asmara Films and Good Films). Her production credits include Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub, My Love (Canto uno), Noaz Deshe’s White Shadow and Babak Jalali’s Frontier Blues. Since 2006 she has been President of the ‘Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli’ art gallery in Turin.

FLESH OUT (Il corpo della sposa) | Dir: Michela Occhipinti | Cast: Verida Beitta Ahmed Deiche, Amal Saad Bouh Oumar, Aminetou Souleimane, Sidi Mohamed Chinghaly | 95 mins

Living in Mauritania, working in a beauty salon and addicted to social media, Verida (Verida Beitta Ahmed Deiche) is a modern girl. However, before getting married in three months’ time she needs to undergo ‘gavage’, or force-feeding, so that she gains a substantial amount of weight to become voluptuous, and thus an ideal model of beauty and wealth. This means that her mother will ensure that she eats and drinks as much as ten times a day. As the weeks of this trial go by and the impending wedding approaches, Verida starts to question her life and her country’s traditions. Michela Occhipinti’s emotionally rich film is a sympathetic portrait of a woman awakening to misogynistic conditioning disguised as cultural convention.  The film screened in the Panorama section at last year’s Berlinale.

Born in 1968, Michela Occhipinti spent her childhood in Rome, Hong Kong, Geneva and Morocco. In 2003 she spent a year in Argentina and made her first documentary film Give Us Back the Constitution (¡Viva la Pepa!), about the country’s social situation. From 2005 – 2007 she worked with the Italian channel RAI 2 to direct several reports on immigration issues. Her other documentary films include Sei Uno Nero, about the prevention of HIV and malaria in Malawi, and the feature-length documentary Lettere dal deserto (Elogio della lentezza), which was shown at over 80 festivals around the world.

SIMPLE WOMEN | Dir:Chiara Malta | Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Elina Löwensohn, Francesco Acquaroli, Anna Malvica, Mirella Mazzeranghi, Betti Pedrazzi, Paolo Graziosi, Thomas Bradley, Michael Rodgers, Cosmina Olariu, Ozana Oancea, Roberta Zanardo, Gea Dell’Orto, Elisa Liberatori |  85 mins

Since childhood, the Italian film director Federica (Jasmine Trinca) has been passionate about cinema. One film in particular has always played an important role: Hal Hartley’s Simple Men, starring the Romanian actress Elina Löwensohn. A chance encounter with her icon offers Federica the opportunity to make a film about her life. However, the real Elina Löwensohn is very different to the one in Federica’s imagination, and soon the true characters of both the actor and the director start to be revealed.

Paris-based director Chiara Malta has written and directed numerous short films in which she mixes various forms of narration, including documentary and animation. Her feature-length documentary Armando and Politics opened the 2008 Turin Film Festival. Simple Women is her debut feature-length fiction film and had its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, where it opened the Discovery section.

THE NIGHT PORTER (Il portiere di notte)  Dir: Liliana Cavani | Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Philippe Leroy | 118 mins

Set in Vienna in 1957, a secret Nazi organisation meets periodically and ‘eliminates’ dangerous witnesses to their cruel actions during WW II. Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former SS officer, is a night porter in an elegant hotel. When Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) enters the lobby with her husband, she recognises the man who was both her torturer and protector when she was a concentration camp inmate. They eventually find a way to be alone together and replay their concentration camp scenes, thus revisiting a sadomasochistic relationship and exploring a reversal of roles. Operatic and bold, Liliana Cavani’s 1974 provocative psychological thriller deftly examines the lasting social and psychological effects of the Nazi regime.

Liliana Cavani was born in Carpi in 1933. After graduating in literature and philology at Bologna University she studied documentary filmmaking at Rome’s renowned ‘Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia’.  She is a director and screenwriter who belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers from Emilia-Romagna who came into prominence in the 1970s, and included Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellocchio.  In 1965 her documentary Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy won the Golden Lion for Best TV Documentary Film at the Venice International Film Festival. In addition to feature films and documentaries, she has also directed operas.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 4 -9 MARCH 2020 | CINE LUMIERE, LONDON SW7

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Cow (2020)

Dir: Kelly Reichardt | Writers Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt | Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd, Gary Farmer, Lily Gladstone, Alia Shawkat, Rene Auberjonois, Jared Kasowski | Drama US 121′

“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” William Blake

Kelly Reichardt’s eighth film takes us back to the old West in a timeless and fabulously crafted story of two men finding friendship as they wander the sylvan landscapes of the 19th century Oregon Trail trying to survive off the land.

This lyrical and richly textured film lulls us with a hypnotic narrative that slowly catches fire in the final stretch. The mutually compatible souls come together from different corners of the earth. Bonded by their hopes and dreams they develop a miniaturist cottage industry: the Chinamen King Lu (Orion Lee) has the business acumen, the diffident American is Boston baker “Cookie” (aka Otis Figowitz, a sensitive John Magaro) and what emerges is a painterly rendering of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: first there is hunger but gradually sophistication and greed come into play, as the smouldering story unfolds.

It all starts with the arrival of the first cow in the region, an amiable dairy heifer seen drifting gracefully along the river in a boat from San Luis Obispo. Once firmly on dry land she is encouraged by Cookie to provide the vital ingredient for his buttermilk buns. And these provide for the men’s needs in the short term. Lu suggests they sell them at the nearby market, and soon they have regular customers for their fare. Lu points out their “window” will not last for long. But before competitors catch on to their bakery bandwagon, something tragic happens.

And this comes with the arrival of the cow’s owner, Toby Jones’ Chief Factor, a wealthy English sea merchant who lives in a supposedly grand clapperboard house, with his Native American wife (Lily Gladstone). His observations on how to incentivise workers, and his sophisticated social commentary on London fashions spike this gentle story with a vein of subversive humour. We learn the buns have a subtle taste of “South Kensington” and that the ‘Empire Line’ is no longer in vogue, but canary yellow is the now the colour ‘du jour’ for ladies couture. Also that his humble cow is actually descended from the highly prized ‘Froment de Leon’ breed, crossed with Isigny in Brittany, ensuring exceptionally rich grass for grazing, hence the quality of its milk and cream. So when Factor visits the market to sample the famous buttermilk buns and orders a ‘blueberry clafoutis’, the penny starts to drop, but not into the baker’s hands.

Reichardt’s regular cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt creates painterly images that glow like Rembrandt Old Masters, enhanced by the use of the silent era’s 4:3 aspect ratio. The animal connection here is tender rather than sentimental, once again showcasing Reichardt’s relationship with animals: her well known dog Lucy has been cast in her films – notably Wendy and Lucy (2008), and Old Joy (2006) which share Reichardt’s regular writing partner, who also wrote the book on which this arthouse treasure is based: The Half Life. MT

ON RELEASE IN THE UK & IRELAND and on MUBI | 28 MAY 2021 | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2020 PREMIERE

 

 

 

When Lambs become Lions (2018) | ****

Dir: Jon Kasbe | Doc | US

When you fight to survive in the vast arid plains of East Africa life is tough. In his deeply affecting feature debut, award-winning filmmaker Jon Kasbe (Heartbeats Of Fiji) explores whether human life in Northern Kenya is more valuable than that of endangered species. The subject of poaching is certainly an emotive issue that strongly divides the nation’s inhabitants, many of whom are deeply opposed to the illegal practice on moral grounds. But the lucrative trade goes on.

This is the latest in a series of conservation-themed features that started with Blackfish, The Cove and last year’s Trophy. Stunningly captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up the film contrasts Kenya’s natural beauty with the less palatable aspects of animal slaughter, that takes place not for food but for trophy hunting. And the animals do not die a quick death but a long, drawn out and painful one due to being inexpertly shot or poisoned with venomous arrows. The film’s atmospheric score adds gravitas to the melancholic episodes where Asan silently contemplates his doubtful future. And these sequences contrast with the high-octane nighttime forays into the bush to locate victims and escape the rangers’ onslaught.

Kasbe’s non-judgemental thriller unspools with a growing dramatic tension as it moves stealthily between the lives of two men: an unlikeable ivory trader (X), and his ranger nemesis Asan, who is also his cousin. The glassy-eyed macho X boasts of making a successful black market business selling ivory. As he swaggers around chain-smoking defiantly and invoking ‘Allah’, he claims not to do the killing himself. Hot on his tracks is Asan and his fellow government employed rangers who are heavily armed with rifles and threaten the poachers with their zero tolerance approach. But rangers have little to gain financially from their work, although many feel sadness for the elephants’ plight. Heavily armed with automatic rifles they also have an axe to grind against the government claiming they have not been paid two months’ wages due to an administrative error. Meanwhile, the poachers make a lucrative living. X’s sidekick Lukas posits the powerful adage “if we do not hunt we will be hunted”. The pressure to earn a pittance is also putting a strain on Asan’s marriage and growing family, and he fears he may have to go back to the petty crime of his youth. 

Although poaching is a blot on the landscape, so is the plight of the people who inhabit this impoverished region. President Uhuru Kenyatta confiscates and burns all illegal ivory stashes claiming – on a television programme – that “ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants”. Meanwhile X and Lukas watch silently desperately wishing they could lay their hands on the truckloads of bounty destined to be destroyed by the government’s crackdown. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Possession (1981) ****

Dir: Andrzej Zulawski  | Cast: Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani, Margit Castensen, Heinz Bennent, Johanna Hofer | 124min  | Horror Drama  | Poland France West Germany

possession_2116In the opening scene of Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION, Isabelle Adjani (Anna) meets Sam Neill (Mark) outside their Berlin apartment block, on his return from a business trip – she appears to be dressed in mourning. It then emerges she wants a divorce, and the two of them descend rapidly into a frazzled state of anxiety – Mark rocking to and fro in a cold sweat and Anna sobbing down the telephone from her new lover’s place. Mark (a self-confessed misogynist) seems less concerned about the divorce, but is eaten up with jealousy that Anna is having sex with another man – and enjoying it. Confronting her lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) in his spacious book-filled apartment, Mark is understandably indignant. Heinrich is dressed like a flamenco dancer; black shirt slashed to his ageing midriff. Embracing Mark, he appeals to his sense of fair-play in understanding their mutual state of flux.

Initially banned in the UK; this is the Russian-born Polish film director’s most controversial film. Many claim to be shocked and traumatised by it; others to find it a total enigma, even a laughable mess. Certainly it gives full throttle to the full-blooded emotional fall-out when a relationship goes wrong – but this is not social realism; it is mannered horror. Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes for her histrionic, ‘obsessive compulsive’ performance – which involves an electric carving knife – and Neill is also at his most viscerally raw, switching from demonic anger to childlike vulnerability (his eyes are especially weird – an effect achieved by coloured contact lenses), as he pleads with Anna to share her feelings so he can work to make it right. Meanwhile he is also trying to negotiate a deal with his employers and look after his infant son Bob.

Filmed by ace DoP Bruno Nuytten (Jean de Florette) in the frigid blue light of a rained-soaked Berlin winter in Kreuzberg and Mitte’s empty streets, there are unsettling vignettes where Anna is at one point pursued by a government official who asks to check the windows of the apartment where she is now living (having left Mark). In this apartment, she has produced – or apparently given birth to – a strange octopus-like blob of gore, that masquerades as a gigantic living foetus. When the inspector discovers it, she glasses him in the neck with a broken bottle of red wine, having previously offered him a drink. In another she plays Helen, a teacher from Bob’s school, and turns up unannounced to read to Bob and do the washing up for Mark: the two end up in bed. The dialogue is often dead pan and banal compared with the heightened melodrama that accompanies it – after trashing Mark’s living room in a blind rage Anna announces blandly: “I have to give Bob his yogourt”.

Admittedly, the film is a carnival of sensationalism, yet we feel nothing for the characters nor their trauma as their feelings are completely unconvincing – they are merely the psychotic and narcissistic projections of sociopathic cyphers, totally lacking in authenticity or a scintilla of humanity. Although Zulawski attempts to generate horror, as an audience we feel entirely alienated and detached from the narrative, however gory, blood-soaked or deranged it becomes. A fantastic curio and the perfect antidote to romantic Valentine’s Day. MT

LEXI CINEMA | KENSAL RISE OVERGROUND | FRIDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2020

 

The End Will Be Spectacular (2020) **** Rotterdam Film Festival

Dir.: Ersin Celik; Cast: Arjin Baysal, Delil Piran, Cîan Seve, Sevda Kina, Sahire Ozhari; Syria 2019, 135 min.

Ersin Celek’s feature debut celebrates the Kurdish fight for independence. Shot in the autonomous region of Northern Syria, The End Will be Spectacular tells the story of the siege of Diyarbakir and the ancient city of Sur, attacked by the Turkish army for over hundred days, from December 2nd 2015, after the declaration of independence by the Sur’s Kurdish assembly.

Zilan (Baysal) enters Diyarbakir to meet up with friends of her brother Andok, killed here fighting for the Kurdish PKK. She encounters a number of women fighters amongst them the commander Nucan (Ozhan), and Dilan (Kina) who also wants to avenge her brother. The overall leader is Ciyzger (Seve), whose titular speech ends with “When hope and resistance come together, no matter what happens: the end will be spectacular”. The slow and bespectacled Zilan is not the model of a resistance fighter. But she soon speeds, and gets quite nifty with her semi-automatic gun. Dilan (Kina) decides to burn her diaries, she feels personal memories are no longer relevant in times of hardship. Then Zilan and Nucan watch in horror as Dilan gives herself up to the Turkish forces. But to their surpise, the diary she is gives the Turkish commander is not a plan of the defence lines but an explosive device, killing a load of Turks, Zilan and Nucan saving her in  the aftermath. The Turkish army with their tanks makes progress, and there is an impressive burial scene amidst the first snows. Later, a traitor is caught having sold the location of the anti-tank mines to the Turks. He meets a sticky end. The siege grinds to a conclusion, Ciyager sending out a small group, including Zilan, who will tell the Kurdish villages and towns in the area about the heroic fight in the hope of garnering support and swelling their ranks.

Shot imaginatively by DoP Cemil Kizildag, The End resonates with Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers narrative-wise, but aesthetically it is closer to Malle’s Viva Maria!. Celik is very much an idealist at heart, and his portraits of women fighters is the highlight of his feature. A little overindulgence by Celek manifests itself in the running time of 135 minutes, but the emotional suspense created by the brilliant ensemble (including seven, who act out their roles in the real uprising) makes up for it. AS

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

Filles de Joie | Working Girls (2020) Rotterdam International Film Festival 2020

Dir: Frédéric Fonteyne | Wri: Anne Paulicevich | Cast: Noemie Lvovsky, Jonas Bloquet, Sara Forestier | Drama Belgium 91′

Belgian filmmaker Frédéric Fonteyne (1968) studied film at Institut des arts de diffusion in Louvain-la-Neuve. He realised several successful short films before his two acclaimed features, Max & Bobo (1998) and Une liaison pornografique (1999), which were both screened at IFFR. This drama about sex workers starts on a light note but soon develops into a more dejected tale of life and death. An excellent cast cannot always overcome Paulicevich’s uneven script.

Sarah Forestier’s thirty-something sex worker Axelle (aka Athena) lives with her three unruly children and a cantankerous mother in a council flat. Every morning she joins neighbour Conso (Legronne) and Dominique (Lvovsky) in a battered car to drive over the border to Belgium, where they ply their trade. Conso, a long legged black women has to run a scary racist gauntlet from the youth of the estate. Axelle is separated from her husband Yann, who still has his fingers in the pie. Their their youngest son is caught in a violent incident at Kindergarten, shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ before his attack – even though he is not a Muslim. Conso meanwhile has a boyfriend, Jean-Philippe, who gives her an expensive pendant for her birthday, raising her hopes for a way out of her depressing life.

But the women’s light hearted banter soon gives way to darker developments. Axelle’s husband Yann trails her, and confronts her as a ‘customer’, threatening to take the children away from her. Then Conso is invited to a special party by Jean-Philippe. It turns out that he is celebrating the very recent birth of his first child. The devastated Conso nearly overdoses, and Dominique and Axelle decide to teach J-P a lesson. Meanwhile, the former is appalled to find her daughter Zoe (Dewaels) “earning some pocket money”, but the real drama starts when Yann attacks Axelle in a domestic set-to defused with the help of a hammer.

Suddenly this bitter-sweet comedy gets serious morphing to a real life and death scenario in a sobering and awkward tonal shift. But these feisty women have learnt to deal with their work related ups and downs – quite literally – so anything else is all in a day’s work.

DoP Juliette Van Dormael’s nimble camera-work captures the raucous near heart-breaking hysteria. Lvovsky is the leader of the pack, looking after ‘her’ girls like a lioness with her cubs  – but failing to keep her own domestic life on track. Forestier is the most ambivalent, often attacking Conso for not being ‘serious’ enough. Working Girls doesn’t always succeed in conveying the complexities of life for sex-working parents. But Fonteyne has a good certainly crack of the whip at it nonetheless . AS

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

 

Rotterdam Film Festival 2020

In his final year as creative director Bero Beyer recently announced the 2020 line-up for the 49th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) including the 10 films selected for the Tiger Competition. Known for its edgy arthouse bias, this year’s film include Kim Yong-hoon’s South Korean crime drama Beasts Clawing at Straws; Arun Karthick’s Nasir, a portrait of theHindu-nationalist province of Tamil Nadu; and Jorge Thielen Armand’s drama La fortaleza, set in the jungles of Venezuela.

The festival also features the Big Screen Competition and the revamped Bright Future Competition, the fifth theme programme Ordinary Heroes and a special screening of David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) with a live musical score by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The festival opens on the 22 January 2020 with Joao Nuno Pinto’s period drama Mosquito, exploring a Portuguese soldier’s adventures in Mozambique during the First World War, and close on 2 February with Marielle Heller’s Oscar contender A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood that revisits the popular children’s television personality Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) through his meeting with skeptical journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys).

The Tiger competition will be judged by a panel composed of Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now), Visions du Réel artistic director Emilie Bujès, South Korea-born American filmmaker Kogonada (Columbus), Dutch filmmaker Sacha Polak (Dirty God) and Indonesian artist Hafiz Rancajale.

The Big Screen Competition features nine films including Danish filmmaker Malou Reymann’s A Perfectly Normal Family; Eden from Hungarian filmmaker Ágnes Kocsis (who made Pál Adrienn) and Argentinian auteur Marco Berger’s El cazador (Young Hunter) which stars End of Century’s Juan Barberini

The Bright Future Competition, comprising a selection of 15 feature-length debuts, includes Liang Ming’s Pingyao film festival award-winning Wisdom Tooth, and feature debuts from Russian filmmaker Artem Aisagaliev’s (Babai) and Bolivian Diego Mondaca’s Chaco.

The 49th International Film Festival Rotterdam | 22 January – 2 February 2020

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Images from the Tiger Competition selection

Tiger Competition

Beyer said: all the films in Tiger Competition radiate a strong sense of personal urgency and cinematic relevance, fuelled by boundary-pushing directorial visions.”

All films selected for Tiger Competition 2020:

El año del descubrimiento, Luis López Carrasco, 2020, Spain/Switzerland, world premiere

Beasts Clawing at Straws, Kim Yonghoon, 2020, South Korea, world premiere

The Cloud in Her Room, Zheng Lu Xinyuan, 2020, France/China, world premiere

Desterro, Maria Clara Escobar, 2020, Brazil/Portugal/Argentina, world premiere

Drama Girl, Vincent Boy Kars, 2020, Netherlands, world premiere

La fortaleza, Jorge Thielen Armand, 2020, Venezuela/France/Netherlands/Colombia, world premiere

Kala azar, Janis Rafa, 2020, Netherlands/Greece, world premiere

Nasir, Arun Karthick, 2020, India/Netherlands, world premiere

Piedra sola, Alejandro Telemaco Tarraf, 2020, Argentina/Mexico/Qatar/UK, world premiere

Si yo fuera el invierno mismo, Jazmín López, 2020, Argentina, world premiere

The Tiger jury consists of Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, artistic director of Visions du Réel Emilie Bujès, South Korean-born American filmmaker Kogonada, Dutch filmmaker Sacha Polak and Indonesian artist, curator and filmmaker Hafiz Rancajale.

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Images from the Big Screen Competition selection

Big Screen Competition

The Big Screen Competition, part of IFFR’s Voices section, features nine films which, according to IFFR programmers, deserve to hit the big screen after the festival. A jury consisting of five audience members picks the winner of the VPRO Big Screen Award. This film gets a guaranteed theatrical release in the Netherlands and will be broadcast on Dutch TV by VPRO and NPO.

All films selected for Big Screen Competition 2020:

El cazador, Marco Berger, 2020, Argentina, world premiere

Eden, Ágnes Kocsis, 2020, Hungary/Romania, world premiere

Énorme, Sophie Letourneur, 2019, France, international premiere

The Evening Hour, Braden King, 2020, USA, international premiere

Fanny Lye Deliver’d, Thomas Clay, 2019, UK/Germany, international premiere

Mosquito, João Nuno Pinto, 2020, Portugal/France/Brazil, world premiere

A Perfectly Normal Family, Malou Reymann, 2020, Denmark,world premiere

Synapses, Chang Tso-chi, 2019, Taiwan, international premiere

A Yellow Animal, Felipe Bragança, 2020, Brazil/Portugal/Mozambique, world premiere

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Images from the Bright Future Competition selection

Bright Future Competition

The Bright Future Competition comprises a selection of 15 feature-length film debuts, screening in world or international premiere. IFFR’s competition for first-time filmmakers presents a variety of innovative, cutting-edge and promising discoveries from all over the world. The Bright Future Award is chosen by a jury of three film professionals.

All films selected for Bright Future Competition 2020:

Babai, Artem Aisagaliev, 2020, Russia/USA, world premiere

Chaco, Diego Mondaca, 2020, Bolivia/Argentina, world premiere

Los fantasmas, Sebastián Lojo, 2020, Guatemala/Argentina, world premiere

Fellwechselzeit, Sabrina Mertens, 2020, Germany, international premiere

For the Time Being, Salka Tiziana, 2020, Germany/Spain/Switzerland, international premiere

I Blame Society, Gillian Wallace Horvat, 2020, USA, world premiere

Moving On, Yoon Dan-bi, 2019, South Korea, international premiere

My Mexican Bretzel, Nuria Giménez Lorang, 2019, Spain, international premiere

Ofrenda, Juan María Mónaco Cagni, 2020, Argentina, world premiere

Panquiaco, Ana Elena Tejera, 2020, Panama, world premiere

A Rifle and a Bag, Isabella Rinaldi/Cristina Hanes/Arya Rothe, 2020, India, world premiere

Sebastian springt über Geländer, Ceylan-Alejandro Ataman-Checa, 2020, Germany, world premiere

The Trouble with Nature, Illum Jacobi, 2020, Denmark/France, world premiere

Truth or Consequences, Hannah Jayanti, 2020, USA, world premiere

Wisdom Tooth, Liang Ming, 2019, China, international premiere

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | 22 JANUARY – 2 FEBRUARY 

The Distinguished Citizen (2016) ****

Dirs: Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn | 118min | Comedy Drama | Argentina

When an Argentinian Nobel prize winner returns to the village of his birth he discovers a lawless Wild West, or has he just become “over-civilised”.

This pithy premise underpins the latest from Argentinian directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn. It stars Oscar Martinez (of Paulina and Wild Tales fame) as the world-weary and emotionally avoidant author Daniel Mantovani, who returns to a remote village about six hours drive from Buenos Aires, to accept a medal. Having left there many years ago, he never felt the impetus to go back having made a successful writing career in Europe where he lives in palatial splendour in the lush hills of Barcelona’s Tibidabo.

Written by Gaston’s brother Andres Duprat, THE DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN is a tightly-scripted, insightful and often hilarious satire with echoes of Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s 2004 comedy Whisky with similar themes of parochial pettiness and cultural awareness. The tone is always light but touches upon some dark home truths. The elegant framing and architectural sensibilities makes this a visual pleasure, Maria Eugenia Sueiro’s interiors reflecting a faded seventies aesthetic.

The film opens as Daniel is delivering a trenchant rebuke at the acceptance ceremony mocking the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm. Fast forward five years and he is on the plane to BA where a taste of his future tribulations arrives when his airport taxi driver breaks down in a field, hours from Salas, forcing him to spend the night in the middle of nowhere round a campfire lit with one of the pages from his recent novel. The following morning that same book comes in handy as lavatory paper – and we all realise where things are going.

The narrative unspools in five parts – for no specific reason – as Daniel goes back in time to a homespun and unsophisticated community stuck in the past. This motley crew respond entirely inappropriately treating him like a local soap star rather than an intellectual introvert. He bumps into his old girlfriend Irene (Andrea Frigerio) who is now married to his butch friend Antonio (Dady Brieva), a mean dancer and an even meaner game hunter – a talent that plays out in Daniel’s hasty departure in the final scenes. The film centres on the small-town mentality that really rears its ugly head as the story develops, the inhabitants gradually turning the writer from hailed hero to vilified outsider in their collective mean-spiritedness.

This is an enjoyable and intelligent piece of cinema, dark and deadpan situational comedy arises out of bizarre encounters and bitter ironies (much in the same vein as those of the recent Toni Erdmann). The film leaves us with some memorable maxims to reflect on. “making things simple is an artistic kindness” is a choice takeaway from the role and often poignant indie gem . MT

Argentinian Film Season: El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) (2016)

WINNER COPA VOLPE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 | BEST ACTOR | OSCAR MARTINEZ

 

Jo Jo Rabbit (2019) ***

Dir: Taika Waititi | Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomas McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell | Comedy Drama 108′

Wes Anderson could easily have made this smug and painterly winsome drama that challenges hate and dogma through a re-imagining of the Hitler story. In JoJo Rabbit the arch fiend is reinvented as the cartoonish friend of an earnest German boy during the last knockings of the Second World War.

Taika Waititi got the idea from Christine Leunens’s bestseller that tells how Johannes aka Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) invents an alternative and jollier version of the Führer, who is gamely played by Waititi himself.

Meanwhile his charming mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in the attic, forcing Jojo into a private war of his own: keeping shtum while wrestling with his own conscience that teeters between his growing feelings for the girl and the dogma surrounding her religion. Gradually the strength of his belief system starts to go AWOL, and his hero turns into one of the greatest antiheroes of history.

Waititi’s tricksy and light-hearted wartime drama brings nothing new to the table – the filmmaker raises a few laughs with his outlandish character’s high jinx, but the story gradually becomes more and more repetitive. Johansson gets the best role with a genuinely complex juggling act that sees her vivaciously paying lip service to the Nazis, while also tussling with her son’s misguided take on proceedings behind closed doors at their gemütlich apartment in Berlin (filming actually took place in Czechia).

Welcome to Sodom (2018) **** WatchAUT 2019

Dir.: Florian Weigensamer, Christian Krönes; Documentary; Austria 2018, 90 min.

Austrian directors/writers Florian Weigensamer and Christian Krönes are attracted to radical material, that brings to mind the work of their compatriot, the noted documentarian Michael Glawogger (1959-2014)  Their first film A German Life, explored the life of  104 year-old Brunhilde Pomsel, Goebbels stenographer. Here they have chosen something completely different but just as fascinating.  Near the Ghanaian capital Accra is Agbogbloshie a swampland, where 250 000 tons of first world electronic dump is ‘recycled’ by about 6000 women, men and children.

The title refers to the biblical place, and Agbogbloshie is certainly making its name proud. The ground itself is unsafe, it sucks people in – after all, it’s a lagoon. Starting with a close-up of a chameleon, emaciated goats and cows roam the wasteland, where ancient dump trucks discharge old computer monitors, TV sets, fridges, printers, mobiles and cars. The mostly teenage work force are looking for aluminium, copper or zinc, anything they can glean with their self-made magnets, working away with crude mallets to break down the chassis. When they have collected enough material they take it to the dealer, who weighs their collection, before trying – usually successfully – to cheat them, reducing a meagre payment even further. Woman and girls are used as water carriers, they too inhale the poisonous dirt, the earth squelches, their health gradually deteriorates. To take their mind off things there is rap music, and even a newspaper, the ‘Daily Graphic’. And oddities, like a make-shift funeral parlour selling some expensive coffins that nobody on the site can afford to buy. A gay Jewish man from Zimbawe sells used water packets.

But there is a sense of pride among the detritus: a teenage boy declares “it’s rubbish for them, but we are the best re-cyclers”. But the common goal is to make it to France, or anywhere in Europe, “and be somebody”. Only few would admit that “this place eats up your life very fast”. Flies and filth are everywhere as the sulphur clouds hang heavy on the air. Cholera and malaria are the inevitable outcome.

Sodom makes for grim viewing but the directors avoid making this a depressing documentary, and some of the artfully framed scenes have a strange appeal, such as those when the men are burning down the metal pipes. The film plays out almost like a poem to industrial waste, dumped from all over the world. But the well-crafted images fit well with the narrative, and the sophisticated sound design conjures up the spirit of those who work in this Armageddon. There may not be much hope here; but you watch in stark  admiration, and a certain sense of shame that your next new gadget or smart phone will eventually end up polluted this dystopian hell hole and the people who spend their short lives dedicated to its daily grind. AS

WatchAUT | 13 -15 DECEMBER 2019 | Picturehouse Cinema W1       

Tlamess (2019) *** Best Director | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir: Ala Eddine Slim |Cast: Abdullah Miniawy, Souhir Ben Amara, Khaled Ben Aissa Tunisia/France |121′.

Tunisian director Ala Eddine Slim follows his striking cult debut The Last of Us with another visually alluring reverie that is rather too opaque for its own good. Verging on the biblical, it once again contemplates themes of isolation and our relationship with nature. The evocative storyline focuses on a loner caught up in the wanderlust of his desert surroundings in a atmospheric soundscape created by Oiseaux Tempete with mesmerising art direction from Malek Gnaoui and  imaginative camerawork by Amine Messadi.

S (Miniawy) is a lieutenant in the army. State terrorism is the order of the day and we witness a brutal suicide. After hearing about the death of his mother S is overcome by grief and absconds from his army service to go  home, becoming Tunisia’s most wanted man. S soon meets the newly pregnant F (Amara), a bored and unhappy housewife left alone in luxury surroundings while her rich husband gads off around the world. The relationship develops into something more, F enjoying the wilderness much more than her pampered home.

The pair communicate only with their eyes, these extreme close-ups inscribed with Arabic are an expression of intimacy, the motives being fear, desperation and a new found equilibrium on F’s part. The monolith in the forest is a nod to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket is also quoted in the military scenes. Slim uses extreme contrasts: light and dark, sound and silence, open spaces versus claustrophobia, tradition collides with modernity Many of the protagonists are mute, Slim drawing much from silent cinema, the characters whirl through time and space in this hostile terrain. Tlamess is a visual triumph, leaving the audience much room for interpretation.

Marrakech Film Festival 2019 | WINNER BEST DIRECTOR 

Luca Guadagnino | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

‘Do it or Die’ is Guadagnino’s motto. He never has a plan B. Even with some heavyweight hits behind him Guadagnino still feels he has a ‘bombastic gorilla’ approach to things rather than a calm confidence. 

Born in Palermo of an Algerian mother, Luca Guadagnino (1971*) spent his early life in Ethiopia where his first experience of the cinema was watching David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. He knew immediately that he wanted to be a film director, but had no formal idea of how this was going to happen. He approached cinema is a very haphazard way without any formal idea of what he wanted to see and had no academic reflection of cinema. A particular favourite was Nagisa Oshima’s Max Mon Amour (1986) but gradually by watching everything he could lay his hands on came a realisation of how he should approach his own career as a director. So cinema started as a way to understand himself and for many years he was still trying to find himself through film. As a director he is convinced that cinema is about form. And the form is the perspective of the filmmaker. Cinema is the act of the auteur; the person who brings their own version of the story to the film. So a boring storyline about a woman who works as a prostitute becomes a profound reflection of her way of being and her importance in the world. There is a massive difference between the story and the way you tell it.

The Protagonists (1999) was his first feature and he spent a great deal of time trying to meet and persuade the main character Tilda Swinton to be part of it all. It sees an Italian movie crew fetching up in London to make a documentary about a murder case that took place a few years before. Guadagnino expresses his profound feelings about Tilda: “You love Tilda because you can’t not love her when you meet her as a person. Her joy and her work as an artist is inspiring”. Derek Jarman’s Orlando (1992) was the film that first brought Tilda to his attention.

Derek Jarman would prove to be a strong influence in his early days as a director. He met Jarman in London and found in him a level of provocativeness and yet deep wells of humanity that really appealed to his idea of cinema at the time. Jarman’s way of putting material on the screen was as exciting and seductive as anything he’d seen in Hollywood at the time. He’d seen Tilda as a regular character in Jarman’s movies such as Caravaggio and so by the time he eventually met the actress he was already in love with the idea of casting her in his owns films. When Tilda arrived in Italy to present a series on underground filmmakers, Guadagnino had already developed a profound connection with her work as an actress. She was opposed to the mainstream cinema of the UK at that time, and it was all very polemic. Six months after the death of Jarman the two met and they are still working together to this day.

Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory saw the two working together again. Alberto Barbera supported this short documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 2002, but the film was slated by the critics, who walked out in flocks. Rather than being upset Guadagnino used this as a useful way to reflect back on his film and its possible flaws. And this experience would go on to serve as an antidote against an inflated ego.

Guadagnino returns regularly to making shorts and doesn’t want to be bound to a specific medium or feature length idea. If he has a creative impulse, then he puts it on film. In I Am Love (2009) his next significant feature, Tilda Swinton stars as Emma who has left her home in Russia to live with her husband, a powerful industrialist in Italy. She becomes the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled in this closeted environment and is suddenly drawn to Antonio, a talented chef who she meets through her son, with devastating consequences.

Music plays a crucial part in Guadagnino’s cinema. When he was filming Melissa P,  a drama exploring a young woman’s sexual awakening, he had the chance to work with the legendary producer Gareth Williams who introduced him to the American minimalist composer John Adams. Adams took his inspiration from Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann. Adams’ triumphant music went on to shape Melissa P. And in the same way, Adams’ symphonic music compliments the final cataclysmic scenes of I Am Love. In his latest film Suspiria (2018) music and dance also play a vital part. A darkness swirls at the centre of a world-renowned dance company and one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer played by Dakota Johnson.

In Call Me By Your Name (2017) Guadagnino works with James Ivory on a script which starts off by being faithful to Andre Aciman’s book, although then there are significant changes. He transposes the action to the seaside instead of the countryside, and sets the story in 1983 instead of 1987. But the narrative is extremely fateful and once again dance plays a part, in a much more subtle and metaphorical way. The so-called ‘forbidden’ dance at its core gives Elio (Armie Hammer) a chance to say what he needs to say to Oliver Timothee Chalamet). Something inevitable happens in their relationship, and this has to come out into the open. So actually the ‘dance’ round the statue becomes about revealing rather than hiding their personal story. And this is brought out into the open in their striking facial expressions and body language. Guadagnino has to see his actors actually on set before he decides how he shoots the scene. He wanted Timothee to be a sexually fluid young guy who is able to break away from being too academic. In other words, he didn’t want Freddy from Room with a View.  

Luca Guadagnino | Marrakech Film Festival 2019 

 

 

 

 

A Son (2019) ****

Dir: Mehdi Barsaoui | Cast: Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah, Youssef Khemiri, Noomen Hamda, Slah Msadda | Drama, 95′

Meriem and her husband Fares seem to have it all – a carefree lifestyle, supportive friends and most of all a lovely little boy, Aziz. Meriem has just been promoted in her managerial job for a Human Resources conglomerate. Life is sweet for this privileged couple. Until tragedy strikes during their drive back from a day out in the countryside. Shots are fired from nowhere and hit the family car, amid shouts of “Allah Akhbar”. Aziz is injured. A blinding rush to the nearest hospital sees the tone shift from upbeat breeziness to heart-pumping terror.

Mehdi Barsaoui’s tense and tightly scripted melodrama makes for a stunning debut feature and subverts our expectations. Films about terrorist attacks are usually set in non-Arab countries so this brave attempt to stage a terror attack in a  Muslim country show courage and a innovation on the part of this Tunisian director, and won him the Orizzonti award for best director at Venice 2019.

But what happens next is both shocking and bewildering. The trauma of Aziz fighting life is compounded by a startling revelation that sends the family into meltdown. Blood tests to work out which parent is most suited to give the child a transfusion reveal that Fares can’t possibly be Aziz’s biological father. Naturally this is devastating: Meriem is aware of her infidelity during a difficult time in their marriage but she had no idea Aziz was not her husband’s child and so she is forced to keep this dreadful fact to herself. This complicates the already fraught scenario as Islamic law forbids organ donations from outside the nuclear family. A long waiting list is their only option as the gruelling nightmare unfolds.

At this point a rather dubious character enters the fray. Mr. Choukri (Slah Msaddak) is the sort of man you wouldn’t trust to post a letter but he attempts to support Fares forcing him into an intractable dilemma and one that money will not necessarily solve. A excellent cast act out this remarkable debut but Bouajila is particularly strong as a successful man of integrity whose masculinity is challenged by a seemingly impossible set of circumstances. MT

Marrakech Film Festival 2019

 

Scattered Night (2019) **** Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir: Sol Kim and Jihyoung Lee | S. Korea dram 90′

Sol Kim and Jihyoung Lee’s first film captures the trauma of family break-up seen through the eyes of two small children in this austere cinema verite drama that gradually builds into a convincing conclusion.

Little Seung-ah Moon (Sumin) is at the centre of it all. Barely ten, she intuitively taps into the imploding relationship of her increasingly alienated parents, searching in vain for guidance, assurance or a hint of stability as she struggles to understand how her parents still care for each other but now want the family to live apart. The questions she asks are basic and natural, but she never gets a proper replay, let alone any love or attention – apart from the occasional platitude and a throwaway comment: “you’ll understand one day”.

Scattered Night is an intense experience, the camera never leaving the child’s face through its entire running time in a compelling natural performance for one so young and vulnerable as Seung-ah Moon. But the filmmakers are not interested in Sumin’s ordinary parents, who carry their own emotional baggage from the past, influenced by society’s expectations of them, fleshed out in a sequence where grandma comes to stay. The focus here is the Sumin (Moon Seung- a) and her brother Jinho (Choi Junwoo) who are barely coping with the emotional confusion of the separation. Using sustained takes and languid pacing the filmmakers carefully observe the children’s reactions to their parent’s non-committal body language, avoiding sentimentality or melodrama in crafting a subtle and resonant snapshot that shares its tragic story full of complexity, uncertainty and pain. MT

SCATTERED NIGHT | Marrakech Film Festival 2019 

 

Bertrand Tavernier Tribute | 1941-2021

In December 2019 Marrakech Film Festival paid tribute to the career of noted French film director, agent, critic and producer Bertrand Tavernier – who has died at 79 – with an expansive retrospective of his films in the presence of the director himself.

Ironically, Tavernier is perhaps best known for his 1980 feature Death Watch (La Mort en Direct), a drama set in the future, when death has become very rare. It tells the story of Katherine (Romy Schneider) who finds she has an incurable disease. NTV, a major television network headed by the unscrupulous Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton), orders cameraman Roddy (Harvey Keitel), a casual acquaintance of Katherine, to film her last days via an implanted camera/transmitter behind his eyes. When Roddy sees a live-show of Katherine on TV, he is so disgusted with himself he owns up to Katherine. But there’s a twist. The implants will lead to blindness if Roddy goes through long periods of darkness, so he can only sleep for a short bursts, and has to carry a flashlight all the time. Engulfed by his feelings for Katherine’s impending death, he suffers nervous a breakdown and loses his flashlight. When Katherine finds it, she shines it in his eyes, but he is already blind. The two visit Katherine’s estranged husband Gerald (a masterful Max von Sydow), who tells Katherine there has been a mistake and pleads with her to reconsider their relationship. But Katherine takes an overdose instead and dies, leaving Roddy and Gerald furious, wanting to kill Ferriman.

Tavernier started life as a film critic for both Cahiers du Cinema and Positif between 1961 and 1971, after having given up on his law studies in Lyon. In his documentary My Journey through French Cinema (2016) he talks about this time casting a rather uncomplimentary light on Cahiers’ writers turned filmmakers: “They were great self-promoters, because they had been journalists, and they convinced Americans they were left-wing, despite writing for right-wing publications. Godard was not a leftist, he was one of the worst contemporary tyrants”. To be fair, Tavernier also accused compatriot filmmaker Jacques Becker (Le Trou) of being a control freak “even telling the composer of the music, which notes to avoid”.

Many of Tavernier’s features are about loneliness. In his 1976 drama The Judge and The Assassin (1976), his regular collaborator Philippe Noiret is Judge Rousseau, who holds the fate of serial killer Bouvier (Michel Galabru) in his hands. Both men change during the process with Bouvier being able to talk about the process which made him kill children. Rousseau, who had a very clear view of guilt before, admits for the first time that his intransigence is part of his own isolation. The Judge and the Assassin has a lot in common with Tavernier’s debut The Clockmaker of Saint Paul (1974), based on a Simenon novel in which a grieving father tries to come to terms with alienating his son.

Political thriller Quai d’Orsay/The French Minister (2013) deals with the France and Germany resistance to the Iran War by the USA and UK government. Arthur Vlaminck (Raphael Personnaz) is a script-writer for the Foreign Minister Alexandre Taillard de Worms (Thierry Lhermite)  – based on the real life Dominic de Villipen. Arthur soon finds out the ministry is really run by Claude Maupass (Niels Arestrup), who seems phlegmatic, but is really in charge of affairs. Arthur, under fierce competition, finds a friend and ally in Maupass. The films ends with the speech by de Villipen before the UN, contradicting Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell before the Security Council. 

Later in his carer Tavernier chose to delve into costume dramas, Let Joy Reign Supreme (1975) was a prime example. In the early years 18th France, Philippe II of Orleans (Noiret) is the regent for young Louis XV. Philippe has no real power, and hopes to raise his country’s stakes with the help of the priest Guillaume Dubois (Jean Rochefort). There is a gruesome autopsy of a royal lady who lived a life of debauchery which included incest with her father. When a court conspiracy, lead by the Marquise of Pontcallec (Jean Pierre Marielle), looks like it might spark a revolution, Dubois, to the chagrin of Philippe, turns out to be an opportunist trying to elevate himself as an archbishop. For Philippe, the only hope is a proper revolution.

The Princess of Montpensier (2010) is a mixture of fiction and history, leading up to the Bartholomew Day massacre of 1572 when Catholics were slaughtered by Protestants. The religious battle between Catholics and Protestants led to infighting in the Royal family and the nobility in general. The fictional story is centred around the titular heroine (Melanie Thierry), who is married to the Prince of Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), but is still in love with with the Duke of Guise (Gaspare Ullieil), whom she knows since childhood. The fate of her marriage and love affair is closely linked to the religious turmoil, with the Princess being unable to convince anybody to keep the peace. AS

Marrakech Film Festival | TRIBUTE TO Bertrand Tavernier 

Cherry Lane (2019) **** Chat with Yonfan | Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir Yonfan | Cast: Voices by Sylvia Chang, Zhao Wei, Alex Lam, Yao Wei, Tian Zhuangzhuang | Hong Kong 125’

Cheeky and charming but very much intended for an adult audience – and particularly cat lovers – this intoxicating animated drama is an amusingly erotic romp through modern history, deliciously enveloped in an avant-garde love story. Set in Hong Kong of the 1960s, No. 7 Cherry Lane sees an English literature student caught in a love triangle with the woman he is tutoring and her 40 year old mother.

Celebrated filmmaker, photographer, art connoisseur, and collector Yonfan returns after a decade with this languorous debut animation that visits the cauldron of political turmoil and repressed desire that was the Hong Kong of his youth.

Based on three of the director’s own short stories, and divided into three enignatically titled chapters — Dream Charade, Play Shadow and Winter Cometh — the story unfolds within the confines of an upmarket residential block in 1967, when the streets of Hong Kong were fraught with leftist protests erupting in violence between anti-colonial demonstrators and police. Meanwhile Ziming (Alex Lam) is experiencing an eruption of a different kind, involving his own sexual awakening. As a student reading modern literature at the university, he takes on a part-time job teaching English to a family recently exiled from Taiwan. Meiling (Zhao Wei) is the daughter of Mrs. Yu (Sylvia Chang), a single mother and exporter of luxury goods to Taiwan, whose own youth has been fraught with revolutionary unrest but whose present is steeped in woozy nostalgia. Ziming’s arrival stimulates literary debate about Brontë, Proust and Cao Xueqin. They indulge in Simone Signoret matinees at a local picture palace. And while a beguiling Mrs. Robinson-like relationship smoulders in the background, the family’s collection of cats indulge in of all kinds of mischievous behaviour. Ziming is beguiled both by Meiling and Mrs. Yu, as he embarks on an education sentimental no university curriculum could possibly provide.

Blending art and history, politics and eroticism. Cherry Lane showcases a new animation process, turning original 3-D illustrations into 2-D images on rice paper. Yonfan has created a delicate aesthetic that feels modern yet steeped in tradition, offering a unique paean to Hong Kong’s past that is tongue in cheek, kitsch and gently erotic. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Noura’s Dream (2019) *** Marrakech Film Festival 2019

Dir/scr. Hinde Boujemaa | Cast: Hend Sabri, Lotfi Abdelli, Hakim Boumsaoudi, Imen Cherif, Saif Dhrif, Jamel Sassi Tunisia, Belgium, France, Qatar. |  92 mins.

Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was a time of change for the nation’s working class. Filmmaker Hinde Boujemaa eyed the era with caution in her 2012 documentary It Was Better Tomorrow.

In her richly textured drama debut, Boujemaa brings the epoch to life in a flawed but fascinating story set in the crumbling backstreets of Tunis and led by a towering performance from Tunisian actress Hend Sabri.

Obviously corruption reigns and petty criminals abound in this impoverishing milieu enchanted by its once glamorous colonial buildings and now fraught with world-weary resilience amongst ordinary people just trying to make their way in life.

Hospital laundry worker Noura (Sabri) is in love with Lassad (Boumsaoudi) and the two share amorous embraces and fond glances indicative of the secrecy of their romance as Noura is seeking a divorce from Jamel (Abdelli), her jailed husband. She is a mother to three children, and her female lawyer reminds her that adultery, in Tunisia, carries a five-year prison sentence. Women beware women.

Jamel is intellectually challenged, to say the least. And when he is suddenly released from prison he starts to threaten Noura again. But Lassad offers little in emotional support. Noura is caught between a rock and a hard place: but most women will be familiar with this territory.

Sabri is brilliant as the central character. Her careworn face is a testament to suffering, yet she carries on in desperation, hoping against hope that love will find a way. Her son is just another misogynist in the making and her daughter looks on almost contemptuously as she vows not to make the same mistakes. An affecting debut that says: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Mt

IN COMPETITION | Marrakech Film Festival 2019 

 

 

Marrakech International Film Festival 2019 | Tributes Australian Film

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is set to pay tribute to screen legend and Sundance pioneer Robert Redford in its 18th edition which also showcases an extensive retrospective of Australian Cinema. November 29th to December 7th 2019.

Marrakech Film Festival is one of the most glamorous events in the film festival circuit attracting professionals and film lovers from all over the World and honouring global film in all its forms. This year’s International Competition Jury is headed by Tilda Swinton, who has starred in over 70 feature films, most recently in The Personal History of David Copperfield, and Wes Anderson latest comedy drama The French Dispatch which will premiere early next year.

This year’s 18th edition taking place from November 29th until December 7th also plays host to an impressive tribute to Australian cinema, considered to be one of the oldest in the world. This year’s tribute is also the biggest get-together of Australian actors and directors ever to take place at a film festival. Australia has a tradition of a gutsy hard-nosed crime thrillers but also lyrical arthouse dramas and comedies that embody the infinite variety of the vast nation. From the hostile outback of Ayer’s Rock to the sophisticated urban centres Australia’s spectacular landscape provides a remarkable background for its visual arts. And although the average cinema-goer may only be able to remember Crocodile Dundee, the country has an impressive array of movies to draw on and one of the world’s most active film industries boasting memorable commercial and indie titles and directors as diverse as Baz Lurhmann, Gillian Armstong, Mel Gibson, Ivan Sen and film pioneer and screenwriter Lottie Lyell  (1890-1925) considered to be Australia’s first film star. During her short life she made an important contribution to the industry in the silent era with The Blue Mountains Mystery (1921) which she co-directed with Raymond Longford. Here is a selection of some outstanding Australian cult classics to put us in mind of what we might look forward during the Marrakech official selection in November 2019.

WALKABOUT (1971)

In Nicolas Roeg’s moving mystical coming of age drama an Aboriginal boy comes to the rescue to two teenagers abandoned by their father in the remote corner of the Outback. Walkabout is a bleak but beguiling feature that riffs on the theme of human kindness and cultural differences. Although Roeg and most of the cast are British, the film has been taken to Australias’s heart because it launched the remarkable career of Indigenous Australian actor David Gulpilil.

WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971)

Directed by Toronto born maverick Ted Kotcheff and also known as Outback, Wake in Fright kicked off the Australian New Wave and is now considered one of the most extraordinary Australian features ever made. Blending horror with an immersive character drama, it was ‘lost’ for many years, until veteran producer Anthony Buckley finally tracked it down in 20o4 in a Pittsburgh warehouse. Remastered and given a theatrical release and the Bluray treatment in 2014 (courtesy of Eureka) this is one film you simply must see with its standout performances from Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty and Sylvia Kay.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975)

A mesmerising and unsolved mystery about a group of school girls who disappear during a school picnic on Hanging Rock. Peter Weir’s haunting drama stays in the memory with its luminous cast and glowering background of Ayer’s Rock. Based on the novel by Joan Lindsey it was adapted for the big screen – and I mean big – by Cliff Green.

GALLIPOLI (1981)

Another haunting tragedy that tells a poignant tale of war and guarantees a tearful audience. Set in Australia just before the First World War, it follows a group of Western Australian soldiers who will eventually meet their fate during the Gallipoli campaign on Turkish soil. Mel Gibson leads a cast of men whose lost innocence and dedication to duty continue to resonate nearly forty years later.

DEAD CALM (1989) not showing

Where would Australian cinema be without British-born Sam Neill and his leading lady Nicole Kidman. Alone on a yacht off the Great Barrier Reef they face up to a psychotic monster Billy Zane in this tensely gripping thriller.

ROMPER STOMPER (1992) not showing

Russell Crowe embodies stomping but he is an actor who can also do subtlety and infinite gentleness. Here in Geoffrey Wright’s urban thriller he does the former with gusto. Set in a working class Melbourne suburb, Romper Stomper sees a motley crew of neo-Nazi skinheads rise up against their changing neighbourhood with devastating consequences.

LANTANA (2001)

Kerry Armstrong, Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush star in this taut and emotional thriller elegantly enveloped in a characterful study of human relationships in suburban Sydney. A dead body, a detective caught in flagrante, a psychiatrist whose own marriage is floundering: these are the elements that gentle stew for two engrossing hours in Ray Lawrence’s memorable mystery movie.

JAPANESE STORY (2003) not showing

In the Australian desert, a guide and a Japanese businessman who can’t stand each other are suddenly drawn together in an awkward situation that ends in tragedy. Toni Collette gives an outstanding performance as the guide in this memorable multi-award-winning psychological drama. Sue Brooks directs Alison Tilson’s brilliant script with aplomb.

THE PROPOSITION (2005) not showing

John Hillcoat directs a superb cast of Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce and Emily Watson in this bleak and feral outback Western scripted and scored by Nick Cave. What can go wrong? The answer is absolutely nothing. The Proposition won awards across the board for its thorny depiction of a criminal  family that sees an outlaw ordered to kill his older brother in order to save the life of his younger one.

ANIMAL KINGDOM (2010)

David Michod’s tense and brutal urban epic sees a mafia-style family locked in bitter conflict in 1980s Melbourne. Based on a real life Pettingill family it stars Oscar-nominated Jacki Weaver as a machiavellian matriarch playing each relative off against the other as she protects her 17 year old son (James Frecheville) without a shred of sentimentality.

SNOWTOWN (2011) not showing

With its unforgettable clanging score, Snowtown sent critics into a cold sweat. This Adelaide-based real crime thriller explores the descent into hell of a young man (Lucas Pittaway) at the hands of his charismatic mentor turned vicious serial killer, the infamous John Bunting – who went on to kill 11 people (chillingly played by Douglas Henshall). Snowtown was the feature debut of Justin Kurzel who  has gone on to deliver The Turning (2013), Macbeth (2015) and historical fact-based drama The True History of the Kelly Gang (2019).  

THE BABBADOOK (2014) not showing 

One of the best horror films in memory is Jennifer Kent’s truly terrifying and formally splendid psychological chiller. Melding a suspenseful narrative with finely crafted horror tropes, the film swept the board at the global film genre awards and is still popular with horror enthusiasts everywhere.

MAD MAX (1979)

Cinema goers didn’t know what had hit them when George Miller’s sadistic motor cycle thriller revved onto the big screen fuelled by murder and mayhem. It was a mesmerising experience and still is, with its odd combination of eccentric characters, stunning scenery and throat-grabbing barbarism that would spawn several sequels, but this was the weirdest yet.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975)

The 1970s was a standout decade for Australian film not least because of the Peter Weir’s languorous mystery drama suffused with an eerie delicacy and based on Joan Lindsay’s novel that sees a group of school girls go missing on Valentine’s Day 1900 in the sizzling heat of summer. Starring Rachel Roberts, Helen Morse and Jacki Weaver, the drama went on to win a BAFTA for cinematography.

MY BRILLIANT CAREER (1979)

Judy Davis won a BAFTA for her performance as a writer and contemporary female role model Sybylla Melvyn in this 19th century set debut feature for Gillian Armstrong. It garnered awards across the board but went home empty handed from Cannes in the year of release.

THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE (1987)

A young man (Noah Taylor) suffers teenage angst as his crush and best friend (Leone Carmen) falls in love with an older guy in John Duigan’s poignantly funny 1960s set coming of age drama. A budding Ben Mendelsohn triumphs as the thuggish rugby playing criminal whose violence sets off an irreversible chain of events.

A CRY IN THE DARK (1988)

Based on John Bryson’s novel Evil Angels, Meryl Streep inspires terrifying evil as she fights to prove her innocence in Fred Schepisi’s biopic drama about the woman whose child was supposedly killed by a dingo in the Australian Outback.

During this year’s festival a distinguished delegation of Australian actors and directors will make the trip to Marrakech to enjoy this exceptional tribute and take part in a range of stage appearances and lives events in the Moroccan capital and its lush locations.

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 29 NOVEMBER – 7 DECEMBER 2019

 

Mater | Mother (2019) *** Tallinn Black Nights Festival 2019

Dir.: Jure Pavlovic ; Cast: Daria Lorenci-Flatz, Neva Rosic; Croatia 2019, 96 min.

Best known for his TV work, Jure Pavlović’s marks his documentary feature debut with this convincing portrait of mother daughter discord mulling over the past both personal and national.

Middle-aged Jasna (Lorenci-Flatz) has arrived home from Germany to look after her dying mother Anka (Rosic) in a small-town Croatia. The opening panning shot sees her returning to the place she grew up. It’s an awkward rather maudlin home-coming fraught with mistrust on both sides, and the two women a while to get used to one another again in the dim and claustrophobic family home.

When does falling over, suddenly become “a fall”. The phrase is laced with dread, and usually doesn’t end well. And in Anka’s case it soon becomes clear she hasn’t got long to live and although she makes it home from hospital, she is now completely bedridden. Gradually things thaw slightly between the mother and daughter and they watch television together. It seems the line of least resistance, the holy cross placed judiciously over the screen. Jasna deals with all her mother’s paperwork and visits a lawyer in order to clear up some property issues. A cloud of deep resentment seems to hover over these meetings and Anca’s friends are always in the background, keeping an eye on her. There are hints of a troubled past, particularly when Jasna visits her father. gravestone. He died at the age forty in 1976. Jasna spends a lot of time skyping with her husband and two children in Germany, switching effortlessly to German when she talks to them. Keeping her own family affairs to herself and often hiding from her mother in the downstairs loo. Finally, on the eve before her family arrives to celebrate her own daughter’s birthday, the two women make peace, the party proceeds in stark contrast to everything which had gone on before.

Without going into finer detail, it’s safe to say that this mother daughter conflict hinges on repressed feelings of the past, but Pavlovic keeps his distance, leaving the ending open. Daria Lorenci-Flatz makes for a convincing fish out of water forced back to her hometown in this quietly intense slice of social realism that sees a loving woman daunted by the authority still radiating from her mother’s immobile body.

Jana Plecas’ camera echoes this detachment, observing the detail like a fly on-the-wall in this prison of souls. Overall, more clarity about the past would have made this chamberpiece a more satisfying watch. But family relationships are often far from satisfying. AS

SCREENING DURING TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL 2019

UK French Film Festival (2019)

The French Film Festival UK is the only festival dedicated to French and Francophone cinema, embracing French and Francophone cinema in all its diversity, featuring a bumper programme bursting with variety and vitality. The 27th edition runs from 1 November to 15 December 2019, showing over 50 films in 35 towns and cities across the UK. 

Nana | Nana (N/C 12A+)

Dir Jean Renoir | Scr Pierre Lestringuez | based on the Emile Zola novel | Music Baudime Jam | 1926 | France | 170 mins |

This special screening of Jean Renoir’s full-length silent film includes two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open-air ball – accompanied live by Prima Vista Quintet 

A Paris Education | Mes Provinciales (N/C 15+)

Dir Jean-Paul Civeyrac | 2018 | France | 136 mins |

Pure love of cinema inhabits every frame of Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s sensitive and sophisticated portrait of Etienne, a provincial boy who moves to Paris to attend film school. 

By the Grace of God | Grâce à Dieu (15)

Dir François Ozon | 2019 | 137 mins |

When Alexandre learns that the priest who assaulted him decades earlier at a scouts’ camp still works with young people, he tells his family what happened and seeks out other victims so that the Church will take action.

Happy Birthday | Fête de Famille (N/C 15+)

Dir Cédric Kahn | 2019 | France | 101 mins |

Family relations unravel to wonderfully excruciating comic and dramatic effect in this all-star ensemble piece from versatile French writer-director and here, co-star, Cédric Kahn. 

Oh les filles ! | Haut les filles (N/C 12A+)

Dir François Armanet | 2019 | France | 79 mins |

Telling the untold story of French female rock stars from sixties pop to today’s gender-indifferent anthems.

The Salamander | La Salamandre (N/C 18+)

Dir Alain Tanner | 1971 | Switzerland, France | 123 mins |

Two self-proclaimed writers attempt to retell how a young woman shot her uncle. 

Yves St Laurent: The Last Collections (N/C 15+)

Dir Olivier Meyrou | 2007 (release: 2018) | France | 73 mins |

Olivier Meyrou’s controversial yet exquisitely drawn portrait of France’s last great fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent, has finally seen the light of day.

For full listings: https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/

 

 

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (2019) PÖFF

Tallinn Black Nights runs from the 15 November until 1 December 2019 offering an extended celebration of international films. For the second year running the festival will also showcase the latest in Baltic cinema with a special sidebar dedicated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The idea is to offer industry professionals and film critics a wider experience and offer the festival audience a taste of local talent.

Tom Sullivan’s Arracht (Monster) is told in Gaelic and set in Ireland in 1845 where a small community fisherman is persuaded to offer board to a sinister stranger. Another world premiere is German filmmaker Hüseyin Tabak’s Hamburg set Gypsy Queen, Konstantin Lopushansky’s Through Black Glass and Narges Abyar’s When The Moon Was Full.

ESTONIA

After her success with Come Back Free, documentary filmmaker Ksenia Okhapkina won this year’s Grand Prix at Karlovy Vary with Immortal exploring a Russian social mechanism that feels a lot like the political systems of the last century.

Manfred Vainokivi presents his latest documentary biography In Bed With A Writer, a portrait of the controversial and newly divorced Estonian writer Peeter Sauter. We follow Sauter in Estonia’s art and underground scene as he shares his thoughts on women, sex and ageing.

In a small Estonian town largely inhabited by ethnic minorities, Vladimir Loginov’s second documentary Prazdnik explores the age old phenomenon of the beauty pageant and whether they still have a place in modern society.   .

Having travelled the globe with his debut In the Crosswind, Martti Helde returns with Scandinavian Silence, a thriller that makes use of an unusual narrative device: the tale of a man reunited with his sister having spent years in jail.

One of the biggest box office hits in the country’s history, Tanel Toom’s literary based feature debut Truth and Justice follows the decade-spanning feud of two neighbours during the second half of the 19th century. Toom previously won the Student Academy Award with his short film The Confession.

Hot from a successful run at the Estonian box office, the comedic depiction of the global and local startup culture, Chasing Unicorns, is start-up entrepreneur Rain Rannu’s sophomore feature.

LATVIA

A culmination of one artist’s creative journey that lasted 3,5 years, Away is a fantasy animation directed, animated and composed by Gints Zilbalodis.

Chronicling the tumultuous times in Post-Soviet Latvia, Jānis Ābele’s feature film Jelgava 94 shines a light on the period where teenagers were obsessed with heavy metal.

Juris Kursietis’ second feature Oleg premiered at Quinzaine des Realiseteurs during this year’s Cannes. It’s a gritty tale of Latvian migrant workers searching for a better life in Belgium, not always on the right side of the law.

The life cycle of the Spoon in the globalised economy is Laila Pakalnina’s documentary follow up to her award-winning drama Ausma (2015) that won Jury Prize Best Cinematographer for DoP Anrijs Krenbergs.

LITHUANIA

Taxidermy, deer-farming and museum curatorship are the focus of this fascinating documentary from Aistė Žegulytė. Animus Animalis, guides us around a bizarre world where reality and artificiality blur.

Meanwhile, Ignas Jonynas’ second film Invisible presents the story of a former dancer Jonas pretending to be blind to enter a TV dance competition, as an intimate and emotional relationship builds between him and his dancing partner. He soon reconnects with the past and a dark secret.

Tomas Vengris’ debut Motherland revisits the year 1992 in a Lithuania, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a single mother and her 12-year-old return to Lithuania, after a long stay in the US, to claim the property that was taken from the woman’s parents when they were sent to labour camps decades ago.

The late 1930s is the setting for Karolis Kaupinis’ historic drama Nova Lithuania where in 1938 the young Lithuanian state celebrated twenty years of independence. Meanwhile situation in Europe is becoming increasingly tense so geographer Feliksas Gruodis sets about raising finance for his novel solution to creating a “backup Lithuania” overseas, where the country’s inhabitants could move in case the whole scenario goes pear-shaped.

Legendary director Algimantas Puipa presents The Other Side of Silence, a tale inspired by the book Bumblebee Honey by Swedish writer Torgny Lindgren. It sees   two brothers living in the same village, on the same lake, by the same forest, but sharing a mutual hatred sparked by their love of the same woman.

The 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival runs from the 15th of November until the 1st of December.

 

Marrakech Film Festival 2019 | Competition and Special Screenings

British actress Tilda Swinton will preside over this year’s jury at Marrakech Film Festival. At the 18th Moroccan celebration she will be joined by French director Rebecca Zlotowski, British director Andrea Arnold, Franco-Italian actress Chiara Mastroianni and five male jurors: Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt, Afghan writer and director Atiq Rahimi, Australian director David Michôd, and Moroccan director Ali Essafi. 

Films in competition for the Étoile d’Or de Marrakech are as follows:

BABYTEETH / Australia | Shannon Murphy
Starring Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Emily Barclay, Eugene Gilfedder, Essie Davis, Ben Mendelsohn 

BOMBAY ROSE / India/Fr/Qatar | Gitanjali Rao
Starring Cyli Khare, Amit Deondi, Gargi Shitole, Makrand Deshpande 

THE FEVER | Brazil | Maya Da-Rin
Starring Regis Myrupu, Rosa Peixoto 

LAST VISIT  `| Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan(Akher Ziyara) /Saudi Arabia
 Starring Osama Alqess, Abdullah Alfahad, Fahad Alghariri, Mousaed Khaled, Ghazi Hamad 

LYNN + LUCY/UK | Fyzal Boulifa
Starring Roxanne Scrimshaw, Nichola Burley 

MAMONGA /Serbia | Stefan Malešević
Starring Marta Bjelica, Dražen Pavlović,  Nabi Tang, Vuk Janošević 

MICKEY AND THE BEAR /USA | Annabelle Attanasio
Starring Camila Morrone, James Badge Dale, Calvin Demba, Ben Rosenfield, Rebecca Henderson 

MOSAIC PORTRAIT | (Ma Sai Ke Shao Nu) / China
By Zhai Yixiang
Starring Wang Yanhui, Wang Chuanjun, Zhang Tongxi, Chen Di, Xie Lixun, Liu Yiying, Ke Limu 

NAFI’S FATHER (Baamum Nafi) / Senegal | Mamadou Dia
Starring Alassane Sy, Saïkou Lô, Aïcha Talla, Penda Sy, Mamadou Bayo Sarr, Alassane Ndoye 

SCATTERED NIGHT  | (Heut-eo-jin Bam) / South Korea
By Lee Jih-young, Kim Sol
Starring Moon Seun-ga, Choi Jun-woo, Kim Hye- young, Lim Ho 

SOLE / Italia, Poland | Carlo Sironi
Starring Sandra Drzymalska, Claudio Segaluscio, Bario, Barbara Ronchi, Bruno Buzzi 

TLAMESS / Tunisia, France | Ala Eddine Slim
Starring Abdullah Miniawy, Souhir Ben Amara, Khaled Ben Aïssa 

THE UNKNOWN SAINT (Sid El-Majhoul) / Morocco, France
By Alaa Eddine Aljem
Starring Younes Bouab, Salah Bensalah, Bouchaib Essamak, Mohamed Naimane, Anas El Baz, Hassan Ben Bdida, Abdelghani Kitab, Ahmed Yaab, Ahmed Yarziz 

VALLEY OF SOULS  | (Tantas Almas) / Colombia, Belgium, Brazil, France
By Nicolás Rincón Gille
Starring Arley de Jesús Carvallido Lobo  

ADAM / Morocco, France, Belgium | Maryam Touzani
Starring Lubna Azabal, Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda, Aziz Hattab, Hasna Tamtaoui 

THE IRISHMAN / USA | Martin Scorsese
Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin 

IT MUST BE HEAVEN / Elia Suleiman
Starring Elia Suleiman, Tarik Kopti, Kareem Ghneim, George Khleifi, Raiïa Haiïdar, Gael García Bernal 

KNIVES OUT / USA | Rian Johnson
Starring Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer 

MARRIAGE STORY / USA | Noah Baumbach
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Azhy Robertson 

RAS EL SANA / Egypt | By Sakr
Starring Eyad Nassar, Ahmed Malek, Sherine Reda, Engy El Mokaddem, Ali Kassem 

NOURA’S DREAM | (Noura Tahlam) / Tunisia, France |  Hinde Boujemaa
Starring Hend Sabri, Lotfi Abdelli, Hakim Boumsaoudi, Imen Cherif, Saif Dhrif, Jamel Sassi 

There will also be a special selection of GALA Screenings 

ALL THIS VICTORY | Ahmad Ghossein – This Lebanese war drama won the Audience Award at this year’s Venice Critics’ Week

A SON | (Bik N’Ish) / Tunisia, France, Lebanon, Qatar | Mehdi M. Barsaoui
Starring Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah, Youssef Khemiri, Noomen Hamda, Qasim Rawane, Slah Msaddak, Mohamed Ali Ben Jemaa 

SOUTH TERMINAL  | (Terminal Sud) / France | Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche
Starring Ramzy Bedia, Amel Brahim-Djelloul, Slimane Dazi, Salim Ameur-Zaïmeche, Nabil Djedouani 

STATE FUNERAL  | (Gosurdarstvennye Pohony) /  Ned/Lith  | Sergei Loznitsa | Doc

TALKING ABOUT TREES  | (Al-Hadith ’An Al-Ashjar) / France, Sudan, Germany, Chad, Qatar | Suhaib Gasmelbari | Doc 

WORKFORCE  | (Mano De Obra) / Mexico
By David Zonana
Starring Luis Alberti, Hugo Mendoza, Jonathan Sanchez, Horacio Celestino, Francisco Díaz 

(Jidar Al-Sawt) /LEBANON | By Ahmad Ghossein
Starring Karam Ghossein, Adel Chahine, Boutros Rouhana, Issam Bou, Khaled, Sahar Minkara, Flavia Juska Bechara 

IF ONLY  | (Magari) / Italy, France
By Ginevra Elkann
Starring Riccardo Scamarcio, Alba Rohrwacher, Ettore Giustiniani, Oro de Commarque, Millo Roussel, Celine Sallette, Brett Gelman 

MOFFIE / South Africa | Oliver Hermanus
Starring Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers, Matthew Vey, Stefan Vermaak, Hilton Pelser 

NO. 7 CHERRY LANE | (Ji Yuan Tai Qi Hao) / Hong Kong, China | Yonfan
Starring Sylvia Chang, Zhao Wei, Alex Lam, Kelly Yao, Teresa Chung, Jiang Wen-li, Nathalie Duplessis 

OUR LADY OF THE NILE  | (Notre-Dame du Nil) / France, Belgium, Rwanda | Atiq Rahimi
Starring Santa Amanda Mugabekazi, Albina Sydney Kirenga, Angel Uwamahoro, Clariella Bizimana, Belinda Rubango Simbi, Pascal Greggory 

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 

The Irishman (2019) *****

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Wri: Steven Zaillian | Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Bobby Cannavale, Jesse Plemons | US Crime Drama, 2019, 208mins

Much of the hype surrounding The Irishman has focused on the fact that it reunites Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for the first time since 1995’s Casino. It also throws Al Pacino into the mix, and marks a return to the mob-infused crime dramas with which Scorsese made his name. The excitement is understandable – Scorsese made a string of iconic hits while working with De Niro, and it was through these that he established himself as one of the great American filmmakers. 

And yet… Scorsese’s body of work has a depth and breadth to it which is often obscured by a focus on certain titles (notably GoodFellas, 1990), and there was, perhaps, a fear that Scorsese’s return to this world might present if not a step backwards, at least a retread of ground already covered. 

Fortunately, such worries prove to be unfounded: the world of The Irishman may be familiar – it even touches on the mob’s involvement in Las Vegas, which formed the backbone of Casino – but the tone is something new: though not without Scorsese’s trademark humour, the film trades the baroque exuberance of his earlier work for a more reflective pace, closer to the ruminations of Silence (2016) than the crashing excess of Casino. 

Spanning multiple timelines set over several decades, The Irishman spends as much time examining the wiles of old age as the wilds of youth. In parts, the film almost plays like a eulogy: throughout, Scorsese uses titles to tell us how characters will die, and the film’s focus on death and aging seems like a lament for the end of an era – of a certain type of lifestyle, and a certain type of cinema. In the past, Scorsese has faced accusations that he glamorises mobsters, but here everyone seems to end up worn out, tired or dead, as if those are the only possible outcomes. The religious angst which has fuelled Scorsese’s work since Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) has here transmuted into a nihilistic acceptance of life as it is.

The story itself is drawn from the nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses, by former investigator Charles Brandt, and follows Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran’s career as a hitman for the mob, painting houses with other people’s blood. After being introduced by head mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci), Sheeran becomes right-hand man to Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a loan-shark to the mob, supplying them with funds from the Union’s pension fund. As the decades pass, the mob’s machinations extend from the union to the White House, installing and removing presidents to suit their needs – an offhand remark about one of the Teamsters’ love of golf makes for some interesting contemporary commentary. 

Throughout the years, Sheeran’s conscience is troubled by disapproving glances from his daughter (for Sheeran has a personal family as well as his mobster family), but it is Sheeran’s friendships with Bufalino and Hoffa that really form the heart of the epic narrative, and which drive it towards its tragically moving conclusion. Given that the film serves, in so many ways, as a family reunion, it’s a fitting thematic thread and one which, thankfully, weaves a powerful tribute to the legacy of what’s come before it. Alex Barrett

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

The Forum (2019) *** DOK Leipzig 2019

Dir.: Marcus Vetter; Documentary; Germany/Switzerland 2019, 116 min.

DOK Leipzig opens with this fly on the wall look at the the World Economic Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that takes place in Davos aiming to improve the state of the world through dialogue between leaders across all areas of society. The film centres on Klaus Schwab, the 81-year-old founder of this get together. 

German filmmaker Marcus Vetter follows Schwab annual world get together is dealing with burning issues such as climate change, Brexit, the  ‘gilets jaunes’ protests in Paris, and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest among others. Trying to get inside so-called clandestine meetings, And while we learn a great deal, Schwab actually seems ambivalent about the merits of these secret get-togethers of the world’s elite – and for good reason. 

The Forum is intended to redress the imbalance between rich and poor, but history tells us that during the 50 years of the WEF’s existence, the gap between the haves and have-nots has grown exponentially – the middle classes, once the heartbeat of any society, are being slowly eroded.

Vetter sees the annual Davos meetings in a critical light, although Schwab claims he has always invited candidates seeking to question the way things are run by politicians and business leaders. There have been cancellations in the past by the self-acclaimed elite: a case in point was when Schwab invited a Brazilian Catholic leader, whose opinion were very left-wing. And while we watch Donald Trump being fawned over at the 2018 meeting, Greta Thurnberg and Jennifer Morgan of Greenpeace have much to say. The rainforest discussion between the Al Gore and the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must also have been worthwhile.

Vetter obviously likes Schwab but he maintains his detached approach: “I believe he has achieved a lot, but that does not mean the meetings are not questionable affairs”. What is most interesting is the role of the invited CEOs. Discussed issues involving imported cotton, they dictate the terms and the many head of states concur. It is clear who is in charge and who is simply the executor of big business. The protests against climate change, Brexit and the rise of populists all over the world are directed against the current head of states, but it would be much more honest and efficient to discuss these burning issues with the CEO instead of the politicians. They can hardly be more intransigent than Donald Trump.

DoP Georg Zengerling’s images of Davos feel like a parody; the head of states arriving in their helicopters; the security details – like something out of a James Bond movie. And the small talk of the self-styled elite is no more lofty than that of a group of provincial business men. Clearly, this is not the tenor of a debate Schwab might have had in mind fifty years ago when he dreamt about how to discuss future problems and reflect; it is just an opportunity for big business, to cultivate new contacts and deals, whilst the politicians look on, waiting to be replaced without any one noticing. AS

DOK LEIPZIG DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 2019

After the Wedding (2019) ****

Dir: Bart Freundlich | Wir: Susanne Bier/Anders Thomas Jensen | Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup, Abby Quinn | US Drama 110′

One of two films out this season starring Julianne Moore. Both are remakes, but this orphanage-themed story is the one to go for.

Danish director Susanne Bier made the original ‘dogma styled’ version and was nominated for an Oscar back in 2006. The US version has two powerful female leads, and Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams make for a terrific duo as a successful business woman and a free-thinking philanthropist, respectively.

Earth mother Isobel (Williams) runs an orphanage in Kolkata, but the magnificent opening sequence has the drones sweeping in over the exotic landscape quickly establishing this as a glossy drama all about fraught relationships, love, and forgiveness rather than a grim slice of social realism. True there are some cheesy elements at the start of the film: we don’t particularly warm to Moore at first, as she sashays round her ample New York residence, nodding to domestic staff while she talks on her ‘phone. But her character soon proves to have a hidden agenda behind its rather glacial facade. She’s a wife, a mother of three and an accomplished entrepreneur married to Billy Crudup’s rather puppyish sculptor, Oscar.

Freundlich has clearly crafted Theresa with Moore in mind. She is businesslike, a loving mother to her kids and affectionate with her husband – a woman who seems to have it all – but we will later discover that she doesn’t. Her daughter (Abby Quinn) is about to get married, but she seems rather unsure of intended. But Theresa gives her plenty of cheesy assurances and she is busy organising her ridiculously lavish wedding and shooting orders at everyone in sight. At first we dislike this rather glib family.

And Isobel (Williams) isn’t much better. Although she clearly loves the beautifully polite kids in her orphanage, and particularly eight-year-old Jai (Vir Pachisia), there’s a steely dissatisfaction behind her doting gestures. And we soon discover why when she turns up in New York to take delivery of the “suitcase full of money” offered to her orphanage by a benefactor who demands a face to face meeting.

This donor turns out to be none other that Theresa. There’s a motif running through the drama that points to her sympathy for felled trees and wounded birds. But she’s also a draconian boss, and there’s a wonderful kick-ass scene involving her assistant, that you’d never get away with in Britain.

The New York scenes are typically over the top with lavish hotel suites, brands everywhere and riches beyond the dreams of avarice in Theresa’s waterfront estate. The first reveal in this strangely absorbing drama occurs when Oscar clocks Isobel at the wedding (she’s been press-ganged into attending by Theresa).

Bizarre the next reveal may be, but it certainly packs a punch. And the characters are sent reeling in disbelief and horror. At this point, Theresa decides to widen the remit of her donation, naturally with poisoned chalice conditions. Isabel may practice yoga and have a habit of kicking her shoes off without a by your leave, but she’s certainly no fool and remains skeptical of her Theresa’s motives. And with good reason. Another dramatic twist leads to the rationale behind Theresa’s erratic behaviour.

These two woman are tough as nails behind their faux sympathy. They display the spiky machiavellian capabilities of the deadlier sex. And it’s a joy to watch them in full flow in this engrossing melodrama that almost puts the BBC’s Dr Foster in the shade. Bier’s original had two male protagonists but these women are much more convincing and never fail to surprise us with their sneakiness. Although a beginner, Quinn is the only one who really displays  heartfelt feelings, but the other characters offer plenty to chew on in this meaty melodrama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2019

Cold Case Hammerskjold (2019) **** LFF 2019

Dir.: Mads Brügger, Documentary; Denmark/Norway/Sweden/Belgium 2019, 128 min.

Director/writer Mads Brügger (The Red Chapel) took six years to research the events leading up to the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld on 18th of September 1961, near Zambia’s Ndala airport, hen part of Rhodesia. Brügger and his co-researcher Göran Björndahl literally dug into the cover-up, because even at the time of the ‘accident’ many voices, who talked about ‘murder’ not ‘accident’, were repressed. They claimed that Hammarskjöld’s aircraft was shot down by a fighter jet.

The Secretary General was on his way to a meeting with Moïse Tshombe, the rebel leader of the Katanga province, which had split from the newly formed Republic of Congo. Hammarskjöld wanted to broker a peace deal in the civil war, but Tshombe was just a puppet in the hands of the Belgium Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which was unwilling to give up the profits from the gold, diamond and uranium-rich country they had ruled for many decades. The Secretary General of the UN had made many enemies, not only in Belgium, but also in the UK and the USA, claiming “that Africa was a happy hunting ground for national interests”. During the research, the director came across the name of Jan van Risseghem, a Belgium mercenary who led the assassination mission code named “Celeste”. He planned to put a bomb in the plane, but when the explosion failed to materialised, a fighter jet shot Hammarskjöld’s plane down. A few survivors who witnessed the crash, all agree about the existence of a second plane.

Most of the material unearthed was connected with the South African spy agency South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), led by the white supremacist Keith Maxwell, who always dressed in white, with a tricorne hat and sword. SAIMR had up to 5000 employees, and was connected to the CIA, which explains the Ace of Spades playing card found on the body of Secretary General (the calling card of the CIA, but also a well known sign of danger). Maxwell was also responsible for “research” into Aids, his black victims injected with a serum intended to cure Aids. The details of the 1990 murder of Dagmar Feil, a marine biologist who worked for SAIMIR, but wanted to go public, is also part of the ‘confession’ of former SAIMR agent Alexander Jones, who seemed happy to go into details. “People are greedy. They want what other’s have. But they don’t want to pay for it”. His testimony also gives credence to the “second plane” theory, since he knew all the conspirators. Since his interview with Brügger, Jones is living at an undisclosed address.

The filmmaker has employed two black, female secretaries, Clarinah Mfengo and Saphir Wenzi Mabanza, who not only type furiously, but give Brügger ideas how to progress, and voice the interest of black people in this plot, where white men were victim and perpetrators.

The crashed airplane is still buried some four meters underground, and Brügger and his team had to stop digging it out after a few day’s work, the absolute proof of the assassination is still to be discovered, but few of those who have seen this documentary will question the theory. And even long after Tshombe’s removal, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other states of the region still suffer today, having endured civil wars for decades. AS

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL |2019

 

 

Venice Film Festival 2019 | Round-up

Celebrating its 76th Anniversary VENICE FILM FESTIVAL was another exciting occasion with the competition line-up featuring the latest from established directors with newcomers also presenting their work.

One of the standouts of this year’s mostra was a pre-festival showing of Gustav Machaty’s 1933 masterpiece ECSTASY which won him Best Director in the year following production,

The fun got going with The Truth by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Then amongst the Golden Lion hopefuls was maverick Roman Polanski who finally brings his biopic about another controversial figure Louis Dreyfus to the competition which ran from 28 August until 7 September on the Lido.

Adapted from Robert Harris novel J’Acuse stars Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner (aka Mme Polanski). Other high profile features were Todd Phillips’ The Joker – which won the Golden Lion and starsJoaquin Phoenix. And once again the lack of women directors in competition was flagged up, although there were plenty of female stars to be seen in the elegant hotspot on the Venetian coast. 

In the 21-strong competition line-up there was one trail-blazing female director in the shape of Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda) who attended to present her fourth feature The Perfect Candidate. Set in Riyadh it tells the story of a woman doctor who navigates her way through the male-dominated scenery to run for the council elections. 

Other auteurs include Czech Vaclav Marhoul with a wartime drama three hours long and ten years in the making: The Painted Bird (CZE/UKR/SLO) follows the plight of a Jewish boy on the run through Nazi Germany. The film stars Stellan Skarsgard. Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain was last in Venice with The Club, his latest sees a couple dealing with the aftermath of adoption, and Mexico stars Gael Garcia Bernal heads the cast. From Colombia Embrace of the Serpent director Ciro Guerra ups his game considerably with a starry cast of Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson and Greta Scacchi in a period drama dealing with themes of loyalty and trust in a distant outpost of the Spanish Empire. Waiting for the Barbarians is based on a novel by South African writer J M Coetzee.

In the Italian corner, there is more about the Mafia from Sicilian director Franco Moresco, who won the Orizzonti Jury prize at Venice with Belluscone. Una Storia Siciliana back in 2014. La mafia non e piu quella di una Volta is a documentary exploring the history and origins of the organisation. From China comes Ye Lou’s historical drama Saturday Fiction and Hong Kong based director Yonfan breaks his 6 year silence with No. 7 Cherry Lane that centres on a English literature tutor caught up in a love triangle with a woman pupil and her mother. And Sweden’s Roy Andersson was in attendance with About Endlessness.

Steven Soderbergh also featured in competition with Panama papers themed The Laundromat that stars Meryl Streep and David Schwimmer as journalists uncovering political tax avoidance sculduggery in the US. Noah Baumbach makes his first appearance at Venice with another domestic satire, this timed entitled Marriage Story: an insightful drama tempered with his usual brand of dark humour and a impressive cast of Laura Dern, Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Ray Liotta. Both these US outings are now on Netflix.

Veteran French filmmaker Robert Guedeguian presents a Marseilles-set family drama, and Olivier Assayas continues to surprises us with his versatility, this time with Wasp Network a story of intrigue involving Cuban political prisoners. Canadian director Atom Egoyan has selected an interested cast of David Thewlis, Luke Wilson and Rossif Sutherland (son of Donald) to flesh out a morally thorny story surrounding pupils in a high school. A slightly underwhelming feature that divided the critics.

Venice 76 ‘out of competition’ selection included documentaries and features –  from Alex Gibney, Costa Gavras, who tackles the Greek financial crisis in Adults in the Room; and Andrea Segre with ecological documentary Il Pianeta in Mare. Pink Floyd’s Roger Walters directs and appeared in a concert film going back over the last few years of his musical career. There was also a chance to see some remastered classics in the shape of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut; screened alongside a new doc about one of the greatest directors of all time Never Just a Dream: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut by Matt Wells. Gaspar Noé  Paolo Sorrentino and Sergei Loznitsa also featured in the out of competition competition section.

Meanwhile in the Horizons sidebar, German filmmaker Katrin Gebbe makes her feature debut with Pelican Blood starring Nina Hoss. And Alfredo Castro (from Golden Lion winner 2015 From Afar) is back to star in a psychological drama White on White from Chilean director Theo Court. MT

MAIN COMPETITION

No. 7 Cherry Lane (HONG KONG) – Dir. Yonfan

The Laundromat (USA) – Dir. Steven Soderbergh

J’Accuse (FRA/ITA) – Dir. Roman Polanski

Joker (USA) – Dir. Todd Phillips

Babyteeth (AUS) – Dir. Shannon Murphy

Marriage Story (USA) – Dir. Noah Baumbach

Il Sindaco Del Rione Sanità (ITA) – Dir. Mario Martone

The Painted Bird (CZE/UKR/SLO) – Dir. Václav Marhoul

La Mafia Non È Più Quella Di Una Volta (ITA) – Dir. Franco Maresco

Martin Eden (ITA/FRA) – Dir. Pietro Marcello

Saturday Fiction (CHI) – Dir. Lou Ye

Ema (CHILE) – Dir. Pablo Larraín

Waiting For The Barbarians (ITA) – Dir. Ciro Guerra

Gloria Mundi (FRA/ITA) – Dir. Robert Guéndiguian

Ad Astra (USA) – Dir. James Gray

Guest Of Honour (CAN) – Dir. Atom Egoyan

Wasp Network (FRA/BEL) – Dir. Olivier Assayas

About Endlessness (SWE/GER/NOR) – Dir. Roy Andersson

The Perfect Candidate (SAU/GER) – Dir. Haifaa Al-Mansour

A Herdade (POR/FRA) – Dir. Tiago Guedes

The Truth (JAP/FRA) – OPENING FILM – Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Out Of Competition (fiction)

The King (UK/HUN) – Dir. David Michod

Seberg (USA) – Dir. Benedict Andrews

Vivere (ITA) – Dir. Francesca Archibugi

The Burnt Orange Heresy (USA/ITA) – CLOSING FILM – Dir. Giuseppe Capotondi

Mosul (USA) – Dir. Matthew Michael Carnahan

Adults In The Room (FRA/GRE) – Dir. Costa-Gavras

Tutto Il Mio Folle Amore (ITA) – Dir. Gabriele Salvatores

Out of Competition (non-fiction)

Il Pianeta In Mare (ITA) – Dir. Andrea Segre

Citizen K (UK/USA) – Dir. Alex Gibney

Woman (FRA) – Dir. Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Anastasia Mikova

Roger Waters Us + Them (UK) – Dir. Sean Evans, Roger Waters

I Diari Di Angela – Noi Due Cineasti. Secondo Capitolo. (ITA) – Dir. Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi

Citizen Rosi (ITA) – Dir. Didi Gnocchi, Carolina Rosi

The Kingmaker (USA) – Dir. Lauren Greenfield

State Funeral (NET/LIT) – Dir. Sergei Loznitsa

Collective (ROM/LUX) – Dir. Alexander Nanau

45 Seconds Of Laughter (USA) – Dir. Tim Robbins

Out of competition (special screenings)

No-One Left Behind (MEX) – Dir. Guillermo Arriaga

Zerozerozero – Episodes 1 & 2 (ITA) – Dir. Stefano Sollima

Electric Swan (FRA/GRE/ARG) – Dir. Konstantina Kotzamani

Irréversible – Inversion Intégrale (FRA) – Dir. Gaspar Noé

The New Pope – Episodes 2 & 7 (ITA/FRA/SPA) – Dir. Paolo Sorrentino

Never Just A Dream: Stanley Kubrick And Eyes Wide Shut (UK) – Dir. Matt Wells

Eyes Wide Shut (USA/UK) – Dir. Stanley Kubrick

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 28 AUGUST – 7 SEPTEMBER 2019

Nobadi (2019) *** Toronto Film Festival 2019

Dir: Kark Markovics | Drama, Austria 83’

This darkly amusing social satire premiering at this year’s TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL is the third outing for actor turned director Karl Markovics who is also turning out to quite a talent behind the camera winning awards at Cannes, Sarajevo and Zurich for his features Breathing (2011) and Superwelt (2015).

Stunningly captured on the wide screen and in crisply shot close-up his latest NOBADI has quite a few surprises up its sleeve in a story that seems at first like a less ambitious version of The Interpreter – two characters come up against each other from across the divide – but this moral fable soon takes a much darker direction plumbing the depths of the immigrant crisis for one young man from Afghanistan.

A pithy and sardonic script and a steely central performance from veteran Austrian actor Heinz Trixner make this a winner. He plays a curmudgeonly old buffer Robert Senft who grudgingly employs a desperate manual labourer down on his luck to help him dig a hole in his back yard to bury his dead dog. After beating him down on his hourly rate, he agrees to pay a measley three euros to the well-mannered Adib (gamely played by newcomer Borhanulddin Hassan Zadeh). But as works starts the old man’s character is revealed in all its complexity. Meanwhile Adib comes across as decent and biddable. But what happens next is both unexpected and tragic allowing Markovics to make some subtle but light-hearted digs at the sad state of affairs in his native Austria. MT

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 5-15 September 2019 WORLD PREMIERING ON SEPTEMBER 8th

 

 

Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy (2018) ***

Dir/Wri: Justin Kelly | Cast: Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Diane Kruger, Jim Sturgess | US Biopic Dram | 108′

The story behind the literary persona JT LeRoy, created by American author Laura Albert, has certainly had some cinematic mileage. Albert took part in the documentary Author: The JT Leroy Story (2016) that screened a few years ago at the BFI Flare’s Film Festival, Here she is played by Laura Dern in Justin Kelly’s slick and lively re-imagining of one of the most brazen literary hoaxes known to mankind. Albert published three books in the early years of the 21st century, under her nom de plume JT LeRoy. They explored the life of a sexually confused teenage boy, abused in childhood. A gamine Kristen Stewart plays her sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop, who comes to stay and ends up being persuaded by Albert to pose as JT for a promotional photo session. And it doesn’t end there. Dern and Stewart give luminous performances in this seamlessly pleasurable and darkly amusing drama that explores themes of gender fluidity, moral ambiguity and fraud. MT
NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | premiered at BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | 21 -31 MARCH 2019

Oroslan (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Matjaz Ivanisin; Cast: Bela Ropoa, Margit Gyecsek, Erzebet Ropos, Micka Ropos, Ferenc Rogan, Ilonka Braunstein; Slovenia/Czech Republic 2019, 72 min.

Writer/director Matjaz Ivanisin follows his critically acclaimed documentary Playing Men with a haunting portrait of loss in a small town Slovenia. Adapted from Zdravko Dusa’s short story ‘And That is Exactly How it Was’ Ivanism slowly pieces together the events leading up to the recent demise of a villager in a mystery that plays out like game of Poker, his life story seeping out despite the blank faces and evasiveness of his fellow townsmen.  

Ivanisin sets the scene in the slow-burning opening sequences gradually building up a picture of this tight-lipped community: in a community kitchen, meals are prepared in huge thermos flasks which are carefully put into a delivery van. A driver then drops these off at the various different houses. And slowly they are taken in – all apart from one household. Not long after a local woman knocks at the door of the house in question and her suspicions are aroused when she gets no answer. Dropping round at the pub to see what gives, she raised the alarm and several men trudge round to the house to make further enquiries.

This is a remote and close-knit village where news travels fast, and soon we see a body being removed from the house. It later emerges that Oroslan had a son and he starts to share his grief with the others revealing more information about his father’s private life with a woman called Irwanka, who could have become his stepmother. “But I made sure that they could not marry, and my father never forgave me”. More and more seeps out: his father’s alcoholism and epileptic fits.  A neighbouring woman tells the story about Oroslan passing out one day after a fit, and waking up to imagine himself in Heaven, because the woman was wearing white. Anecdotes and more snippets of information gradually seep out about his work and love life. Poignantly, an Alsatian waits outside the old man’s house waiting ruefully for his return.

Oroslan is brief but affecting despite its compact running time, certainly living up to the title of the short story: in just seventy-two minutes, a whole life is captured. Gregor Bozic’s grainy 16mm camera sketches out the intimate character of the narrative. Bold and sensitive, this is a little gem. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Technoboss (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir: Joao Nicolau | Miguel Lobo Antunes | Portugal/France | Drama 112mins

Joao Nicolau’s musical bittersweet tragedy could be described as the sentimental swan song of a technophobe – quite literally. It witnesses the slow death of a salesman, but this Willy Loman is defiantly not going to give up without a struggle. Luis Rovisco (Lobo Antunes) is an endearing old buffer who is nearing retirement after dedicating his life to one company. His marriage is over so a paperback book keeps him company on lonely nights on the road, when he’s not bursting into impromptu bouts of song at every opportunity.

Naturally, he suffers the usual aches and pains of late middle age. And rather like Victor Meldrew he finds technology challenging to say the least: bank codes and car-parking barriers often get the better of him. But he’s no fool when it comes to dealing with old-fashioned paperwork and his verbal dexterity and negotiating skills serve him well and could run rings around many a digital native when it comes to servicing his clients.

Newcomer Miguel Lobo Antunes throws himself into the role with gusto and is totally unselfconscious in this inventive musical hybrid – which takes a bit of getting used to, and may not appeal to everyone with its slightly 1970s look. Although the film is overlong, Nicolau’s characterisation keeps us engaged because Luis feels like a real person – he may even be someone you know. His natural joie de vivre and charisma is infectious as the story wears on, Luis embodying the ideal salesman with his positive manner. And when he meets up again with a previous flame in the shape of a rather reluctant Lucinda (Luisa Cruz), who works in one of his regular haunts romance may even be on the cards again: If he can close any sale, let’s hope it’s this one. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION | 7 -17 AUGUST 2019

 

The Apprentice | l’Apprendistato (2019) Locarno Film Festival

Dir: Davide Maldi | Doc Italy 84’

At dusk, fourteen-year-old Luca carries food into his family’s cowshed for the last time. His life in the mountains is about to come to an end: he is enrolling in catering school to learn the trade as quickly as possible.

Doing things properly will never go out of fashion, and this is particularly true when it comes to the art of serving in hotels and eating establishments. But is this kind of work still feasible in the 21st century where machines are gradually taking over. As a “a democratic republic founded on work”. Italy has always prided itself on a reputation for stratospheric standards of service. \working in the hospitality industry is a highly respectable career and serving is an art to be proud of. Hotel School has always been one of the popular options after schooldays are over.

Davide Maldi’s third feature, a docu-drama, follows a group of young apprentices at hotel school and Luca Tufano  is one of them. The young men – there are only two girls on the course – learn basic skills such as how to serve and prepare food at the table, to balance a tray, and take an order/booking over the telephone, but there is much more to learn apart from these obvious ones. The school is renowned for its strict teaching methods: students learn that the customer is king and the source of their income. The lessons on cooking, dining room etiquette, law and religion, repeated day after day, make them endlessly confront their weaknesses, insecurities and abilities. At the end of the year Luca, immaculate in his black uniform with shiny shoes, will walk into the great hall and face the first test of his new career as a waiter and future maître d’hôtel – even though his lack of people skills makes him a non-starter for this type of career. Maldi shows Maldi’s handles his subject matter with mastery and breathing dark humour into this absorbing story of the making of servants and masters. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Prazer, Camarades!| A Pleasure Comrades! (2019) Locarno Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Jose Filipe Costa; Cast: Cecilia Rodrigues, Eduarda Rosa, Joao Azevedo, Jose Avelino, Amanda Booth; Portugal 2019, 104 min.

Director Jose Filipe Costa (Red Line) adapts Antonio Rodriguez’ play entitled ’25th April in a rural Village’ and transforms into a provocative feature, exploring how the rural population reacted to the Portuguese revolution of 1974. Often funny, but very much in a Brechtian mood, it confronts the real world with the wishful perspective of revolutionaries from home and abroad. Once again, town and country collide, as we’ve experienced in Brexit.

The protagonists from 1975 have aged considerably: we meet them travelling in a camper van (which breaks down) and by train. Mick, who came from London when he was eighteen, was one the many foreigners entering the country to live a proper revolutionary life: “I did’nt think revolution was possible in Europe, I thought, it could happen only in South America”. Others come from Berlin and France, they all are meeting in Cova da Piedale, where their Luar Cell are building a hospital for gynaecology and paediatric services.

As the outsiders gain a grasp of Portuguese, it soon becomes clear that the village males have no intention of doing any housework.  The women, who also have to milk the lambs, work in the fields and look after the children. A meeting of the group is called, where the men will have to defend their laziness. Instead they spend their time in ‘creative pursuits’, writing pornographic poems – and teasing their wives about them lacking a sense of humour. The foreign women quote Reich, the inventor of Orgastic Potency, which will ‘help to bring about World Revolution’.

On the ground, men are told to do the washing up and when they refuse, one of the women gets out the dice, and three men end up with the lowest score. Embarrassed they head for the sink.  But while the village women toil away every Saturday doing the washing by hand – the men spend their work-free weekend in the café. The Portuguese men start to blame the European women for the gentle uprising amongst their other halves. who complain “even the young boys behave like domineering tyrants.” The lack of sex-education and a repressive sex life seriously undermines the females’ quality of life. And in a play put on by the group, the men are  seen defending the dictator Caetano, who had been brought down in 1974.

Finally in November 1975, a radio broadcast announces the Portuguese state’s expulsion of all foreign revolutionaries, “because of their destabilising interference in this country’s politics”. The village men let some of their foreign counterparts stay (even though Mick has to cut his hair short). But the women will go. There is a short scene near the end when in one of the last public meetings, the mayor declares “servants do not exist any more after the revolution”.

Costa and DoP Hugo Azevedo have used close-up intimacy and theatrical effects to show the lack of real change. Patriarchal power has not diminished, and the status quo remains unchanged: it seems that the women are prepared to except things just the way they always were. And this was very much the case with Gramsci in rural areas of Southern Italy, progressive forces have had very little impact in rural Portugal. Costa’s lesson needs to be heeded – in any society – before it can claim to be liberated from feudal structures. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7-17 AUGUST 2019

Holiday (2018) ****

Dir/Writer: Isabella Eklöf, Wri: Johanne Algren| Cast: Thijs Romer, Victoria Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde | Thriller | Danish | 112′

If you’re worried about the current state of male empowerment this film from Denmark will adjust the skewered perception, in this year’s BFI London Film Festival showing, that women are somehow pulling rank in the pecking order and getting too big for their boots.

HOLIDAY certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing and there are some shockingly sadistic pornorgraphic scenes that are by no means gratuitous, and are actually pivotal to the plot. It’s the debut feature of writer and director Isabella Eklöf who co-wrote Cannes winner Border and also worked on Tomas Alfredson’s lugubrious vampire standout, Let the Right One In. Her third outing at the LFF is a stunning looking but savage satire that explores sexual abuse and domination.

Some may say HOLIDAY overplays its hand in its overlong preamble, making us wait nearly a hour before the feisty finale kicks in. But this torpid first hour allows Eklof and her co-writer Johanne Algren to set the scene for a devastating denouement by slathering her thriller with rich layers of texture, establishing the lowlife criminal ethos of the humans to just how boring and beastly they have become. The venal antihero Michael (Lai Yde) plays a Danish drug baron who has taken call-girl Sascha (a well-cast ectomorph Victoria Carmen Sonne) for a break in a Villa in Bodrum. While he does ‘a bit of business’, she suns herself by the pool with a motley crew of family members and hoodlums. Crude is very much the watchword in HOLIDAY. These mindless meatheads are be-decked in timepieces the size of telephones, garish trainers and vulgar designer labels such as Philip Pleinn.

In the opening scenes Sascha rocks up at the Turkish airport wearing a platinum hairpiece showing more black roots than Kunta Kinte. Her personality could be best described as vacant, she is an symbol of female submission, and for most of the film she is as naive as Bambi. But something is clearly ticking away in her reptilian brain that makes her strike out like a cobra when we’re least expecting it. Once ensconsed in the villa, Sascha has her work cut out dealing with the macho Michael who flexes his muscles with regular psychotic outbursts that end in abusive sex. This is the school of hard-knocks and not even Michael’s henchman escape a bloody good hiding when they overstep the mark. The only sights Sascha sees in the ancient Turkish port are expensive jewellery shops and lap-dancing clubs. She is there as an extension of Michael’s ego: when he’s feeling good she gets a hug or some emerald earrings (“they’re more expensive than diamonds”); when he’s feeling bad she gets a punch in the nose or even worse. But never is there meaningful sex.

On the contrary, the two have no emotional bond, but control freak that he is, Michael soon asserts his authority when Sascha strikes out on her own, and is drawn to an attractive Dutchman, Thomas (Thijs Romer), whose yacht is moored in the marina. At first it feels like she’s looking for a life raft, and escape route from Michael – but not a bit of it. Sasha flirts with Thomas, but her goal is to garner the emotional strokes she craves, feeding her latent narcissism.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Michael takes another bad mood out on Sascha, roughing her up and then abusing her sexually on the cold marble floor. The violent release gives Michael a psychopathic high and he falls asleep feeling totally fulfilled in her annihilation. Sascha soaks up the intended rejection that enforces her own lack of self esteem: the two are one. Victorious, Michael now has to lift his leg, metaphorically speaking, on Thomas. Arranging a quiet tête à trois, with the subtext of discussing yachts, Michael invites the unsuspecting Dutchman to join him and Sascha for dinner. In an act of vicois bravado, he then flagrantly humiliates both of them, and Thomas rapidly gets his coat.

The material in this uncomfortable but brilliant film could to be developed into others of the genre, if Eklöf so desires, and let’s hope she does. As female writers go, she is certainly on a par with Patricia Highsmith in her ability to create psychological complexity and conjure up tightly-plotted thrillers in glamorous surroundings, as demonstrated in this dynamite debut. MT

ON RELEASE from FRIDAY 2 August 2019

 

 

 

Hard Paint | Tinta Bruta (2018) ***

Dir/Writers| Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon | Cast: Shico Menegat, Bruno Fernandes, Guega Peixoto, Sandra Dani, Frederico Vasques, Denis Gosh, Camila Falcao, Aurea Baptista, Larissa Sanguine, Ze Adao Barbosa

Contrary to its flamboyant sounding title, Hard Paint sees a soulful young loner seeking seclusion in the virtual world of gay chatrooms until his colourful cover is blown with mixed consequences.

This visually alluring and sensually suggestive character study unravels in Brazil’s Porto Alegre were the troubled protagonist has reinvented himself as an online performer when his actual life disappoints him sexually and socially. But despite his vulnerable appearance Pedro (Shico Menegat) has developed a an emotional toughness that serves him well in his harsh contemporary surroundings where his androgynous appearance and pretty boy tousled locks are often viewed with contempt, desire and even open hostility.

Told in three chapters, the film is shot in intimate close up but also gets out and about in the locale capturing the skyline of this southernmost Brazilian city. The first chapter is dedicated to Pedro’s sister Luiza (Guega Peixoto), who has supported him through thick and thin and is now leaving to work in another part of Brazil, and his parents are no longer on the scene. The subdued daytime scenes provide a rhythmic counterpoint to his graphic love-making with rival Leo (Bruno Fernandes), and the dreamlike chatroom sequences where his body glows with florescent paint as he gyrates to electronic vibes.

But Leo is also competing with him online as Boy25, and he forms the subject of Chapter 2. Leo wants to move from the downmarket Porto Alegre to the bright lights of BA where he hopes to take up a dance scholarship, and soon the two are performing as a double act online, and making money. Pedro must now clear up some legal business relating to a serious road accident. Leo seems supportive as the couple’s online and offline lives start to be mutually beneficial and they share a palpable onscreen chemistry in graffic sex scenes which incredibly authentic.

Neon Boy is the appropriately titled enigmatic Third Chapter where Pedro faces the music, and the music starts to become a more noticeable part of the film. The gloves are now off and the real Pedro is revealed in some scenes of heightened drama. The weak may look vulnerable but they are often the strongest people around. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 2 AUGUST 2019

 

A Short Film About Killing (1988) | KROTKI FILM O ZABIJANIU

Dir.: Krzysztof Kieslowski; Cast: Miroslaw Baka, Krzyztof Globisz | Poland 1988, 84 min.

So powerful was the effect of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s graphic description of violence in eighties Warsaw that the Polish authorities declared a five-year moratorium on capital punishment. Forty minutes go by before the first murder: a nearly botched attempt, mercilessly shown in all the gory detail. The second killing is just the opposite: a professional job, executed by the hangman in cold blood, but much more gruesome than the first one. A rope is used in both cases, but there all similarities end.

Jacek (Baka) is a young man lost in the high-rise concrete that is Warsaw in 1988. The camera encircles him like an animal in a laboratory. He is alienated, has lost nearly all contact to friends and family, life has been sucked out of him. When he kills the taxi driver without an obvious motive it may seem senseless to the audience, but for Jacek it is only just one more unexplainable act in a chain of events he cannot comprehend any more. Jacek’s lawyer in the forthcoming murder trial, Piotr Balicki, (Globisz) is just his opposite. Not much older than the murderer he is defending, Piotr has just finished law school and is a ferocious opponent of the death penalty. He is full of idealism with his life stretching out in front of him in a clear path: he wants to do good. But he too will be scarred by the case; he stands no chance in the courtroom and for the rest of his life he will suffer from this defeat.

Kieslowski shows a grim world; children play with dead cats in dark backyards – the light seems a predominantly nauseous green, as in a  morgue. Jacek is a product of this society – we should not be surprised that he acts out his inner hollowness in this way. Many reviewers saw this film as a condemnation of the death penalty (which was only abolished in Poland in 1997), but it is more realistic to assume that Kieslowski wanted to show that Stalinism had hit rock bottom – a year before the system finally collapsed.

Both leads give dynamite performances. The camera shows this Dantesque Inferno with panoramic shots and close-ups. Jacek is cold-eyed and ashen-faced throughout. The portrait of a dying world in which murder, in whichever form it takes, is as normal as clocking-in for work. AS

A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING IS NOW OUT ON BLURAY

Locarno International Film Festival 2019

New artistic director Lili Hinstin unveils her eclectic mix of films for the 72nd Locarno Film Festival which runs from 7 until 17 August in its luxurious lakeside location. Locarno is known for its edgy profile and this year will be no different: Films by established auteurs Koji Fukada, Asif Kapadia, Kiyoshi Kurosawa will screen alongside an inventive array of undiscovered newcomers and sophomore cinema in a selection that embraces traditional stories and more experimental and avantgarde fare.

Hinstin takes over from Carlo Chatrian, who served as artistic director of Locarno since 2013 and now returns to the Berlinale. Hinstin is the 13th artistic director of the Locarno Festival since it was founded in 1946 and is only the event’s second female artistic director following on from Irene Bignardi (2000-5).

The largest open air cinema space in Europe, the Piazza Grande, will welcome up to 8,000 viewers for 19 full-length, 2 short films, and 6 Crazy Midnight, a total 11 world premieres. The magnificent state of the art Grand Rex cinema will pay host to this year’s Retrospective BLACK LIGHT conceived by Greg de Cuir Jr. showcasing international 20th century black cinema with stars such as Pam Grier, Ousmane Sembene, Spike Lee and Euzhan Palcy who will introduce his restored print of Rue Cases-Negres.

There will be another chance to see Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Luebbe DeBoer’s Sundance breakout Greener Grass and Kapadia’s Cannes documentary Maradona, along with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-starring hijack thriller-drama 7500, Carice Van Houten-starring Instinct, and British comedian Simon Bird’s directorial debut Days Of The Bagnold Summer. Making its world premiere is also the  intriguing Italian horror feature The Nest from Roberto de Feo whose 2010 short film Ice Scream was one of the most awarded worldwide during the year of its launch.

Films in the main competition vying for the Golden Leopard include the latest crop of South American stories: The Fever from Brazilian director Maya Da-Rin sees a disillusioned man hovering between reality and a dreamlike existence; from Argentina Maura Delpero’s Hogar (Home) is set in present day Buenos Aires where two homeless teenagers are bringing up their kids in a religious institution run by Italian nuns. Icelandic director Runar Runarsson (Sparrows) will be there with his latest Echo. The first ever Locarno competition film in Gallego entitled Longa Noite (Endless Night) is a second surreal feature from Spanish director Eloy Enciso; and previous Golden Leopard winner Pedro Costa (Horse Money) is back with a Cape Verdean set drama Vitalina Varela. Activist and award-winning animator Mina Mileva and her Bulgarian co-director Vesela Kazakova have filmed their realist drama Cat in the Wall in Peckham, London. It follows the trials and tribulations of a mother and her daughter.

This year’s Cineasti del Presenti, a sidebar dedicated to original and Avantgarde cinema, includes works from acclaimed actress Jeanne Balibar – Merveilles à Montfermeil, and Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter’s Space Dogs explores the work of Laika, the first canine astronaut. Matjaz Ivanisin’s debut drama Oroslan shows how traditional mourning rituals help to heal the community’s grief in a village in Slovenia. From the magical midsummers of American teenagers in Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye to Klaudia Reynicke’s surreal female-centric drama Love me Tender– these are just some of the films in a programme full of daring inventiveness.

The President of the main competition jury will be Catherine Breillat, and she is joined by this year’s guests: Mathieu Amalric, Bi Gan, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Cote, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Maren Ade, Jake Perlin, Bi Gan, Aline Schmid, Alba Rohrwacher, Hilary Swank and Bela Tarr and John Waters whose will receive a Leopard of Honour for his daring, outrageous, often hilarious work: “Somehow I became respectable…What the hell has happened!”

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7 -17 AUGUST 2019

 

My Friend the Polish Girl (2018) ***

Dir.: Ewa Banasziewicz, Mateusz Dymek; Cast: Aneta Piotrowska, Emma Feldman-Cohen, Daniel Barry, Max Davies; UK 2018, 87 min.

Ewa Banasziewicz and Mateusz Dymek have directed written and produced this sometimes uneven cinema verite style mockumentary that explores whether the documentary form can ever be objective: or does the filmmaker always influence the outcome with their own subjectivity? Shot mostly in black-and-white by Dymek, with enchanting animation by Mathieu Rok, My Friend is aesthetically much more convincing than its sometimes questionable narrative.

New York filmmaker Katie (Friedman-Cohen) lives in London where she picks the Polish actor, thirty-something Alicja (Piotrowska), as the central focus for her Brexit-themed documentary. But nothing goes to plan: first of all Alicja, (who is living with her boyfriend (Barry) in the Edgware Road), tells Katie that he is suffering from terminal cancer. Michael then denies the gravity of his illness and moves out, not wanting to be filmed by a very intrusive Katie. The two women have not always got on together so Katie decides “to change” Alicja’s life, by introducing her to a group of filmmakers at the Groucho Club. Alicja is going to play a Russian prostitute (her seventh casting in this role), and shooting is due to commence, but when it does, Michael’s condition worsens with Alicja trying in vain to stop the cancer by buying expensive alternative medicines from a Harley Street doctor. To no avail, he dies and at the rather embarrassing wake for Michael, she meets his friend Max (Davies), who stays the night. By now, Katie has moved in with her girlfriend, both declaring they are misfits. But when Alicja is suddenly fired from the film set, she also runs away from Katie who is forced to use a false ending (Alicja’s suicide) to finish her film. 

Despite their best intentions the portrayal of the complicated relationship between documentary filmmakers and their subjects sometimes falls victim to rather bad taste, such as in the faux-sex scene between the two women in Alicja’s bedroom. But the female leads are so convincing in portraying their obsessive relationship they somehow manage to overcome this setback. Overall, My Friend is a brave attempt to discuss the essence of documentary filmmaking, and, in spite of everything, it is a very worthwhile watch. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Patrick | De Patrick (2019) Bfi Player

Dir: Tim Mielants; Cast: Kevin Janssens, Josse de Pauw, Hannah Hoekstra, Jemaine Clement Katelinje Damen, Ariane van der Velt, Pierre Bokma; Belgium 2019, 97 min.

Peaky Blinders’ Tim Mielants won the directing prize at Karlovy Vary for this subversive tragicomedy that takes place in a Belgian nudist camp fraught with scheming machiavellians.

In his late thirties the naive main character Patrick (Janssens) is still living with his father Rudy (de Pauw) and blind mother Nelly (Damen). They run a summer camp fraught with  scantily dressed, middle-aged holiday-makers. Rudy is on his last legs but his son has no aptitude for business, and so he relies on Herman (Bokma), whose wife Liliane (Van Welt) projects her lust on the undersexed Patrick.

Into this bizarre environment comes Natalie (Hoekstra) whose unfaithful musician boyfriend Dustin (Clement) immediately strikes up a relationship with another adoring female. So Natalie decides to turn her attentions to Patrick whose sideline as a joiner now becomes central to the narrative, and the tool of his trade, a hammer, one of the main protagonists. When Rudy dies, Herman and Liliane plan to take over the place, declaring Patrick ‘not fit for purpose’, in running the camp’s affairs – not least because his hammer was the weapon of choice in a catastrophe that cost the commune their entire funds. It soon emerges that the hammer was also the weapon used in a murder in Brussels.

Even though the naturalists proclaim to be progressive, they are really straight out of the 1950s. Mielants’ humour does not always come off, and De Patrick often feels repetitive – the running time could be tightened up a tab. But there are enough contradictions to keep the show on the road, and Janssens makes for a brilliant anti-hero. AS

NOW ON IPLAYER | BEST DIRECTOR WINNER | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Half Sister (2019) Polsestra **** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Damjan Kozole; Cast: Ursa Menart, Liza Marijina, Jurij Drevensek, Peter Musevski; Republic of Macedonia/Serbia/Slovenia; 105 min.

Another tightly controlled and intriguing drama from veteran documentarian Damjan Kozole, who won best director at Karlovy Vary with Nightlife in 2016 . 

Irena and Nezha, the titular half-sisters hate each others guts – but when push comes to shove, blood proves thicker than life-long animosities. Irina (Menart) works in the local hairdressers: she is protected from the outside world by a half-open jalousie. And it soon emerges why. 

Separated from her violent husband Branco (Drevensek), she is looking for a place to stay and visits her mother. Clearly moving in with her mother is no option, the two have a fractured relationship and the same goes for her father handball coach Silvio (Musevski) who ran off with an Albanian woman when Irena was a little girl. But one of her half-sisters Anisa (Marijina) is moving to Ljubljana to study for an MA in communications, so she asks her father if she could live shares the flat with her rival Nezha, a tomboyish aggressor, who has a knife handy wherever she goes. Nezha immediately blames Silvo (who pays the rent) and Irena for setting her up. But blaming everybody – apart from her dog Jimmy – is Nezha’s default position in life. A vegan (for environmental reasons) she attacks Irena full on: “If Dad wasn’t such a pussy, he’d put you in a nuthouse”. Irena answers with well trained passive-aggressiveness. But when Branco assaults Irena, breaking her nose, the dynamic changes, Nezha going on the attack to defend Irena to the last.

Half-Sister is a brilliant character study, the near-perfect script an exception in today’s landscape of ‘atmospheric non-narratives”. DoP Miladin Colakovic’s intimate camera conveys the emotional range of the rollercoaster, and despite of the antagonistic characters involved, one cannot help but smile. Finally, Menart and Marijina gives remarkable performances, playing off each other like the real thing. AS

Karlovy Vary FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | Until 7 July 2019

 

 

El Hombre del Futuro (2019) *** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Felipe Rios Fuente; Cast: Antonia Giesen, Jose Soza, Maria Alche, Roberto Farias; Chile 2019, 96 min.

Director/co-writer Felipe Rios Fuente’s debut feature is beautiful to look at, but based on a rather misplaced ideology. Somehow his melancholic defence of absent fathers, caught up in their so-called independence, sticks a the throat: even in Chile, country of machismo, a little more honesty would be welcome.

We meet Elena (Giesen) at high school in Cochrane, north Chile, were she discusses her future with a friend. Not much of an academic Elena has set her heart on professional boxing. Sadly this becomes a pipe dream when she heads down south to a match in the wilderness of Patagonia. Meanwhile her biological father Michelsen (Soza), whom she has not seen since her childhood, is coming to the end of his life. He seems resigned to his fate setting off on his final trip taking sheep to Patagonia and on the way picks up a young hitchhiker, Maxi (Alche). At the same time Cuatro Dedos (Farias) picks up Elena. ‘Four Fingers’ is a younger version of Michelsen, he knows that Elena is Michelsen’s daughter, whom he holds in near mythical regard. Somehow, via the hauler’s radio system, Elena sends a message to her father. He arrives in time to see her beaten up in the ring by Patagona, a much heavier woman, who is supported by the local crowd. Elena and Michelsen now travel together, deliver the sheep, and try to come to terms with their relationship. Michelsen insists he never gave up being Elena’s father, but she reminds him he never knew her at all. Fuente insists on a reconciliation, but his pleas are hollow.

The beauty of the wilderness of Patagonia is captured on spectacular widescreen images by DoP Eduardo Bunster. Fuente’s opaque choice of the title is as superfluous as his insistence that old men should be forgiven for leaving their families. Four Finger and his hero Michelsen want their freedom and independence to roam the country, but leave the responsibility of childcare to the abandoned wives. They might talk about love for those left behind, but the words are empty. Elena’s dislocation is a result of her father’s negligence, and however hard Fuente tries to romanticise their relationship, his choice of independence has certainly created her emotional insecurity. AS

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | IN COMPETITION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EAST OF WEST COMPETITION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2019

The Last Autumn | Sidasta Haustio (2019) Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir.: Yrsa Roca Fannberg; Documentary with Ulfare Eyjolfsson, Oddny Snjolang Bordardottir; Iceland 2019, 78 min.

Icelandic writer/director Yrsa Roca Fannberg follows Salome with this thematically related story set in the Icelandic arctic ocean village of Norourfjordur where a couple are getting ready to sell their sheep. This is their last autumn on the farmland they have occupied all their lives, and their daughter and grandchildren, who live in Reykjavik, come and pay their final farewells.

The black and white footage of the opening sequences reflects their contented past, the rough landscape and the sea, making an imposing background where humans are dwarfed by mother nature. Soon we switch to colour and intimate domestic interiors where Ulfar and Oddny are listening to a radio broadcast about the ecological tragedy that led to the entire population of Iceland being evacuated to Denmark after a volcano eruption during the18th century.

The old sheep dog Loppa watches Ulfar bottle-feed two lambs. Later, he drives out to sea in his fishing boat coming back with a decent catch, then cutting wood to repair the barn wall – even though he knows very well that there will be no more sheep to shelter there. His daughter arrives on a small plane and they reminisce about the barn repairs: “It is beautiful to sustain life, even if it is not for yourself”.

This honest existence has been the mainstay of their lives together, but eventually the day arrives for them to round up the sheep. Loppa, his master and some other farmers go into the mountains to collect the animals, about 75 of them, herd them into the barn, and then huge travel containers. Ulfar seems to live in the past, his only contact with the outside world is the radio which brings news of those who have recently passed away. Afterwards Ulfar gives his granddaughter a ride on the tractor regaling her with an old fairy tale about Vera, a woman who fell down the cliffs.

Focusing on long panoramic panning shots, and connecting with the narrative of surviving communities and rural existence this is a melancholic journey. Carlos Vasquez’ images focus on the close interaction of humans and nature, showing that animals are far more intelligent than we often give them credit for. The relationship between Ulfare and his dog is particularly close. Dialogue is sparing reflecting the importance of action and reflection rather than ideas. Fannberg handles this slow-burner with care and patience, every shot has a function – an enchanting portrait of another disappearing world. AS

BERGAMO FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | KARLOVY VARY 2019 PREMIERE

Projectionist (2019) **** Karlovy Vary 2019

Dir: Yuriy Shilov | Doc with Valentin Speshylov, Volodymyr Mak, Halyna Speshylova, Yuri Speshylov | Ukraine/Poland 78’

64 years is the average life expectancy for a man in Ukraine. And Valentin is heading that way. Pleasant and voluble with his twinkling eyes and broad smile, he has spent most of his working life as projectionist at Kiev’s oldest cinema the Kinopanorama, that opened in 1958.

Preoccupation with his mother has clearly dogged and dominated his personal life. A chain smoker with false teeth – at one point he’s seen popping them in and swigging the cleaning fluid – he loves to visit the dancing girls in the next door casting agency nearby the cramped flat shares with his ageing mother who is confined to bed with chronic constipation. But Valentin is not the only colourful character, in this picaresque and gently humorous debut from promising Ukrainian filmmaker Yuriy Shilov, Valentin’s neighbour Silpa is a batty lonely old man who dyes his hair and drinks himself to oblivion.

Camerawork lends a voyeuristic feel to the semi darkness of pokey place where Valentin’s friends pass by to say hello through the brightness of the open window. Kiev is seen crumbling in its former grandeur, Valentin and his pals the idiosyncratic old guard keeping the show on the road in a rapidly changing world while several widescreen panoramas reflect the sheer vastness of Ukraine’s capital city with its traditional curative baths and magnificent Dnieper River, the fourth longest in Europe

But when the Kinopanorama finally goes up in smoke one night, its clearly time for Valentin to seek pastures new and this amiable Ukrainian is very much game. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | 28 June – 7 July 2019

Venezia (2019) Edinburgh Film Festival 2019

Dir: Rodrigo Guerrero | Cast: Paula Lussi, Margherita  Mannino | Drama Argentina, France, Italy 75’

At the start of Rodrigo Guerrero’s atmospheric drama VENEZIA, Sofia (Paula Lussi) lies on a bed in a hotel room, sobbing gently and utterly alone. Her mobile buzzes, but she doesn’t answer. Later, as we see her pace through the winding, narrows streets of the eponymous city, the cause of her tears and solitude is slowly revealed, her loneliness signalling an absence in her life – and an absence felt in the film itself, for the story begins in media res, with a slow-burning sense of uneasy mystery.

As such, the opening raises a string of active questions whichwould not feel out of place in a thriller, but Guerrero instead uses these intrigues as hooks by which to propel an engrossing character study – a portrait of a lost woman attempting to find solace and understanding for what life has thrown her way.

Thankfully, and in contrast to so many other recent films, the opaqueness gradually lightens, allowing us a rich understanding of the problems faced by Sofia, as wonderfully conveyed through Lussi’s hypnotic performance. Indeed, the film’s only slight misstep is the inclusion of a scene which takes the focus momentarily away from Sofia, to give us an unnecessary insight into the life of Francesca (Margherita Mannino), one of several characters who Sofia encounters as she drifts through the city – for this is Sofia’s story, and it’s in following the minutiae of her journey (physical and emotional) that the film excels.

Filmed in striking 1.33:1 images, Venezia‘s evocative, observational style follows in the arthouse tradition which is too often described as ‘detached’ – it would be better, and more accurate, to say that Guerrero’s engrossing, tender film is unsentimental and devoid of emotional manipulation, and that it’s all the more impactful as a result. Understated and light on dialogue, Venezia reminds us that, so often, less is more – and, with a slender runtime of just 75 minutes, it also offers a further rejoinder to the bloated nature of much contemporary cinema. A real, subtle gem.

Elsewhere in the programme, Sasha Collington’s LOVE TYPE D offered a very different, and much more light-hearted, portrait of a lonely woman: Frankie (Maeve Dermody), who has just been dumped for the 11th time in a row. Discovering a scientific theory that suggests her run of bad luck may be the result of genetics and, more specifically, a ‘loser in love‘ gene, Frankie sets about trying to cure herself. Slightly more high-concept than your average rom-com, Love Type D offers plenty of laughs and entertainment, frivolous though it may all be. ALEX BARRETT

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 19-30 JUNE 2019

Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018) **** Edinburgh Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Milorad Krstic; Animation with the voices of Ivan Kamaras, Gabriella Hamori, Zalan Makranczi; Hungary 2018, 96 min.

Milorad Krstic (66), director, designer and script-writer of his debut animation feature, won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale in 1995. Premiering here at Locarno Film Festival Ruben Brandt is mostly hand-drawn with some CG elements and very much resembles in style and narrative of the recent Folimage animation feature A Cat in Paris , even though the tone is much darker.

Psychotherapist Ruben Brandt (Kamaras) suffers from dreams and hallucinations: He is attacked by figures from famous paintings like Velazquez’ “Infanta Margarita” and Botticelli’s “Venus”. Nevertheless, Brandt goes on treating his four patients, through role-plays of stories such as Little Riding Hood. They are all highly skilled burglars; so is Mimi (Hamori), who puts Ruben’s plan into action; he wants to possess thirteen famous paintings, so Mimi heads first to the Paris Louvre, hotly pursued by detective Kowalski (Makranczi), who has been hired by various insurance companies, who put a 100million dollar bounty on Ruben’s head. But Brandt becomes increasingly desperate, his dreams growing ever more violent. We see little Ruben, his neurologist father making him watch cartoons, a favourite is Rusalocka in “The Little Mermaid”. The thieves embark on a world cruise to steal Van Gogh’s “Postman Roulin”, Titan’s “Venus of Urbino” and Picasso’s “Woman with Book”, visiting the Uffizzi, the Hermitage, Tate and MoMA. There are flying cats, and the pictures start to interact with Ruben. In the Pantheon, Ruben is asked to participate in a Western duel, before being whisked off in a plane to Arles in Provence. Matters become even more complicated it emerges that Kowalski is Ruben’s half-brother. Their father Gerhardt was a Stasi spy who defected to the USA and worked for the CIA on neurological research. He has just died, and Kowalski’s mother tells his son, “ I had to leave your father, so you could have your own dreams”. Ruben meanwhile is meeting the painter Renoir, and is trying to unravel his father’s life. After a wild hunt, when the six are hunted down by two oil-tankers and a helicopter, the chase ends in Tokyo, during the attempted theft of the last painting, Warhol’s “Double Elvis”.

On one level Ruben Brandt is a haunt caper, one the other a trip through European film history from ‘Caligari’, Eisenstein, Hitchcock to Wenders. Krstic is clear about his intentions: “To be haunted by ghosts or zombies in nightmares is a cliché, it’s more exciting to be haunted by Velázquez’s ‘Infanta Margarita’ or Botticelli’s ‘Venus.” And paraphrasing Godard he explains his aesthetic concept: “For me drawing is imagination, and animated film is imagination twenty-four times a second.” His attempt at an ‘audio-visual symphony’ might be strange at times, but is always fascinating, and even in its most absurd moments Ruben Brandt is utterly compelling. A unique, magical, trippy experience, a throwback to the Sixties with its echoes of Pink Panther.

EIFF 19 JUNE – 30 JUNE | ANIMATION STRAND | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Blancanieves (2012) **** Edinburgh Film Festival

Dir: Pablo Berger | Cast: Maribel Verdu, Emilio Gavira, Daniel Gimenez Cacho | Spain Drama 110’

A bittersweet homage to the Golden Age of Spanish silent cinema, Pablo Berger’s intoxicating Gothic fantasy relocates the tale of Snow White to a sweepingly romantic vision of 1920s Seville, where a little girl overcomes cruel adversity to find fame as a bullfighter.

Tinged with melancholy and the macabre, along the lines of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, Blancanieves is delicately rendered in elegant black and white and set to Alfonso de Vilallonga’s lush score.

Carmen (played by Sofia Oria as a child and Macarena Garcia in later life) is the daughter of a proud and famous bullfighter who is paralysed in the ring.  After her mother’s death in childbirth, her father remarries unwisely to Marbel Verdu’s spiteful and self-centred virago Encarna. She neglects both Carmen and her father who later dies leaving the little girl at her mercy.  In this version six miniature bullfighters take the role of the seven dwarfs who come to Carmen’s rescue after finding her abandoned one day by Encarna. She is re-named ‘Blancanieves’.

As the story progresses, the production is slightly hampered by tonal differences as heightened melodrama struggles with Gothic and surreal fantasy to create slightly off-key episodes of banal humour which detract from the graceful delicacy of Kiko de la Rica’s cinematography.  A passionate and inspired creation, nevertheless, with the fresh appeal of The Artist tweaked with touches of Buñuel: it has certainly won the hearts of the Festival Circuit Juries winning no less than 33 awards in one year for script, score, cinematography, cast and costumes. Snow White has never looked so good!. MT

BLANCANIEVES screening on 22 June 2019 at EIFF | Part of the Once Upon a Time in Spain Strand

 

Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 – New Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is taking place between 19th and 30th June. This year the Festival will screen around 121 new features, including 18 feature film World Premieres from across the globe.

This year the focus is Spain and there will be a particular emphasis on genre films from women directors from around the world, ranging from gothic romance and Western chills through to science fiction and old-fashioned horror. All this set alongside a tribute to French filmmaker Agnès Varda, a woman who has inspired generations of directors.

There will be guests including one of Britain’s most successful directors, Danny Boyle, award-winning actor and producer Jack Lowden, British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield and Scottish writer, director and actor Pollyanna McIntosh who also brings her latest film, Darlin’ to this year’s EIFF, and director, actor, writer and producer Icíar Bollaín. 

The festival will screen the world premiere of Adrian Noble’s Mrs Lowry & Son, starring Timothy Spall as the iconic painter L S Lowry, and Vanessa Redgrave. The Black Forest described as a ‘love letter to Europe’ from writer-director Ruth Platt; and coming-of-age supernatural love story Carmilla from director Emily Harris.

The EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES strand features: Elfar Adalsteins’ End of Sentence where a bickering father and son from America take a road trip in Ireland; The Emperor of Paris starring Vincent Cassel will receive its UK Premiere at the Festival alongside Rudolph Herzog’s amusing How to Fake a War starring Katherine Parkinson and Aniara, an epic science-fiction drama about a passenger spaceship lost in the void, as well as titles including Barbara Vekarić’s Aleksi from Croatia; Susanne Heinrich’s Aren’t You Happy? from Germany and Swiss psychological drama Cronofobia. Audiences can also look forward to the return of France’s favourite Gaul in Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion.

This year’s WORLD PERSPECTIVES strand offers audiences an exciting and challenging array of new works by talented filmmakers from around the world. Highlights include: the World Premieres of Astronaut, starring Richard Dreyfuss as a lonely widower who dreams of a trip to space and Rodrigo Guerrero’s Venezia. Australian cinema features prominently this year with the acclaimed Acute Misfortune, a striking, brilliant and unconventional portrait of one of Australia’s most acclaimed and idiosyncratic painters, Adam Cullen; Other highlights include two South Korean action-adventure masterclasses in the form of Unstoppable and box office smash Extreme Job.

This year’s DOCUMENTARIES programme reflects the ability of documentary film to amaze, inspire, challenge, provoke and fascinate audiences, offering them the unique chance to travel the world and see strange and unusual sights. Strand highlights include:Memory: The Origins of Alien, a fascinating documentary about the making of Alien from the very beginning; This Changes Everything which examines the problems faced by women filmmakers and features interviews with Hollywood greats including Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Reese Witherspoon and Cate Blanchett; Loopers: The Caddie’s Long Walk narrated by former caddie Bill Murray and Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, from Nick Broomfield, giving audiences an insight into Leonard Cohen’s love affair with Marianne Ihlen. 

This year’s retrospective strand entitled ONCE UPON A TIME IN SPAIN, will explore Spain’s rich cinematic history through three strands: A Retrospective Celebration of Modern Spanish Cinema; A Retrospective Selection of Cult Spanish Cinema and an in-depth celebration of the work of legendary Spanish writer, actor and filmmaker, Icíar Bollaín. Designed to begin where the retrospective ends, FOCUS ON SPAIN features a selection of brand new Spanish cinema by some of the country’s most promising directors. Highlights include: Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles from Salvador Simó, an accomplished and fitting homage to the great master of surrealist cinema; the directorial debut from Nicolás Pacheco Cages and gripping sci-fi thriller h0us3 from Manolo Munguía, inspired by the mysterious ‘insurance files’ famously employed by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. 

The Festival will screen a number of films by the late great Agnès Varda across a retrospective strand entitled THE FEATURES OF AGNÈS and Varda by Agnès, her final film which will be introduced by Honorary Patron Mark Cousins.

Audiences can look forward to a whistle-stop tour of the latest ideas and techniques being explored in the world of animated film in the International Animation selection, as part of the Festival’s annual dedicated ANIMATION strand, as well as a screening of an anthology of anime shorts from the Japanese Studio Ponoc – the anticipated successor to Studio Ghibli – in association with Scotland Loves Anime.

If the weather holds there will be a free open-air cinema event, Film Fest in the City with Edinburgh Live, at St Andrew Square Garden, running from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th June 2019.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 19-30 JUNE 2019 

 

Haut les Filles (2019) ****

Dir.: Francois Armanet; Cast: Jeanne Added, Jehnny Beth, Lou Doillon, Brigitte Fontaine, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, Imany, Camelia Jordana, Elli Medeiros, Vanessa Paradis; France 2019, 78 min.

What if Edith Piaf had invented Rock-n-Roll, rather than Elvis Presley? Francois Armanet’s excellent Cannes documentary showcases the musings of ten popular French singers from the Sixties to the present day. The upshot is that Rock-n’-Roll is female and French.

Edith Piaf opens with a raunchy love song for her lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, who died in a plane crash in 1949. In the Sixties, it was the likes of Françoise Hardy and Brigitte Fontaine who challenged the predominance of men. Hardy remembers how naïve she and other chanteuses were at a time of total male dominance: When France Gall sang the saucy “Sucettes” songs with composer Serge Gainsbourg, she hadn’t the faintest idea of the double meaning of that ‘lollipop’.

Things have changed since. Camelia Jordana and Jeanne Added felt the freedom of being on stage, describing it as  “lifting me out into space”. Sixties photos of Françoise Hardy and singing partner Jacques Dutronc show a different picture, and one that was re-affirmed when she met Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg in the UK “where men expected women to look like Brigitte Bardot” – rather than Hardy’s androgynous look. Jagger claimed “she was his ideal woman”. Ironically even nowadays Charlotte Gainsbourg is hampered by old-fashioned male chauvinism. “I wish I looked more like my mother, but unfortunately I look like my father…he could not understand that I did not like to be on the cover of magazines”. She goes on to talk about the beautiful women in her family, such as Lou Doillon, daughter of filmmaker Jacques Doillon, although the two women had the same mother in the shape of Jane Birkin. Gainsbourg always thinks about herself as pretty and ugly (une jolie-laide), like the teenager she played in her film debut film La Voleuse by Claude Miller. Lou Doillon remembers the burden of having to be interesting to adults who were all creative. But although he father directed, her mother was very much in front of the camera.

Camelia Jordana also remembers that her voice only made an impression when it sounded sweet and sexy, when she got older. Jordana lately found her identity as a strong feminist via the works of Simone de Beauvoir, a signatory of Women’s Manifest, a group that fought to de-criminalise abortion in France. Of the ten, Fontaine is the most radical – and much more so now than in the Sixties. “Stop Talking and take arms. Down with the stronger sex. Death to it” is only one of her provocative songs on stage.

Elli Medeiros, who was born in Montevideo, started her career with the Stinky Toys and was discovered by Malcolm McLaren, who invited the band to London, where they appeared at the ‘100 Club’ in Oxford Street. Having arrived without gear, they asked the Sex Pistols to lend them their outfits, but the band declined. Stinky Toys ended up singing in garb belonging to The Clash. Medeiros reflects that she stopped ‘screaming out her rage on stage’, after she had learned to sing properly.

Vanessa Paradis “feels on stage like a shipmaster” and Lou Doillon compares her music “with making love, forgetting everything else, like religion”. Whilst Paradis was awakened to feminism by Beatrice Dalle, Doillon had to watch TV in her nanny’s room, where she was fascinated by Catherine Ringer of Rita Mitsouko fame. Doillon finally sums up the development of female Rock-n’-Roll stars: “In the Seventies and Eighties, girl bands were more violent on stage then male musicians. They paid the price for being on stage, having to be more mannish than the blokes.” Whilst for Lou Doillon and others, gender fluidity is the order of the day, Fontaine remains a radical feminist: “Fuck l’amour!”

When all is said and done, it’s a shame that women have always had to struggle just to maintain the status quo with men. Oh Les Filles will be remembered mainly for its fabulous music and TV archive clips which certainly prove that female talent is more than skin deep. AS

SCREENING DURING CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Go Where You Look! Falling off Snow Mountain (2019) Directors’ Fortnight 2019

Dirs: Laurie Anderson, Hsin-Chien Huang Virtual Reality Creation | US/China

Anderson and Hsin-Chien collaborate in three virtual reality installations presented together for the very first time at this year’s  Quinzaine.

If you’ve not experienced virtual reality it really is a transformative experience: Rather like diving you enter a whole new world, but with VR you can’t actually see your body during the process.

Laurie Anderson is a musician, filmmaker, writer, digital arts creative pioneer and, ultimately, a storyteller in the broadest sense. She discovered VR only recently and her new way of exploring narrative territories is a good way to start. New media artist Hsin-Chien Huang, who has a background in in art, design, and digital entertainment. His VR collaboration with Laurie Anderson was awarded the Best VR Experience in at Venice Film Festival in 2017. But they first worked together in 1995 on the CD-ROM Puppet Motel. 

AloftChalkroom and To the Moon, are three poetically linked and complementary pieces presented together, and each lasting around fifteen minutes. The sensory, poetic and technological dimensions of these three pieces are tightly intertwined and and considerably amplify our cinematic experience, and this one takes place in Le Suquet morgue, just to add a  surreal twist to the proceedings.

Rocking a very soigné Issy Miyake rigout, Anderson explains that there are no cameras or lenses involved in Go Where You Look and it all feels very physical and interactive, as the audience very much influence the outcome of each tour. You sit on a stool, pop on a headset and the show takes off. 

ALOFT is the nearest thing to experiencing a place crash – in the most serene way possible. As the sole passenger in the airline you begin to notice some shafts of light appearing in the ceiling and floor near the cockpit. Gradually the plane starts to fall apart, in a gentle way. Suddenly you’re floating in your seat towards what looks like a town with to connected rivers. The black box floats by, and soon other objects come into view and float by as you head towards a luminous vortex. If you grab them with your gloves paws, Laurie’s voice then tells a story. There’s a lily, a mobile ‘phone and a lump of coal. If you snatch the coal it turns out to be Mars and soon you’re hovering above the Martian landscape. A typewriter appears and you can write your name as the letters floats high up into the black stratosphere. Other experiences include a placid lake. Your hands soon turn into horses legs. 

TO THE MOON uses images and tropes from Greek mythology, literature, science, sci fi space mo- vies and politics to create an imaginary and dark new moon, and a more formal narrative structure. During the 15-minute VR experience, you take off from Earth and soar up towards the blackness which then becomes the surface of the Moon. The eeriest thing is being able to see Earth revolving with Europe stretching before you. You can then climb a lunar mountain before returning – eventually – to Earth, your two handsets guiding you forward, or even speeding you up. You see the Constellations, the Great Bear etc evaporating before your eyes. In Snow Mountain you actually climb the mountain before your virtual body dramatically tumbles away into deep space, Laurie Anderson’s voice chanting about not knowing where we all came from. In the Donkey Ride you the viewer trot along on the back of a donkey through the lunar landscape. Eventually you float up and away into a universe of stars that begins to explode like fireworks.

Certainly different and worth experiencing. Maybe one day virtual reality will be able to re-create experiences that are more personalised. For example you could embark on a world tour, or even be united with a long lost lover or a a friend of family member who has passed on. MT

QUINZAINE | 15 -24 May 2019 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019  

 

Float like a Butterfly (2018) ***

Dir: Carmel Winters | Drama | Ireland | 104′

Carmel Winters second feature is a poetic and gorgeously redolent coming of age drama set in the Emerald Isle of the 1960s where a young Irish Traveller has to contend with the death of her mother and an abusive father as she follows her dream of becoming a boxer like her idol Muhammad Ali.

Hazel Doupe gives a stunning performance as tomboy Hazel whose daily life in a wooden caravan with her younger brother and wayfarer father Michael (Dara Devaney) is fraught with altercations not only with the local Garda but also members of this feisty family and their old-fashioned attitudes towards gender roles that hamper her own natural pugilist talents.

With its universal themes Float Like A Butterfly has the rare quality of being utterly relevant today and yet quaintly traditional, its placid pacing capturing the slow-burning essence of a bygone era. Auteuse Carmel Winters’ writing and directing has a distinct lightness of touch which brings both gentleness and integrity to her storytelling. This is a drama that glows with the lush beauty of its verdant Irish setting untrammelled by time and enlivened by stirring folk music, suddenly catching fire in its final denouement. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 10 May 2019 | FIPRESCI PRIZE Winner | TIFF 2019

Madeline’s Madeline **** (2018)

Dir: Josephine Decker | US | 90′ | Drama | Cast: Miranda July, Molly Parker, Helena Howard

Josephine Decker’s inventive, impressionistic dramas – Butter on the Latch (2013) /Though Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) are an acquired taste but one that marks her out as a distinctive female voice on the American indie circuit. And here she is at Berlinale again with a multi-layered mother and daughter tale that is probably her best feature so far. With a stunning central performance from newcomer Helena Howard and a dash of cinematic chutzpah that sends this soaring, Madeline’s Madeline is a thing of beauty, intoxicating to watch, compellingly chaotic and with a potently emotional storyline. It’s probably best described as a experimental drama set in an experimental theatre run by Evangeline (Molly Parker), who, at one point says to protege Madeline: “In all chaos there is a cosmos. In all disorder a secret order.” In other words, “there’s a method in the madness; a predictability to every unpredictability”. And this seemingly obtuse truism really sums up this most original of features.

Howard’s Madeline is an often precocious but highly gifted performer teenager and who is clearly on the spectrum but we are never quite sure of what mental condition or how much it affects her. Hospital visits are mentioned and medication is involved, and mother Regina (Miranda July) and daughter clearly have issues with each other. Evangeline has spotted the 16 year old’s talent to entertain, and is also nurturing and exploiting it, and the trio’s relationship becomes increasingly complex and unpredictable. Ashley Connor’s roving camera is all over the place creating a fluid feeling that is enjoyable, but also disorientating as Madeline becomes more and more powerful in this ingenious female ménage à trois. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 May 2019

 

Sundance London 2019 | 30 May – 2 June 2019

Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival brings a selection of films to London, screening at at PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL from 30 MAY – 2 JUNE 2019. Here is a selection of the features and documentaries scheduled:

THE LAST TREE/ United Kingdom (Director/Screenwriter: Shola Amoo) – Femi is a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after a happy childhood in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner London to live with his mum. Struggling with the unfamiliar culture and values of his new environment, teenage Femi has to figure out which path to adulthood he wants to take CAST: Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Nicholas Pinnock 

LATE NIGHT U.S.A. (Director: Nisha Ganatra, Screenwriter: Mindy Kaling) – Legendary late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her only female staff writer. Originally intended to smooth over diversity concerns, her decision has unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women separated by culture and generation are united by their love of a biting punchline. Cast: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow, Paul Walter Hauser, Reid Scott, Amy Ryan

THE NIGHTINGALE Australia (Director/Screenwriter: Jennifer Kent) – 1825. Clare, a young Irish convictwoman, chases a British officer through the Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way she enlists the services of Aboriginal tracker Billy, who is marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past. Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Baykali Ganambarr, Damon Herriman, Harry Greenwood, Ewen Leslie

HAIL SATAN? U.S.A. (Director: Penny Lane) – A look at the intersection of religion and activism, tracing the rise of The Satanic Temple: only six years old and already one of the most controversial religious movements in American history. The Temple is calling for a Satanic revolution to save the nation’s soul. But are they for real? 

THE FAREWELL U.S.A., China (Director/Screenwriter: Lulu Wang) – A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family’s decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.  CAST: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo

THE DEATH OF DICK LONG U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Scheinert, Screenwriter: Billy Chew) – Dick died last night, and Zeke and Earl don’t want anybody finding out how. That’s too bad though, cause news travels fast in small-town Alabama. CAST: Michael Abbott Jr., Virginia Newcomb, Andre Hyland, Sarah Baker, Jess Weixler 

CORPORATE ANIMALS U.S.A. (Director: Patrick Brice, Screenwriter: Sam Bain) – Disaster strikes when the egotistical CEO of an edible cutlery company leads her long-suffering staff on a corporate team- building trip in New Mexico. Trapped underground, this mismatched and disgruntled group must pull together to survive. CAST: Demi Moore, Ed Helms, Jessica Williams, Karan Soni

ASK DR RUTH  U.S.A. (Director: Ryan White) – A documentary portrait chronicling the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America’s most famous sex therapist. As her 90th birthday approaches, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and her career at the forefront of the sexual revolution. 

THE BRINK U.S.A. (Director: Alison Klayman) – Now unconstrained by an official White House post, Steve Bannon is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker with a direct line to the President. As self-appointed leader of the “populist movement,” he travels around the U.S. and the world spreading his hard-line anti-immigration message

Tickets on sale Tuesday 23 April; priority booking from Friday 19 April

Find out more at picturehouses.com/sundance

 

Arctic (2018) **

Writer-Dir: Joe Penna | Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smaradottir | Drama | 93’

A macho Mads Mikkelsen is marooned in Arctic nothingness in Joe Penna’s dialogue free survival saga. You could almost call ARCTIC a road movie, but there isn’t a road to speak of. And this is not really a two hander either because the woman Mads tries to save – when her own aircraft crashes trying rescue him – is just a concussed and grunting victim he feels duty bound to take with him on his mission to reach safety in the snowy wilderness of craggy peaks and perilous caverns.

Moving mountains to get her to hospital is an experience as gruelling for Mads as it since for us viewers, if you haven’t already drifted off in the opening stages. If you do remain awake, there is no backstory or attempt at characterisation to make you care whether either of the travellers makes it home. Barren of landscape and of narrative, ARCTIC follows Mads as he moves in a slow circle, due to his poor map-reading skills, after etching an enormous SOS in the snow. The only brief moment of drama is derived from seeing a Polar bear deprived of his dinner when our hero hides in a cave.  Meanwhile Mads develops clever ways of catching and eating raw fish, a sight almost as unpalatable as Joseph Trapanese’s screeching score. 

Even Stakhanov would be proud of the work Mads puts in, and his perseverance in getting the injured woman out of danger as he drags her up hill and down dale without a by your leave, and certainly no encouragement from his human bundle. Yet he never gives up hope until the final showdown where he sets off a flare which is totally ignored, leaving him to trudge on tirelessly through the elements. Mikkelsen’s grunting performance has a strange humour to it, matched only by the moment when he catches sight of an artic flower and then rapidly disappears through a pothole. Marvellous stuff. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 10 MAY 2019

November (2017) ****

Dir/Writer: Rainer Sarnet | Cast: Rea Lest, Jorgen Liik, Arvo Kukumagi, Katariina Unt, Taavi Eelmaa, Dieter Laser, Jette Loona Hermanis | Fantasy Horror | 115′

Rainer Sarnet’s wickedly weird adaptation of an Estonian folklore infused fairy tale is flawed but enthralling and full of magic moments of ethereal black&white beauty.

This is a film that wears its Baltic credentials proudly on its delicate fashioned sleeve – set in the deepest, creepiest snowbound forest in a remote region it features the Devil, ghosts and all kinds of mysterious and often mischievious characters. Adapted from Andrus Kivirahk’s best-seller ‘Rehepapp’, NOVEMBER is an endlessly fascinating film that has you gawping in terror and disbelief despite its rather enigmatic narrative that scratches at the edges of horror, fantasy and dark comedy. At it’s core NOVEMBER is a love story based on the premise of human survival in hard times.

The inhabitants of a distant Estonian village desperately eek out a living in frosty and threadbare poverty. The fantasy element strikes fearfully from the opening sequence that pictures a spiky mechanical creature flies through the air and into a stable where a slumbering calf is transfixed with fear as the creature, called a ‘Kratt’, lassoos it with a sturdy steel chain, transporting it through the night sky and into the barn of a nearby farm. And this is how the inhabitants survive by robbing and cheating each other with their supernatural robotic aids.

In this legendary land of dour and often demonic doings where characters often come back from the dead to join the living, young Liina (Rea Lest) is hoping to marry her sweetheart Hans (Jorgen Liik) while desperately avoiding the clutches of a gruesome farmer. Meanwhile Hans is in thrall to a newcomer to the village in the shape of a gorgeous German baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis), whose beauty is unrivalled and unsullied by hardship. But there’s a secret going on with both these women, and caught in a love triangle, they seek out magical ways to capture the hearts of the one the desire.

The only criticism here is that NOVEMBER is chockfull of strange and outlandish characters that fail to serve the central narrative robbing the drama of much of its delicious tension and often detracting from Sarnet’s dark humour. There’s simple too much going on. But Jacaszek sinister score provides just the right note of chilling concern to keep us waiting, and fearing that there may not be a happy ending. NOVEMBER is an arthouse gem that begs to be seen, along with Sarnet’s 2011 adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. MT 

NOW ON BLURAY COURTESY OF EUREKA MONTAGE | https://amzn.to/2CiMCB3

BEST FILM; RIGA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2017  | BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2017

 

Styx (2018) ****

Dir: Wolfgang Fischer | Cast: Susanne Wolff | Thriller | 98’

Wolfgang Fischer’s debut was evocative philosophical psycho-thriller: What You Don’t See.  STYX works along similar lines with Fischer putting his characters into difficult situations to see how they cope. Once again the result is only surface deep in this two-hander which could almost be called an eco-thriller with its glorious seascapes and focus on flora and fauna. It follows Reike, an emergency doctor who is in her mid-thirties and decides take her holidays sailing single-handedly to the Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. We are told Reike is “is confident, determined and committed” but she is also terribly naive. The film opens as she attends to an RTA before preparing for her trip equipped with the latest snazzy gear and gadgetry. Her hedonistic early days are soon over on the high seas when, after a storm, she finds herself near a stricken refugee boat.

Fischer’s sophomore effort luxuriates in a magnificent sense of place, telling its tale through visuals and atmosphere. Reike gradually faces some stark moral dilemmas as she is torn between her dream and her nagging sense of responsibility. And although we feel little for heroine, Wolff still makes for compelling viewing – a strong woman suddenly made vulnerable by her flawed sense of duty to her fellow man when she comes up against a distressed fishing trawler filled with refugees off the coast of Cape Verde.

The final stretch is tense and unsettling as Reike helps teenager Kingsley (Gedion Wekesa Odour) on board and gets emotionally involved in a story that can only end badly when her coastal support lets her down. The sober truisms of the situation are bravely laid bare in a drama that holds its own given the current refugee crisis, and while Styx offers no easy answers to the thorny dilemma it raises, it certainly offers absorbing food for thought. MT

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 27 April 2019

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | PANORAMA | ECUMENICAL PRIZE WINNER |

 

 

Canada Now Week 2019

CANADA NOW festival brings a selection of new Canadian films to the United KingdomLaunching on the 24th April 2019, nine films will play across five days at the Curzon Soho and Phoenix East Finchley cinemas, followed by a nationwide tour

As always, the 2019 CANADA NOW celebrates the independent spirit that has always been a hallmark of Canadian cinema along with its cultural diversity and twist of French heritage.

The festival opens with the London premiere of Keith Behrman’s LBGTQ+ drama GIANT LITTLE ONES, a refreshingly original and emotionally powerful coming-of-age drama. And the festival closes with Barry Avrich’s PROSECUTING EVIL, a feature biopic of Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor and life-long human rights activist. CANADA NOW expects many of the filmmakers and cast to be in attendance.

Alongside eight U.K. premieres, CANADA NOW also includes a performance from Canadian filmmaker Daniel Cockburn of his surreal, autobiographical show HOW NOT TO WATCH A MOVIE.

The full programme is listed below, and tickets are now on sale:

http://canadanow.co.uk/

Hugh Hefner’s After Dark: Speaking out in America (2018) **** Canada Now

Dir: Brigitte Berman | Doc CANADA | With: Bruce Belland, Kitty Bruce, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Maher, Ron Simon, Tony Bennett, Dick Gregory, Smokey Robinson, Leon Isaac Kennedy, John Burk, Annie Ross, Tim Hauser, Pete Seeger, Taj Mahal, Barry Melton, Dick Rosenzweig, Barbara Dane, Robert Clary, Roger McGuinn, Sivi Aberg, John Kay, Joan Baez, Michael Wadleigh, Gene Simmons, Jim Brown, Charles Strouse

Brigitte Berman chronicles the Playboy founder’s short but controversial foray into television in her entertaining and informative documentary.

Musical interludes and talking heads are deftly interwoven to provide an appreciation of just about everyone who was culturally significant throughout the Swinging Sixties. The initially engaging film increasingly works as a full-on history of US race relations, showing how black people were ostracised from the mainstream cultural offering music-wise.

This is not Berman’s first foray into the life of Hugh Hefner. In 2009 she made a documentary for Netflix: Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. The thrust of this latest film is his TV career which took the form of two TV shows set in his own bachelor pad where sexy women pander to eminent celebrities of both sexes providing the pithy cultural and political counterpoint to a relaxed soirée:”Playboy’s Penthouse” which began in Chicago in 1959 and was known as a ‘talk-and-music syndicated show’. So while David Frost was presenting That The Was the Week That Was in the UK, Hugh Hefner had found a cool way of inviting America into his drawing where an eclectic mix of black and white musicians (culturally unheard of back in the day, along with Jazz on TV) who performed in the relaxed and genial environment. These affairs  include impromptu numbers from Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Count Basie, Samie Davis Jr; Ray Charles and Toni Bennett.

On of the talking heads is Whoopi Goldberg who points out, Hefner “was a pioneer. There was nothing like it in television. And there was nothing like it because he made sure everybody was welcome.” But in the less liberal south stations refused to air this interracial mishmash and Hefner eventually pulled “Playboy’s Penthouse” in late 1960.

The other politically progressive show more focused on rock music and the counter-culture was “Playboy After Dark”, which launched in Hollywood in the summer of 1968 after Playboy’s operations moved to California. This saw Joan Baez;, Steppenwolf; The Byrds; Gore Vidal, Jerry Garcia. Peter, Paul and Mary, Smokey Robinson, and Woodstock director Michael Wadleigh – who looms rather too large. The mood is not as intimate in tune with the 1970s which felt a lot more serious generally and the chat focused on censorship, ecology and race. This time Hefner had graduated to ongoing partner in the shape of Barbi Benton and the summer-of-love vibe was echoed in “Born to Be Wild”. Another black talking head was football and film star Jim Brown who proudly claims “Hefner lets me say all the things I wanted to say,” namely that America’s black population should now focus on“expertise and finance.” Whatever that meant.

And as the bandwagon rolls on the focus is less on the music and fascinating celebrity chatter and more on general social commentary especially from Pete Seeger, beating his drum in the same old way as torpor gradually take hold of the final 20 minutes or so with the umpteenth rendition of “We Shall Overcome”.

It has to be said that this documentary certainly raises Hefner’s profile in a good way. He emerges culturally aware, racially tolerant, innovative and chipper who is articulate, voluable even, and professional and incisive in his interviewing technique.  And for those who remembered the era this film certainly goes down a treat. MT

CANADA NOW | 24 -28 APRIL 2019

Cannes Film Festival –

Thierry Frémaux (now general delegate) has unveiled the 2019 official selection. And this year’s Cannes looks to be a glittering number with plenty of real stars gracing the Croisette (Elton John, Isabelle Huppert, Tilda Swinton and Claude Lelouch), four female filmmakers in the main Competition line-up which strikes a good balance of well known auteurs and new filmmakers – and some promising British Films: Dexter Fletcher’s biopic Rocketman; Asif Kapadia new documentary about his hero Diego Maradona, and another dose of dour social realism from Ken Loach. Cannes and Netflix are still at loggerheads – in the best possible way – but where would Cannes be without a little controversy to hit to headlines…

The four Palme d’Or hopefuls directed by women are— Mati Diop’s Atlantique (she was memorable in Simon Killer);Jessica Hausner’s Sci-fi-ish debut Little Joe stars Ben Whishaw and Emily Beecham in a story set in the world of genetic engineering (left); Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (with its all female cast) and Justine Triet’s Sibyl a psychotherapist themed drama which has distinct echoes of Ozon‘s l’Amant Double. Infact, 13 of the 51 filmmakers (about 25%) are women. And Thierry intends to continue with the trend.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won the festival’s directing prize for Babel in 2006 will head up the jury. This year’s official poster (above) pays tribute to the director Agnès Varda, who died last month at age 90, and features an image from her final film La Pointe Courte. And for the first time ever, the opening film Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die will also play in competition. Styled as a zombie comedy is has a superb cast: Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Tilda Swinton.

Also in the main competition is Pedro Almodovar with Pain and Glory described as a fictionalised auto-biopic. He’s be nominated before but never won the Palme so it would be a feather in the Oscar winner’s cap. Canadian Xavier Dolan is back with a Quebec-set drama Matthias and Maxime. Il Traditore is Marco Bellocchio’s drama about Tommaso Buscetta the first mafia informant in 1980’s Sicily. Ira Sachs’s Frankie is set in the bewitching town of Sintra which will add another dimension to the story starring festival doyenne Isabelle Huppert along with Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear and Jérémie Renier. Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu tries his hand at comedy with The Whistlers which unites him once again with Vlad Ivanov (Hier and Sunset). Ladj Ly is the only first time filmmaker on the comp list and he brings a drama expanded from his 2017 short entitled Les Miserables about the Seine-Saint-Denis anti-crime brigade. Veteran favourites The Dardennes Brothers will be there will Muslim-themed Young Ahmed. Malick’s A Hidden Life (aka Radegund) explores the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector to the Third Reich who was executed in 1943 and contains final performances from Michael Nqyvist and Bruno Ganz, sadly no longer with us.

Other directors returning to competition include Oh Mercy, a Roubaix-set crime drama from Arnaud Desplechin and a family drama from South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho (Okja). And Cannes regular Kleber Mendonça Filho co-directs his latest (with Juliano Dornelle), a horror film entitled Bacurau.

Un Certain Regard sidebar has films from Catalan auteur Albert Serra – Liberté – and The Wild Goose Lake, a Chinese thriller by Diao Yinan (Black Coal, Thin Ice). Bruno Dumont’s follow up to Maid of Orleans story Jeannette (2017) is simply called Joan of Arc. 

And where would Cannes be without the megastars of the Riviera? Double Oscar-winning Claude Lelouch claimed the Palme d’Or back in 1966 with the iconic Un Homme et Une Femme. And he follows this up with the same classic duo in The Best Years of a Life (Out of Competition) uniting Jean-Louis Trintignant with Anouk Aimée. Veteran heavyweights Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog also join the party.

TV-wise there will be a chance to sample Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 10-parter  Too Old to Die Young. Venice started the TV-streaming service trend, and Cannes has now joined the bandwagon.

Thierry Frémaux left the press conference with his usual cheeky promise that other titles will soon be announced. And everyone was excited to hear that these could include Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood exploring the final years of the Golden Era with a starry line-up of Al Pacino, Leonard DiCaprio, Dakota Fanning and Margot Robbie.

For the time being no Netflix films will be included in the Palme d’Or competition, indeed the streaming giant does not have a film ready in time to be presented this year. Martin Scorsese has declared that special affects have delayed his entry of The Irishman which was very much on the cards for Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure, and will now most likely appear at Venice.

Other regulars and possible contenders are Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and the latest from Noah Baumach and Ad Astra from James Gray. So watch this space. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14 -25 MAY 2019

Jury

Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Elle Fanning

Maimouna N’Diaye

Kelly Reichardt

Alice Rohracher

Enki Bilal

Robin Campillo

Yorgo Lanthimos

Pawel Pawlikowski

 

La Vida in Comun (2019) **** Visions du Reel 2019

Dir.: Ezequiel Yanco; Cast: Isaias Barroso, Pablo Chernov, El Apoyo De, Uriel Alcaraz, Yuliana Alcaraz; Argentina, France 2019, 70 min. 

This lyrical rather eclectic coming-of-age documentary is set in the remote indigenous settlement of Pueblo Nacion Ranquel in Northern Argentina, where animals and the past play a central role. A puma is stalking the community and a group of young boys start tracking the animal, as part traditional rite of passage. La Vida En Comun is imbued with an atmosphere of transition, as if the whole colony is waiting and watching for something to happen. And Yanco captures this transitory nature of this temporary set-up with its Avantgarde houses that seem to be part of another world. Infact, Pueblo Raquel is decisively otherworldly – the buildings are from the future, but the teenagers live in the ancient world, where animals and humans lived side by side.

Apart from a few teachers, there is an absence of adults and so the unobserved teens are left to their own devices. The action is narrated by one of the girls who relates how, in an act of bravado to impress a girl, one of the youngest boys Isaias (Barroso) defied the older ones by hunting down the mighty puma, and maybe even killing him. Well, that’s what we’re led to believe.

Everything seems opaque, ephemeral, ready to disappear at any second. These are the reflected emotions of a land where expropriation was (and is) rife; where the natives who once owned this country are pushed back into a reservation where they are marginalised by the interlopers. The lyrical tone often betrays this savage past, but it is always there, hovering over the living souls.

Yanco creates his own world where teenagers hunt animals and look for an identity that remains elusive. La Vida en Comun is like a huge question mark: is it a mirage, or reality? The only thing that is certain is mighty puma. We can only watch in wonderment, looking at a unique world in-between. AS

VISIONS DU REEL | 5 -13 APRIL 2019

 

        

Yuli (2018) ***

Dir: Icíar Bollaín | Carlos Acosta, Santiago Alfonso, Carlos Enrique Almirante, Keyvin Martinez, Laura De la Uz | Biopic Drama 104

Cuba is the dazzling backdrop to this ‘all singing all dancing’ traditionally-styled biopic that vivaciously explores the rags to riches route to the international stage of its best known living export Carlos Acosta, now an celebrated ballet dancer. Based on his 2007 memoir No Way Home, it stars Acosta himself looking back on a career that has gone from minor to major striking nearly every thematic chord in life’s libretto from childhood poverty to paternal domination, racial discrimination, political turmoil and self realisation through artistic endeavour, under the glare – and glory of Castro’s regime.

Teaming up for the third time with her English husband and scripter Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake) Spanish director Icíar Bollaín (The Olive Tree) creates the irrepressibly vibrant milieu of modern Cuba where Acosta is seen rehearsing for a show that chronicles his life in the medium of dance. He is then transported back – by means of a red-bound scrapbook – to memories of his childhood where as ‘Yuli’ the cheeky young Acosta (Nuñes), named after the Cuban Santéria religion, is growing up in an impoverished barrio of Havana, with his white mother Maria (Perez) and his black father Pedro (Alfonso) who we first meet dragging Yuli away from a brilliant break-dancing routine with his pals.

The draconian Pedro has set his sights on better things for the wayward whippersnapper, and soon he is forcing him into a formal training despite the boy’s natural inclination to join a football pitch rather than the stage of the respectable Cuban School of Ballet where he soon fetches up, his talent capturing the imagination of his teacher Chery (De la Uz), who encourages him into a strict regime of training.

The years go by and the grown-up Carlos (Keyvin Martínez) finds himself travelling to London to take up an offer he soon manages to refuse, missing the warmth of his native Cuba which is by now in political meltdown. Back home, his father and Cheryl point him in the direction of dance rather than ballet – despite an approach from the Royal Ballet.

Laverty’s script tiptoes lightly over Maria of the rest of the family – alluding to mental illness for his older sister Berta (Doimeadíos) – but no love stories for Carlos, despite his popularity with the opposite sex. Knowing how well-received father/son relationships are (Boyhood, Field of Dreams etc) maybe Laverty and Bollain have decided to put Carlos and Pedro in the limelight of a story of male inspiration, particularly as it is a black one, although the decision to have Pedro give a diatribe on the slavery question in Cuba seems awkward, and strangely misplaced.

Bollaín injects plenty of joie de vivre into this sun-filled optimistic portrait with its terrific dance routines and sweeping cinematography. And although Laverty’s script sometimes follows a schematic road the performances overcome this, with Olbera Nuñes and Acosta himself the standouts. Yuli provides flamboyant entertainment for ballet lovers and mainstream audiences alike, enlivened by the presence of Acosta having so much fun. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 8 April 2019 | WORLD PREMIERE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Sunburn *** BFI Flare 2019

Dir. Vicente Alves do Ó. Portugal. 2018. 82 mins

This sexually fluid and visually lush love-in has shades of François Ozon La Piscine to it- except Ozon’s sizzling storyline puts this tepid affair distinctly in the shade.

In the heat of a languid Portuguese summer four beautiful people are languishing in a fabulous villa, sunning themselves and salivating over the next meal. A phone-call disrupts their placid naval-gazing to announce an absent friend, now back in town will shortly pay them a visit. David’s call sends unnerving ripples through the tepid torpor. Clearly he has touched their lives in different ways. His imminent arrival now creates waves of tension in this becalmed backwater as they cogitate and speculate over the outcome.

Ricardo Barbosa plays Simao a beardy, pale-skinned script-writer prone to wearing skimpy white trunks. Vasco (Ricardo Pereira), a tanned adonis with striking come-to-bed eyes has unrequited romantic yearnings, while tousled-haired Francisco (Nuno Pardal) swings both ways with the bronzed and brooding Joana (Oceana Basílio), who is keen to have his child.

Their laconic exchanges over lunch are laced with nervous insinuations as the memories of David come silently back to haunt them. Cocktails on the terrace take a more sinister turn; their after dinner sambas seem more urgent, as distant sirens announce a far away fiasco in the cool of the night.

David’s imminent arrival casts a pall over their pleasure, both individual and collective, as they remember how he slighted them each in his own special way. Yet they seem to savour the betrayal and the hurtfulness it caused them, secretly fostering hopes for a positive reunion, why ruminating over his motives, as he talks to them, unspecifically, in voiceover.

At the end of the day, this is a story that sounds much more interesting than it actually ends up being on the big screen. These beautiful people feel strangely empty in the picture perfect place they inhabit, each possessing a curious lack of personality and certain, spontaneity. Sunburn is has a brilliant premise, poorly executed, a missed opportunity for the something really stunning. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Eaten by Lions | Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir.: Jason Wingard; Cast: Antonio Aakeel, Jack Carroll, Sarah Hoare, Natalie Davis, Kevin Eldon, Vicky Pepperdine, Asim Chaudhry, Hayley Tammaddon, Neelam Bakshi, Johnny Vegas, Tom Binns; UK 2018; 99 min.

British director Jason Wingard (In another Life) has assembled a multicultural absurdist comedy featuring two teenage half brothers: one looking for his father, the other simply following big brother where ever he goes. Their madcap journey from Bradford to Blackpool ends in the bosom of a large, wealthy Asian family, where histrionics are the rule.

Omar (Aakeel) and Pete (Carroll), are alone again after the death of their Gran. Having already lost their parents in a freak accident in Africa, where they had met their demise in the jaws of a lion. The idea of living with reactionary and repressive relatives (Eldon/Pepperdine) does not appeal to the brothers, so Omar sets out to find his genetic father, a certain Malik, whose name is on his birth certificate. In Blackpool they meet punky Amy (Hoare), her campy uncle Ray (Vegas) and a fortune teller (Binns) who turn out to be useful providing them with the address of the Choudray family. Ruled by two matriarchs Sara (Tamaddon) and Tazim (Bakshi), it turns out that Malik is not Omar’s father, his progenitor is actually Irfan (Chaudhry), Malik’s younger brother, who is about as mature as Omar himself. Pete falls into the arms of young Parveen (Davis), a teenager who doesn’t speak to her family, but is very verbal with Pete, who also has a slight walking disability. When Parveen and Pete set out in grandfather Choudray’s pristine Rolls Royce, picking up oddballs from the waterfront, the scene is set for a raucous wedding finale.

Told this way, one might expect a run-of-the-mill comedy, but every character feels rather a parody, and the clichés pile up like papadums. Everyone seems to be  OTT so the lack of straight versus crazy, the very essence of any comedy, is therefore missing.  funny numbers, but not much cohesion. DoP Matt North overdoes the colourful palette making everything as saccharine as the candyfloss on the beachfront. Humour is always highly personal affair. Let’s just say that Wingard’s lack of subtlety veers on the embarrassing, and the rather undeveloped characters and storyline make for disappointing viewing. AS

EATEN BY LIONS celebrated its World Premiere on 21June at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2018 | On release from 29 March 2019 

The Tag-Along (2015) ** UK Taiwan Film Festival 2019

Dir.: Cheng Wei-hao; Cast: Wei-ning Hsu, River Huang, Liu Yin-Shang, Ming Hua-Pai; Taiwan 2015, 93 min.

Cheng Wei-hao’s horror flick is a decent debut feature but horrific it is not. Based on an old rural myth and written by Shih-Keng Chien, it set up Wei-Hao up for greater things, including a sequel, Tag Along II (2017), which scored at the box office. While the original is low on thrills, its horror elements being far too benighted,  monsters being rather too benign, Ko-Chin Chen’s atmospheric camerawork help to keep us all interested.

Estate agent Wei (Huang) lives with his grandmother Ho Wen (Shang), who spoils him rotten. His long-time DJ girlfriend Shen(Hsu) is keen on her independence Wei wants to marry and have children. The feature opens with a ‘Missing Persons’ poster of Wei’s auntie Shui (Pai), one of many who suddenly disappear. But in her case, she returns seemingly unharmed, only for Ho Wen to disappear under stranger circumstances, involving a girl in a red dress. Wei meanwhile has mortgaged his grandmother’s house to buy a luxury apartment in order to keep Shen on side, but it has the opposite effect, and then Wei disappears with his grandmother later re-appearing. Shen discovers Wei in the depths of the forest, where he is captured by evil-doers the guise of babies and monkeys.

All well and good but certainly not remotely scary and the mixture of hyper realism and horror fails to catch fire: the creepy little critters are more cute than frightening. Finally, the finale is like an advert for marriage and childbearing, somehow spoiling a diffuse project even more. 

Tag-Along II is more of the same with the director, scriptwriter and DoP collaborating once again. This follow-up sees four women in search of their missing children; again the emphasis and directive is on childbearing: any women not taking part will be punished. Needless to say the ending opens the possibility for a third part. AS

SCREENING DURING UK TAIWAN FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Human Rights Watch Festival | 15-22 March 2019

Creating a forum for courageous individuals fighting worthwhile causes on both sides of the lens, this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival returns to the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Regent Street Cinema with an international line-up of 15 award-winning documentary and feature films from Venezuela, South Africa, Palestine, Thailand and more.

The festival will open at the Barbican on 14 March with Hans Pool’s Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World, which follows the revolutionary rise of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat, dedicated to redefining breaking news by exploring the promise of open source investigation. 
 
Among other topics highlighted in the festival are: modern-day slavery in the fishing industry, South African students’ #FeesMustFall movement and the call for the decolonization of the education system; ‘boys will be boys’ rape culture; the impact of non-consensual gender assignment surgery on intersex infants; urban displacement; and a behind the scenes access to the trial of Ratko Mladić. Many filmmakers, protagonists, Human Rights Watch researchers and activists will take part in in-depth post-screening Q&A and panel discussions, some of which are detailed below:

UK Premiere: Screwdriver Mafak
Palestine-USA-Qatar 2018. Dir Bassam Jarbawi. With Ziad Bakri, Areen Omari, Jameel Khoury. 108min. Digital. EST. 15

Shot entirely on location in the West Bank, award-winning Palestinian director Bassam Jarbawi’s debut feature film tackles the physical and emotional toll of one man’s return home after 15 years in an Israeli jail. This mesmerising drama examines the trauma of reintegration after imprisonment, together with the unpredictable set of challenges faced in modern-day Palestine.

FRI 15 MAR 20:30 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: Facing the Dragon 

Afghanistan-Turkey-Germany-Australia 2018. Dir Sedika Mojadidi. 81min. Digital. EST. 15 

Afghan-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi pursues two awe-inspiring women on the front lines as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and the Taliban regains their hold. As the country’s fragile democracy shakes, threats of violence increase against Shakila, a journalist, and Nilofar, a local politician. They are soon forced to choose between duty and love for their country, and their families’ safety. 

SAT 16 MAR 18:10 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: Roll Red Roll 

USA 2018. Dir Nancy Schwartzman. 81min. Digital. 15 

In small-town Ohio, USA, a sexual assault involving members of the beloved high-school football team gained global attention. With unprecedented access to a local community struggling to reconcile disturbing truths and the journalist using social-media evidence to reveal them, this true-crime thriller cuts to the heart of debates around engrained rape culture, and unflinchingly asks: ‘Why didn’t anyone stop it?’ 

SAT 16 MAR 20:30 NFT3 | SOUTHBANK

UK Premiere: The Sweet Requiem Kyoyang Ngarmo
India-USA 2018. Dirs Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam. With Tenzin Dolker, Jampa Kalsang Tamang, Tashi Choedon. 93min. Digital. EST. 15

At the age of eight, Dolkar fled her home with her father to escape Chinese armed forces, and faced an arduous journey across the Himalayas. Now 26, she lives in a Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi, where an unexpected encounter with a man from her past awakens long-suppressed memories, propelling Dolkar on an obsessive search for the truth.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on 12 February 2019. Members of BFI Southbank can purchase tickets from 5 February and members of the Barbican can purchase tickets from 6 February.

The Snatch Thief (2018)

Wri/Dir.: Agustin Toscano; Cast: Sergio Prina, Daniel Elis, Leon Zelarrayan, Liliana Juarez, Camila Plaate, Pila Benitez Vibart; Argentina, Uruguay, France 2018,  Drama, 93 min.

Set in his home town of Tucuman in northern Argentina, Agustin Toscano’s twisty tale of a thief and his victim is spiked with mordant humour.

Social services have broken down in this poverty stricken town, the police are on strike, and Miguel (Prina) is at the end of his tether. His six-year old son Leon (Zelarrayan) lives with his mother Antonella (Plaate), waiting for child support. So Miguel and his friend Colorao (Elias) turn to crime, out of sheer desperation, using Miguel’s motorbike for a snatch-job. But their victim clings on to her bag and is dragged along for several minutes, behind them. Leaving her for dead the two run off and split the money. But Miguel feels bad and decides to visit the woman in hospital, finding her identity card in the stolen purse. Elena is alive – just, but has lost her memory. Posing as a nephew Miguel inveigles himself into her life in an clever conceit that Toscano pulls off with aplomb, his convincing plot-line playing on its plausible characters caught in a folie à deux: Miguel is a master of avoiding responsibility and Elena uses him, fully aware of his guilt. The pair make an odd couple, driving the plot forward with their intransigence and childish temper tantrums. In a way, they are both kids living in a world of wishful thinking.

DoP Arauco Hernandez Holz handheld camera searches the dark interior of Elena’s flat for every source of light, but somehow it always stays dark – like the murky world of the crime-fuelled encounter. Toscano manages a last twist – ending his humanistic play on a high note. A strong cast and imaginative direction of this simple but never simplistic storyline proves once again that a low budget need not stand in the way of a really gripping drama.  

THE SNATCH THIEF | BEST FILM, FIRST PRIZE | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2019 | UBI BANCA

 

 

 

A Decent Man | Un Om La Locul Lui (2018) *** | Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir.: Hadrian Marcu; Cast: Madalina Constantin, Bogdan Dumitrache, Arda Gales; Romania 2018,93 min.

Hadrian Marcu’s debut feature sees a man very much out of his depth emotionally when it comes to women, and especially the two women in his life. Somehow this guy finds himself in an impossible situation and retreats into the background, hoping that the women take charge. Marcu cleverly shows how  professional women often end up drawing the short straw in their emotional choices.

Based on a novel by Petru Cimpuescu, this is a classic example of how men can be highly competent in the workplace but fall apart when it comes to their private lives. And the main character does just that. And this being Romania it’s unlikely to end well. Petru, an engineer, has got involved with two women: Laura (Gales) is a doctor and pregnant with his child, and Sonia (Constantin) is the wife of his colleague who dies when the car they are travelling in goes off the road, in the film’s early scenes. Feeling stressed out and guilty Petru puts Sonia first. Soon enough, nurses in the hospital inform Laura of Petru’s infidelity, and she throws him out of her flat. Clueless and adrift, Petru hides behind Sonja, hoping for the best.

This is a very confident debut by Marcu, who never lets the action get out of hand, avoiding sentimentality as well as histrionic scenes. Dumitrache is ideal for the role of the rather hesitant Petru, who cannot do right for doing wrong. Yes, he is decent, but his emotional intelligence is limited, he wants to have his cake and eat it. When confronted by Laura, he is like a little boy who wants the teacher to let him off failing his exam. The genders seem to live a very segregated life in contemporary Romania: Petru enjoys the company of co-workers, but when he is with Laura or Sonja, or even his mother, he becomes emasculated and insecure, avoiding conflict. keeping the women apart, compartmentalising their existence, living a double life, which crashes down, when Laura learns the truth. But he has still not learnt from his mistakes, and hopes that the decision will be made for him.

DoP Adrian Silisteanu uses a handheld camera for intimate effect, keeping close to the protagonists. Even their homes tell the storyline: Petru lives in a mess; whilst Laura is a proper homemaker – even though her work is as challenging as his is. Overall, it seems Marcu has re-invented the sub-genre of male malaise, but his careful detailing and string construction of the narrative arc marks him out to be a filmaker with a future. AS

WINNER | BEST DIRECTOR | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 9-17 MARCH 2019

 

Insulaire (2018) *** Bergamo Film Meeting 2019

Dir: Stephane Goël | Wri: Antoine Jacoud/Stephane Goël With: Mathieu Amalric | Doc, 92′

In 1877 a Swiss aristocrat, Alfred von Rodt, became the governor of the remote Chilean island in the South Pacific Ocean, giving birth to the legendary term “Robinson Crusoe”. Exiled from his country and family, Rodt turned his hand to surviving without them in a utopia of his own making. While Mathieu Amalric narrates Rodt’s imagined musings (in French), the story of his current descendants unfolds before our eyes, showing little has changed on the island in the intervening 142 years, as the islanders fight for survival outside the governance of Chile, seeking political autonomy and the preservation of their indigenous identity.  

On this renamed ‘Isla Robinson Crusoe’ in the remote Juan Fernandez Archipelago  (off Chile) there are no immigrants because everyone was born there along with the firecrown hummingbirds and fur seals and (originally) imported cattle and horses. Valparaiso is the nearest mainland city and from there most of the imports arrive. The islanders are still reliant on the mainland so nothing has changed since Rodt’s day, but now the population has grown to around 900, and they appear to be increasingly insular, and proud of it too.

Stephane Goël evokes this windswept island paradise with its undulating terrain formed by ancient lava flows. Extraordinary views dominate the white sandy beaches where baby seals frolic in the waves. Rodt dreamed of creating a mini Switzerland and yet nothing could be further away as these contented South American people brush along happily together bound by their collective Catholic faith. Goël does not attempt to get know any of them so this remains largely a speculative documentary where we are projecting putative notions and ideas onto existing archive and fact. Nor does he question the natives apparently placid existence, leaving us to assume that the vast open spaces and rural existence ensures tranquility. But as the film plays out there are clearly similarities with the genial South Americans here and the well-behaved Swiss of his native Berne. And the person who unites them still lives on through this community: the indefatigable pioneer von Rodt. But was he an optimist or a simply a megalomaniac propelled by the rage of being driven out.

At this moment in time where we explore ever more closely the notions of nationalism and patriotism, this island thousands of miles away is also going through the same process. MT

INSULAIRE | BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9 – 17 MARCH 2019

 

 

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) ****

Dir.: Sara Colangelo; Cast: Maggie Gyllenhall, Parker Sewak, Gael Garcia Bernal, Daisy Tahan, Sam Jules, Michael Chernus, Ajay Naidu, Rosa Salazar; USA 2018, 96′.

Director Sara Colangelo (Little Accidents) won a Sundance directing award for this spry psychological thriller that takes constantly surprising turns.

Adapted from Nadav Lapid’s script of his French/Israeli feature of the same name (Haganenet), this is no Hollywood re-make – in fact, it was Lapid who approached the producers. By a stroke of luck, Maggie Gyllenhall (who also produced) was cast in the lead, and the result is a fascinating character study, full of ambivalence and obsessive longings.

Lisa Spinelli, having just turned forty, feels unfulfilled on many levels. Travelling to work every day on the ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, she looks forlorn and lost in her daydreams. Husband Grant (Chernus) is a bear of man, but lazy of body and mind. Her teenage children Laine (Tahan) and Josh (Jules) are an obvious disappointment to Lisa: Laine is just interested in the latest fads, and thinks her mother’s a dinosaur. Josh is even worse, and is giving up school to join the US-Army. To counter all this, Lisa has joined a poetry group – but alas, her talents are limited, and teacher Simon (Bernal) expresses his doubts politely. Enter five-year old Jimmy (Sewak), one of Lisa’s pupils, who suddenly spouts lines of poetry, which are well beyond his tender age. Lisa is thrilled, asking Jimmy to phone her, whenever a poem is ready, and the little boy responds eagerly. And it’s not difficult to understand why: he is neglected by his divorced father Nick (Naidu) who runs a shady nightclub, and his lackadaisical  babysitter Becca (Salazar), who got the job because she gets laid by his father.

In her poetry class, Lisa passes off Jimmy’s work is her own, which leads to a quick romp with Simon (Bernal), who is suitably impressed. To get more access to Jimmy, Lisa tells Nick that Becca is often late for picking-up time, and Nick fires her, only too happy that Lisa is volunteering to look after Jimmy until he fetches him in the evening. But Nick also makes it clear he expects his son to excel in sports and business, rather than try to pursue an artistic career, like his impoverished relatives. Then everything slowly unravels towards a tense finale.

Colangelo traces Lisa’s growing obsession step by step. Creativity is her only way of escape, but it’s hard for her to realise that she is dilettante –  as Simon puts it blandly. She channels all her yearnings into Jimmy, in an effort to save both him and herself. Family and society, dominated by social media, are a great disappointment to her, and Jimmy’s father Nick, is just another materialist ignoramus. Throwing all her past life away, she has to save Jimmy from the same fate that has destroyed her. She ignores her responsibilities as a teacher (and as a human being) and becomes obsessed with Jimmy being a prodigy. Lisa, who has been so gentle and rational all her life, suddenly sees Jimmy as an embodiment of herself – and is determined that he won’t suffer the same fate as she has.

DoP Pepe Avila del Pino pictures Lisa’ descent with his subtle camerawork. The rides on the ferry are a study in melancholy, and her classroom is a real work of art, light and shadows creating a nuanced moodiness. But this is Maggie Gyllenhall’s feature: she never puts a foot wrong, going seemingly unobtrusively forward from an ideology of art as a saviour, to a a full blown psychosis. Colangelo supports her aptly, particularly with a great solution at the ending: she never denounces Lisa or the relationship between her and Jimmy, which somehow survives. Kindergarten Teacher is not perfect, but portrays a specific ambiguity which is as endearing as it is dangerous. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 8 MARCH 2019       

   

                                     

                       

Pier Paolo Pasolini: New Restorations at Bergamo Film Meeting 2019

The cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini is one of the highlights of this year’s Bergamo Film Meeting taking place from 9 until 17 March 2019 in the ancient city just north of Milan in Lombardia.

PASOLINI AND THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, will consist of an exhibition of the auteur’s photos and the screening of three recently restored films: the delicately erotic Il fiore delle Mille e una notte (Arabian Nights (1974), and his two entographical documentaries: Le mura di Sana’a (The Walls of Sana’a (1971) and Appunti per un film sull’India (Notes for a film about India (1968).

In 1961 Pasolini took a trip to India with Elsa Morante and the writer Alberto Moravia (Il Conformista). Pasolini’s idea was to compare the stark reality of  the appalling poverty they encountered, with the myths and legends of the vast and exotic continent with its multi-faceted cultures. The focus here is Bombay and the extreme poverty of its environs. Sixty years later, the constrast betweet rich and poor appears even more polarised.

In 1971, while filming of The Decameron, Pasolini made this 13 minute documentary serving as an impassioned plea to UNESCO to preserve Yemen’s capital and its ancient construction. The result was this short film The Walls of Sana’a.

BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9-17 MARCH 2019

 

 

Eastern Memories (2018) *** Bergamo Film Meeting 2019

Dir: Martti Kaartinen, Niklas Kullstrom | Doc, 86′

Finnish linguist, explorer and diplomat G. J. Ramstedt (1873-1950) first published his memoirs as a radio series. And it’s easy to see how engaging his story would be without visuals. But narrated by Michael O’Flaherty (Vikings) and Frank Skog over the backdrop of visually arresting but often subversive contemporary footage it is a much more muscular experience and one that requires your constant attention and engagement. And there’s also a score to contend with. So it’s not a meditative or contemplative as you initially imagine.

Ramstedt first fetched up in Mongolia at the turn of the 20th century with the aim of mastering various Asian languages including Mongolian, Japanese, and Korean. He also wrote about Mongolian epic poetry and become the first Finnish chargé d’affaires in Japan where he also translated Japanese poetry.

Niklas Kullström and Martti Kaartinen have worked long and hard on this documentary and the structural solution they have arrived at to avoid historical visuals makes for demanding viewing. The film is full of stimulating wisdom and insight of the kind we’ve grown used to expecting from the ancient Chinese and Mongolians who saw the world from a completely different point of view than the one we are currently used to in the West. And that’s very refreshing, as it projects the past into the future. A language is not just a set of equivalent words but comes into being to serve a completely different experience in all kinds of ways and Ramstedt conveys this wisdom cleaned from his studies of poetry, religion and local folklore. Mongolian is a fricative language and has adapted itself to being heard over distances, where people communicated on horseback rather than in close or intimate indoor settings. So the language needs to be rely on loud and abrasive sounds in order to be heard.

Niklas Kullström and Martti Kaartinen’s film works best in reflecting the contemplative mores of the East, and illustrates this in a scene in a remote panoramic landscape of Mongolia where two strangers meet: “If you see a stranger on the steppe it is customary to step down from the horse and wait. For a half an hour you exchange courtesies. Then you may get to the point”. MT

 

BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9-17 MARCH 2019

Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2019

Just as Britain leaves the EU some intriguing initiatives start to open up beckoning us closer to Europe. One in particular is a crossover event that takes place each Spring in Paris and Berlin. And as we’ve already covered Berlinale 2019 we thought it might interesting to look more closely at the Paris experience.

Not having been there for quite a while I realise that Paris has changed considerably since my last visit, and is now home to some stylish new venues film and art-wise. Rencontres takes place at several of these and also visits others beyond the usual Right Bank/Left Bank weekend stamping ground. The central meeting venues are: Louvre auditorium, Forum des images, Centre Pompidou, Le Carreau du Temple and Cité internationale des arts.

The generic blurb tells us that “events include 90% European and French premieres, cartes blanches, special sessions, thematic video sessions – performances, panel discussions and a daily forum led by directors of art centres and museums, curators, artists and distributors who will share with the audience their experience and views on new audiovisual practices. Crossing new cinema and contemporary art, this unique platform in Europe provides a rare opening on contemporary audiovisual practices. Documentary approaches, experimental fictions, videos, hybrid and multimedia forms: the programme of Rencontres Internationales is the result of a thorough research and invitations to outstanding artists, personalities from cinema and the contemporary art field comprising 120 works from 40 countries; bringing together internationally renowned artists and filmmakers with young and emerging ones presented for the first time.”

But actually this turns out to be rather good value, with daily visits to the venues outside Paris – rather beguilingly described as “hors les murs” – with a daily shuttle service to new and exciting exhibition venues such as Ile-de-France, Ivry and Clamart where the latest art videos and experimental and Avantgarde art installations take place.

Cutting to the chase film-wise, the highlight of this year’s get-together is a free screening of Claire Denis’ foray into sci-fi HIGH LIFE (2018) which takes place on the 9th March at the Louvre auditorium. The disturbing feature stars Robert Pattinson as a single father in charge of his (largely) unwanted child, and Juliette Binoche as a wicked reproductive pioneer. They are both attempting to survive in Outer Space beyond the solar system after Cosmic rays hit their shuttle. It won the FIPRESCI prize at San Sebastian 2018. How about that for some international encounters? MT

RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES | PARIS/BERLIN | 5-10 March 2019 | HIGH LIFE RELEASES NATIONWIDE 10 MAY 2019

 

 

Ray and Liz (2018) ****

Dir: Richard Billingham | Cast: Justin Salinger, Ella Smith, Patrick Romer, Deidre Kelly, Tony Way, Sam Gittins, Joshua Millard-Lloyd | UK | Drama |107′

Turner prize-nominated Richard Billingham doesn’t miss a trick in portraying the squalid splendour of his early life in Birmingham during the early Seventies in his debut drama RAY & LIZ, premiering here at Locarno Film Festival.

Five years in the making, this impressively-tooled arthouse piece is not for the feint-hearted: In one scene the family dog makes quick work of some vomit spewed out after an enforced drinking spree. But this all adds to the glorious texture of his childhood experiences in the Black Country recorded fondly for posterity and in tribute to his parents, from collected photographs.

The Political undertones of the era are not swept under the grimy council house carpet but hardly forced in your face either. The Seventies were desperately difficult years for Britain, both politically and economically, and although Harold Wilson got the country back to work, it came at the price of inflation at almost 30%, the decade ending with Jim Callaghan’s humiliation at the hands of the unions in the Winter of Discontent and Margaret Thatcher taking over as prime minister in 1979.

We first meet Ray (Patrick Romer) sipping some kind of lethal home brew out of a plastic bottle after a night’s sleep, fully clothed, in his dismal bedroom. It’s a pitiful sight and we feel for him, yet he seems content enough although lost in his thoughts. As the narrative slips back and forward from Billingham’s early years to this final memory of his father, still in a council property and separated from his mother, there are poignant moments but also those that are painful to watch, such as when his “soft” uncle Lol is beaten senseless by his mother (with her shoe). And the cockroach-ridden mildewed walls and filthy ‘front room’ in their council flat makes grim viewing, as does the disgusting sight of bloated and chain-smoking Liz on one of her shouty outbursts. But the film is never maudlin. Welcome bursts of cheeky humour occasionally lurk round the corner even in this God-forsaken highrise hovel with its menagerie of invited and uninvited animals, such as the time when little Jason poured chilli powder into his father’s mouth while he was asleep. 

There are also echoes of Terence Davies in this social realist memoire. Ray lost his job when the kids were small and his reduced masculine pride sees him making himself scarce or – even useful – around the place in contrast to his surly, stroppy wife who spends her time flower arranging. The period detail here is extraordinary, almost to the point of cliché. It’s as if Billingham has sat down and made a list of every single item he remembered from his upbringing, and then painstakingly placed it on the set and in the dialogue which is rich in local expressions recalling the era. Not an appealing film to watch but an honest, authentic and heartfelt reflection of a point in time and place. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | PREMIERED AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/281967728

Jean-Pierre Léaud | Tribute | Bergamo Film Meeting 2019

Jean-Pierre Léaud (*1944) is widely known as the face of the French Nouvelle Vague. During his impressive career he made seven film with François Truffaut and eight with Jean-Luc Godard. But the indie directors of the 1990s have continued to fascinate him and more recently he has appeared in Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre (2011) and Ming-liang Tsai’s Face (2009) and the upcoming comedy from Walter Veltroni C’e Tempo (2019).

Leaud’s transition from juvenile hero to mature character actor is quite amazing: his performance as the dying Louis XIV in Albert Serra’s La Morte du Louis XIV (2016) is stunning, and the antithesis to his very beginnings. Whilst avoided the glitz of international stardom, he has enchanted six centuries of European filmmaking.

After his debut as Pierrot in Georges Lampin’s King on horseback (1958), he was to meet François Truffaut: an encounter which would change both their lives. The sly rebel, as Truffaut called himself, had met the revolutionary of the frontal attack. After filming wrapped on Les Quatre cents Coups (400 Blows) in 1959, Truffaut took charge of Léaud who was fast becoming a social outcast. The young man had been expelled from school, his parental home and a foster family. And this trauma feeds into the narrative of 400 Blows, a black-and-white hymn to adolescence. Léaud’s Antoine steals and lies his way through a drama which  ends on the run-away Antoine facing the sea. It’s one of the most impressive finales in film history. The pairing of Truffaut and Léaud would manifest itself best in the Antoine Doinel trilogy – Baisers Volés (1968), Domicile Conjugal (1970) and L’Amour en fuite (1979), both men growing up together in a strange sort of way.

In 1966 Léaud would star in Godard’s Masculin, feminin: 15 Faits Précis, winning a Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlinale for his role as Paul, who is in a ménage-a-quatre with three women in a contemporary Paris. Loosely based on Maupassant’s short stories, this feature was the beginning of the break Godard would make with narrative cinema. Also called The Children of Marx and Coca Cola (an inter-title of the feature), sex and politics are at the core. Léaud is fragile, and the lighting shows him as beautiful and vulnerable as the three women, Madeleine (Chantal Goya), Catherine (Isabelle Duport) and Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert). All four main protagonists have very different plans for the future, when their agendas collide. There is immense elegance and beauty here  (DoP Willy Kurant), and Godard treats his actors (perhaps for the last time) with more care than in the verbal politics of later films. Pauline Kael called it “that rare achievement: a work of grace in a contemporary setting” and for Andrew Sarris it was “the film of the season”.

A year later Godard would cast Léaud as part of a group in La Chinoise (1967), this time surrounded by two women and two men, but with a very much harsher political focus. Based on Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, this was Godard’s first adventure into Maoism. Léaud is Guillaume, in love with Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), who has a much stronger personality than him, and will finally leave him. Kirilov (Lex de Bruijin), is the weakest of the trio and he will kill himself, as in the novel. Léaud’s Guillaume is in love with Veronique, but he is very much a man of clever words, but little action. Veronique on the other hand, is much braver, and decides in the end to assassinate the Russian Cultural minister on a visit to Paris. But he mixes up the numbers of his hotel room, and kills the wrong man. Wiazemsky, the grand daughter of novelist Andrew Malraux, then the Gaullist minister for Culture, fell in love with Godard, and the couple married after the shooting. As an in-joke, Godard casts Francis Jeanson in the film (Wiazemsky’s philosophy lecturer at the Paris 10 (Nanterre) University) having a debate with Veronique while on her way to assassinate the minister.

Pier Paolo Pasolino’s Porcile (1969) tells two parallel stories. The first is about a young cannibal who has killed his father. The second features Léaud as Julian Klotz, the son of German entrepreneur (Alberto Lionello), who is part of the German economic miracle after WWII. Julian’s fiancée Ida (Wiazemsky) is very much an early version of the Baader Meinhof Group, and tries in vain to agitate him. But Julian can’t stand people in general. He prefers the company of pigs, who will be his downfall. Léaud is again the angelic outsider, treating society with avoidance. He is so much more feminine than Ida, that the role reversal is quite breathtaking and Léaud carries his limited part with great sensitivity.

Truffaut’s 1973 outing La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night), is essentially about filmmaking, showing Léaud as the weak and self-obsessed actor Alphonse. During the filming of Je vous présente Pamela , a conventional weepie, he fancies leading lady Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who has recently had a breakdown. Out of pity she sleeps with him but Alphonse then ‘phones her analyst, Dr Nelson (David Markham), who has left his own family to live with her, and spills the beans on their fling. Léaud plays the histrionic weakling with great skill. And Truffaut, playing himself as the director, assumes the role of his protector – much as in real life. Godard, who by now had broken with his ex-friend Truffaut, called Day for Night “a big lie” – later the two founding fathers of the Nouvelle Vague fought over  Léaud who somehow survived the acrimony and went on to work with another enfant terrible, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.

I hired a Contract Killer (1990) was one of Kaurismaki’s first English language films and he made a beeline for Léaud in the lead role. The gamine actor of Day for Night had since changed dramatically. His slight, almost feminine appearance was gone, and he’d put on a substantial amount of weight – his acting too was from another dimension. He plays Henri Boulanger, an English Civil Servant, who is sacked after fifteen years of service due to privatisation. With no life outside his work, he tries – in vain – to commit suicide. Then asks a contract killer (Kenneth Colley) to step in. But Margaret (Margi Clarke) gives his life a new meaning. With time running out, Henri tries to contact the killer, to reverse the order. Léaud is totally morbid and emotionally reduced, the environment is straight out of the 1950s, the colours pale, bleached out by wear and tear. Léaud’s agile friskiness has been replaced by gentle placidness, making him look much older than forty-six. But his acting had matured too, and he slips easily into character roles nobody would have expected from him in his New Wave days. AS

BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9-17 MARCH 2019

 

 

Festival Focus: Bergamo Film Meeting 2019 | 9-17 March 2019

Bergamo Film Meeting unveils its 37th edition from March 9 – 17, 2019 in the mountain side venue just north of Milan in the Italian Dolomites. Bergamasco is one of Italy’s most intriguing dialects and the town boasts a wealth of gourmet restaurants and bars where you can savour saffron-flavoured risottos and a legendary pancetta laced pasta dish called casonelli alla bergamasca in a rich butter sauce accompanied by the local wines, including the famous red Moscato di Scanzo. Local handmade ice creams are based on regional ingredients, with stracciatella a speciality.

To open this year’s festival there will be a live performance of Fritz Lang’s  METROPOLIS on Friday 8th March, 20.30, Ex Chiesa di Sant’Agostino – P.le Sant’Agostino, Bergamo.

During the nine screening days and more than 180 films among feature films including world premieres, docs and short-films

COMPETITION EXHIBITION

Dedicated to new auteurs, the International competition will premiere 7 feature films, which will compete for the Bergamo Film Meeting Award (the audience will grant 5,000 euros to the best three films) and, from this year, for the Best Director Award (the International Jury will grant 2,000 euros to the best director). The competition line-up includes three debut features: British director Jamie Jones’ Obey; Holy Boom, which won an award at Zaragoza festival for Greek filmmaker Maria Lafi; Hadrian Marcu’s A Decent Man and Balkan feature Raindrops, Borders from Nikola Mijovic. Also in competition are two winners from last year’s San Sebastian festival: Benjamin Naishtat’s gripping Argentinian thriller RojoThe Snatch Thief from Agustin Toscano. Richard Billingham’s multi-awarded biopic Ray & Liz, 

CLOSE UP

Dedicated to documentary cinema. Two awards will be assigned: the Best Documentary CGIL Bergamo – Close Up Section (the audience will grant 2,000 euros) and the CGIL Jury Prize (the CGIL Bergamo trade union delegates will grant 1,000 euros).

EUROPE, NOW!

The complete works of two filmmakers who, in the last few years, have portrayed Europe’s varied  aspects through a uniquely personal vision: the Norwegian BENT HAMER (10001 Grams) and the Spanish director ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ (Marshland) along with his collaborator RAFAEL COBOS, will be guests of the Festival from March 13 to 16.

RETROSPECTIVES 

JEAN-PIERRE LÉAUD. The renowned actor will be a guest of the Festival to mark this tribute to his film canon. The retro includes I Hired A Contract Killer; La Chinoise; L’amour en Fuite, La nuit americaine, Le depart, Les quatre cent coups, Masculin et Feminin, Porcile, La mort de Louis XIV, La mama et le putain. 

Also joining the celebration will be Macedonian director and cinematographer Karpo Godino as part of THE YUGOSLAVIAN BLACK WAVE: Retro of his work.

Polish director, animator, painter, cartoonist and performer MARIUSZ WILCZYŃSKI will also join to take part in the festival.

TRIBUTE to PETER MULLAN

PASOLINI AND THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, special event consisting of a photo exhibition, a panel discussion and the screening of three restored films: Il fiore delle Mille e una notte (Arabian Nights, 1974), Le mura di Sana’a (The Walls of Sana’a, 1971) and Appunti per un film sull’India (Notes for a film about India, 1968)

https://www.bergamofilmmeeting.it/

 

Everybody Knows (2018) ***

Dir: Asghar Farhadi | Cast: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Barbara Lennie, Ricardo Darin | Drama

Penelope Cruz is the star turn of the off kilter drama. Returning to Spain from Argentina with her two teenagers, Laura is back to celebrate her sister’s Irene’s wedding. Husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) soon follows, and she also reconnects with an old boyfriend (Bardem) as events take a less sunny turn.

Farhadi (A Separation) directs from a script written in Farsi and translated into Spanish, which he learnt phonetically.Tepid as a psychological thriller with a telenovela-esque twist, the film’s strength and most of its attraction lies in the three dynamic central performances and the picturesque 16th century setting in the town of Torrelaguna (Madrid) which is very much a character in itself, gloriously brought to life in Jose Luis Alcaine’s zinging images. Everybody Knows provides fascinating insight into traditional Spanish country life, exposing deep fault-lines of internecine resentment, provincial pettiness and mean-spirited grudges.

The plot revolves round a secret “everybody knows” (except Laura herself) about former flame Paco (Bardem) who was devastated when she left. The whole affair seems connected to a local kidnapping that took place years previously, revealed in some newspaper cuttings that just happen to be left around in Irene’s bedroom. Soon, menacing letters start to arrive demanding money, and threatening Irene not to contact the police. This unpleasantness also lays bare a long-standing dispute between Laura’s curmudgeonly father and Paco going back years.

Laura’s absence has kept all this at bay but now it comes into full focus, re-opening old family wounds that had never really healed. Strangely nobody seems to acknowledge or discuss the perpetrators of the original kidnapping, and although this slight plothole is glossed ovrr by the polished performances of the strong cast, still remains a nagging question mark in our minds.

This is a mildly intriguing drama that rolls on despite its narrative flaws which are significantly diminished by the undeniable slickness of Farhadi’s confident direction and complemented by the lead trio in brilliant form. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 8 MARCH 2019

Hannah (2017)

Dir: Andrea Pallaoro | Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Andre Wilms, Jean-Michel Balthazar, Luca Avallone | Drama | Italy | 95′

Charlotte Rampling gives an extraordinary performance in this intimate portrait of a woman coming to terms with her loss of identity after her husband (Andre Wilms) is sent to imprison for a crime that has caused the breakdown of her family.

Andrea Pallaoro’s sophomore feature keeps us wondering what has happened to cause such emotional devastation all round. Hannah battles to face an uncertain future late in life and at a time where she feels unable to bounce back with the positivity of youth, and has lost her former place in society. Soul-searching her way forward from a past that is ambiguous and unresolved. The status quo has been devastated, and we are intrigued to discover the image portrayed in the photographs she is seen destroying.

Her marriage is clearly over, and her son will no longer speak to her due to circumstances beyond her control after events she had noting to do with, and she has also lost her connection with grandson Charlie (Savinin), who is told not to speak to her in a devastating scene where she brings him a homemade cake for his birthday party. Unable to cope she  dissolves in floods of tears. Later her swimming club membership is revoked without explanation. And she is left humiliated. She clearly knows the reason why.

Rampling carries the film through each slow-burning scene. Wandering aimlessly through streets in Brussels and along a beach in Knocke she is a picture of broken a life. And we feel for her. Shattered by  anguish and pitiful in her loneliness, Rampling makes the film both compelling and quietly devastating. In an effort to keep going and survive what has gone before, Hannah joins a self-help group practising the Alexander Technique, and keeps house for a woman whose own son appears to be blind. Despite this work, Hannah seems to be highly intelligent and full of graceful manners suggesting she has somehow come down in the world, from a well-to-do household. Her son is well-spoken and her own behaviour suggests good breeding.

Clearly Pallaoro had something in mind along the lines of Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman. Hannah’s emotional fragmentation leads to her to a (symbolic) meeting with a beached whale on the beach at Knokke Heist – showing a helplessness on Pallaoro’s part, which cannot be overcome by Chayse Irvin’s stylishly cold and forbidding visuals. They show a wintry landscape, forlornly mirroring Hannah’s state of mind. MT

Andrea Pallaoro was born in Trento, Italy. He received his BA from Hampshire College before going on to study film directing at the California Institute of the Arts. His credits as director include the short Wunderkrammer (08) and the feature Medeas(13). Hannah (17) is his latest film.

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES | premiered at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Cinema Made in Italy 2019 |

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is back in London to kick off the Spring with the latest crop of Italian films. The 9th edition takes place at Cine Lumiere and is supported by Istituto Luce Cinecitta and the Italian Cultural Institute.

LORO ****

Director: Paolo Sorrentino Cast: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kasia Smutniak, Euridice Axen, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Roberto De Francesco, Dario Cantarelli, Anna Bonaiuto | 150′

Paolo Sorrentino’s savage political satire is a powerful portrait of controversial Italian public figure Silvio Berlusconi and his inner circle. | UK release date: 19 April 2019

EUFORIA ***

Director: Valeria Golino | Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Valerio Mastandrea, Isabella Ferrari, Valentina Cervi, Jasmine Trinca, Francesco Borgese, Francesco Pellegrino, Andrea Germani, Marzia Ubaldi | 120′

Valeria Golino’s second film as a director explores brotherly love through two very different siblings. It stars her on/off partner Riccardo Scamarcio as one of two brothers brought together through adversity when one falls dangerously ill. Matteo is a man of means in central Rome, Ettore is a primary teacher in their provincial hometown. Beautifully photographed in the eternal city, Euforia ultimate predictability is rescued by the strength of its dynamic performances.

RICORDI? ***

Director: Valerio Mieli | Cast: Luca Marinelli, Linda Caridi, Giovanni Anzaldo, Camilla Diana, Anna Manuelli, Eliana Bosi, David Brandon, Benedetta Cimatti, Andrea Pennacchi, 106′

After success with her debut Ten Winters this touching love story explores the ups and downs of this emotional journey for two young lovers Luca Marinelli and Linda Caridi.

LUCIA’S GRACE (Troppa Grazia) ***

Director: Gianni Zanasi | Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Elio Germano, Hadas Yaron, Giuseppe Battiston, Carlotta Natoli, Thomas Trabacchi, Daniele De Angelis, Rosa Vannucci, Elisa Di Eusanio, Davide Strava | 110′ 

Alba Rohrwacher blazes through this upbeat ecumenical drama that sees single working mother Lucia juggling her life between motherhood, an emotionally exhausting romance, and her work as a land surveyor. When she discovers that an ambitious new building project will have devastating effects on the locale, she debates whether to challenge the project when up pops a mysterious woman, claiming to be the Madonna and offering to support Lucia in flagging up her concerns, and suggesting the construction of a church as an alternative. This whimsical affair offers cheap laughs as an alternative to trusting its strong psychological elements, but Vladan Radovic’s lively camerawork and a strong cast carry it through in the end.   

THE GUEST (L’Ospite) ****

Director: Duccio Chiarini | Cast: Daniele Parisi, Silvia D’Amico, Anna Bellato, Federica Victoria Caiozzo aka Thony, Milvia Marigliano, Daniele Natali, Guglielmo Favilli : 96′

Sofa-surfing is the theme of this coming of age drama about the ups and downs of modern day love and commitment phobia. Guido (Daniele Parisi) is a 38-year-old academic who is writing a pot-boiler on Italo Calvino. But his girlfriend girlfriend (Silvia D’Amico) is having none of it, and puts an end to their flagging relationship forcing him to out of his cosy existence to face some uncomfortable truths through the experiences of lodging with his friends and family. Insightful and enjoyable  .

THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE MOON ( L’Uomo che compró la Luna) ***

Director: Paolo Zucca |Cast: Jacopo Cullin, Stefano Fresi, Francesco Pannofino, Benito Urgu, Lazar Ristovski, Angela Molina |  103′

This off the wall spy-themed buddy movie from Sardinia stars Jacopo Cullin as a secret agent tasked with investigating a claim that one of his compatriots has bought the Moon as a gift for his girlfriend. Teaming up with his fellow Sardinian Badore (Benito Ugo) the pair set off to infiltrate the Sardinian community and investigate the ludicrous idea in a surefire but engagingly silly caper.

WHEREVER YOU ARE (Ovunque Proteggemi) ***

Director: Bonifacio Angius |Cast: Alessandro Gazale, Francesca Niedda, Antonio Angius, Anna Ferruzzo, Gavino Ruda, Mario Olivieri | 94′

Bonifacio Angius won the Junior Jury Award at Locarno for Perfidia (2014) and returns with this impressively perceptive drama about a middle-aged ‘mammalone’ with a drinking problem. Burning a hole in his mother’s pocket with his failed singing career, he has a mental breakdown and is taken to hospital, where he meets Francesca (Francesca Niedda), a young mother with drug issues. The two fall madly in love and set off on an eventful odyssey to redeem each other by reclaiming Francesca’s daughter who has been taken in to care. 

NOTTI MAGICHE ****

Director: Paolo Virzì |Cast: Mauro Lamantia, Giovanni Toscano, Irene Vetere, Giancarlo Giannini, Eugenio Marinelli, Marina Rocco, Paolo Sassanelli, Roberto Herlitzka, Regina Orioli, Andrea Roncato, Giulio Scarpati, Simona Marchini, Annalisa Arena, Ornella Muti, Jalil Lespert, Paolo Bonacelli | 125 ‘minutes

Ornella Muti makes a welcome return in Paolo Virzi’s playfully affectionate black comedy that explores the mysterious drowning of a film producer in the River Tiber. The main suspects are three young aspiring scriptwriters, and their outlandishly spirited alibis form the basis of an entertaining exploration that takes us back to the golden years of Italian cinema and a moving and magical trip through the backstreet of Rome

THE CONFORMIST (Il Conformista) *****

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci | Cast: Jean-Louis Tritignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti, José Quaglio, Yvonne Sanson | 118′

A wonderful chance to see this classic cult thriller adapted from a novel by Alberto Moravia. Set in 1938, it tells the story of an aristocratic would-be fascist who is sent to Paris to murder his former, anti-fascist philosophy tutor. Jean-Louis Tritignant is supremely sinister in the role of Marcello Clerici, whose demeanour is an eternal reminder of the banality of evil. It was an instant hit when it was released in 1970, and some say it is one of the most poetic and influential films ever made, beloved by film-makers the world over.

WE’LL BE YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Saremo Giovani e Bellissimi) ***

Director: Letizia Lamartire | 92 minutes)

In the early 1990s, 18-year-old Isabella (Barbora Bobulova) was a pop star. Two decades later she’s still on the road singing the same old songs with her son Bruno (Piavani) on guitar. But nothing can last for ever and soon the ties that bind will also unravel in this bittersweet and often poignantly moving musical love story.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | LONDON 2019 | 26 FEBRUARY – 3 MARCH

 

Die Kinder Der Toten | Children of the Dead (2018) **** Berlinale 2019 | Forum

Dir: Kelly Copper/Pavel Liska | Horror | Greta Kostka, Andrea Maier, Klaus Unterreider | Austria 2019, 90′

Based on the mammoth ghost novel by Austrian author and Nobel-prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, Kelly Cooper and Pavol Liska direct, write and shoot this Super 8mm moral tale of Zombies, transposed to a contemporary Austria still haunted by its Nazi past and neo-Nazi present.

The filmmakers cleverly conflate a migration satire with a ‘herimatfilm (or homeland film) a style popular in Germany, Switzerland and Austria from the 1940s until 1970s, radically rejecting classical cinema to create instead a moody meditation on contemporary Austria, co-produced by the National Theatre and The Steirischer Herbst ensemble, The disonnant sound of the brass band is as disturbing as the mannered acting, reminiscent of silent cinema, and logically complimented by Inter-titles, whilst the macabre actors mouth their words.

At the ‘Alpenrose’ guesthouse in the Austrian region of Styria, Karin Frenzel (Meier) and her mother (Kostka) are eating dinner. The two are bitter enemies, and make no secret of it, their animosity overheard by the other guests. Suddenly a group of Syrian refugees appear asking if this is a Syrian restaurant, but are turned away by the fiercely nationalistic landlord and his wife.  Soon afterwards, Karin and her mother die in a road accident. But this is not the only tragedy to occur. A distraught forester (Unterrieder) has lost his two sons, and is scouring the woods in search of them, to no avail. This home-movie horror immerses us in the universe of the text – and somewhere else at the same time. The parade of zombies in the supermarket recalls the genre films Jelinek herself mentioned as an inspiration, only giving greater credence to the sense that this blend of text, performance, and film, was a terrific idea. Meanwhile the Syrian refugees are seen transformed into zombies, along with Karin, who is chasing her double. Whilst Karin and her double fight, the innkeeper’s wife falls prey to the Syrian Zombies, who speak in lyrical verse. Back at the Alpenrose Inn, now transformed into a gastronomic Michelin star restaurant by the Syrians, Karin and her mother have it out for the last time.

An understanding of Austrian history is somehow necessary to appreciate the finer details of why the Zombies wear yellow Jewish Stars, and other emblems of the Third Reich. The inter-titles are crafted in old fashioned German script which contrasts with   banal mise en scene. Somehow, Jelinek’s anger is channelled into a bluntly outrageous film language by the debut filmmakers in their startling unsettling fantasy horror, which leaves no room for compromise. The duo are from the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and it’s no accident that their producer is Ulrich Seidl.

Children of the Dead won the Fipresci Prize for the Forum section of the 2019 Berlinale.

 

 

 

   

 

Grâce à Dieu (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Silver Bear Grand Jury prize

Dir/Wri: Francois Ozon | Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Denis Menochet, Swann Arlaud, Eric Caravaca, François Marthouret, Aurelie Petit, Amelie Daure, Bernard Verley | Drama, France 137′

François Ozon is known for his satirical wit and his relaxed views on sexuality. His Grand Jury Silver Bear winner By the Grace of God takes on the theme of abuse in the Catholic church and its affects on three men. But no matter how hard-hitting their experiences may be there is always a flinty glint of Ozon’s brand of dry humour peeping though to light the dark clouds of its heroes’ despair.

Grâce à Dieu is based on the real case of Father Bernard Preynat who in 2016 was charged with sexually assaulting around 70 boys in Lyon, François Ozon portrays the victims as mature men but reveals the lifelong wounds they have sustained. At the same time, the film criticises the church’s silence on paedophilia and asks about its complicity. As of January 2019, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is standing trial for ‘non-denunciation of sexual aggression’.

Ozon casts three actors at the top of their game to play the trio: Melvil Poupaud is Alexandre a wealthy Lyonnais banker who has found success with his wife Marie (Petit) and five kids. He appears to be the one least damaged by the Preyan but when it emerges the priest is still working with kids, Alexandre decides to risk jeopardising his own settled existence and blow the whistle. His parents never gave credence to his feeling back in the day, and are still making light of them, but he goes ahead with a difficult confession to the Catholic authorities. It then turns out that happily married François is the next victim, and Dénis Menochet is less cautious about his confessions, bringing his explosive emotional potential to the part. Perhaps the worst affected is Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud) who claims his whole life has been traumatised by what happened, making it difficult for him to deal parent’s divorce and destroying his ability to connect emotionally with women, and this is played out in some incendiary scenes with his partner (Daure). Gradually others join the cause and we learn how each is struggling with their private demons while creating the self-help organisation ‘La Parole Libérée’ (The Liberated Word) is just the first step.

Some of the confessions are explicit and we’re never quite sure how far Ozon tipping the balance between salaciousness and pure honesty. This is also noticeable with reference to Lyon’s gourmet traditions and fine wine and there are frequent allusions to food which is considered as important as upsetting matter in hand when the men meet up, often leading to amusing non-sequiturs: (“anymore quiche anyone”?).

The magnificent Basilica Notre Dame de Fourvière dominates the impressive opening scene as the Cardinal Barbarin hoists a golden cross over the city, almost as a blessing for what is to come in this meaty, affecting and enjoyable saga that richly chronicles a true story whose implications and repercussions are still unfolding in the present. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019 | COMPETITION.

 

 

 

Delphine et Carole (2019) Mubi

Dir.: Callisto McNulty; Documentary with Delphine Seyrig, Carole Roussopoulos; France 2019, 70 min.

Director/co-writer Callisto McNulty throws new light on the remarkable career of French actress Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990), who together with filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos (1945-2009) was one of the most noteworthy feminists in France from the late Sixties onwards. With Iona Wieder they founded the video collective Les Insoumuses (neologism, in translation Disobedient Muses) in 1975.

Seyrig’s directional debut was Ines (1974), a short documentary calling for the release of Ines Romeu, a Brazilian activist, who was incarcerated in the infamous “House of Death” of the Military Junta. she survived after years of torture and rape. And went on to meet Seyrig in the mid 1970s, when they bought one of the first Sony Portapak video cameras in France – the first was purchased by Jean-Luc Godard.

The duo staged and filmed a protest at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, pointing to the repressed fate of the even more unknown soldier’s wife and celebrating her with a massive arrangement of flowers. Seyrig also signed the ‘343 Manifesto’, admitting to have had an abortion, which was illegal until 1975 in France. Her apartment was the setting for a short film about the technique of abortion. But her first film project with Roussopoulos was Maso et Miso go Boating (1975), an ironic innuendo for Rivette’s Celine et Julie go Boating, in which different generations of women talk about their sex lives.

One woman in her sixties actually accused the younger generation of being lazy: “When it was over, I jumped up and down, I never needed an abortion”. Seyrig was also a member of the MLF (Movement de Liberation de Femmes).  

There are some illuminating TV clips from the mid-Seventies with the then Minister for Women, Françoise Giraud, former editor of Vogue and later co-founder of L’Express. Giraud supports a male journalist who states, “misogynists make the best lovers.” Later, Giraud sent a delegation to the filmmakers, urging them not to use her comments in the documentary. “Sois Belle et tais toi” (Be Pretty and shut up, 1981) followed, the two interviewing famous actresses like Jane Fonda who had been victims of “the male gaze”. Fonda reports“I did not recognise myself after my first make-up session in Hollywood – I was one from a long production line. They even asked me to have my jaw broken, so that I would have hollow cheeks. Oh yes, and a nose job too, because ‘my nose was too long, to be taken seriously in a tragedy”.

Maria Schneider makes reference to the friendships between male directors and actors on the set; whilst women often had nobody to engage with. Francois Truffaut confesses that “women end up scaring men”. There is also an amusing clip with a well-known chef seen declaring that there are no woman chefs or food critics, because women “are unsuitable” for these professions. In a short video, Seyrig and Roussopoulos filmed the protestations of sex workers who had to hide in a church to avoid being imprisoned by the police. The filmmakers were also part of the many groups who filmed the famous LIP strike, where women openly challenged the male Union for the first time.

In 1976 the two filmmakers produced “Scum’, the radical manifesto of early feminist Valerie Solanas from 1967. But the greatest achievement of Wieder, Seyrig and Roussopoulos was the foundation of The Centre Audiovsiuel de Simone de Beauvoir in 1982, an institution which has grown since to be one of the leading centres of Feminism worldwide.

Clips from many of Seyrig’s most famous features enliven this informative film that celebrates the founders of French Feminism. An excerpt from Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is particularly relevant AS

NOW ON MUBI

       

Farewell to the Night (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir: André Techiné | Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Kacey Mottet Klein, Oulaya Amamra, Stephane Bak, Kamel Labroudi, Mohamed Djouhri, Amer Alwan, Jacques Nolot | Drama, French 91’ 

Catherine Deneuve always gives star quality to her films but she feels rather miscast here as a horse trainer and almond farmer who finds out her grandson has been radicalised. 

Farewell to the Night is rather a bland film that makes nothing of the incendiary dramatic potential of the jihadist plot line. Instead it plays down the affaire to focus on the beauty of the story’s rural surroundings in Techiné’s French Pyrénees birthplace where the almond blossoms are in full flower and a magical solar eclipse takes place in the opening scene. All this contrasts with the outrage of the homegrown jihadist movement and its protagonists Alex (Mottet Klein) and his childhood sweetheart Lila (Oulaya Amamra) who are also discovering first love. Clearly this is a film for all the family, and Techiné directs with a paternalistic eye. 

Alex’s radicalisation has already taken place when the film begins, so we feel little engagement with his character and the reasons for his becoming a jihadi, and this could have enriched the storyline, particularly if young people are the film’s intended audience. It’s worth noting that Both Alex and Lila have dysfunctional backgrounds. His mother died in an accident and he blames his father, who has moved to Guadaloupe with his new family. The trauma has affected his schooling in Toulouse but he comes across as a cocky and committed young man with a clear determination to make a future with Lila, and has converted to Islam to please her. Deneuve plays Muriel with a haughty stiffness and lack of conviction. She runs the farm and equestrian school with her North African business partner Youssef (Mohamed Djouhri), but feels more at ease in the company of a young Syrian ex-fighter (Kamel Labroudi as Fouad) who comes looking for work and, despite his criminal background, actually turns up trumps. Techiné and Lea Mysius co-script this father facile affair that once again highlights the director’s keenness for stories about French-Arab culture. And he adopts a non-judgemental and rather procedural approach to Alex and Lila’s plan to join forces with ISIS recruiter Bilal (Stephane Bak), to raise finance for their jihadist cause. This involves raising a substantial amount of cash for weapons and equipment, and Alex steals part of the money from Muriel. He claims that this is kosher as she is technically an infidel. But their plan will go awry in the rather tame finale. 

There’s a clunkiness to the film’s flow particularly noticeable in the lunch scene which abruptly cuts into a clandestine jihad meeting, where Alex sports white robes and takes orders from an Islamic preacher (Amer Alwan, who collaborated with Techine on the storyline), while Lila dons a hijab for the first time. Techine softens her character by giving her a job as a gentle carer in a nursing home – one of the most caring you’ll probably ever have occasion to meet. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | SPECIAL GALA 2019

Breve Historia del Planeta Verde (2019) *** Berlinale | Panorama 2019

Dir: Santiago Loza | Drama: Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Germany | 90′
Santiago Loza was born in Cordoba, Argentina in 1971 where his edgy, award-winning dramas such as La Paz, Lips and Strange go down well with the arthouse crowd. There’s a Lynchian quality to his latest, a stunningly surreal story that revolves around Trans woman Tania who discovers her favourite grandmother has died peacefully after spending her final years with an alien. With two friends in tow Tania sets off across rural Argentina to bring the creature back to its origin. But when they arrive at Granny’s home in the depths of a petrified forest, the reality is even more bizarre than expected. Powerful childhood memories come flooding back to Tania. And the alien being is not the only surprise they encounter.
There are echoes of Amat Escalante’s 2016 feature The Untamed and even cult classic ET to this thrilling road movie that also works as a lyrical horror mystery. We never know what to expect. And Loza achieves this sense of discombobulation and dislocation with a mixture of magic realism, slo-mo camerawork, photo montage and an eerie electronic and ambient score that wafts us into the unknown depths of the dark continent, blending the commonplace with the utterly absurd, strange and uplifting: literally and metaphorically. Loza’s unique cinematic language and delightfully delicate visual style make this an ethereal experience. MT
BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | PANORAMA SECTION | 7 -17 FEBRUARY 2019

Buoyancy (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Dir.: Rodd Rathjen; Cast: Sarm Heng, Thanawut Kasro, Mony Ros; Australia 2019, 94 min

Rodd Rathjen’s feature debut has a worthy but not always convincing narrative. A teenage boy from Cambodia tries to find work in Thailand, but ends up being one of 200,000 boys from South- East Asia to ‘contribute’ six billion $ for unpaid work in the fishing industry of Thailand. More often than not, they will never see their homeland again.

Fourteen year-old Chakra (Heng) slaves away in the rice fields with his father and brother Kravaan, who is being groomed as the heir. Chakra only wants to find a girl friend, but is rejected because of his low social status. Fed up with the whole set-up he finally snaps and travels with smugglers to Thailand.  There he will have to work a month for free, to pay for the cost of the transport. But on the ramshackle trawler, where the catch is substandard seafare (to be processed into dog food), Chakra soon find out this is a life sentence of hard work. One of his fellow workers tells Chakra they “they are already” dead. The ship’s captain, Rom Ron (Kasro) and his second in command punish the crew mercilessly for any disobedience, and bind them in chains, before throwing them into the sea. Chakra’s neighbour, who is losing his mind, is bound with ropes and thrown into the water, whilst the captain brutally manhandles Chakra at the so the propellers catch Kea. More tragedy will follow.

Rathjen keeps strictly to a one-to-one realism, and DoP Michael Latham catches the doomed atmosphere on the trailer in moody images. But somehow the ending undermines what has been said before, leaving the audience with a muted reaction. MT

BERLINALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019

A Tale of Three Sisters (2019) *** Berlinale 2019

Wri/Dir: Emin Alper | Cast: Cemre Ebuzziya, Ece Yuksel, Helin Kandemir, Kayhan Acikgoz, Mufit Kayacan, Kubilay Tuncer, Hilmi Ozcelik, Basak Kivilcim Ertanoglu | Turkish, 108’

A tale of Three Sisters seems like a step backwards for Emin Alper who started his career with the outstanding psychodrama Beyond the Hill. Frenzy followed promisingly, an Istanbul set story of political turmoil.

This folkloric family fable sees him back in another rural part of Turkey, in an Anatolian mountainside village cut off from the modern world. Here three daughters are trying to escape to the capital Ankara, but are thwarted by their poor skillset and the domineering men in their lives.

Almost like a Grimm’s fairy tale the feature is imbued with a mythical quality tethered in old world customs and beliefs. There is even a village idiot who somersaults down the valley with a macabre grin – and teeth to match. But the lack of a gripping storyline sees the film rambling on for nearly two hours without a strong dramatic arc to keep us engaged.

Life goes on as it always has in this village unable to learn by its mistakes. The men drink coffee while the women look after the home. The eldest sister Reyhan (Cemre Ebuzziya) has just had a baby boy and is married to Veysal (Kayhan Acikgoz), a superstitious, embittered loser who we first meet tending his sheep on a cold winter’s night. He soon abandons the herd when confronted by two men looking to buy the fold. And his cowardly nature is the key to the second of the film’s minor tragedies unfolding in the underwhelming finale. Death, birth and illiteracy are the main setbacks for women in this patriarchal set up

Havva (Helin Kandemir), the youngest, and the middle sister Nurhan (Ece Yuksel) seem unable to be trusted with kids and have been dismissed from their care-giving jobs in Ankara by wealthy urbanite Mr Necati (Kubilay Tuncer) who controls everyone’s lot in the village. They have taken part in the Bessemer tradition whereby girls from poor families go to wealthier ones. But due to State changes these girls often never get away again and are abandoned forever in old world poverty. Their kindly widowed father, Sevket (Mufit Kayacan), is determined to find the girls other positions although they are semi-illiterate. 

Before going back to Ankara, Necati enjoys an hilltop raki picnic with Sevket and the village chief. But an unfortunate contretemps develops with Veysal ending in a punch up. Angered and resentful, the herder goes home where he also upsets Reyhan with tragic consequences.

Shot on the widescreen the magical mountain panoramas dominate along with the hostile terrain and climate. DoP Emre Erkmen works wonders with the glowing interiors where dramatic colours compliment the girls’ heightened emotions echoed in the lilting tunes of folk singers and a tremulous violin score. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | COMPETITION

Ghost Town Anthology (2019) **** Berlinale 2019 | Interview

Dir/Wri: Denis Côté | Fantasy Drama | Canada, 97′

Auteur Denis Côté explores the aftermath of tragedy in remotest Quebec where the supernatural coalesces with the everyday lives of a blighted rural community.

Well known for his off-piste forays into Canadian backwaters Ghost Town most reassembles his Locarno Golden Leopard winner Curling (2010). There are also tonal echoes of his debut Drifting States, and even Xavier Dolan’s Tom a la Ferme, which was visited by a similar existential angst. Cote bases his story on the novel by Laurence Olivier, who also co-wrote the script. Silence reigns throughout the film apart from an occasional droning sound which adds to the doleful sense of gloom.

Ghost Town Anthology is an unremittingly bleak affair scratching at the edges of horror but settling instead for a mournful mood throughout; its dysfunctional characters stuck in the icy grip of inertia. When Simon Dubé drives his car at full throttle into a wall of cement, the entire population clings together, while a vortex of wind and snow rages through their flatlands home of Irénee-les-Neiges, a place of 200 odd people.

And odd is the operative word. After the crash a handful of kids play around the wreckage, wearing masks reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s Scream. They are the recurring human motif throughout the film, their identity revealed in the finale. At the funeral chirpy mayor Diane Smallwood (Diane Lavallée) fronts up vehemently despite the mood of despair, determined to raise the morale of her townsfolk with a firm belief in allegiance. “my door is always open”. But in vain. Angered by an offer of bereavement support from the local council, she reacts with thinly veiled hostility when the Muslim therapist arrives in the shape of Yasmina (Sharon Ibgui).

Simon leaves behind a family of three: his mother Gisele (Josee Deschenes) and father Romuald (Jean-Michel Anctil) are numbed by the grief and gradually go their own separate ways, suffering in silence. Simon’s look-a-like brother Jimmy (Robert Naylor) is left in state of shock. A coy George and Mildred style couple – Louise (Jocelyne Zucco) and Richard (Normand Carriere) – offer tea and sympathy to timid live-alone single Adele (Shelley Duvall lookalike Larissa Corriveau) who Richard describes as “a few lightbulbs short of a chandelier”. But her fears seem valid enough: she heard thuds and whispering voices in their house, and ends up suspended by own disbelief. Pierre (Hubert Proulx) owns the village bar and wants to keep his partner happy by offering to do up a dilapidated house at the end of the street, until they discover it was the scene of a brutal murder years earlier. And soon the regular appearances of random figures in the gloaming seem to point to the existence of ghosts from the past. A handheld camera conveys the unstable nature of the experience, but also the ephemeral quality of life.

Jimmy actually sees Simon at close quarters by the ice hockey pitch. Yet he has visited his embalmed body in its temporary morgue, awaiting burial, come the thaw. Romuald picks up a hitchhiker who bears a striking resemblance to his son. Adele also sees one of the masked children surrounded by static figures in the distance. There’s nothing baleful or malevolent about these people, lending them further credibility in the scheme of things. And their low key presence seems to lend credence to the Christian belief that the dead are always amongst us. Despite the bleakness that’s a comforting takeaway. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | IN COMPETITION

 

 

 

 

37 Seconds (2019) *** Berlinale 2019 | Panorama

Dir.: Hikari; Cast: Mei Kayama, Misuzu Kanno, Shunsuke Daito, Makiko Watanabe, Minori Hagiwara; Japan 2019, 115 min.

Award-winning short-filmmaker Hikari has directed, written and co-produced her first feature 37 Seconds, a passionate but sometimes cloying portrait of cerebral palsy sufferer Yuma. Confined most of the time to a wheelchair, she is at the mercy of an over-protective mother who is afraid of being left behind, should her daughter gain independence.

Yuma (Kayama) is a gifted Manga artist whose work is exploited by her cousin Sayaka (Hagiwara), passing Yuka’s drawings off as her own and paying her a pittance in return. Yuma’s mother Kyoko (Kanno) is only interested in keeping her daughter under her own control, giving her no room to develop. Yuka’s father is absent, we learn later, when Yuka is visiting her twin sister Yuka in Thailand, that Kyoko has burned his letters and drawings to Yuma. She rebels and sends her portfolio to another publishing house where she is advised by the female editor, to have a sexual experience first if she wants to draw her Manga adventures. Yuma sets off to the Red Light district of Tokyo, hiring a male prostitute to have sex with – an experiment which goes wrong. She then meets sex workers Mai (Watanabe) and Toshiko (Kumashino) who take care of her, the latter travelling with her to Thailand to meet Yuka. Although Kyoko has tried to cut Yuma off from everyone but Sayaka, she has gradually come to terms with her daughter being a successful, independent human being, despite her disability.

The acting is impressive, particularly Kayama (who in real life is a social worker for cerebral palsy sufferers), and Kanno, who excels in her portrait of an overbearing mother, interdependent with her daughter. DoPs Stephen Blahut and Tomoo Ezaki enlivens the film with some impressive panorama shots of Tokyo and the Thai countryside, and always finds new angles to show Yuma’s fight for independence. But Hikari’s script is often too simplistic and far-fetched in her portraits of the altruistic sex workers. 37 Seconds (the time Yuma failed to breathe after being born) suffers also from a self-indulgent running time, but the rosy-coloured happy ending would have made Hollywood proud. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | PANORAMA

   

   

Hellhole (2019) **** Berlinale 2019

Dir.: Bas Devos; Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Willy Thomas, Hamza Belarbi, Lubna Azabal, Mieke de Grotte; Belgium/Netherlands 2019, 87 min.

Bas Devos is back with another hybrid feature, a vision of urban anxiety and alienation. The feature works as an installation where actors represent Brussels’ lost souls, very much like his 2014 Berlinale winner Violet. 

Inspired by the Brussels’ subway bombings of March 2016 Devos shows us a world out of synch. Often the images break down totally: we get a black screen. Other intervals include long shots of the skies. We watch young immigrants from the Middle East, at school and playing football. “Brussels is called the Jihadi capital of Europe. It would be better to bombard us”. One of the youngsters is Mehdi (Belarbi). He lives with his parents and two younger siblings on a council estate. His older black sheep of the family Ahmed Ahmed puts him in a no-win situation: stealing their grandmother’s jewellery, so he can pay his debts. Mehdi resists. Another bewildered soul Samira (Azabal) makes the only spoken statement of the entire feature the rest are elliptical images: “Violence for me used to be pixels on TV, now I can feel that I can touch it”.  

Meanwhile, Wannes is in a permanent state of angst, unable to get hold of his son Boris, a fighter pilot stationed in the Middle East. He tries to reach him via Skype, but the connection always breaks down. In the Mall, the brutalist architecture and cement walls close in on the shoppers creating a claustrophobic hell. Wannes has a sister, Els (de Grotte), whose husband is dying. The doctor alleviates his last hours of life. The siblings share an unspoken closeness. But closer still is his German Shepherd, who sleeps on his bed. 

Alba (Rohrwacher) is convincing as a vulnerable woman with an eating disorder. Working as a translator with the EU, she is having a break from her fiancée who lives in Rome. Alba picks up a one-night stand on a strobe-lighted dance floor, and sends him away after sex. She knows her fiancée will do the same. When she has faints at work, the fear of something sinister leads her to ask Wannes for advice, but is not convinced she has brain tumour. “The internet says so”. 

It turns out that Mehdi couldn’t find the jewellery – or at least that’s what he tells Ahmed in the Mall. He sits down depressed as two armed soldiers tell him to “keep his backpack close to his body”. At the end Wannes gets a long message from Boris explaining his job: “All images are stored and filed away. There is nothing more to it”. The camera circles a fight plane, like a commercial.

Hellhole unfurls in the city’s drab interiors. Often we get still photos – humans, seem secondary, mostly talking behind glass, in disjointed conversations. Breath-taking and original, Hellhole is like the portrait of a space station, run by aliens, as humans become more and more impersonal. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019

 

Mektoub my Love: Canto Uno (2017) ***

Dir; Abdellatif Kechiche (France, Italy, 180’, o.v. French s/t English/Italian) starring Shaïn Boumedine, Ophélie Bau, Salim Kechiouche, Lou Luttiau, Alexia Chardard, Hafsia Herzi

Scripted by regular collaborator Ghalya Lacroix, Abdellatif Kecihiche’s follow-up to Blue is the Warmest Colour is a big-screen version of François Begaudeau’s novel. It doesn’t warrant its three hour running time, and few filmmakers would have got away with such a sparse narrative: but somehow Kechiche succeeds, always re-inventing the plot, keeping the audience on board with hypnotic images – helped by the moody mellow camerawork of DoP Marco Graziaplena.

Kechiche returns to  Sête, where he filmed The Secret of the Grain, for this sensuous celebration of sex and food. Amin (Boumedine), a young scriptwriter from Paris, arrives in the Languedoc fishing town to join his large family who run a restaurant. He visits his friend Ophélie (Bau), whose husband is serving the French navy which does not prevent her from indulging in a passionate affair with Toni (Kechiouche), one of Amin’s family. Amin himself is very reserved, preferring the company of girls like Charlotte (Charchard), who are committed to a relationship. Amine’s mother, played by the director’s sister, always reminds him to go out to the beach. Amin follows her advice, falls in love with Jasmine (Luttiau), but is too shy to make headways, whilst Toni takes what he gets – which is lot, to the chagrin of Ophélie. Whilst his friends – Tony again in the forefront – are celebrating lust and alcohol in a nightclub, Amin photographs the birth of two lambs.

The critics at Venice have all remarked how Kechiche (again) sees women from a man’s perspective, which is fine; but they forget that in many scenes women prefer their own gender when dancing and flirting, and are geting on perfectly well without men. Mektoub, meaning destiny – or thereabouts, is certainly not on the same level as Blue, but it celebrates youth, summer, food and sex; and has in Amin, a very convincing counterpart to Toni’s always-ready stud. Mektoub is like a self-indulgent extended holiday: it could be edited down to a long luxurious weekend break, without losing out on the positive benefits. A perfect Valentine film – or maybe not. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 16 FEBRUARY 2019

The Golden Glove (2019)

Dir: Fatih Akin | Drama | Germany, 2019 | 102’

There are brief echoes of Reiner Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats the Soul in the opening scene of The Golden Glove. This schlocky sortie into the squalid life of a serial killer also brings to mind Ulli Lommel’s cult thriller The Tenderness of Wolves. But that’s where the comparison ends. These films offered another string to their bow. Akin’s thriller just revels in its own ghastliness, descending into a desolate world of bars and pick-up joints where in 1970s West Germany, Fritz Honka was a voracious sexual predator, butchering his victims at will.

Chilling it is not, nor remotely terrifying. The true story plays out as a pointlessly gory procedural recording each death with sensationalist fervour. Blood, gore, body parts and disgusting lavatories – you’ll laugh and shake your head at the mindless depravity of it all. 

Rather than explore the psychological profile of this demon, Akin just pictures the gruesome daily grind of Fritz Honka, a Hamburg psychopath who kept dismembered body parts of prostitutes in his attic flat in the red light district of St Pauli. When visitors complained about the smell, Honka blamed his Greek Gästarbeiter family that lived downstairs “and didn’t work”. There’s no attempt to humanise the murderer or to probe his inner life or backstory. Honka remains a cypher from beginning to end.

This is a film that doesn’t serve anyone – least of all its victims. It takes a swipe at racism and ageism but forgets to condemn misogyny. But as the credits roll, the films suddenly turns sentimental offering up poignant portraits of the real women who died – as if suddenly coming to its senses in a bid to do the right thing. We go home without understanding or clarification. A tawdry tribute to those who died.@MeredithTaylor

NOW ON MUBI

 

Sundance Film Festival | Award and Winners 2019

Sundance announced its awards last night after ten extraordinary days of the latest independent cinema. Taking place each January in Park City, snowy Utah, the festival is the premier showcase for U.S. and international independent film, presenting dramatic and documentary feature-length films from emerging and established artists, innovative short films, filmmaker forums. The Festival brings together the most original storytellers known to mankind. In his closing speech President and Founder Robert Redford commented: “At this critical moment, it’s more necessary than ever to support independent voices, to watch and listen to the stories they tell.” Over half the films shown were directed by women and 23 prizes were awarded across the board including one film from a director identifying as LGBTQI+

This year’s jurors, invited in recognition of their accomplishments in the arts were Desiree Akhavan, Damien Chazelle, Dennis Lim, Phyllis Nagy, Tessa Thompson, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Yance Ford, Rachel Grady, Jeff Orlowski, Alissa Wilkinson, Jane Campion, Charles Gillibert, Ciro Guerra, Maite Alberdi, Nico Marzano, Véréna Paravel, Young Jean Lee, Carter Smith, Sheila Vand, and Laurie Anderson.

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary/China | Dirs: Nanfu Wang/Jialing Zhang,

 photo by Nanfu Wang.

ONE CHILD NATION After becoming a mother, a filmmaker uncovers the untold history of China’s one-child policy and the generations of parents and children forever shaped by this social experiment.

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic/USA | Dir/Wri Chinonye Chukwu

 

photo by Eric Branco

CLEMENCY: Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill. Cast: Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, Wendell Pierce, Richard Gunn, Danielle Brooks.

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary: Dirs: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov | Macedonia

HONEYLAND – When nomadic beekeepers break Honeyland’s basic rule (take half of the honey, but leave half to the bees), the last female bee hunter in Europe must save the bees and restore natural balance.

The Souvenir| photo by Agatha A. Nitecka.

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic | UK | Dir/wri: Joanna Hogg

THE SOUVENIR: A shy film student begins finding her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man. She defies her protective mother and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship which comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams. Cast: Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton.

The Audience Award: U.S. Documentary, | USA  Dir: Rachel Lears:

KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE — A young bartender in the Bronx, a coal miner’s daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada and a registered nurse in Missouri build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. One of their races will become the most shocking political upset in recent American history. Cast: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic, U.S.A. Dir/Wri: Paul Downs

BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON — A woman living in New York takes control of her life – one city block at a time. Cast: Jillian Bell, Michaela Watkins, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Lil Rel Howery, Micah Stock, Alice Lee.

The Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary/Austria: Dir: Richard Ladkan

SEA OF SHADOWS/Austria – The vaquita, the world’s smallest whale, is near extinction as its habitat is destroyed by Mexican cartels and Chinese mafia, who harvest the swim bladder of the totoaba fish, the “cocaine of the sea.” Environmental activists, Mexican navy and undercover investigators are fighting back against this illegal multimillion-dollar business.

The Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic/Denmark Dir: May el-Toukhy

QUEEN OF HEARTS — A woman jeopardises both her career and her family when she seduces her teenage stepson and is forced to make an irreversible decision with fatal consequences. Cast: Trine Dyrholm, Gustav Lindh, Magnus Krepper.

 

The Audience Award: NEXT, Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra

THE INFILTRATORS / U.S.A. (Directors: , Screenwriters: — A rag-tag group of undocumented youth – Dreamers – deliberately get detained by Border Patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center. Cast: Maynor Alvarado, Manuel Uriza, Chelsea Rendon, Juan Gabriel Pareja, Vik Sahay.

The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary | USA Dirs: Steven Bognar and Julia

AMERICAN FACTORY  — In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

The Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic U.S.A. Dirs: Joe Talbot, Screenwriters: Joe Talbot,

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO — Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.

The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary NOR | Dir: Mads Brüggerwas

 photo by Tore Vollan.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld / Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium — Danish director Mads Brügger and Swedish private investigator Göran Bjorkdahl are trying to solve the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjold. As their investigation closes in, they discover a crime far worse than killing the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic | Spain (Dir/Wri: Lucía Garibaldi,

THE SHARKS / Uruguay, Argentina – While a rumour about the presence of sharks in a small beach town distracts residents, 15-year-old Rosina begins to feel an instinct to shorten the distance between her body and Joselo’s. Cast: Romina Bentancur, Federico Morosini, Fabián Arenillas, Valeria Lois, Antonella Aquistapache.

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic USA | Dir: Pippa Blanco

SHARE— After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout. Cast: Rhianne Barreto, Charlie Plummer, Poorna Jagannathan, J.C. MacKenzie, Nick Galitzine, Lovie Simone.

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency| USA | Dir: Jacqueline Olive

ALWAYS IN SEASON — When 17-year-old Lennon Lacy is found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014, his mother’s search for justice and reconciliation begins as the trauma of more than a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Emerging Filmmaker USA : Liza Mandelup

JAWLINE — The film follows 16-year-old Austyn Tester, a rising star in the live-broadcast ecosystem who built his following on wide-eyed optimism and teen girl lust, as he tries to escape a dead-end life in rural Tennessee.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing USA : Todd Douglas Miller

APOLLO 11 — A purely archival reconstruction of humanity’s first trip to another world, featuring never-before-seen 70mm footage and never-before-heard audio from the mission.

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography | U.S.A. Dir: Luke Lorentzen

MIDNIGHT FAMILY / Mexico/DOC — In Mexico City’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, the Ochoa family runs a private ambulance, competing with other for-profit EMTs for patients in need of urgent help. As they try to make a living in this cutthroat industry, they struggle to keep their financial needs from compromising the people in their care.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019

Hail Satan! (2019) *** Rotterdam Film Festival 2019

Dir: Penny Lane | US, Doc 95′

Satanism is gaining ground, but don’t panic. Penny Lane’s drôle but disappointing documentary will explain why. According to her findings, the old Devil we can come to know and love has actually been foisted by his own petard. His cult has been hijacked by a motley crew of rather ordinary people who just want to get together and counter the mainstream forces they see dominating America. No harm done. Counterbalancing  is certainly a reasonable idea, but not a compelling premise for a a full length feature documentary. 

Satanists have chosen the rather apt name of The Satanic Temple (TST for short) to represent their cause – and simply because no one else had chosen this title, they checked on the internet, and it was available. And their main man and co-founder really looks the part too with his glazed right eye and shifty expression: Lucien Greaves – not his real name – works jolly hard for the organisation as its spokesperson, ensconced in the black-painted wooden clad house (straight out of the film Halloween) in Salem Massachusetts. Some of the other supporters look rather weird too in their Gothic garb and horned headgear, but that’s about as scary as it gets. And they don’t have much to say for themselves  either, beyond criticising the people they vehemently oppose.

But doesn’t a religion have to have conviction, spirituality, beliefs and customs that transcend mere civic duty?. Amongst their seven tenets the Satanists list: compassion, a struggle for justice, and ‘the inviolability of the body’. But this doctrine could easily apply to the Girl Guides.

And Lane’s documentary certainly doesn’t make us quake in our boots over these so-called Satanists. Mild fascination turns gradually to boredom as Hail Satan! plays out, running round in ever decreasing circles in its effort to get to the crux of the organisation. What TST purports to represent seems ill-defined, but its certainly anti-establishment. The thrust of their activity is clearly to oppose government efforts to establish religious totems such as a granite structure listing the The Ten Commandments in front of a state house, and to erect their own idol which is a metallic figure called Behemoth.

But once we discover that name Satan is just a facade for TST’s rather pointless activities – such as attending ‘unbaptisms’ – and it adherents are just a bunch of average punters with nothing salacious or particularly macabre about them (except their black garb) the whole documentary starts to feel quite tedious. And the fact that they feature regularly on Fox News spinning endless ‘Satanic’ narratives won’t have a novelty value forever. On their website they maintain: We acknowledge blasphemy is a legitimate expression of personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms”. Isn’t this just the same as supporting free speech?. And there’s nothing evil about that.

There’s nothing even o suggest that Satanism is a religion. Ok, it doesn’t espouse violence or evil. Infact it doesn’t really espouse anything cogent at all, apart from being a force for decency and liberalism, and a mealy-mouthed opposition to the mainstream. But behind their black hoods and wicked headgear, there is little talk of faith, spirituality or even morality. Infact there’s no talk of anything other than their smug feeling of hiding behind something that actually doesn’t represent them at all. So their whole existence is misleading. But it’s gathering ground. Their numbers swell day by day, and you might even find yourself joining them one day. But make no mistake. If you’re drawn to this film in the hope of experiencing of something dark and dastardly, you will leave feeling disappointed. At the end of the day, these Satanists are just a bunch of small-town do-gooders.  MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019

God of the Piano (2019) Digital release

Dir: Itay Til: Cast: Naama Pries, Ron Bitterman, Shimon Mimran, Andy Levi | Drama | Israel 80′

Anat is a young woman who will let nothing get in her way, least of all accidents of nature, in this tightly-scripted and quietly chilling first feature from Israeli director Itay Tal. Prepare to be shaken and stirred.

This study of obsession brings to mind the so-called ‘tiger’ mothers who are so focused on achieving their goals, the well-being of their family is secondary, as long as everything goes according to plan. Sadly these women often come from high-performing backgrounds themselves, and such is the case with pregnant concert pianist Anat (a superbly slick Naama Pries from Laila in Haifa), whose waters break while she’s on stage.

Anat ignores this call of nature until the end of her piece, the liquid slowly pooling round her feet. But when she discovers her chortling baby has hearing difficulties, she takes the sinister step of swapping him over with another child in the hospital birthing room.

Control freaks have been vividly portrayed in arthouse cinema of late, recent examples are Calin Peter Netzer’s Golden Bear winner Child’s Pose (2013) where a mother does her utmost to change the course of law for her son. Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2016) also reworks this thorny theme with a similar cold visual aesthetic and unlikeable central character. In fact, Tal’s film is full of unpleasant types, cyphers whose means to an end makes them frighteningly real in these success-focused times.

Anat’s family are all accomplished musicians including her new son Idam, who plays like a professional pianist from the early scenes – despite his lack of genetic connection with the rest of the family. Her son’s music career gradually becomes the focus of Anat’s days, coaching him as he learns to compose and perform. Even sex with her husband goes out of the window (she is seen half-heartedly pleasuring him with her hands) as she transfers her amorous efforts to composer Shimon Mimran – the only character here with charisma – who gamely offers to help the boy with his composing.

Sex with Mimran seems to satisfy Anat more than anything else in her life: it’s as if she’s finally been fed after starving for years. But rather than trusting her intuition and taking things further with this interesting man, Anat suppresses her own needs and rushes off to promote her son to the next stage of his career.

Alarm bells ring when the local hearing-impaired centre tries to get in touch, Anat eradicating any further communication from them, even visiting the clinic to make sure they strike Idam’s records from their books. Anat’s father is a fiercely competitive man and his reaction to Idam’s talent is quite chilling: rather than encouraging the boy he seethes with anger at Idam’s perfect performance of a piece he wrote at the same age. Although we cannot like Anat’s character, we start to understand her motivations, and the strain she’s under to compete in this unforgiving family environment. A slick and enjoyable thriller and a brilliant debut from Itay Tal. MT

NOW ON iTUNES AMAZON VUDU FANDANGO ON DEMAND DVD | ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE | Big Screen Competition 2019 

 

Murder Me Monster (2018) *** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir Alejandro Fadel. Argentina. 2018. 106′

MURDER ME MONSTER’S widescreen solemnity might bring to mind the murder investigation in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. There are vague echoes too of Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, but that’s where the similarity ends. This brooding Andes-set crime mystery is the gruesome work of Los Selvajes director Alejandro Fadel, and it is certainly not for the feint hearted with its bestial themes and deformed zombie-like characters. Infact everyone in this stomach-turning horror fantasy is on edge and whispering morosely, for one reason or another. And a series of macabre murders, where heads are torn from bodies, seem to be the reason why.

The opening scene sees the dying moments of a woman whose throat has been severed and as a herd of sheep, and some other livestock are slowly make their supper of her remains, a blind man mumbles on about the murder, as slowly Fadel builds suspense out of a series of weird incidents that seem to indicate that a feral beast is on the prowl and out of control in this remote corner of Argentina where it invariably appears to be night.

Rural police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is tasked with investigating the murders and the finger seems to point to local thick-lipped weirdo David (Esteban Bigliardi) who claims that a savage creature is using certain phrases to commune with him, as if through telepathy, with a ‘silly’ voice that repeats ‘Murder Me, Monster’.

Cinematographers Manuel Rebella and Julian Apezteguia evoke nightmarish visuals often using the same technique as the painter El Greco – where the characters’ faces are often starkly backlit against a murky darkness. And there’s a garish otherworldly quality to the outdoor mountain scenes that turn increasingly Lynchian as the plot thickens. Pus-yellow, murky mustard and puke green make up the colour palette of costume and set designers Florencia and Laura Caligiuri. An atmospheric ambient score keeps the tension brewing.

This is intriguing stuff, if rather too enigmatic for its own good. A rather unsatisfying narrative eventually leaves us stranded in its own mysterious backwater, and we feel rather nauseous and bewildered by the end. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019 |

 

The Man Who Surprised Everyone (2018) **** IFFR Rotterdam 2019

Dir: Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov | Cast: Evgeniy Tsiganov, Natalya Kudryashowa, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Vasiliy Popov, Pavel Maykov, Aleksey Filimonov, Elena Voronchikhina, Maksim Vitorgan | Drama | Russia Estonia France | 105’

Russian directing duo Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov tackle a thorny subject with deftness in this classically styled and  surprisingly moving arthouse drama that had its premiere in the Orizzonti sidebar at Venice Film Festival 2018

LGBT issues are still viewed with hostility back home in Russia but the leads are completely convincing in their subtlely nuanced and solemn portrayal of a modern couple coping with extremely challenging conditions in a remote rural outpost.

Egor is a respectable family man who we first meet navigating his boat along the Siberian Taiga where he works as a forest ranger looking out for poachers. He and his wife Natalia are expecting their second child when Egor discovers he has terminal cancer but keeps his wife in the dark about his imminent death. But this is not the only secret the thoughtful middle-aged man harbours, and the filmmakers gradually draw us in establishing the couple’s joint and several feelings of joy for her, and mounting grief and unease for him: Egor must bear alone the double burden of his cancer trauma and his nascent sexual yearnings that will certainly require his wife’s forbearance. When he tells Natasha she persuades Egor to seek further help in looking for a cure. But no traditional medicine or shamanic magic can save him. Finally, left with no other option, he makes a desperate attempt to escape the reality of his death by channelling his feelings into self-identifying as a woman with initial alarm to his close community, followed by anger, disbelief and acceptance by Natasha, and we feel for both of them. His family and the local society now have to accept his new self.

Moody rain-soaked settings and subdued interiors add to the feeling of angst and quiet desperation as the couple struggle on trapped by poverty and Natasha’s ageing and ailing father in a scenario that will be feel familiar to many.

This is a grim and provocatively complex tale that needs clever handling and one that could have gone severely awry with disastrous consequences without the skill of a competent directing team. But instead clever scripting, skilful handling of the complex issues at stake and sensitive performances make for an absorbing feature and one with considerable dramatic heft as we wait for the startling denouement that requires a certain leap of faith but one that feels plausible and satisfying in the circumstances.MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Berlinale Competition films announced | Berlinale 2019

The full competition line-up and special films for this year’s Berlinale have now been announced. The festival opens with Lone Scherfig’s THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS and runs from the 7th February until the 17th. 

Vying for the Golden Bear, there are three Asian films: Zhang Yimou’s One Second, (China) Farewell My Son Wang by Xiaoshuai (China) and Öndög by Wang Quan’an (Mongolia). From Canada, festival regular Denis Côté wiIl bring his latest drama Ghost Town Anthology Israeli director Nadav Lapid brings his world premiere: Synonyms. The rest are from all over Europe. 

There are 20 world premieres this year in Berlin, and 16 films vying for the Golden Bear of which 6 are directed by women.

BERLINALE GOLDER BEAR – hopefuls and Competition films:

The Kindness of Strangers by Lone Scherfig (Denmark / Canada / Sweden / Germany / France) – Opening film. Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones and Bill Nighy star in Scherfig’s 20th film exploring the lives of four people in crisis.

The Ground beneath My Feet, by Marie Kreutzer (Austria)

Kreutzer’s first film The Fatherless won her an honourable mention at Berlinale 2011. Her latest drama follows a high powered woman has everything under control until a tragic event forces her life to unravel.

So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) by Wang Xiaoshuai (People’s Republic of China). Once again the social and economic changes in China from the 1980s until the present day are pulled into the spotlight through the experience of two couples.

Elisa y Marcela (Elisa & Marcela) by Isabel Coixet (Spain), The first recorded lesbian marriage is the subject of this black and white biopic from Catalan director Isabel Coixet.

The Golden Glove, Der Goldene HandschuhFatih Akin was born and grew up in Germany from Turkish parentage. His first literary adaptation is a crime thriller that traces back to Hamburg in the 1970s where a rampant serial killer was at large. (Germany / France) God

Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, (Gospod postoi, imeto i’ e Petrunija)  by Teona Strugar. The  male population of a Macedonian seaside town is scandalised when a young local woman decides to enact a traditionally men-only religious ceremony, but Petrunya holds her own in this unusual drama from award-winning director Teona Strugar Mitevska. Brings to mind Sworn Virgin. (Macedonia / Belgium / Slovenia / Croatia / France)

Grâce à Dieu (By the Grace of God) by François Ozon (France). French provocateur Ozon is back in Berlin with this portrait of three men who decide to challenge a Catholic priest who abused them many years previously.

I Was at Home, But by Angela Schanelec (Germany / Serbia). Franz Rogowski is the star of this Germany drama that revolves around a teenager whose brief disappearance changes the lives of his local community.

A Tale of Three Sisters (Kız Kardeşler)by Emin Alper (Turkey / Germany / Netherlands / Greece). The knock-on affects of unsuccessful adoption is the thorny theme of this drama from Emin Alper, whose award-winning, incendiary thrillers Frenzy and Beyond the Hill have delighted previous Venice and Berlinale festival-goers.

Mr. Jones by Agnieszka Holland (Poland / United Kingdom / Ukraine). Two years ago Polish director Holland won the Silver Bear with her eco-drama Spoor. She’s back in the competition line-up with a thriller about the Welsh journalist who broke the news to the Western media about the 1930s famine in the Soviet Union. Vanessa Kirby, James Norton and Peter Sarsgaard star.

Öndög by Wang Quan’an (Mongolia). Wang Quan’an is no newcomer to Berlinale. In 2010 he  won the Silver Bear for his drama Apart Together, and the Golden Bear for Tuya’s Marriage in 2006.

La paranza dei bambini (Piranhas) by Claudio Giovannesi (Italy). A gang of teenage boys terrorise the streets of Naples in this thriller based on Robert Saviano’s novel Gomorrah.

Répertoire des villes disparues (Ghost Town Anthology) by Denis Côté (Canada). It’s always a pleasure to see Denis Côté’s films – this inventive Canadian maverick was last in town with Boris Without Beatrice. Here he’s back with a fantasy drama set in the aftermath of a tragic incident in a small isolated town

Synonymes (Synonyms) by Nadav Lapid (France / Israel / Germany), with Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte. Lapid follows his 2014 drama The Kindergarten Teacher with a story about a young Israeli man who absconds to Paris with his trusty dictionary as companion.

Systemsprenger (System Crasher) by Nora Fingscheidt (Germany) a drama focusing on an unruly kid who terrorises everyone around her, not least the child protection services.

Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses) by Hans Petter Moland (Norway / Sweden / Denmark). Moland brought his politically incorrect thriller In Order of Disappearance to Berlin in 2014. His latest, Out Stealing Horses also stars Stellan Skargard as a grieving widow whose past comes to the present when he moves out to the depths of the Scandinavian countryside.

Yi miao zhong (One Second) by Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum) People’s Republic of China ). Always extravagant and visually alluring, Zhang Yimou’s stylish films win awards across the board. Fresh from Venice 2018 and the Golden Horse Festival where his latest Shadow won the top prize. He tries his luck again at Berlinale 2019 with this story that sees a film buff befriending a homeless female.

Berlinale Special at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Peter Lindbergh – Women Stories – Documentary
Germany
by Jean Michel Vecchiet (Vies et morts d’Andy Warhol, Basquiat, une vie, 6 juin 1944, ils étaient les premiers)
World premiere

Berlinale Special Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast

Photograph
India / Germany / USA
by Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox, Our Souls at Night, The Sense of an Ending)
with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Farrukh Jaffar, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Vijay Raaz, Jim Sarbh, Akash Sinha, Saharsh Kumar Shukla
European premiere

You Only Live Once  – Die Toten Hosen – Tour 2018 Documentary – World Premiere
Germany
by Cordula Kablitz-Post and concert director Paul Dugdale (Taylor Swift)

In Competition – Out of Competition

L’adieu à la nuit (Farewell to the Night) by André Téchiné (France / Germany) – Out of competition with Catherine Deneuve, Kacey Mottet Klein.
Amazing Grace realised by Alan Elliott (USA) From 1970s Warner footage – Documentary, out of competition

Marighella by Wagner Moura (Brazil) – Out of competition

The Operative by Yuval Adler (Germany / Israel / France / USA) – Out of competition

Varda par Agnès (Varda by Agnès) by Agnès Varda (France) – Documentary, out of competition

Vice by Adam McKay (USA) – Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry – Out of competition

Berlinale Special films:

ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky (Canada) – Documentary
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by Chiwetel Ejiofor (United Kingdom)
Brecht by Heinrich Breloer (Germany / Austria)
Celle que vous croyez (Who You Think I Am) by Safy Nebbou (France)
Es hätte schlimmer kommen können – Mario Adorf (It Could Have Been Worse – Mario Adorf) von Dominik Wessely (Germany) – Documentary
Gully Boy by Zoya Akhtar (India)
Lampenfieber (Kids in the Spotlight) by Alice Agneskirchner (Germany) – Documentary
El Norte (The North) by Gregory Nava (USA 1984)
Peter Lindbergh – Women Stories by Jean Michel Vecchiet (Germany) – Documentary
Photograph by Ritesh Batra (India / Germany / USA)
Watergate – Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President by Charles Ferguson (USA) – Documentary
Weil du nur einmal lebst – Die Toten Hosen auf Tour (You Only Live Once – Die Toten Hosen on Tour) by Cordula Kablitz-Post, concert director Paul Dugdale (Germany) – Documentary

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2019 | 7-17 FEBRUARY 2019 

Rotterdam Film Festival | 23 January – 3 February 2019

Rotterdam is one of the largest shipping ports in Europe and forms part of the prosperous oil-trading triangle known as ARA, along with Amsterdam and Antwerp. Rotterdam is the cradle of Modernism from the 1930s onwards and although it was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War (apart from the iconic Sonneveld House Museum which still remains, built in the Nieuwe Bouwen style). The vibrant Dutch city takes pride in its Avant garde and Art Nouveau architecture and buildings such as the Cube House (left), Kunsthal Museum and the Erasmusbrug Bridge (below) making it a magnet for design lovers – and cineastes alike.

This year’s Rotterdam Film Festival takes place from 23 January until the 3rd February with the latest World premieres running alongside 4 sections entitled Bright Future, Voices, Deep Focus and Perspectives – and a cutting-edge arts programme to add a cultural dimension to the 10 days, and this year includes SLEEPCINEMAHOTEL a one off project by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and never before seen outtakes from Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece The Colour of Pomegranates (196

The 2019 jury comprises Chilean filmmaker and artist Alfredo Jaar; Daniela Michel, festival director of Morelia Film Festival; Katriel Schory, former director of the Israel Film Fund; Pimpaka Towira, Thai filmmaker/producer and programme director of Singapore Film Festival; and Italian filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli. The festival’s Big Screen Competition awards a prize of €30,000 to its winning director whose film will be guaranteed a theatrical release in the Netherlands, as be broadcast on the Dutch public TV network NPO.

Sacha Polak’s Dirty God will open the festival.

T  I G E R   C O M P E T I T I O N

Sons Of Denmark, Ulaa Salim, 2019, Denmark, world premiere

No coração do mundo, Gabriel Martins Alves/Maurílio Martins, 2019, Brazil, world premiere

Take Me Somewhere Nice, Ena Sendijarević, 2019, Netherlands/Bosnia and Herzegovina, world premiere (left)

Present.Perfect., Shengze Zhu, 2019, USA/Hong Kong, world premiere

Sheena667, Grigory Dobrygin, 2019, Russia, world premiere

Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them, Camila José Donoso, 2019, Chile/Brazil/France/South Korea, world premiere

Koko-di Koko-da, Johannes Nyholm, 2018, Sweden/Denmark, international premiere

Els dies que vindran, Carlos Marqués-Marcet, 2019, Spain, world premiere

B I G   S C R E E N   C O M P E T I T I O N

Bangla, Phaim Bhuiyan, 2019, Italy, world premiere

The Best of Dorien B., Anke Blondé, 2019, Belgium, world premiere

God of the Piano, Itay Tal, 2019, Israel, world premiere

Hail Satan?, Penny Lane, 2018, USA, international premiere

Joel, Carlos Sorín, 2018, Argentina, European premiere

Queen of Hearts, May el-Toukhy, 2019, Denmark, European premiere

Transnistra, Anna Eborn, 2018, Sweden, world premiere

X&Y, Anna Odell, 2018, Sweden/Denmark, international premiere

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019 

The Raft (2018) ***

Dir/scr. Marcus Lindeen. Sweden/Denmark/US/Germany. 2018. 97 mins.

THE RAFT is Marcus Lindeen’s follow up to The Regretters. As another studio-based experimental film it won the top prize at this year’s CPH: DOX festival, one of Europe’s most important documentary festivals. A fascinating study in sociology and psychology, it unites a group of 7 survivors from an 11-man (and woman) raft (the Alcali), who discuss the sea-bound project they took part in during the 1970s – and their experiences then provide remarkable contrast to the people they have now become – although the archive footage is more interesting than the contemporary chats, their maturity now enables them to gain insight into their younger selves.

Marcus Lindeen was essentially playing a game with these people. They had all been selected along strict guidelines (good-looking, sexually attractive parents who may miss their children and look for support from each other) and confirm (or deny) long-standing theories on violence, provocation, sexual desire and group dynamics etc. The raft in question set sail in the Atlantic in 1973 and was put together by the radical Mexican social anthropologist Santiago Genovés, who had been involved in a plane hi-jacking. It was initially Genovés who came up with the idea to put the group in a isolating situation  and thence to study the violence and conflict that potentially ensued. Very much along the same lines as the various Uk TV realit programmes – only more dangerous – there were clearly perils involved in the seaborne voyage of the Acali from the Canary Islands to Mexico, that took over three months and was crewed by volunteers of different nationalities, race, religion and social backgrounds with the sole aim of  “creating tension”. Crucially the only person who felt conflicted was Genoves himself, and he confesses to breaking down in tears one night on deck.

Strangely enough, the only one concerned about the voyage was Maria, the Swedish captain, who stayed calm throughout a near hit from a massive tanker, and everyone grew to respect her. But soon they lose faith in Genoves who withdraws, feigning illness, and later has some sort of minor breakdown. As they set sail, Lindeen had likened this to experiments with rats, but one of the women confirms that the group eventually became inseparable regardless of their radical differences.

Distilled from over eight hours of 16mm footage, this is an extraordinary endeavour. But it could never be done today with the Health and Safety limitations, let alone the lack of Suntan cream! Far from violence and conflict, what actually comes out of this fantastic voyage is the comment “we started out ‘them and us’ and we became ‘us’”. A positive conclusion to a potentially lethal experiment. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Sundance Film Festival | 24 January – 3 February 2019

In Park City Utah, ROBERT REDFORD and his programmer John Cooper set the indie film agenda for 2019 with an array of provocative new titles. This year’s selection has the latest documentaries from Alex Gibney and Kim Longinotto (Shootin the Mafia). There will be biopics about Harvey Weinstein, Stieg Larsson (Millennium Trilogy), designer Halston, and tragic actor Anton Yelchin. English director Joanna Hogg’s latest drama The Souvenir will compete in the World Dramatic section, and Shia LeBoeuf’s scripting debut Honey Boy will compete in the US Dramatic section.
PREMIERES 2019 | D R A M A T I C 

After The Wedding

Isabel (Michelle Williams) has dedicated her life to working with the children in an orphanage in Calcutta. Theresa (Julianne Moore)…
Dir/Writer: Bart Freundlich

Animals

Would-be writer Laura (Holliday Grainger) and her free-spirited bestie Tyler (Alia Shawkat) share a messy Dublin apartment and a hearty…
Director Sophie Hyde Writer Emma Jane Unsworth

Blinded by the Light

1987, Margaret Thatcher’s England. Javed, a 16-year-old British Pakistani boy, lives in the town of Luton. His father’s recent job…
Director Gurinder Chadha, Writer Sarfraz Manzoor, Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

1969. Ted (Zac Efron) is crazy-handsome, smart, charismatic, affectionate. And cautious single mother Liz Koepfler (Lily Collins) ultimately cannot resist…
Director Joe Berlinger. Screenwriter Michael Werwie

I Am Mother

Shortly after humanity’s extinction, in a high-tech bunker deep beneath the earth’s surface, a robot named Mother commences her protocol….
Director Grant Sputore, Screenwriter Michael Lloyd Green

Late Night

Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a pioneer and legendary host on the late-night talk-show circuit. When she’s accused of being…
Director Nisha Ganatra. Screenwriter Mindy Kaling

Official Secrets

Based on the book , tells the true story of British secret-service officer Katharine Gun, who during the immediate run-up…
Director Gavin Hood, Screenwriter Sara Bernstein, Gregory Bernstein, Gavin Hood

Paddleton

An unlikely bromance between two misfit neighbors becomes an unexpectedly emotional journey when one of them is diagnosed with terminal…
Director Alex Lehmann. Screenwriter Alex Lehmann, Mark Duplass

Photograph

Rafi works as a street photographer in frenzied Mumbai, snapping improvised portraits for tourists at the city’s landmarks. When his…
Director Ritesh Batra. Screenwriter Ritesh Batra

Relive

Los Angeles detective Jack Radcliff fields a distressed phone call from his niece Ashley and rushes to the rescue—only to…
Director Jacob Estes Screenwriter Jacob Estes, Drew Daywalt

Sonja – The White Swan

Before there were the Ice Capades, there was Sonja Henie. In 1936, Henie has three Olympic gold medals and ten…
Director Anne Sewitsky. Screenwriter Mette Marit Bølstad, Andreas Markusson

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Young William Kamkwamba lives with his family in rural Malawi, where he attends school regularly and shows great aptitude for…
Director Chiwetel Ejiofor Screenwriter Chiwetel Ejiofor

The Mustang

Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a tightly wound convict fresh out of solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in…
Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Screenwriter Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, Brock Norman Brock

The Report

Senate staffer Daniel Jones is assigned the daunting task of leading an investigation into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program….
Director Scott Z. Burns. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns

The Sunlit Night

Summer is off to a terrible start for Frances (Jenny Slate). Her art project fails, her boyfriend unceremoniously kicks her…
Director David Wnendt. Screenwriter Rebecca Dinerstein

The Tomorrow Man

Retiree Ed Hemsler (John Lithgow) spends his quiet days watching the news, checking internet forums, and preparing for the end…
Director Noble Jones. Screenwriter Noble Jones

Top End Wedding

Lauren and Ned are engaged. They are in love. And they have just ten days to find Lauren’s mother (who…
Director Wayne Blair. Screenwriter Joshua Tyler, Miranda Tapsell

Troop Zero

Nine-year-old oddball Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace) is obsessed with space and making contact with the aliens of the universe. When…
Directors Bert&Bertie. Screenwriter Lucy Alibar

Velvet Buzzsaw

In the cutthroat world of fine-art trading and representation, up-and-coming agent Josephina (Zawe Ashton) stumbles across a secret weapon: hundreds…
Director Dan Gilroy. Screenwriter Dan Gilroy
PREMIERES 2019 | D O C U M E N T A R Y
The Brink / U.S.A. (Director: Alison Klayman, Producer: Marie Therese Guirgis) — Now unconstrained by an official White House post, Steve Bannon is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker with a direct line to the President. After anointing himself leader of the “populist movement,” he travels around the U.S. and the world spreading his hard-line anti-immigration message. World Premiere
ASK DR RUTH (2019) 

Don’t let her small status fool you. She may be under five feet tall but Holocaust survivor Dr Ruth Westheimer is a force to be reckoned with, as chronicled by Ryan White in his documentary portrait of the noteworthy sex therapist.

Dir: Ryan White.

Halston

Fashion designed Halston combined talent, notoriety and sheer gorgeousness to become a legend. From humble beginnings in Des Moines, Iowa this doc explores his meteoric rise to fame.

Dir: Frederic Tcheng

 Love, Antosha

Prolific young actor Anton Yelchin was wise beyond his years and influenced around him to strive for more.

Dir: Garret Price

Marianne & Leonard

Is a beautiful yet tragic love story between Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen.

Dir: Nick Broomfield

 Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen

In the 1970s Merata Mita broke through barriers of race, class and gender.

Dir/writer: Hepi Mita

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

Using words from Miles Davis’ Autobiography, Stanley Nelson’s biopic offers insight into our understanding of the legendary musician.

Dir: Stanley Nelson

 Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Mollu Ivins

With razor-sharp wit, outspoken journalist and firecracker Molly Ivins took on the good-old-boy corruption in the political establishment

Dir: Janice Engel. Writer: Janice Engel, Monique Zavistovski

The Great Hack

Have you ever filled out an online survey? Do you wonder why you received ads for products

Dir: Karim Amer, Jehane Noujam Wri: Erin Barnett, Pedro Kos, Karim Amer

The Inventor: Out for blood in Silicon Valley

Elizabeth Holmes arrived in Silicon Valley with a revolutionary medical invention. She called it “the Edison”

Director: Alex Gibney

 Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

After a stint as an editor early in her career, this American writer got the measure of publishing.

Dir: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

 Untouchable

The inside story of the meteoric rise and monstrous fall of movie titan Harvey Weinstein is laid bare.

Dir: Ursula Macfarlane

Words from a Bear

When N Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, it marked one of the first major acknowledgements of Native America.

COMPETITION TITLES | U S   D R A M A T I C

Before You Know It

Stage manager Rachel Gurner still lives in her childhood apartment—along with her off-kilter actress sister, Jackie; eccentric playwright father Mel;…
Director Hannah Pearl Utt. Screenwriters Hannah Pearl Utt, Jen Tullock

Big Time Adolescence

It’s funny: humans have been growing up for a really long time, but somehow we still suck at it. Just…
Director Jason Orley. Screenwriter Jason Orley

Brittany Runs A Marathon

Brittany Forgler is a funny, likeable, 27-year-old hot mess of a New Yorker whose trashy nightclub adventures and early-morning walks…
Director Paul Downs Colaizzo. Screenwriter Paul Downs Colaizzo

Clemency

How do you salvage your marriage when you are struggling to salvage your soul, your sense of self, and your…
Director Chinonye Chukwu. Screenwriter Chinonye Chukwu

Hala

Hala is her father’s pride and joy. Dutiful and academically gifted, she skillfully navigates both her social life as a…
Director Minhal Baig. Screenwriter Minhal Baig

Honey Boy

When 12-year-old Otis starts to find success as a child television star in Hollywood, his ex-rodeo-clown father returns to serve…
Director Alma Har’el. Screenwriter Shia LaBeouf

Imaginary Order

For Cathy, life as she’s always known it seems to be slipping away. Her sense of significance is crumbling as…
Director Debra Eisenstadt. Screenwriter Debra Eisenstadt

Luce

It’s been ten years since Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) adopted their son from war-torn Eritrea,…
Director Julius Onah. Screenwriter JC Lee, Julius Onah

Ms. Purple

In the dark karaoke rooms of Los Angeles’s Koreatown stripmalls, Kasie works as a girl, a young hostess paid to…
Director Justin Chon. Screenwriter Justin Chon, Chris Dinh

Native Son

Bigger “Big” Thomas, a young African American man, lives with his mother and siblings in Chicago. Half-heartedly involved with a…
Director Rashid Johnson. Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks

Share

After a night of partying, high-school sophomore Mandy discovers that a series of cell-phone videos of her—half-dressed and semiconscious—have gone…
Director Pippa Bianca. Screenwriter Pippa Bianco

The Farewell

After learning their beloved matriarch has terminal lung cancer, a family opts not to tell her about the diagnosis, instead…
Director Lulu Wang. Screenwriter Lulu Wang

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Jimmie Fails has one hope in life: to reclaim the majestic Victorian house his grandfather built. Every week, Jimmie and…
Director Joe Talbot. Screenwriter Joe Talbot, Rob Richert

Them That Follow

In the rugged wilderness of Appalachia, the members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by Pastor Lemuel…
Director Britt Poulton, Dan Madison Savage. Screenwriter Britt Poulton, Dan Madison Savage

The Sound of Silence

A self-taught scientist, Peter (Peter Sarsgaard) works in New York as a “house tuner”—a unique, highly specialized profession he’s invented….
Director Michael Tyburski. Screenwriter Ben Nabors, Michael Tyburski

To The Stars

In a god-fearing small town in 1960s Oklahoma, bespectacled and reclusive teen Iris endures the booze-induced antics of her mother…
Director Martha Stephens. Screenwriter Shannon Bradley-Colleary
US   D O C U M E N T A R Y  

Always in Season

Claudia Lacy wants answers. When her 17-year-old son, Lennon, was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina,…
Director Jacqueline Olive

American Factory

In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands…
Director Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert

APOLLO 11

NASA’s vaults open for the first time to spill this exquisite, never-before seen audio and 70 mm film footage of…
Director Todd Douglas Miller

Bedlam

is the first major documentary to explore the crisis in care of severely mentally-ill citizens. Set in Los Angeles,…
Director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg

David Crosby: Remember My Name

We’re all acquainted with archetypal rock bio-doc tropes: the unexpected rise to stardom, calamitous love affairs, a descent into drugs,…
Director A.J. Eaton

Hail Satan?

What kind of religious expression should be permitted in a secular nation? Holy hell, something is brewing! Just a few…
Director Penny Lane

Jawline

Austyn Tester—handsome and 17—feels oppressed by the confines of life in his small hometown in Tennessee. But in the online-streaming…
Director Liza Mandelup

Knock Down the House

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young, bold Puerto Rican bartender from the Bronx, works double shifts to save her family’s home from…
Director Rachel Lears

Midnight Family

With striking vérité camerawork, drops us directly into the frenetic nighttime emergency ecosystem of Mexico City. In the midst of…
Director Luke Lorentzen

Mike Wallace Is Here

Deemed the “enemy of the people” by our current president, journalism in America is on the chopping block. Lies, fake…
Director Avi Belkin

Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements

Irene Taylor Brodsky builds on her powerful first feature (Audience Award winner at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival) by delving…
Director Irene Taylor Brodsky

One Child Nation

In order to expose rampant human-rights abuses, filmmaker Nanfu Wang fearlessly confronted Chinese government agents in her 2016 Sundance Film…
Director Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang

Pahokee

Four high-school students, Na’Kerria, Jocabed, Junior, and BJ, embark on their senior year in Pahokee, a small Florida town on…
Director Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan

TIGERLAND

In the span of only a handful of generations, the tiger has been transformed from a venerated creature with a…
Director Ross Kauffman

Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary

It begins as a documentary about “The Amazing Johnathan,” a uniquely deranged magician who built a career out of shock…
Director Ben Berman

Where’s My Roy Cohn?

Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of twentieth-century American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues—from Senator Joseph McCarthy to…
Director Matt Tyrnauer
WORLD CINEMA   D R A M A T I C 

Dirty God

After a vicious acid attack leaves half her body covered in scars, Jade (Vicky Knight) must come to terms with…
Director Sacha Polak. Screenwriter Sacha Polak, Susanne Farrell

Divine Love

In the Brazil of 2027, where raves celebrate God’s love and drive-through spiritual-advice booths have become the norm, Joana holds…
Director Gabriel Mascaro
Screenwriter Gabriel Mascaro, Rachel Daisy Ellis, Esdras Bezerra, Lucas ParaÍzo

Dolce Fine Giornata

Maria Linde, a free-spirited, Jewish Polish Nobel Prize winner, lives in Tuscany surrounded by warmth and chaos in her family’s…
Director Jacek Borcuch. Screenwriter Jacek Borcuch, Szczepan Twardoch

Judy & Punch

In the rough-and-tumble town of Seaside (nowhere near the sea), villagers flock to Punch and Judy’s marionette theatre. Though Punch…
Director Mirrah Foulkes. Screenwriter Mirrah Foulkes

Koko-di Koko-da

Three years after their daughter Maja’s eighth birthday was interrupted by sudden tragedy, Elin and Tobias embark on a mirthless…
Director Johannes Nyholm. Screenwriter Johannes Nyholm

Monos

Belonging to a rebel group called “the Organization,” a ragtag band of child soldiers, brandishing guns and war names like…
Director Alejandro Landes. Screenwriter Alejandro Landes, Alexis Dos Santos

Queen of Hearts

Anne, a successful lawyer, lives in a beautiful modernist home with her two daughters and physician husband, Peter. Yet when…
Director May el-Toukhy. Screenwriter Maren Louise Käehne, May el-Toukhy

The Last Tree

Femi, a British boy of Nigerian heritage, enjoys a happy childhood in Lincolnshire, where he is raised by doting foster-mother…
Director Shola Amo. Screenwriter Shola Amoo

The Sharks

Rosina ticks away the days of a restless summer in her sleepy beachside town until she sights an ominous dorsal…
Director Lucía Garibaldi, Screenwriter Lucía Garibaldi

The Souvenir

Between script pitches and camera setups, Julie hosts a film-school cohort party where she meets a mysterious man named Anthony….
Director Joanna Hogg. Screenwriter Joanna Hogg

This is not Berlin

As Mexico anticipates the 1986 World Cup, 17-year-old Carlos is less interested in soccer and more interested in listening to…
Director Hari Sama. Screenwriter Rodrigo Ordóñez, Hari Sama, Max Zunino

WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

One sunny day, four young strangers—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—meet by chance at a crematorium. They have all recently lost…
Director Makoto Nagahisa. Screenwriter Makoto Nagahisa
WORLD CINEMA.  D O C U M E N T A R Y

Advocate

Israeli human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel is a force that won’t be deterred. Having defended Palestinians against a host of criminal…
Director Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaïche

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

In 1961, United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously crashed, killing Hammarskjöld and most of the crew. . It’s understood…
Director Mads Brügger

Gaza

Facing the serene Mediterranean Sea, 17-year-old Karma Khaial stands at the water’s edge and senses freedom. But in Gaza, the…
Director Garry Keane, Andrew McConnell

Honeyland

In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman in a bright yellow blouse and green headscarf, trudges up a…
Director Ljubomir Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska

Lapü

On a windy night in the Colombian desert, a young Wayúu woman named Doris sleeps in her hammock and dreams…
Dirs Juan Pablo Polanco, César Alejandro Jaimes. Writers Juan Pablo Polanco, César Alejandro Jaimes, María Canela Reyes

Midnight Traveler

In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put…
Director Hassan Fazili. Writer Emelie Mahdavian

Sea of Shadows

The Sea of Cortez is facing total collapse because of a war at sea. Mexican drug cartels have discovered the…
Director Richard Ladkani

Shooting the Mafia

In the streets of Sicily, beautiful, gutsy Letizia Battaglia pointed her camera straight into the heart of the Mafia that…
Director Kim Longinotto

Stieg Larsson – The Man Who Played With Fire

Since his untimely death, Stieg Larsson has become one of the world’s most famous authors. His Millennium Trilogy— and its…
Director Henrik Georgsson. Screenwriter Henrik Georgsson

The Disappearance of My Mother

Benedetta Barzini is a revered Italian model who shattered stereotypes by becoming a journalist and professor and gained notoriety by…
Director Beniamino Barrese. Screenwriter Beniamino Barrese

The Edge of Democracy

Once a nation crippled by military dictatorship, Brazil found its democratic footing in 1985 and then, in 2002, elected a…
Director Petra Costa. Screenwriter Petra Costa

The Magic Life of V

Wizards, magic spells, and heroic sword battles are just fantasy for some, but for Veera they’re a meaningful part of…
Director Tonislav Hristov. Screenwriter Tonislav Hristov, Kaarle Aho
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 24 JANUARY – 3 FEBRUARY 2019 | PROGRAMME COURTESY OF THE SUNDANCE INSTITUTE 

La Villa (2017) | The House by the Sea

Dir: Robert Guediguian | Cast: Ariane Ascaride, Jean Pierre Darroussin, Anais Demoustier Robinson Stevenin, Yann Tregouet | Drama | France | 107′

Robert Guediguian offers a paean to Provence in the 1970s when three siblings: famous actress Angèle (Ascaride), Armand (Meylan) and Joseph (Daroussin) all hark back to a jeunesse dorée at their father’s seaside villa, he has since suffered a debilitating stroke.

Armand is possibly the most stable of the trio. He has been running the local restaurant for the past two decades. Joseph pines for the good old days of the PCF, which makes him morose and depressed. The film plays out very much in line with a Checkov play where the past must be resolved before life can go on. Joseph too must face the music; his dance with a much younger fiancée Bérangère (Demoustier) must come to an end. Angèle is still mourning the drowning of her only child, and has fallen for a younger fisherman Benjamin (Stevenin), a fan of her stage appearances since he was a teenager. Neighbour Yvan is the only one in a ‘good place’ emotionally – the young doctor is in town to visit his elderly parents. Late catalysts to the party are Yvan’s parents and the appearance of three child refugees.

Director and co-writer Guediguian marks his 19th collaboration with his wife Ariane Ascaride, staying on familiar ground: he gently sketches out the older characters’ longing for the past, and the contemporary fast lane that young ones like Bérangère and Yvan cling to: for them decisions about the future are easy because they have one. Benjamin is somewhere in the middle – he is a romantic dreamer, who yearns for a life shaped on the past. Property speculators circle the coast line like vultures, Joseph cannot even put his memoirs in order. The three siblings are keen to keep the place and the restaurant open, they have to admit that nearly all their old neighbours has cashed in on the property boom. The refugee children at least provide Angèle with a sort of closure.

The ensemble acting is reliable, and DoP Pierre Milon (The Class) is kept busy, panning and tracking the hilly countryside, nature being the only stable element among the coming and going of humans who, with few exceptions, don’t appreciate the beauty of the stunning landscape. AS

Robert Guédiguian was born in Marseille. Many of his early films, including À la via, à la mort (95) and La Ville est tranquille(00), screened in the Director’s Spotlight programme at the 2002 Festival, and he returned to TIFF with his subsequent features Mon père est ingénieur (04), Le Voyage en Arménie(06), and Neiges du Kilimandjaro (11). Other credits include Le promeneur du champ de Mars (05), L’armée du crime (09), and Une histoire de fou (15). La Villa (17) is his latest film. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 11 January | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 première.

The Rider (2017) **** Blu-ray

Writer/Dir: Chloe Zhao | Drama | 100min | US | 2017

Skilfully melding narrative and documentary film techniques, The Rider is set on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and follows a Lakota cowboy after an accident derails his rodeo riding dreams.

Chinese-born Chloe Zhao is a writer, director and producer known for her previous Cannes outing Songs My Brothers Taught Me. THE RIDER, her second feature selected for the Directors’ Fortnight and has won the National Critics’ Aeard. It’s a poetic cinema vérité drama that explores themes of male pride, family loyalty and thwarted ambition through a moodily soulful young cowboy who is unable to continue his vocation in the rodeo circuit due to a life-changing injury.

Enlived by the magnificent mountains and windswept prairies of America’s Badland’s National Park, South Dakota, a cast of non-professional actors Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau and Lane Scott star alongside Cat Clifford, who appeared in Songs My Brothers Taught Me, make this resonant action drama feel both authentic and  informative on the subject of horse training and competitive riding.

Zhao convincingly conveys the wild excitement and thrilling danger of this male-dominated world where young cowboys are addicted to the high octane buzz of the rodeo the narrative sizzles with angst and poignant moments, where macho bravado must be tempered with patience and gentle coaxing required to tame and tackle the wild horses and train the, to be ridden, and this is where Brady has an innate ability.

Brady dearly loves his family, his father is a disappointment to him, drinking and gambling on the slot machines, but he also fails to comprehend the weight of responsibility left to his dad when Brady’s mum died leaving him to bring up his two siblings: his brother has been left brain-damaged from a rodeo accident and his kind-hearted sister clearly has learning difficulties. But after a fall competing in the circuit where he was once a leading star, the film’s unsettling tension derives from Brady’s bitter struggle to fulfill his future in the outside world, a pale comparison to his life in the wild outdoors, and he constantly torn between reality working in the local supermarket, and his desire to get back in the wild riding and training with his horses.

But this is Brady’s film and he gives a mesmerising and deeply moving turn with echoes of Montgomery Clift in The Misfitas, as a man so deeply connected to the land and his horses that he doesn’t know where else to go. MT

NOW ON BLU-RAY

The Rider won the Art Cinema Award at CANNES 2017 and National US Critics’ Award 2018

 

 

 

 

Camorra (2018) ***

Dir; Francesco Patierno | Doc | Italy 70’

Francesco Patierno offers a pragmatic but mournful insight into the criminal identity of his birthplace Naples in this historical and socio-anthropological portrait of the capital of Campania in Southern Italy.

The phrase “see Naples and die” takes on a different meaning here from the one coined during the city’s Golden Age when it was the Bourbon capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Patierno seeks to show how the city’s criminal underbelly dealt with pernicious result of unemployment and poverty through powerful self-regulation that confined crime to the working classes.

Camorra is the result of months of research among the treasures of Rai Teche and the Riccardo Carbone archive. What emerges is a surprising trove of unseen news footage and period films from the 1960s to the 1990s, enlivened by a visceral score from local musician Meg.

The Camorra ‘phenomenon’ was born from a culture of subordination. Many post-war orphaned children found in it a structure to protect them from complete poverty and homelessness. They became street workers who learnt to sell cigarettes arriving as contraband from Morocco and further afield, smuggled in by the criminal underworld. Things changed with the advent of warlord Rafaele Cutolo, who unified the activity into a single large military and economic organization providing its members with an identity of social and territorial redemption. 

The culmination of Cutolo’s power coincides with one of the darkest events in the history of the Republic, when the Christian Democrat Ciro Cirillo was kidnapped by the Red Brigades and returned after a massive family ransom was paid. Cutolo negotiated with the terrorists for the release of the politician and the State remained in his debt.

Patierno adopts a different approach to the usual one involving the violence and blood-letting for which the organisation is known. His narrative searches for a meaning and an explanation for the Camorra’s existence, tracing its history and exploring the background of its protagonists, to offer a short but engaging watch. By understanding the roots of the organisation and its methods, positive change can hopefully be brought about.MT

NOW SHOWING AT BERTHADOCHOUSE and selected arthouse venues | VENICE FESTIVAL 2018

Tribute to Richard Lormand (1962-2018)

It is with great sadness that we pay tribute to one of our greatest supporters, film consultants and readers Richard Lormand who has died aged 56.

During a long and distinguished career Richard was a leading light in international communication, film publicity and marketing, specialising in launches at the Berlin, Cannes, Locarno and Venice festivals, and just recently, Marrakech 2018 where he was preparing the 17th edition, when he died.

LOCARNO credit

Richard was a true professional and always a pleasure to work with. He handled world premieres for numerous award-winning films, including Maren Ade’s TONI ERDMANN, Ildiko Enyedi’s ON BODY AND SOUL, Fatih Akin’s IN THE FADE and SOUL KITCHEN, Alice Rohrwacher’s THE WONDERS and HAPPY AS LAZZARO, Christian Petzold’s BARBARA and PHOENIX, Samuel Maoz’s LEBANON and FOXTROT, Lav Diaz’s THE WOMAN WHO LEFT, Ritesh Batra’s THE LUNCHBOX, Takashi Miike’s 13 ASSASSINS and BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, the Taviani Brothers’ CAESAR MUST DIE, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE, Jerzy Skolimowski’s ESSENTIAL KILLING, Amos Gitai’s RABIN, Lucrecia Martel’s ZAMA and LA CIENAGA, Alexander Sokurov’s RUSSIAN ARK and FAUST, Jafar Panahi’s THREE FACES and THE CIRCLE, and Takeshi Kitano’s ZATOICHI and HANA-BI.

Richard was part of the press consultancy team of Locarno Festival and the producing teams of Mitchell Lichtenstein’s cult favourite TEETH, HAPPY TEARS (starring Demi Moore, Parker Posey, Ellen Barkin and Rip Torn) and ANGELICA (starring Jena Malone and Janet McTeer). He was also a producer on Amos Gitai’s DISENGAGEMENT, starring Academy Award-winning actress Juliette Binoche.

Born and raised outside Lafayette, Louisiana, Richard was the son of a Japanese mother and a native French-speaking Cajun American father. He began his career as a reporter/journalist for Reuters in New York City, then went on to work for the Cannes Film Festival (France), Taormina Film Festival (Italy), Torino Film Festival (Italy) and the Viennale/Vienna Film Festival (Austria). Richard also wrote and directed the 1994 award-winning short TI-BOY’S WIFE/LA FEMME DE TI-BOY (Clermont-Ferrand, Locarno, Torino).

His charisma, warmth and professionalism are rare in these days of increasingly faceless public relations, focussing on ‘hits’ and ‘likes’ on social media. Passionately driven by genuine talent and strong stories, Richard often took chances with small independent films and invested his time and talent to make sure they were noticed. His was a personal approach, genuine and always with heart. We shall miss him so much. MT

RICHARD LORMAND

London Turkish Film Week 2018 | 12 -16 December 2018

If there’s a common thread that runs through Turkish cinema it lies in the vast nation’s landscape and nature that shapes and often divides human relationships. And nowhere is this more so than in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or winner WINTER SLEEP (2014), set in the Anatolia’s mountain region of Cappadocia. Whilst the mountains represent freedom, his human characters fight it out in a claustrophobic hotel. Men are usually out of touch with their emotions in all of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films, and Winter Sleeps anti-hero Aydin is no exception. A former actor, living from his inherited wealth his property portfolio makes him a feudal lord, even though he sees himself more as an intellectual. Living with his much younger wife Nihal and recently divorced sister Necla, Ceylan confronts him with his weaknesses, peeling away his persona away layer by layer. Ceylan pays homage to Bergman and Bresson in the long, vicious arguments between Aydin, his wife and sister where the camera catches them in shot/contra-shot movement, the close-ups showing hurt on the women’s faces, and Aydin’s sarcastic smile. Echoing Bresson in Au hazard Balthazar, Ceylan uses Schubert’s piano sonata no. 20 to score the sequences between Aydin and his wife – the region’s wild horses serve as a metaphor for their seething discontent; in a more generous mood Aydin has freed one of the beasts to return to the wild. Ceylan’s intensity never lets up, leaving WINTER SLEEP as an unforgettable chronicle of human psychological warfare, amidst a towering landscape.

GRAIN (2017), directed by Semih Kaplanogu (Honey), is based on a chapter from the Quran, but can easily compete with the best of Hollywood’s dystopia. A scientist working for an all-powerful Corporation, flees into the wasteland surrounding the heavily controlled city, to find a supply grain uncontaminated by GM. There he meets a stranger, who leads him to a secret location in the rugged terrain where they eventually find what they are looking for. Giles Nuttgens’ stark black-and-white camerawork conveys a post-apocalyptic world, dwarfing the human element. An enigmatic narrative scratches to be heard in this devastated landscape where Ufo-like fighter planes hunt down the characters like animals. Kaplanogu’s symbolism echoes Tarkovsky as his protagonists are overwhelmed by the destruction of nature, a strong ‘end of days’ feeling, where fragmentation triumphs over the human weak attempts to save themselves and the planet.  A terrifying and prescient drama. 

In her debut HICRAN AND MELEK, director Esra Vesu Ozcelik explores the true meaning of female emancipation in a discursive drama set in a small rural community where Iman’s daughter Hicran hopes to find a decent job and a fulfilling marriage. Her childhood friend Melek left a decade ago for Istanbul, where she’s been working in a night club. But her abusive boyfriend has driven her back home. The two women look at their lives but never really find any answers. Again, the landscape is shown as a feature of personal identification.

Dervis Zaim’s DREAM is by the far the most ambitious feature of this year’s programme. Sine is an architect who very much sides with Prince Charles’ traditionalist views in her dislike of contemporary building design. But she is driven to eventually distraction when no-one will support her latest scheme for a cave-like mosque. Suffering from stress and insomnia, she goes into in a sleeping clinic. The treatment has a profound effect on her psychologically and physically: her four different identities then focus on one goal: to finish the project. Based on the ‘Seven Sleepers’ myth, Dream is not only a feminist manifest, but a coruscating critique of contemporary architecture.

LONDON TURKISH FILM WEEK | 12-16 DECEMBER 2018

 

          

Berlinale 2019 – First competition films announced

Opening this year with Lone Scherfig’s The Kindness of Strangers, the 69th Berlinale Film Festival (7-17 February) has announced the first competition films which include the latest from regulars François Ozon, Denis Côté and Fatih Akin.

Serbian director Angela Schanelec will present her latest film I Was at Home, but, and Emin Alper will be there with A Tale of Three Sisters, a follow up to his dazzling drama Beyond the Hill

Also competing is The Ground Beneath my Feet from Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer.

In the Berlinale Special Gala Section there is Gully Boy from Zoya Aktar (India), Heinrich Breloer’s drama Brecht which stars Trina Dyrholm and Tom Schilling and Charles Ferguson’s documentary on the Watergate scandal

COMPETITION 

Der Boden unter den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet) Austria/World Premiere

by Marie Kreutzer (The Fatherless, We Used to be Cool)

with Valerie Pachner, Pia Hierzegger, Mavie Hörbiger, Michelle Barthel, Marc Benjamin, Axel Sichrovsky, Dominic Marcus Singer, Meo Wulf

Der Goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove) Germany/France/World Premiere

by Fatih Akin (Head On, In the Fade)

with Jonas Dassler, Margarethe Tiesel, Hark Bohm

Grâce à dieu (By the Grace of God) France/International Premiere

by François Ozon (8 Women, In the House)

with Melvil Poupaud, Denis Ménochet, Swann Arlaud, Éric Caravaca, François Marthouret, Bernard Verley, Martine Erhel, Josiane Balasko, Hélène Vincent, François Chattot, Frédéric Pierrot

Ich war zuhause, aber (I Was at Home, but) Germany / Serbia/World Premiere

by Angela Schanelec (The Dreamed Path, Marseille)

with Maren Eggert, Franz Rogowski, Lilith Stangenberg, Jakob Lassalle, Clara Möller

Kız Kardeşler (A Tale of Three Sisters) Turkey / Ger/ Neth/ Greece/World Premiere

by Emin Alper (Beyond the Hill, Frenzy)

with Cemre Ebüzziya, Ece Yüksel, Helin Kandemir, Kayhan Açikgöz, Müfit Kayacan, Kubilay Tunçe

Répertoire des villes disparues (Ghost Town Anthology) Canada/World Premiere

by Denis Côté (A Skin So Soft, Bestiaire)

with Robert Naylor, Josée Deschênes, Jean-Michel Anctil, Larissa Corriveau, Rémi Goulet, Diane Lavallée, Hubert Proulx, Rachel Graton, Normand Carrière, Jocelyne Zucco

Berlinale Special Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast 

Gully Boy /India/ World Premiere

by Zoya Akhtar (You Won’t Get This Life Again, Lust Stories)

with Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Kalki Koechlin, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Vijay Raaz, Amruta Subhash, Vijay Verma 

Berlinale Special at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Brecht /Germany / Austria/World Premiere

by Heinrich Breloer (The Manns – Novel of a Century, Buddenbrooks – The Decline of a Family)

with Burghart Klaußner, Tom Schilling, Adele Neuhauser, Trine Dyrholm, Mala Emde, Franz Hartwig, Friederike Becht, Ernst Stötzner, Lou Strenger

Watergate – Documentary/USA/Euro Premiere

by Charles Ferguson (No End in Sight, Inside Job)

with Douglas Hodge, Jill Wine-Banks, Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, Richard Ben-Veniste

MORE FILMS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE COMING WEEKS

An Elephant Sitting Still | Da Xiang Xi Di Er Zuo (2018)

Dir.: Hu Bo; Cast: Zhang Yu, Peng Yuang, Wang Yuwen, Liu Congxi, Ling Zhenghui, Zhnag Xialong; China 2018, 230 min.

Written, directed and edited by the Chinese director Hu Bo, his award-winning debut is an immersive masterpiece and also his  last film: he committed suicide at the age of just 29, just before the end of shooting.

The action takes place during a single suspenseful day, from dawn to dusk, where the train to the Northern Chinese city of Manzhouli is about to depart. The only noticeable feature in this miserable backwater is an elephant, who, according to rumour, simply sits and watches the world go by.

The symbolic creature draws all sort of people from the surrounding villages: There is young Wei (Yuang), abused by his venal father who father lost his job for taking bribes. Wei’s friend Li (Zhenghui) is accused by Yu (Xiaolong) of stealing his mobile ‘phone. But Li protests his innocence, and Wei defends him. At school, Yu corners the two boys on a staircase and Wei is seriously injured after a scuffle.

This is a community on its knees and at each other’s throats, forced into crime and misdemeanour by harsh economic circumstances. The sins of the parents are meted out on their kids. Wei is in love with Huang (Yuwen) but her troubled mother has projected her own fears onto the young woman causing problems for them both, and Huang to cheat on Wei with the vice-dean of the school whose luxury apartment seems to exist in a parallel universe to the rest of city.

Their secret relationship has been outed by Li, whose phone images of Huang and the teacher, have now gone viral on the internet. The teacher throws Huang out of his flat, blaming her for jeopardising his career. At home Huang is hassled by the teacher’s wife who accuses her of ruining her marriage. And so it goes on, a series of interconnected stories of misery, mistrust and pain all gracefully crafted. A poetic epilogue sees Wang, his granddaughter, Huang and Wei at the station: their train to Manzhouli has been cancelled, forcing them to take several replacement buses to their destination.

Unfolding like one of Balzac’s novels from La Condition Humaine, Hu Bo keeps the narrative going, always finding new angles, plot lines and twists. Everything is elegantly elliptical as the main protagonists meet again and again under new circumstances, completely out of their control. They are always in motion, the city providing a beguiling backdrop to their rat-like existence. In their alienated indolence the young become victims of their elders, who prove poor role models.

Chao Fan’s camera pans relentlessness over the sordidness of it all, tracking the protagonists through the minefield of misdemeanours, like a prowling beast. Even Bela Tarr, always on the lookout for a backdrop of utter desolation, would be impressed by the machinations of Elephant; and there are shades of the Hungarian director’s Werckmeister Harmonies in the the lack of substantial interplay between these characters who glide through the swamp of the city without finding an identity: nothing sticks to them, as they drowning in the quagmire. Fan’s delicately rendered camerawork leaves a great deal to the imagination: the background often distorted in a filmic milkyway. And most impressive of all, we never notice the substantial running time: Hu Bo invites us to live with these characters, and we become part of their world.

A monumental undertaking, to be remembered as a part of film history and with utter regret for being Hu Bo’s sole feature output. A team of China’s FIRST Film Festival, who co-funded Elephant, finished the saga of despair and alienation the way Hu Bo had envisaged it. Elephant won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin Film Festival (Forum section) along with a string of awards at Festivals all over the world including The Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Asia’s equivalent to the Oscars. The copyright of An Elephant Sitting Still is now with his parents. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO 

Lynne Ramsay at the Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

We spoke to Competition Jury member Lynne Ramsay to talk about her latest project and the film that most impressed her as a child growing up in Glasgow.

Known for her ground-breaking dramas RATCATCHER (1999), MORVERN CALLAR (2002) and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011),  her latest film YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE won Best Screenplay (ex-aequo) and Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix at Cannes Film Festival 2018. (she asked not to be recorded due to a heavy cold).

LYNNE RAMSAY | MAMOUNIA HOTEL | MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/305775148

 

Capernaum (2018) *** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Nadine Labaki | Drama | 105’

Nadine Labaki gained international acclaim with her delightfully upbeat debut Caramel, set around a women’s hair salon in Beirut. Here she casts non-professional actors in a politically themed fable that sees a child resorting to the strong arm of the law. Just before the film screened at this year’s Marrakech Film Festival the news broke that the film would represent the Lebanon at the Academy Awards 2019.

This Cannes Jury Prize winner, and Golden Globe 2019 hopeful has the same stylish look as her previous two features but is a much more accomplished film that puts a watchable spin on dour social realism, although it does not quite reach the heights of perfection as the script resorts to disingenuous pandering in the slack final section. Subject-wise we are back to Daniel Blake territory although this is a much better crafted film than the one that bagged Ken Loach the Palme d’Or award several years ago. It also has to be said that CAPERNAUM does not bludgeon the life out of you with an agitprop hammer, despite a rather manipulative feel to proceedings. There are similarities too with Slumdog Millionaire in its upbeat fervour powered by cute and captivating performances from its newcomer children, and particularly from its lead Zain Al Rafeea.

Labaki structures her film round a trial, although this is not a courtroom procedural and most of the action is set in the chaotic streets or in cramped interiors where 12 year old Zain (Al Rafeea), who looks more like 8, is already serving a prison sentence for stabbing, is now suing his irresponsible parents for bringing him into the world. As one of several siblings, his parents never registered his birth. And all they seem to do is have children who they are unable to support and nourish, or even love. Despite cocky indignation and a bristling sense of entitlement to his rights, Zain is a likeable kid who lives with his parents Souad (Kawthar Al Haddad) and Selim (Fadi Kamel Youssef). Rather than school, he goes out to sell fruit juice in the market, where he also collects tramadol which the family grind into clothes-washing water which is then passed to Zain’s prison-serving elder brother. Later this tramadol water comes in as a usual way of earning money when Zain strikes out on his own. Although these circumstances are all startling to Western viewers, it has to be said that they are sadly run of the mill for millions of kids all over the world. But medication here in the Lebanon seems to be free at the point of collection, a fact which is difficult to believe given the current opiod crisis in the US and Europe.

After his younger sister Sahar is sold in marriage by his parents. Zain runs away and comes across Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian cleaner who is in Lebanon illegally. This strand introduces a migrant theme to the narrative which also feels timely. Zain offers to look after Rahil’s toddler while she is at  work but she later disappears leaving the two to fend for themselves in what turns out to be quite an adventure.

This is a watchable drama with some endearing turns from the ensemble kiddy cast who conjure up an intoxicating chemistry considering their lack of experience. But the star of the piece is Rafeea as the cheekily adamant Zain, a tribute to kids everywhere who feel life has dealt them an unfair start, and who set out to put matters right. MT

MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | IN COMPETITION 2018

The Dead and Others (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

Docudrama | 114’ | Brazil/Portugal

Directed by Palme d’Or winner João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, THE DEAD AND THE OTHERS is an extraordinary docudrama based on their experiences of living for nearly a year in Pedra Branca, a village inhabited by the indigenous community of the Kraho people in Northern Brazil. The Kraho very much want to continue their way of life and traditions in their rural community, striving to be self-sufficient. Their plight very much connects with a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Fifteen year old Ihjãc has been suffering from nightmares since he lost his father and in the opening scene he walks through the rain forest in the light of the moon. A distant sound of chanting comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall. It is now time to organise the funeral feast so his father’s spirit can depart to the village of the Dead and mourning can cease. Although his baby son Tepto was born in the local hospital, Ihjãc still spends most of his life with his family in the remote forest and although the village elders are urging him to fulfil his duty to undergo the crucial process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc escapes back to the local town to avoid the transition. There, far from his people and culture, he faces the reality of being an indigenous native in contemporary Brazil.

With its themes of loss, displacement and cultural identity, this is an masterful if rather overlong piece of filmmaking that feels woozily impressionistic but also strangely urgent in its message, glowingly conveyed in vibrant high contrast cinematography MT

SCREENING DURING MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | VIEWS FROM MOROCCO AND THE Ottoman Empire | THE 11th CONTINENT

Marrakech Film Festival 2018 | Conversations with….

To celebrate the 17th edition – 30 November to 8 December – MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL has introduced an interactive new talk series.

CONVERSATION WITH is an initiative that offers a space for expression, exchange and reflection with screen legends and film luminaries:

Martin Scorsese (b.1942, US)

Director, writer, actor and producer is one of the most influential directors working today and also one of the most generous in his support of talented emerging filmmakers. In a multi-award winning career spanning nearly 60 years his work has been inspired by his early life growing up with Italian parents in New York City in crime dramas such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976) and Goodfellas (1990), and his own religious faith as in Silence (2016) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He has captured the spirit of legends such as boxing supremo JakeLaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004) and the Dalai Lama in Kundun (1997). His animated feature Hugo (2011) was dedicated to his daughter Francesca. His thriller Cape Fear (1991) has one of the most frightening performances in film history courtesy of his long time collaborator Robert De Niro (Max Cady) and Shutter Island (2010) that was his stylistic tribute to both Out of the Past (1947) and Vertigo (1958). His other regular collaborators have been Leo DiCaprio and Bernhard Herrmann who created iconic scores for Taxi Driver and Cape Fear. His latest crime drama The Irishman based on the death of Jimmy Hoffa, is shortly to be released on Netflix.

Guillermo Del Toro (b. 1964, Mexico)

Del Toro started making programmes for Mexican TV before he directed and produced his first feature film Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1986) at the age of 21. Learning his make-up techniques from The Exorcist’s Dick Smith he got his first break in 1993 with Cronos which went on to win the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. Since then he has won two Oscars in 2018 for The Shape of Water, a remake of Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). He is currently working on a documentary about the filmmaker Michael Mann.

Cristian Mungiu (b. 1968, Romania)

Screenwriter, director and producer Cristian Mungiu rose to international fame in 2007 with his bleak drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days that shocked audiences with its raw depiction of backstreet abortion in communist Romania. He was the first Romanian director to win the Palme d’Or. Since then he has made a series of films exposing moral degradation in Romanian society. Beyond the Hills (2012) won his Best Screenplay at Cannes in year of its release, and his thorny depiction of family life Graduation followed four years later winning his Best Director at Cannes 2016 (ex aequo with Olivier Assayas for Personal Shopper). 

Yousry Nasrallah (b.1952, Egypt)

Born into a Coptic Christian family in Cairo, Nasrallah started his career as a film critic in Beirut in the late 1970s, soon becoming assistant  to Youssef Chahine whose company Mirs would go on to produce his films that focus on Socialism, Islamic fundamentalism and expatriation. His award-winning debut Summer Thefts (1985) was described as “the only non-ideological film on Nasserism in Egypt”. El Medina (1999) describes the struggle for creative realisation of a young Egyptian actor and After the Battle competed for the Palme d’Or in 2012.

Agnes Varda (b.1928 Belgium) 

Director, writer and photographer Agnes Varda has made over 50 films in her celebrated career. She was born in Belgium but moved to France as a baby before settling in Paris where she eventually married Jacques Demy and became one of the protagonists of the French New Wave with her feature debut La Point Courte (1951). She went on to make a series of award-winning dramas focusing on life and love: Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), Le Bonheur (1965); L’une chante, l’autre pas (1977) and Jacquot de Nantes (1991) a biopic drama dedicated to her husband. Her latest documentary Faces Places (2017) is a rural ride through France.

Robert De Niro. (b. 1943, US)

One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro grew up in Manhattan where he launched his acting career in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party at the age of 26. By 1974 he had won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor in Bang the Drum Slowly, the National Society of Film Critic for Mean Streets, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, Part II. In 1980 he won his second Oscar, as Best Actor, for Raging Bull.

De Niro’s next project will be Netflix’s The Irishman in which he stars and is producing with Martin Scorsese, for their ninth collaboration. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting and the Stanley Kubrick Award from the BAFTA Britannia Awards. De Niro was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He served as the jury president of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

De Niro is also known for his Tribeca Production company and the Tribeca Film Festival, which he founded with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Through Tribeca Productions, De Niro has developed projects on which he has served as producer, director and actor. Tribeca’s A Bronx Tale in 1993 marked De Niro’s directorial debut. De Niro also directed The Good Shepherd in 2006.

During the interview De Niro confessed to not liking smoking on set. And has never had trouble keeping his personal life, personal. “Don’t bring your drama to the set, put it into your performance”.

https://vimeo.com/303947159/d498bda114

Cannes Film Festival Creative Director Thierry Fremaux.

Thierry Fremaux has come a long way since joining the Lumiere Institute in Lyon. The Fast-talking artistic force behind Cannes also directs, along with (president) Bertrand Tavernier, the Lyon-based Lumiere Festival that each year celebrates the vitality of classic film (restored films, retrospectives and tributes). Fremaux has even made a film about the brothers (LUMIERE 2016). who were the first filmmakers with their ground-breaking invention, the cinematograph. The legendary brothers not only invented the technique of making film, but also the art and the way of bringing people together in a theatre. Thierry explains how the aim of the Lumiere Festival was to connect the past with the present – as digital internet platforms, and mobile phones now compete with the classic way of crafting films. To be ‘healthy’ with contemporary cinema we have to look to the past, and that is why Lumiere came about – back in 2009

As artistic director at Cannes his work is much more difficult than it was 30 years ago, not simply because of the volume of films presented to the festival (the team selects the line-up down from over 1800 films) but also the sheer variety. And if Cannes misses a potential new auteur then this becomes a big deal – not just a small faux pas. As he explains: “Cannes is an international festival set in France and we try to embrace the ever-widening variety of film from across every continent. In the 1990s film noir was being re-invented in Hong Kong by Phil Joanou (State of Grace), inspired by Pierre Melville. Each time a young filmmaker makes a breakout hit – the spotlight will be on him, and we can’t afford to miss that”. “Pan’s Labyrinth came as a big shock to many festival goers, as it was the kind of style that had never really been invited before, and it really surprised people about the way forward we were taking – also with animation and with documentary”. Most films “choose” Thierry rather than the other way round, as passionate filmmaking eventually shows through, as much as talent. But certain films will never be right for the competition. “You have to ask the question – is it good or not for the film to be in Cannes. Also is it suitable for the audience – or for the press – we have in Cannes”. 

At the moment Thierry works with a group of 8, sometimes 10 people to make the final Cannes selection (equally split by gender). “The culture of making films is not that same for a man as for a woman so gender equality is absolutely vital as we move to 2020. This year’s Cannes selection was criticised but we have a duty to put new names on the map. And we have to adapt Cannes for the future and to make it comfortable for the audience and the press”. Clearly there will more changes, but Thierry assures us that they will be for the better. MT

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | 30 NOVEMBER – 8 DECEMBER 2018 | INTERVIEW AT THE MAMOUNIA HOTEL POOLSIDE, MARRAKECH 2018

 

 

Red Snow | Akai Yuki (2018) **** Marrakech International Film Festival 2018

An island community is still haunted by the mysterious disappearance of a little boy 30 years after he went missing, in this spookily stylish Japanese crime thriller. 

Premiering at Marrakech Film Festival RED SNOW is the feature debut of Sayaka Kai known for her award-winning short Ondine’s Curse (2014). The young auteur quickly establishes a sinister mood in the eerie snowbound location where her troubled characters are all victims of their own past and still fraught with pent-up emotion and debilitating psychological scars that threaten to break out and reveal a truth too ugly to bear.

Themes of unreliable memory, child abuse and mental illness play out in the sober, icy landscapes where Takumi went missing three decades previously leaving a mood of anger, bitterness and mistrust amongst the broken inhabitants. 

The main suspect is an eccentric female cleaner with an abusive childhood – seen in repetitive flashbacks where we witness the cruelty of her sociopathic mother. Not only is she generally unpopular with the rest of the islanders, but she is also in a toxic relationship with an older man who is purportedly her pimp. And the more Takumi’s brother urges her to share her recollection of what happened, the greater her reluctance to discuss the crime, or even talk about her memory of it. 

But when a reporter arrives on the island to investigate the cold case, clues and truth start to mingle with a trail of other unsolved crimes including insurance fraud and a devastating fire. It soon appears that Takumi’s reclusive brother, a talented lacquering specialist with a workshop close to the desolate shores, could also be involved in the disappearance. 

There are distant echoes of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes to this baleful piece that seems to languish in its own misery. YAS-KAS’ atmospheric score sets a sober tone occasionally giving way to scenes of lingering silence thats seems to accentuate the bleakness of the remote settings. Sayaka Kai makes use of a re-occurring luxuriant red motif that connects the lushly lacquered boxes with the blood of Takumi’s presumptive murder that stains the mournful flashbacks haunting his brother’s dreams and memories, and recalling that fateful day when he left home on a brief errand. 

A strong cast supports lead Masatoshi Nagase as the man trying to solve the mystery. RED SNOW’s visual aesthetic is way beyond what we can usually expect from Japanese first features marking Sayaka Kai as a talented auteur in the making. MT

WORLD PREMIERING AT MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Teatro de Guerra (2018) * * *

Dir/Writer: Lola Arias | Doc | Argentina, Spain 2018

The Falklands War (1982-84)  took the lives of 655 Argentinian and 255 British soldiers. It ended in Argentina’s military defeat and in territorial claims on both sides that remain contentious to this day.
Experimental in nature, this frank and often moving film essay from Argentinian artist and filmmaker Lola Arias tries to discover if past trauma can ever be resolved by collectively revisiting the memories by giving soldiers from both sides a chance to explore their feelings and even re-enact their experiences 34 years after hostilities officially ended. This is an illuminating piece of filmmaking that puts us at the cutting edge of the combat through face to face interviews; news footage and staged episodes of the conflict enacted by those who actually took part.

Now in their early 50s, the 12 veterans from both sides, bear their souls in a piece that swings between moments of anguish and absurd comedy. At one point the men even break into song and perform together in a rock band, emoting and finding a cathartic outlet for their anxiety from the past. This makes for an interactive cinema – the soldiers finding a space to release their trauma and viewers experiencing the full throttle of their pain – and even elation. An engaging piece of cinema that grapples with the coal face of conflict in new and inventive ways. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | BERLINALE FORUM PRIZE | ECUMENICAL JURY | CICAE ART CINEMA AWARD

 

Vmayakovsky (2018) ****Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Alexander Shein | 115’      

“For you, cinema is just a spectacle, for me – almost a world view.” declared the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1993 – 1930) who as well as being a socialist ‘rock-star’ performer was also an actor of the silent cinema era (The 1918 The Ladyand the Hooligan, his only surviving film, can be watched on YouTube.) Mayakovsky was part of the Russian Futurist movement believing that art and society would reject the past and strive for a new consciousness. His multi-faceted and contradictory personality was clearly the result of a troubled beginning, and his life went on to be accordingly unorthodox. Yet director Alexander Shein has managed brilliantly to employ a non-linear and iconoclastic style for VMayakovsy that captures (though often it can barely contain) this incendiary poetic talent now mythologized, alongside of Pushkin, in modern Russia.

VMayakovsky opens with a group of actors in a studio rehearsing a film script about Mayakovsky. Gradually they assume the appropriate characterisation of the poet and the people who knew him: body language, manners and revolutionary language start to emerge. This is intercut with fictionalised documentary footage of Lilya Brik (The poet’s muse and lover played by Chillopan Khamatova) as an elderly invalid reflecting on her past. One amusing moment has a gift arriving from perhaps Mayakovsky’s daughter. Lilya’s carer says it’s a package form someone called Saint Saens but it’s not the French composer, but Yves Saint Laurent. Real documentary footage of protesters in modern Moscow; recitals of Mayakovsky’s verse, social gatherings, meetings and a recreation of a Mayakovsky play keep bursting into the film. This becomes a dazzling, energetic collage of impressions and incidents that doesn’t sidestep things into an obvious drama-doc. There’s no excessive use of 1930s documentary footage or any Shostakovich ‘theme related’ music. Shein maintains a restless pace for VMayakovsky – for it’s an experimental film intent on destroying the bio-pic.

VMayakovsky is two hours long: after an hour of arresting cinematic effects its biographical data is realised as a kind of ‘theatrical tableaux’ with occasional filmed exteriors. This shift of tone deepens the film and the superb performance of Yuri Kolokolnikow (As Mayakovsy) reveals him to be a tragic character. Mayakovsky was admired by Lenin yet viewed with suspicion by Stalin and The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers: eventually falling completely out of favour with his audience and the authorities who began to detest experimentation in the arts.

There’s a marvellously satirical scene where the workers are collecting the autumn crop of apples performed against a backcloth of Stalinist Palace of Culture architecture. A close friend informs Mayakovsky that he’s been awarded a state apartment to live in. But cautions him that his writings need to conform to the new social order. This army companion (Who is also being pressured) has a fellow writer colleague of Mayakovsky released from jail and then agonises over Mayakovsky’s unwillingness to change his art. Stalin’s totalitarian world is soon conveyed as a theatre audience of complaining hats, without heads, wittily grouped in a surreal space.

VMayakovsky isn’t an easy film to watch and not everything works. Why is real footage of Communist North Korea shown? What are the crowd, in present day Moscow, actually protesting about?  And why leave out Mayakovsky’s film acting? Yet in spite of some excluded and not properly thought-through ideas, VMayakovsky provokes, stimulates and entertains: rather than an audience beginning to fully understand Mayakovsky, they experience a poetic force called Vladimir Mayakovsky who was a very vulnerable man.

VMayakovsky is a terrific achievement that reminded me of some of the film experimentation that we took for granted from the early sixties to the mideighties (Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Jacques Rivette and the better side of Ken Russell are an obvious influence on Shein.) Sadly Shein’s feature isn’t on any form of limited release. It’s had a few University screenings in London and you can now only catch it if you take a train to Glasgow, Cambridge or Oxford this winter.

I saw VMayakovsky at a cinema inside a large London bank. The director introduced the screening, telling us that it was a joke that his film was being screened in a bank as he himself had just become bankrupt. Buying a ticket may not help to keep Alexander Shein financially afloat: yet your support could just spur him on to produce more work like the remarkably assured VMayakovsky. Alan Price © 2018       

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 2018

 

The Forest | Les (2018) **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Roman Zhigalov; Cast: Oleg Shibayew, Natalia Rychkova, Oleg Feokzistov, Maria Avramjova, Vladimir Malyugin; Russia 2018, 97 min.

Roman Zhigalov’s feature debut is a glum, violent and dramatic passion play. In a village surrounded by dense forest, murder, rape and arson seem to dominate the troubled community, in a microcosm of Putin’s Russia. This an important portrait of Russian society, despite its over-accentuated sombre realism. 

Sixteen-year old Danila (Shibayew) lives with oppressive mother Galina (Avramkova) and brutal father Pasha (Feokzistov). Cut off from society he has a problem adjusting to school life and is bullied for his sullen manners and total lack of interest in girls. 

Meanwhile, Pasha lusts after Katya (Rychkova), even promising her to leave his family if she gives in. Katya’s husband Kolka (Malyugin) is an alcoholic with physical and emotional impairments. Little does Pasha know that Danila shares his taste for women and is much more successful than his father in finding favour with Katya. While Pasha are his mates in a battle to prevent the local Mafia buying his sawmill for a knock-down price, one of Danila’s female classmates is gang raped by boys from the district capital, and after Galina surprises her son and Katya in flagrante, she asks her husband to take action. Events eventually spiral out of control in scenes of unrelenting and sometimes graphic, but never gratuitous violence. 

Somehow here, society has taken a step backwards, with greed and lust coming to the fore at every opportunity. The local Mafia seems to represent the regime’s semi-criminal mode of government, and their power is much greater than that of the local administration. Pasha is warned – in vain – by the local mayor to sell his sawmill to the mafia: “You remember what happened in 1989 with the land of the kolkhozes”. Violence against women seems to be the norm, men of all ages still see them predominantly as sex objects, to be conquered and discarded at will.

DoP Yury Sergeyev captures the rural violence with intense close-ups and panoramic shots of the landscape. The human presence seem to offend nature, spoiling its beauty in every possible way. Rychkova is the only positive figure, and her humble humanity is constantly abused by the rest of the protagonists. Zhigalov might have sometimes overdone his orgy of violence, but in the end he succeeds in his message, showing a Russia falling back into the senseless savagery of the eighteenth century.AS

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018 

 

Embargo (2017) *** Utopia Portuguese Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Antonio Ferrera; Cast: Filipe Costa, Claudia Carvalho, Laura Matos; Portuga/Spain/Brazil 2010, 83 min.

Antonio Ferrara specialises in stories of the absurd – his 2018 feature The Dead Queen is based on a historical novel about a 14th century Portuguese king who had his mistress disinterred, so that she could become Queen. Embargo is a far lighter affair that follows Nuno, a madcap inventor.

Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, Ferrara pictures his hero Nuno (Costa) in the midst of a fuel crisis in contemporary Portugal, selling his revolutionary shoe scanner to everyone who shows a mild interest. He works part time on a hot dog stand, and his long-suffering girl friend Margarida (Carvalho) has to labour full time and look after their two children. Even though Nuno is hellbent on making his device a commercial success customers, nobody has any idea what practical use it could have. Eventually after various trials and tribulations, Nino is sacked from his day job and goes on the hunt for a toy rabbit, to make his daughter Sara (Matos) happy.

Nuno is a loafer par-excellence. Charming and funny, he could be the ideal companion – if he could earn a living. But his obsession with his machine takes over more and more of his life. Made on a shoe string budget, this debut of Ferrara is a labour of love, where crew and cast made up for the lack of budget with much enthusiasm and passion, even. There are some holes in the narrative, but Embargo is fun to watch, without the claim of being anything but light entertainment. AS

http://www.utopiafestival.org.uk

Cause of Death (2018) *** IDFA 2018

Dir.: Ramy A. Katz; Documentary; Israel 2018, 79 min.

On the night of March 5th 2002, a gunman opened fire in a restaurant near Tel Aviv’s Maariv Bridge. Police officer Salim Barakat, who was nearby, brought the gunman down only to be found dead next to the killer. Director/producer Ramy A. Katz (Freeflow) researches the death of the Druze policeman, following his brother Jamal on his search for the truth.

The verdict was that Salim died from a knife wound to the throat. But after visiting a memorial ceremony for Salim, held every year in the police precinct for the tenth time, Jamal begins to question the official version. He discovers that the emergency ambulance’s doctor called in that night, reporting that his brother was “murdered by gun shots” and contradicting the official diagnosis of throat slashing. We watch a video where the main witness, middle-aged Willys Hazan, claims to have shot the attacker, after slashing Jamal’s throat. He is on a drip in a hospital bed, praising Salim, but admitting that the police officer was actually the terrorist. Then Jamal, a trained investigator, meets the head of the National Centre for Forensics, and tells him about the contradictions. The director is concerned l, and questions why no autopsy was performed; asking Jamal to have his brother undergo an exhumation  –  but Jamal’s religion does not permit such an option. Jamal also confronts the chief of Police who asks him to “let his hero brother rest in peace” – the same answer Jamal gets from Hazan, whom me meets twice. Breaking down, Hazan finally concedes, that “this would not have happened had Salim been an Israeli”. Finally, tracing down the staff of the restaurant, who were on duty on the fateful night, Jamal gets the answers he was originally searching for.

This is not just a document of Jamal’s investigation, but a testament to his coming to terms with grief – and his shattered belief in the righteousness of the law. The more he learns, the more his world crumbles. In the end he has not only lost his brother, but what he called his ‘extended family’,the police officers at the station where Salim served. There are some poetic moments, particularly when Jamal talks about his belief in reincarnation that persuades him that Salim has been reborn, and that his soul now rests in the body of a young boy in primary school. Moving, passionate and gripping, Katz takes a candid approach to his narrative, letting the audience make up their mind about the social implications of this cover-up. AS

SCREENING AT IDFA 2018 |

 

 

Genesis 2 (2018) *** Russian Film Week 2018

Dirs: Christian Frei, Maxim Arbugaev | Switzerland | 2018 | 113 mins

GENESIS 2 follows the yearly search for mammoth tusks in the frozen wastes of the New Siberian Islands, discovered in 1723. The task of extracting frozen genetic material from the permafrost is a tough but a worthy one intended to enable some pioneering scientists to reconstruct the long-extinct mammoth that once roamed the icy region.

Oscar-nominated documentarian Christian Frei (War Photographer) has quite literally taken on a mammoth task in exploring this hostile Arctic hinterland. Genesis 2 scratches at the edges of both horror and science, in an endeavour that occasionally feels like he has taken off more that he can chew.

As in Book of the Sea, also screening during Russian Film Week, Friel adds elements of myth to his icebound study. The film opens with narrated verses from a Yakutian epic tale, accompanied by Max Richter’s morose music, and the characters who embark on this intrepid research are all courageous – even foolhardy – enough to risk their lives for what may amount to very little: the resonance with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, The Wild Blue Yonder, Grizzly Man and even Aguirre Wrath of God, are clearly felt. At times Frei even sounds like the great master himself.

Many of these eco-warriors are dicing with death and several will actually meet their maker in the vain hope of returning home with a slither of genetic material that they can trade for upwards of $45,00. And while this may feed their families for some time, they must endure the downside: perishing cold and even death.

Back in the comparative comfort of a smug Boston scientific seminar we hear how “synthetic biology” is going to change everything by “taking control of evolution” by creating hybrid creatures out of horses, sheep and zebras. But that seems rather glib to the anxious tusk hunters struggling to dig up the ground in the bleak terrain of the Northern hemisphere. Peter Grigoriev (Frie terms him an intellectual because ‘he likes reading a lot”) and his brother Semyon Grigoriev, the Head of the Mammoth Museum, in Yakutsk, Siberia are the main characters in this rather sombre eco-doc, are seen wading through mud in the dripping interior of a cave where “cavemen lived for hundreds of years”. It emerges that anyone who tries to dissenter a mammoth will visited by a curse but they are also deemed “lucky” to come across three polar bears. When Semyon eventually comes across the ancient flesh of tusk specimen, he can’t help tasting it, but seems rather unimpressed. Back in the lab, the aim is to create a new animal, a chimera – just the like the woolly mammoth was back in the day. `

There is a sense of wonder and awe, but also a sense of foreboding in the sober search for animal remains. The spectacular visuals create an amazing sense of the remote emptiness of the locations and the quiet desperation of Siberians who travel here in the hope of improving their lives. The bright Boston buildings and the massive shiny headquarters of China’s National Gene bank make this ‘new life’ seem rather devoid of reality when compared to the gruelling coal face search. MT

SCREENING DURING RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 25 NOVEMBER – 2 DECEMBER 2018

Los Reyes (2018) **** IDFA 2018 | Special Jury Award 2018

Dir: Ivan Osnovikoff, Bettina Perut | 88′ | Doc Chile 2018

Santiago streetlife plays out poignantly through a pair of canny canine caretakers in this wry and filmic foray to the capital’s largest skatepark.

LOS REYES have got it sussed. A black Labrador (Chola) and a Collie Cross (Football) are literally kings of all they survey. With shady trees and water sprinklers to cool the midday heat, they can play away from traffic in this public playground they consider their own. There’s always an odd ball or two to keep them amused, But don’t welcome motorbikes or the rubbish cart, and howl at the fire engine.

Limpidly shot on the widescreen and in intimate often minute close-up, there’s lightness of touch to this graceful and upbeat slice of city life: every twitch of a tail, every tweak of the cheek signals the dogs’ reaction to the human activities nearby. Meanwhile random male conversation is overheard from passers by. Some of it quite startling. But the kids can rest assured that their macho confessions are safe with these trusty tenants of the capital’s microcosm. On wet days they have a contingency plan – a kennel retreat by the rubbish bins. But it’s not all easygoing between the two of them. When Chola tries to hump a discarded old duvet, Football goes mad.

The film derives its subtle humour from the banal disdain of the dogs’ expressions as they tolerate the trivial and sometimes bawdy adolescent banter, shrugging off the intrusion of wildlife and a couple of donkeys who dare to cross their territory. But when uncertainty looms for the future of this canine couple, some welcome female chitchat lightens the mood. Just like humans, dogs don’t need to talk to communicate with their loved ones, but even in Santiago de Chile’s paradise park, every dog has its day. MT

WINNER | IDFA Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary | 2018

 

 

Marrakech Film Festival 2018 | This year’s line-up..

The Marrakech International Film Festival has now revealed its 17th edition line-up  which runs from 30 November until the 8 December 2018.  

The competition focus is on international independent cinema, showcasing the latest from the Middle East: Mohcine Besri’s URGENT, Nejib Belkhadhi’s LOOK AT ME, and THE GIRAFFE from Egyptian filmmaker Amed Magdy. These will compete alongside sophomore and award-winning titles from this year’s international festival circuit. The 14 titles include London Film Festival winner JOY (Sudebeh Mortezai), Warsaw Film Festival awarded IRINA (Nadejda Koseva) and ALL GOOD (Eva Trobisch) which won the Best First Feature prize at Locarno 2018. Six of the films competing for the Marrakech Etoile d’Or (Gold Star) are directed by women.

The festival opens with a gala screening of Julian Schnabel’s AT ETERNITY’S GATE (above) starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh. There will also be another chance to see Alfonso Cuarón’s Venice Golden Lion winner ROMA, Peter Farrelly’s GREEN BOOK which stars Viggo Mortensen, and Nadine Labaki’s CAPERNAUM, which won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

There will be 17 special screenings including Gonzalo Tobal’s THE ACCUSED and Paul Dano’s WILDLIFE. Also on the specials list is EXT. NIGHT the latest drama from Ahmad Abdalla (Microphone (2010), Heliopolis (2009). Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s enchanting BIRDS OF PASSAGE will also be there (below).

A new strand entitled THE 11th CONTINENT aims to highlight local Moroccan fare in its Panorama section. Amongst others there will be the recent Cannes Doc Alliance winner SRBENKA, Brazilian documentary THE DEAD AND THE OTHERS, Lee Chang-dong’s Cannes breakout hit BURNING, Austrian historical drama ANGELO fresh from San Sebastian, and my personal favourite Locarno 2018 thriller TEGNAP (YESTERDAY) . 

The outdoor screenings in the famous JEMAA EL FNA square will include Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama drama KUNDUN (1997), Brian De Palma’s THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987), Youssef Chahine’s ALEXANDRIA, AGAIN AND FOREVER (1989) and there will be classics from Agnes Varda, Martin Scorsese, Robin Wright and Robert De Niro in the tributes section. MT

COMPETITION

GOOD GIRLS (Las niñas bien) | Mexico By Alejandra Márquez Abella

JOY | Austria By Sudabeh Mortezai

DIANE | USA By Kent Jones

THE LOAD (Teret) | Serbia, France, Croatia, Iran, Qatar By Ognjen Glavonić

THE CHAMBERMAID (La camarista) | Mexico By Lila Avilés

RED SNOW (Akai yuki) | Japan By Sayaka Kai

LOOK AT ME (Fi ‘ainaya  Regarde-moi) | Tunisia By Nejib Belkhadhi

IRINA | Bulgaria By Nadejda Koseva

VANISHING DAYS (Màn yóu) | China By Zhu Xin

URGENT (Tafaha al-kail | Une urgence ordinaire) / Morocco, Switzerland By Mohcine Besri

ROJO | Argentina, Brazil, France, the Netherlands, Germany By Benjamín Naishtat

AKASHA | Sudan, South Africa, Germany, Qatar By hajooj kuka

THE GIRAFFE (La ahdun hunak) | Egypt By Ahmed Magdy

ALL GOOD (Alles ist gut) | Germany By Eva Trobisch

THE MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 30 NOVEMBER – 8 DECEMBER 2018

Shoplifters (2018) ****

Writer/Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda | Cast: Kirin Kiki, Lily Franky, Sosuke Ikematsu | Drama | South Korea |121′

Hirokazu Koreeda’s portrait of parenting, After the Storm, has much in common with this perceptive and often ambiguous satire about a family of small-time crooks and the misguided theft they commit for compassionate reasons, but with devastating consequences. SHOPLIFTERS is a worthwhile addition to the auteur’s preoccupations with family life, father and motherhood – both real and imagined, and is possibly his best work so far.

In Tokyo, part-time workers Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) complement their meagre income with a sideline in shoplifting. Aided and abetted by son Shota (Kairi Jyo), they often swipe groceries from the local store near the flat they share with fellow grifter Noboyu (Sakura Andô), teenager Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), who turns the most lucrative tricks of the lot.

One day they take pity on an abused and timid teenager called Juri (Miyu Sasaki), offering her board and lodging in their already cramped home. This simple act of kindness is the catalyst for change in the family dynamic unleashing previously hidden motivations that range from short-sightedness to self-aggrandisement, and even narcissistic pride.

A tonal shift from upbeat bonhomie to gloomy sadness takes place in the film’s third segment when the family anticipate their emotional loss and start to fear the backlash of their rash altruism, and its damning formal retribution. Kore-eda and his cast bring out  tremendous pathos in this well-meaning family, and while we feel for them as do-gooders, – in the true sense of the word – they are crucially also law-breakers. And this is the J B Priestleyan crux of this upbeat and cleverly-crafted caper reflecting the subtle nuances of Japanese society. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 21 November 2018 | CANNES WINNER | PALME D’OR 2018

Marrakech International Film Festival | 30 November – 8 December 2018

Marrakech International Film Festival (FIFM) is back this year under the artistic control of its newly appointed director Christoph Terhechte. It will run from 30 November until 8 December 2018.

Terhechte comes with considerable arthouse experience and impeccable credentials. He was director of Berlinale’s Forum section from 2001 to 2018 and also a member of the Berlinale Competition selection committee.

This year’s 17th Edition will also honour Robert De Niro, Agnès Varda and Robin Wright along with Moroccan filmmaker Jillali Ferhati. The festival president is James Gray. International stars in the shape of Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Cristian Mungiu, and Yousry Nasrallah will also be gracing the Moroccan city and Medina. Along with Cannes luminary Thierry Fremaux.

US director James Gray will head the International Competition jury which includes actress Dakota Johnson (50 shades of Grey, Suspiria), Indian actress Ileana D’Cruz (Barfi!), Lebanese filmmaker and visual artist Joana Hadjithomas (I Want to See), British director Lynne Ramsay (We Need To Talk about Kevin, A Beautiful Day), Moroccan director Tala Hadid (House in the Fields), French director Laurent Cantet (The Class– Palme d’Or 2008), German Actor Daniel Brühl and Mexican director Michel Franco (April’s Daughter).

From November 30th to December 8th, these nine celebrities will select the recipient of L’Étoile d’Or 2018 among the 14 first and second feature films in competition.

The Marrakech International Film Festival has been one of the biggest events devoted to Moroccan cinema and the locality offers favourable conditions for global film production. Since its inception in 2003 the most prestigious names in world cinema have been hosted and celebrated in Marrakech and include Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Marion Cotillard and Johnny Halliday. Back in the day, Winston Churchill and Agatha Christie made Marrakech their winter holiday destination and were hosted at the world famous La Mamounia Hotel.

With its fabulous climate, medieval walled Medina dating back to the Berber Empire, exotic palaces and lush gardens (Yves St Laurent designed the Majorelle), Marrakech is the ideal location for an international winter film festival. MT

30 NOVEMBER-8 DECEMBER 2018 | MARRAKECH | MOROCCO

 

Jumpman (2018) Podbrosy **** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir.: Ivan I. Tverdovsky; Cast: Denis Vlasenko, Anne Slyu, Daniil Steklov; Russia/ROI/France/ Lithuania 2018, 87 min.

Ivan I. Tverdovsky follows up his zany Zoology with a darker feature, another harsh critique of Putin’s Russia. Very much in the mould of Loveless, Jumpman is a portrait of callous exploitation, the young victim literally sold by his mother to perform life-threatening stunts, just to fill her pockets and those of her cronies.

Sixteen years ago Oksana posted her newborn Denis through the baby-hatch of an orphanage where he has lived ever since, handicapped by a rare disease, congenital analgesia, which affects his ability to feel physical pain, and needs to be medically controlled. Now, forbidden from taking care of her son, Oksana (Slyu) tricks the orphanage staff, literally kidnapping little Denis (Vlasenko) and taking him home. It soon emerges that Oksana’s motive is anything but motherly. Denis does not fee pain when injured (his mates in the orphanage played some cruel games with him), and is trained to jump on cars so his mother’s friends can extort cash from the driver. First in line is Denis’ ‘instructor’ policeman Kusnetzov (Steklov), who drives a police vehicle alongside the one earmarked for the ‘accident’, and is first on the scene when Denis lays motionless on the ground. Kusnetzovs’s mother is a doctor at the hospital where Denis is taken by an ambulance crew (also on the make). But the most profitable jobs go to Judge Olga and the bribed defence lawyer. The driver is forced to pay up a huge sum of money – and Denis gets hardly a penny, after everyone else has taken their share. At home his mother treats him more like a lover, running around half naked in a drunken state, even trying to seduce him. That all changes after Denis puts his foot down –  and this leaves only one solution.

Jumpman is a portrait of a society corrupt on every level, a society where the most vulnerable victims are treated like commodities – whether they are rich, poor or just disenfranchised.. When Denis finally quits, Kusnetzov spits in his face: “We’ll find another one, the city is full of trash like you.” AS

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | LONDON 25 November -2 December 2018 | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | 29 JUNE – 7 JULY 2018

 

Suleiman Mountain (2017) *** Russian Film Week 2018

Dir: Elizaveta Stishova | Cast:Daniel Daiybekov, Turgunai Erkinbekova, Perizat Ermanbaeva | Drama | Kyrgyzstan | 101′

Enlivened by offbeat humour and vibrant widescreen images reflecting the rugged beauty of this wild Central Asian nation, SULEIMAN MOUNTAIN is the debut feature of Russian filmmaker Elizaveta Stishova. Largely funded by European finance this appealing arthouse drama explores an unconventional journey of discovery – both literal and metaphorical – for its passionate central characters: a woman, her long-lost son and husband, and his other younger wife. In a drama fraught with tense uncertainty and often brutal rituals involving folklore and shamanism – a scene involving an unconscious woman is particularly alarming – Kyrgyzstan emerges as a region caught between the modern world and one of ancient traditions where women (predictably) get a rough deal as they compete vehemently for the attention of self-seeking macho men. Their hope is that somehow, by smothering them with love and attention, they can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Sadly, twas ever thus.

Kazakhstani actor Asset Imangaliev plays the maverick male at the centre of the story, who cleverly plays his two wives off against one another. Karabas is an opportunistic adventurer who cons his way through life veering from violent outbursts to twinkling smiles as he tries to charm the pants off everyone he meets. Recently reunited with the couple’s thoughtfully endearing son Uluk, his older wife is a healing soul, desperately trying to hold the family together, while her coltish younger rival is also pregnant with Karabas’ child.

Although Kyrgyzstan initially feels exotic and remote, the human story at its core is as old and evergreen as the hills. Stishova has certainly made a watchable and lively debut. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK London  2018 | WINNER OF BEST FILM | PRESENTED BY THE ROSSELLINI JURY | PINGYAO YEAR ZERO 2017

The Wild Pear Tree | Ahlat Agaci (2018)****


Dir/Writer: Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Ebru Ceylan | Cast: Serkan Keskin, Hazar Erguclu, Ahmet Rifat Sungar | Drama | Turkey/France/Germany/Bulgaria/Macedonia/Bosnia and Herzegovina/Sweden 2018 | 188′

For some the countryside is a retreat where hopes and dreams merge with solitude and recovery. For a father and a son in THE WILD PEAR TREE the sweeping landscapes of Western Turkey’s Marmara region are a place of shattered hopes and despair.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan imbues his melancholy mood piece with the usual visual richness in a slow-burning saga that revolves around aspiring writer Sinan (Aydin Dogu Demirkol) who returns from army service to his native village to raise the money to publish his first book. But his father’s debts catch up with him and put a stop to his personal aspirations. Running at a little over three hours, this long-awaited follow to Winter Sleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia takes the customary languorous and discursive pace. The wide screen splendour also makes time for quietly intimate moments but there is no melodrama or ‘major developments’ in a film that plays out contemplatively as the story naturally unfolds.

Sinan is not particularly glad to be back home in the small rural village of Çan, where he holds the community in disdain. But his father Idris’ gambling has spiralled out of control causing his mother and sister to do without, so Sinan starts to do the rounds of friends and family in search of finance for his literary endeavour.

Contrary to the title, a wild pear tree never features in the film, and there is no love lost between Sinan and his father Idris, their relationship slowly deteriorating for obvious reasons. There is a sense of longing for urban civilisation, and while the film takes much delight in the convincingly creditable characterisations and conversation pieces, which are quietly enjoyable, often philosophical (even a little bit over talky at times), it’s clear that Sinan is no more enamoured with this rural idyll than when he reluctantly arrived.

Ceylan returns to the evergreen signature themes that have been present in his work since the beginning and have gained him a reputation and a strong following, along with his elegantly crafted widescreen style and well-rounded character studies. And there is always a touch of dry wit to lighten proceedings while grounding them in community, local politics, moral and ethical issues and family concerns.

In some ways, his latest is an expansion of his FIPRESCI and Golden Tulip winner Clouds of May (1999) and has the same ripe quality of visual sumptuousness throughout. Dermirkol plays Sinan as a vaguely unsympathetic character whose ennui with his family and rural life simply demonstrates an ardent need to get on with his aspirations rather than indicating a deeply flawed personality. But maybe they are one in the same. Ceylan eyes his antihero in a detached and observational way that makes him really convincing as a representative of his generation. In contrast to the self-sacrificing heroes of the early 1900s, Sinan is a full-fledged 21st century man. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 30 NOVEMBER 2018 | Cannes Film Festival Premiere

Hamada (2018) *** IDFA 2018

Dir.: Eloy Dominguez Seren; Documentary; Sweden/Germany/Norway 2018, 88min.

Director-writer Eloy Dominguez Seren (No Cow on the Ice) raises the profile of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in this vibrantly passionate documentary shot mainly in the Tindouf refugee Camp in Algeria.

In 1975, when Franco was on his last legs, Spain gave up some North African colonies, and Morocco (300 000 citizens entered the old colony) and Mauritania claimed the territory. However, they did not concede self-government to the Sahrawis, as they were mandated by the UN. The resulting conflict between Morocco and the refugees in their own country lasted for over forty years, with Morocco bombing the Sahrawis with Napalm in 1976, causing a humanitarian crisis as the homeless and afflicted fled to Algeria.

HAMADA follows teenagers Sidahmed and Zaara in their fruitless search for work in the self-governed camp. Sidemeh is rather a restless young. He makes some money repairing cars and radios but finds the work unsatisfying. He also lacks patience, and efforts to teach Zaara to drive soon run out of steam. He’d really like to emigrate to Spain, like everyone in the camp. But this seems like a pipe-dream and none of the others have managed to get a Visa, and Spain does not recognise the SADR or his passport. Zaara can’t get a stable job either and has no qualifications, although she is certainly better educated than Sidameh, who only knows one European country (Spain). Zaara seems more intelligent.

So Sidameh starts to plan an illegal passage to Spain, with his friend Tasalam. Meanwhile the more down to earth Zaara focuses on a potential marriage partner chatting things through with her friends. Both girls are emancipated, and expect their future husbands to leave them in peace, to live their own lives. Zaara still wants to be taught to drive, seeing this as a vital asset in the job market. Sidameh finally sells his car to finance his passage to Spain. When he eventually sets off, the convoy of cars he is travelling in, gets stuck in the desert. And the grass is far from green when he reaches his destination. Homeless and without any proper qualifications, contacts or viable work skills he seems surprises that he is treated with disdain.  Instead of focuses on his own failings, he blames his racial identity: “people make you feel inferior, just because you are an Arab”. Clearly the grass wasn’t greener. Zaara has a better and more philosophical frame of mind and soon finds this leads her to improve her chances of success. And with the help of her kind friend Tasalam, she even learns to drive.

Seren’s observational study certainly succeeds in bringing this forgotten conflict to our attention, letting the teenagers speak for themselves. The local climate and primitive conditions make life tough and extremely challenging. Sidameh is seen rebuilding a house for a family of eight, whose home has collapsed during the rainy season. Spain becomes a much longed for dream destination and their all obsess about finding this ‘Holy Grail’.  But these down-trodden people also reflect on their past: when one of them finds a fishing rod in an abandoned house, it soon emerges that the Sahrawis once made a living from fishing, before being forced into the central plains of the arid desert. MT

WORLD PREMIERE | IDFA 2018 | 15 NOVEMBER 2018

3 Days in Quiberon * * * (2018)

Dir/Wri: Emily Atef | Cast: Marie Baumer, Birgit Minichmayr, Charly Hübner | Germany | Drama | 115′

Award-winning German director Emily Atef’s breezy black and white playful portrait self-indulgently explores the brief sejour in the Britanny seaside resort of Quiberon of one of Europe’s most famous but now fading stars as she attempts to detoxify. At only 42, Romy Schneider’s career was on the wane and she was to die not long afterwards (in 1982). It soon becomes clear that the garrulous diva – a luminous Marie Baumer – is battling demons of all kinds and desperately missing her two children, a baby girl and a teenager who refuses to live with her.

The focus here is the two-day interview with Stern magazine German journalist Jürgs whose crafty attempts to get her to open up about the death of her first husband, who had committed suicide two years earlier, and her tortured relationship with her mother, who allegedly colluded with the press, finally pay off after plying the diva with copious amounts of white Chablis.her best friend arrives to offer support but the two soon fall out.

This playful drama takes inspiration from the glorious maritime setting of a modernist beachside hotel, and is anchored by four thoughtful performances, particularly from Bäumer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Schneider. Thomas Kiennast’s luminous photographs help to recreate a distinct Seventies feel. An enjoyable but rather superficial riff on the nature of celebrity, love and friendship. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDEFROM 16 NOVEMBER 2018

The Border Fence (2018) **** IDFA 2018

Dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Austria | Doc | 112′

Brenner Pass, Alpine border, spring 2016: the Austrian government announces the construction of a border fence expecting a shift of the refugee routes to Italy after the Balkan route is closed. The Austrian residents seem to fear the fence as much as the influx of refugees to their homeland. Two years later, the fence is still rolled up in a container. History took another route.

This gave Austrian documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter reason enough to go to the region with his camera and explore the mood there. Surveillance and border fences have long been themes in his work (Abendland, 2011), along with the delicate balance between humans and their environment (Homo sapiens, 2016). What was originally seen as a welcome from Austria soon switched to a crisis that has swept through Europe like a forest wildfire. Everyone feels challenged to protect their homeland (or heimat, as the Austrians put it). “As the first refugees, we were impressed by the welcome culture of Austria. But at some point in the reporting a switch was put”. This subtle change meant that suddenly these people became unwanted. Europe’s solidarity during the world wars was finally put to the challenge.

A short conversation in the toll booth is one of the many absurd scenes in the film: border functionaries air their negative feelings about the ‘refugees’ and migration, while going about their duties solemnly dispensing a 9 euro toll ticket every 30 seconds. In the nearby hillside, two male hunters talk about their experience with refugees on the so-called ‘Green Brenner’ borderline during the winter months, and admit to feeling sorry for the scantily clad travellers who are totally unprepared for the climate and thick snow. These human encounters are often forgotten or buried in the abstract political discourse. Meanwhile the local police try to carry on with their commitments. It’s a thankless task and one that clearly compromises them, trapped between the humanistic angle and their duty to their country. There are no winners here. Everyone tries to put forward their opinions delicately without appearing racist. But the protesters are not silent. 

Elegantly framed and filmed in long takes, Geyrhalter remains the calm observer, distancing himself from the madding crowd, muting their anxiety and anger with placcid detachment, yet still retaining a humanistic feel. THE BORDER FENCE makes for a contemplative experience, allowing the audience space and time to process this European crisis. Geyrhalter’s documentary is a study in atavistic fear and human behaviour at its most base. And while many are vehemently opposed to the crackdown on migration, others feel threatened: “Be my guest – but don’t take over my home”.  MT

IDFA COMPETITION FOR BEST FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY | International premiere Tuesday, 20 Nov)

The Workshop (2017) ****

Dir: Laurent Cantet | Writer: Robin Campillo | France | Cast: Marina Fois, Matthieu Lucci | 114min | Drama

Laurent Cantet follows his middle-aged rumination Return to Ithaca (2014) with an equally unsettling but darker teenage drama that takes place in a multi-cultural summer school in Provence. Youth is a subject he’s covered before in his Palme d’Or winner The Class (2008) but here the region’s working class past come back to haunt the instability of the present providing an intoxicating mix of emotions in a tense, intelligent and socially relevant drama.

The film follows Antoine who is taking part in summer school in rather downtrodden town of La Ciotat, where he hopes to write a crime thriller novel with the help of a well-known author Olivia Dejazet (Marina Fois).  Joined by seven other local teenagers from the town which has seen better days as a centre for shipbuilding – today the docks just service luxury yachts.

Whilst most of the students are critical of Dejazet’s Parisian “snootiness”, they still co-operate  – apart from Antoine (Lucci). He is provocative to both teacher and co-students, shocking them with a piece of gruesome writing, describing a mass-killer, and told in the first person singular. Downtime is spend hanging around the area, in one instance with an unlicensed firearm.  Antoine has already been playing the popular video game “The Witch3: Wild Hunt”,  where he choses the role of a Viking killer-for hire. Malik (Rammach), a young Muslim woman, is Antoine’s fiercest critic, as he continues to undermine the project, upsetting everyone with his unruly attitude. Dejazet feels hopeless – not used to open racism and Antoine’s perverse love of violence – then she tries to help him. But her efforts end in a traumatic encounter, and Antoine gives himself away: he describes the main motive of the Bataclan perpetrators as boredom, a very astute projection, considering his activities with other far-right friends.

Antoine might not have the intellectual prowess of Drieu La Rochelle, the nihilist hero of Louis Malle’ s Le Feu Follet, but there are certain parallels: both men prefer male company, the home-erotic undertones are very clear. Like many fascists, they are obsessed with death and suicide (La Rochelle killed himself in 1945 after being a collaborator), and their relationship with women tends to be antagonistic: their masculine pride does not allow them to come emotionally close to women. Antoine is a gun for hire, his phantasies of obliteration are as much directed at himself as others.

Regular collaborate Robin Campillo, who also worked on Entre les Murs with Cantet, constructs an ambivalent relationship between Dejazet and Antoine: both are aware of their social differences, but in spite this they are somehow attracted to one another. Their relationship develops into a separate story, whilst the other six students try to write their own crime novel. DoP Pierre Milon uses impressive panoramic shots, showing the empty docks, then returning to the intimate scenes of collaborate writing, without breaking the fluent movement. Cantet’s direction is  sensitive, he never denounces Antoine, seeing him as a victim of change: once he would have found a spiritual home with the dock workers, but now he is alienated and bitter. L’Atelier is a story of disenfranchisement, and storytelling – with the author as teacher, but one who’s not always in control.

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 NOVEMBER 2018

 

 

Russian Film Week 2018

Russian Film Week is back for the third year running. From 25 November to 2 December the event will take place in London at BFI Southbank, Regent Street Cinema, Curzon Mayfair and Empire Leicester Square before heading to Edinburgh, Cambridge and Oxford.

The eight-day festival celebrates a selection of award-winning new dramas, documentaries and shorts, bridging the gap between Russian cinematography and the West with the aim of building bridges rather than enforcing tensions. The festival will culminate in the Golden Unicorn Awards. This year’s selection has certainly upped its game and comes thoroughly recommended. Particularly worth seeing is Rashomon re-make THE BOTTOMLESS BAG, a magical mystery drama, in black and white.

Russian Film Week opens with Avdotya Smirnova’s prize-winning historical drama THE STORY OF AN APPOINTMENT (prize for Best Script at Russia’s main national film festival Kinotavr). Based on real life events, it follows an episode from Leo Tolstoy’s life. The opening night will be held at the largest screen in the UK – Empire IMAX Leicester Square.

Other seasonal highlights include Kirill Serebrennikovэ’s Cannes awarded biographical film LETO (Summer) and SOBIBOR, Russia’s foreign-language film Oscar submission 2018. The film is the debut feature for actor-turned-director Konstantin Khabensky, and focuses on events in the titular Nazi extermination camp during 1943. The film also stars Christopher Lambert and Karl Frenzel. Danila Kozlovsky, known for his role in BBC series McMafia (2018) and numerous Russian blockbusters, will present his debut project, sports drama TRENER (‘Coach’).

The festival c Golden Unicorn Awards ceremony, including the Best Foreign Film About Russia. British actor Brian Cox will head up the jury. The awards ceremony is in aid of Natalia Vodianova’s Naked Heart Foundation.

Russian Film Week and the Golden Unicorn was founded in 2016 by Filip Perkon with a group of volunteers on a non-profit basis. From 2017 the festival supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture, Synergy University, and the BFI.

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK 2018 | 25 NOVEMBER – 2 DECEMBER 2018

Budapest Noir (2017) *** UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Eva Gardos; Cast: Krisztian Kolovratnik, Reka Tenki, Janos Kulka, Adel Kovats, Franziska Töröcsik; Hungary 2017, 94 min.

Veteran director Eva Gardos (An American Rhapsody) serves up a slick but conventional noir spoof that offers decent entertainment despite its cliche-ridden script. There are too many holes in the narrative, the brothel scenes are voyeuristic, and without any knowledge of the complex Hungarian history of the era, audiences will find it hard to understand what’s going on. But BUDAPEST NOIR looks simply stunning and serves as a perceptive study of Hungarian fascism and Anti-Semitism.

In October 1936, Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös, had died of cancer in Munich. His body was received in Budapest with full military honours (Gömbös had boasted about his fascist credentials). Crime reporter Zsigmond Gordon (Kolovratnik) meets an enigmatic young woman in a restaurant, who tells the waiter that the journalist will pick up her bill. When he finds her note to him, promising to pay back the money, the womanising journalist’s interest is aroused – only to discover her murdered a few days later. But when her body then disappears from the morgue, Gordon makes his own inquiries against the advice of the authorities. He finds out that the girl in question, Fanny (Töröcsik), is the daughter of Andras Szöllosy, a wealthy Jewish coffee importer with links to the government. He converted to Catholicism, and started a lucrative business with Nazi Germany. Helped by his on/off girl friend Krisztina (Tenki), a photographer who had just had an assignment in a German camp (sic), Gordon finds out that Fanny’s father had driven his daughter into prostitution, forbidding her to see her Jewish boyfriend, because of his fears for her future. But after Fanny had become pregnant in a high-class brothel, her situation deteriorated. And when Gordon finally catches up with Fanny’s parents, he mother Irma (Kovats) reacts dramatically.

Sad to say, Hungarian Fascists were as brutal as their Germans counterparts. The ruling Regent, Admiral Horthy, felt superior to Hitler, who had spent a decade in a dosshouse. Gömbös, Horthy’s Prime Minister, wanted two nations to be more closely allied, whilst Horthy only supported Hitler without reservations after the outbreak of WWII, when Hungarian troops fought on the side of the Axis.

It is ironic that Horthy was deposed by Hitler when it came to the deportation of the 400 000 Hungarian Jews in 1944 – it turned out that the Hungarian fascists (Pfeilkreuzler) and the population as a whole, did not share Horthy’s reservation, they enthusiatiscally assisted the Germans to send the Jews to the death camps.

There are scenes of open Anti-Semitism in Budapest Noir: in one scene, a bar singer croons a song composed by a Jew, and some Anti-Semites in the audience attack him. Gordon stops them, but the real fighter is his Krisztina, who leaves him for London, to show her death camp images in an exhibition “because over there are people who really care”. The Szöllosy’s family history is typical for Jews of the region: many had converted to Catholicism, trying to deny their Jewish heritage, and, like Fanny’s father, would marry their offspring to anybody but a Jew. Gordon represents the cynical by-stander, who is only after a good story, he does not mind taking a beating, but is totally non-committed on a personal and political level. Strangely enough, Budapest Noir is – in spite of its obvious faults – a mirror of a society where the points for the future genocide are being put in place. AS

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 |

Inside Mossad: Imperfect Spies *** (2018)

Dir: Duki Dror | Doc Israel | 90′ 2018

Mossad (the National Intelligence Service of Israel) has long been regarded as Gold Standard among spy networks in a world that continues to be fascinated by international espionage. Since the First World World spies have been glamourised and vilified. Their tales have spawned a rich vein of cinema from Noir dramas to documentaries and TV series, the most recent and spine-chilling KILLING EVE has enthralled BBC audiences nationwide.

Here, award-winning documentarian Duki Dror steps behind the secret curtain to unveil insider stories from former Mossad agents – some of them as recent as last year. But it’s important to remember that nowadays these functionaries lead quite normal lives aside from their intelligence activities. And although often viewed as exciting a great deal of their work is routine and procedural – like most people they respond with relish to share their stories of adventure and derring-do.

What emerges here is both intriguing and unsettling. Back in 1960 Mossad rose to the public’s attention when an agency team led by former intelligence officer and politician Rafi Eitan, now 91, captured Nazi arch villain Adolf Eichmann and put him on trial in Israel to answer for his Holocaust crimes in a court of Law. Naturally, no-one objected to the move. But since those glory day, Mossad has simply dispatched a number of high profile terrorists considered a threat to the national interest, without a fair trial. This spirit taking the Law into their own hands has been echoed in the recent events in Salisbury, where a former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were famously poisoned on British soil, purportedly by the Russian themselves. Meanwhile, Eitan reveals an incident where an one of his compatriots was discovered to have been selling secrets to an enemy Arab country. He was kidnapped, assassinated, and his body was dropped over from a place somewhere in the Mediterranean. Another Mossad leader, Zvi Zamir also confesses with relish his time spent in service. He also refers to The Gatekeepers (2012) another documentary highlighting the activities of Israel’s other intelligence agency Shin Bet,, who famously failed to protect the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated by right-winger Yigal Amir.

Scripted by Yossi Melman and Chen Shelach (both from Zero Days) Inside the Mossad is an engrossing and succinctly made human interest story. MT

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 8 – 27 NOVEMBER 2018

The Other Side of Everything (2017) ****

Dir/Writer: Mila Turajlic. Serbia. 2017. 100 mins.

Like most people who have been driven to their knees and learned how to survive their troubled history, the Serbians are tough cookies. And none more so than the indomitable a professor (who is also her mother) in Mila Turajlic’s engrossing documentary. THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING illuminates turbulent times in pre-World War II Serbia when Tito’s communists countermanded her family’s spacious central Belgrade apartment, and forced them to share their home with two other families.

Srbijanka was a tiny girl when Tito came to power in 1943. But the experiences of her childhood have made her a strong-willed and independent thinker who cuts to the chase with salient truisms such as: ” You don’t believe how it all can begin….until it begins.”. Her views and experiences are enriched by fascinating archive footage and news reels of the Tito years in a film that won Turajlic the main prize at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival in 2017.

When the communists took over, the internal doors of her apartment were locked back and have remained so for more than 70 years. Serbia is a country that has never really recovered from this shocking era. It’s the sort of place where the Census-taker asks ordinary citizens searching questions like: “Have you had links to terrorism? What about genocide?”.

But it’s the personal story of its stoical matriarch that actually makes this potted history of Yugoslavia and Serbia over the past hundred years, so engaging. And it soon emerges that the casually dressed and amiably ‘bolshie’ raconteur actually took an active part in the eventual downfall of creatures like Slobodan Milosovic.

The rather opulent apartment bears witness to Srbijanka’s upmarket background of enlightened intellectuals and professionals. Her grandfather had involvement with the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that later became known as Yugoslavia. Sadly, because Srbijanka was not a Communist, she was unable to study Law, but she later became a Mathematics professor at the capital’s University and worked hard to promote pro-Serbian interests. Like so many parents who have experienced terrible political regimes, she warns her daughter to be watchful and sceptical (Mila remains off camera). Yet Mila has her doubts, and this gently probing film marks their expression throughout. The Other Side serves as a worthwhile tribute to the valiant woman at its core, and to everyone who has risked their lives to make their world a better place. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 9 NOVEMBER 2018  | IDFA 2017 REVIEW | Best Feature-length Documentary Winner 2017 | SCREENINGS IN YOUR AREA

 

For Vagina’s Sake (2017) London Korean Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Kim Bo-ram | S. Korean Doc | 73′

FOR VAGINA’S SAKE takes a coyly humorous approach to a bodily function that happens to half the world’s population. A woman will lose over 10 litres of blood during her reproductive years. And while in North East Asia menstruation is still often seen as an embarrassing occurrence, Dutch women treat periods much more pragmatically according to this worthwhile but rather scatty South Korean documentary debut from Kim Bo-ram.

Boram has certainly done her research and uncovered a wealth of information about this vital bodily function, uncovering startling facts from the Dark Ages and followed it through with up to date political developments. It’s a shame then that her film is hamstrung by its choppy editing, flipping backwards and forward and flitting around like a butterfly on heat, it eventually becomes exasperating in the final scenes. It’s also focused almost entirely on women in their twenties and early thirties in Holland and South Korea.

A dinner discussion in Holland reveals that young Dutch woman go for basic applicator-free protection, while in South Korea some are still scared to insert a tampon (afraid that it may get lost) in a country where periods are still taboo and anatomical ignorance is frankly shocking. We then meet an 80 year old Korean woman whose first period came after she marred at 18, and who then went on to produce five or six daughters. In those days sanitary towels consisted of natural cotton balls wrapped in cotton material. Tied with strings round the woman’s waste they often fell down, causing horrific embarrassment. And this humiliation and fear connected with staining a public seat or losing a pad in the street is still a woman’s worst nightmare today.

There follows a potted historical and religious background which verges on the macabre (if not downright misogynistic). We learn than ancient Japan women were thrown into communal pits of menstrual blood and allowed to drown, whereas in China those who gave birth would apparently go to Hell (?). Menstrual blood was considered a puny female attempt at producing sperm.

The second part of the documentary focuses on politics developments and taxes that apply to feminine hygiene products, with a discussion on the contemporary developments in sustainable protection (material pads, sea-foam, and an overlong diatribe about the menstrual cup and its advantages.

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For Vagina’s Sake uses a mixture of interviews and delicately-drawn animations to put its information across and is both subjective and observational. Graphic images dovetail with lighter more frivolous hand-draughted visuals. Fast-paced and fluffy and rather than serious and analytical – the film becomes more inspirational and empowering for its contributors as it presses on. Certainly a worthwhile film to show to teenagers and students from all nationalities who may be suffering in silence, rather than learning about a shared and very natural female experience. MT

SCREENING DURING THE London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Microhabitat (2017) **** London Korean Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Jeon Go-woon; Cast: Esom, Ahn jae-hong, Choi Deok-moon, Kang Jin-ah, Kim kuk-hee, Kim Jae-hwa, Lee Sung wook; South Korea 2017, 104 min.

Jeon Go-woon’s spirited road movie sees a city girl determined to keep her independence while her friends cow-tow to tradition in contemporary Seoul. The original title ‘Little Princess’ better describes this thoughtful story of materialism versus spiritualism.

Miso (a brilliant Lee Som) may be getting on a bit, but can’t afford to heat her tiny studio flat, on her salary as a housemaid. When the rent goes up together with the price of cigarettes, she makes a dramatic decision: to move out and indulge in her favourite brand of whisky, and to keep on smoking. But what price freedom? Her boyfriend Hans-sol (jae-hong) lives in a male-only dormitory, so she can’t go there – they even have to give up having sex. Schlepping around with her belongings, like a bag lady, Miso asks her former band members for help. First off is ambitious office worker Moon-yeong (Jin-ah). She is curt and unapologetic: “I am too irritable to lie with someone”. Next is former vocalist Roki-i (Deok-moon), who now lives with his old-fashioned parents. His mother is keen on the idea. Clearly Miso is the just the right match for her son: “she can clean, and that’s all a woman needs to do”. Roki-i’s certainly keen on Miso. But she can’t deal with being hemmed in with his family, so once again it’s time to move on. The next port of call is her girlfriend Hyeon-jeong (Kuk-hee) whose husband tells his wife “to shut up and cook”. And so it goes on.

Go-woon’s refreshing debut is very much a riff on the traditional versus the modern way of South Korean life. It contemplates the difficulties and isolation of the spiritual way of life, in contrast to the more easier and socially acceptable option of materialism. Freedom may be more nourishing for the soul, but is tough on the body: It’s all very well following your heart in your twenties, but the process becomes tougher as the years go by, and when old age looms around the corner. Esom’s former band-members had their flings with music in their twenties, but they have given up on an inner life, swapping it for opportunism – with different degrees of success.

DoP Tae-soo Kim’s images of Seoul are just breathtaking: the city glitters at night, but during daytime it looks rather drab –  just like Miso’s former friends. Shot in fifteen days, with a rather loose script – Go-woon wanted to convey the humour and absurdity during of the shoot. Microhabitat is a little gem: fast moving yet imbued with gentle insight. This intimate picture of a woman’s determination to follow her dreams at all costs is full of humour and irony. AS

MICROHABITAT OPENED THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018

    

  

The Return (2018) | **** London Korean Film Festival

Dir: Malene Choi | Writer: Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen | With Thomas Hwan, Karoline Sofie Lee | Doc | Denmark | 85′

Two Danish-Korean adoptees return for the first time to the country of their birth in search of their origins, in this refreshingly thoughtful and quietly devastating arthouse documentary debut from Malene Choi. Based on her own experiences THE RETURN is a stunningly photographed and touchingly resonant meditation on destiny and identity, nature and nurture. Muted visuals and Philip Nicolai Flindt’s subtle sound design lend a dreamlike quality of mystery and alienation to this contemplative study of two young people uprooted from Denmark, the country that has become their home and where they have grown up, and returned to their original their birth lands. Despite this yearned for homecoming, they somehow feel disorientated and thrown into confusion in the search for their biological parents. Both internalise their feelings into discrete expressions of loss, anxiety and sadness. So locked away is their private grief, that they often admit to feeling nothing, but the trauma clearly lives within them, hidden deep in their souls.

Thomas’s story is particularly harrowing as it emerges during the emotionally-charged first meeting with his birth mother that he was actually conceived after a one night stand. Clearly he is devastated, but remains dignified in front of his mother, suppressing the trauma that slowly seeps out in dramatic physical expressions during a trip around Seoul  – together with Karoline, where they both let off steam by going boating together and enjoy cocktails. For her part Karoline is less emotionally buttoned up but equally traumatised, especially during a meeting with a hospital adviser who tries to help but simply lacks the necessary resources to further the Korean girl’s inquiries. Clearly she is angry, but also disappointed.

Without resorting to sentimentality or even attempting to create a falsely romantic narrative arc, Choi paints a realistic and utterly convincing portrait of two people who cannot go forward until they have gone back – with satisfaction and closure. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Now SCREENING DURING London Korean FILM FESTIVAL 2018

French Film Festival UK (2018)

A nationwide festival of recent and classic French film that takes place from 7 November until mid December 2018.

From cult classics such as Alain Delon starrer The Unvanquished (1964), to Jean Luc Godard’s Cannes awarded Image Book (2018) there are 50 films to choose from at various venues all over the UK from London to Edinburgh and Belfast to the provincial cities of Bristol and Dundee.

FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL UK 7 NOVEMBER UNTIL 16 DECEMBER 2018

London Korean Film Festival 2018

Launching its 13th edition, the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF2018) is back with a full programme of films and special events at various arthouse cinemas in the London area. 
Korea is regularly in the world news cycle of late due to some tense international political machinations. This year’s festival moves from this global outlook to an intimate view of the day-to-day lives and struggles of ordinary people. The Regent Street cinema will play host to this year’s Gala Premiere 1 November with Microhabitat Jeon Go-woon’s award-winning drama that follows the trials and tribulations of a female city worker in Seoul. There will also be a chance to see The Return that premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival 2018, and Hong Sang-soo’s Locarno 2018 Best Actor winner Hotel By the River. 
Celebrating its 13th Anniversary LKFF runs from 1- 14 November in London before taking highlights around the country with its annual UK Tour, the festival will feature an in-depth Special Focus entitled A Slice of Everyday Life, along with an exciting mix of UK and International premieres, guests and events across a diverse set of strands; Cinema Now, Women’s Voices, Indie Firepower, Contemporary Classics, Artists Video, Animation and Shorts.

KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | PROGRAMME 

UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

The 22nd edition of the  UK Jewish Film Festival this year runs from 8th-22nd November 2018 at cinemas across London, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Brighton and Glasgow.

The programme features a Philip Roth Retrospective in tribute to the much loved author, with a screening of three cinematic interpretations of his work: Goodbye, Columbus; Human Stain and Portnoy’s Complaint.

Other strands include: The Alan Howard International Documentary Strand, Israeli Cinema, Made in Britain, European Cinema, Education Programme, The Sound of Silence providing a spectacular journey back to the 1920s with beautifully restored classic films, Across the World – from Argentina to Russia in 15 days.

Films in Competition for the Dorfman Best Film Award are: The Accountant of Auschwitz, Foxtrot, 2017/Samuel Maoz); Promise At Dawn (2017/Eric Barbier); Three Identical Strangers (2018/Tim Wardle); The Waldheim Waltz (2018/Ruth Beckermann/Berlinale Doc Winner); and Working Woman (Isha Ovedet/2018).

The jury presided by Michael Kuhn includes Anita Land, Clare Binns, Andrew Pulver, Henry Goodman and Michael Rose.

Best Debut Feature Award contenders are: Closeness (2017/Kantemir Balagov/FIPRESCI prize winner, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2017); Doubtful (2017/Eliran Elya); Driver, Outdoors (2017/Asaf Saban); Red Cow (2017/Tsivia Barkai) and Winter Hunt.

Claudia Rosencrantz will lead this jury.

Up for Best Screenplay Award is: Budapest Noir (2017/Eva Gardos), Death of a Poetess (2017/Dana Goldberg/Ephrat Mishori), Foxtrot, Promise At Dawn, To Dust (2017/Shawn Snyder) and Winter Hunt. Jury headed by Nik Powell.

The Opening Night Gala on the 8th November at BFI Southbank is the UK Premiere of Working Woman, directed by Michal Aviad and starring Liron Ben Shlush, Menashe Noy and Oshri Cohen. This film has been nominated for the Dorfman Best Film Award. Released in 2018, this cautionary tale could hardly be more appropriate in the current climate, and follows an ambitious career woman who struggles with harassment in the work place.

The Closing Night Gala, Eric Barbier’s Promise At Dawn will take place on 22 November at Curzon Mayfair and stars Pierre Niney with Charlotte Gainsbourg (Best Actress Cesar Nomination) playing the overbearing Jewish mother in a powerful adaptation of Romain Gary’s memoir.

The Centrepiece Gala is the London Premiere of Three Identical Strangers, directed by Tim Wardle won the Special Jury prize at Sundance Film Festival and involves three men raised by their respective adoptive families within a hundred-mile radius of each other. These siblings Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland and David Kellman were oblivious to the fact that each had two identical brothers until a chance meeting brought them together, aged 19, for the first time since birth. MT

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | NATIONWIDE | 8-22 NOVEMBER 2018

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018) Netflix

Dir: Morgan Neville | US Doc | 98′ | With Peter Bogdanovich, Steve Ecclesine, Oja Kodar, Frank Marshall, Joseph McBride, Beatrice Welles, Orson Welles.

Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) is back with a new doc that serves as a useful companion piece to Welles’ rather haphazard metaphor for the madness of the industry that tormented him: The Other Side of the Wind (2018).

Working with footage from the film itself, which started life in 1970, and complementing it with informative interviews and other Wellesian treasures, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead has a spirited and haphazard style that aims to capture the creative butterfly that was the larger than life, Orson Welles (1918-1985).

Those who wonder whether the world needs another Orson Welles documentary will do well to bear in mind that this Netflix affair will reach an audience that may not even have heard of the man and his genius, so the doc will hopefully find a completely new following along with its committed fanbase, amongst its viewership.

The title apparently refers to the pronouncement that Welles once made in reference to those film financiers and ‘powers that be’ who deserted him when he needed their help. And it’s reassuring to know that the film has finally been completed by those who have ultimately leant their support.

Neville has certainly set himself a tricky task but he pulls it off with the usual aplomb. His previous documentaries have been very well received: 20 Feet From Stardom (2013); Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal (2015) and Won’t You Be My Neighbour (2018). And he’s also brought his own creativity to this outing with its inventive camera angles and black & white to ease cohesion with the archive footage. The film’s interviewees were all close friends of Welles: associates Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom. This documentary’s executive producer Frank Marshall also worked on the Wind shoot and produced the reconstructed film. And there is historian Joseph McBride, who appeared in Wind. Neville’s doc also serves as a tribute to the late Gary Graver, who shot Wind and served as his personal DoP for over a decade, putting his own career and family on the back-burner, in the same way that Leon Vitali dedicated his life to Stanley Kubrick.

The story of the experimental project that was Welles’ main focus for the final 15 years of his life unfolds before us in the velvety black and white sequences. Welles once said that Wind was inspired by his belief in “divine accidents” – and this is one thing that seems to unite the genius with his fellow filmmakers: Every director from Martin Scorsese to William Friedkin reports on these serendipitous moments, and Welles was no different. Wind was repeatedly re-worked and rewritten in a narrative that followed the last day in the life of a veteran film director called Jake Hannaford  (purportedly Welles himself, although he denied it) who was played by John Huston.

Ironically, Peter Bogdanovich started off hero-worshiping Welles, until his own success as a director saw him supporting Welles’ and even offering him accommodation in his own house, with Welles almost outstaying his welcome. But his romantic companion, co-writer and collaborator Oja Kodar, who worked with her paramour on another unfinished project The Deep (1970), remains an enigmatic presence here.

Sadly, Welles’ initial effort to raise finance for Wind remains the most poignant aspect of his endeavour, and the footage of his speech to the AFI in this veiled attempt to garner support, makes for disheartening viewing. The final scenes of the documentary see Welles speculating on the nature of Wind: “maybe it’s just people talking about a movie.”

Neville certainly gives us a great deal of background about Wind in his documentary, but there is very little on the subject of how the film eventually made it to our screens in 2018. And it’s because of this slight flaw in Neville’s film, you might even be excused of thinking that Wind remained a flight of fantasy, rather than a complete feature. Orson Welles and his legacy lives on. MT

ON NETFLIX  | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Artes Mundi 8 Award | National Museum Cardiff

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM in Cardiff is playing host to the UK’s largest international art prize Artes Mundi. From the 26 October until 24 February 2019 the exhibition showcases the five finalists competing for this coveted award.

Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul has joined the list with his latest work INVISIBILITY, a short film melding cinema with contemporary art and riffing on the signature themes that permeated Cemetery of Splendour (2016) and his 2006 debut Syndromes and a Century. Also short-listed for this year’s Artes Mundi award is French-Moroccan artist and filmmaker, Bouchra Khalili. Her short film Twenty-Two Hours took part in this year’s BFI London Film Festival. 

In Twenty-Two Hours, Bouchra Khalili (left) considers how celebrated French writer Jean Genet was invited by the Black Panther Party to secretly visit them in in the U.S in 1970. The film features Doug Miranda, a former prominent member of the Black Panther Party. Echoing BlacKKKlansman, the film questions how we might transmit the historical voice of resistance into the present.

This year’s selection has been distilled from over 450 entries, from 86 countries. The judging committee includes Anthony Shapland, creative director of Cardiff’s g39 gallery. Artes Mundi is a charity founded in 2002.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apichatpong’s work deals with memory, personal politics, and social issues in his native Thailand. With over 40 films under his belt, and still only 48, he is a Cannes Film Festival regular, where he won the Palme d’Or in 2010 for his fantasy drama Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and the Jury prize for Tropical Malady in 2004. Cemetery of Splendour (2015/above) was selected to World premiere in the arthouse Un Certain Regard sidebar, and his love story Blissfully Yours won the UCR award in 2002. His surreal and enigmatic open-ended outings evoke the essence of his homeland through mysterious narratives that often remain unsolved, and are best savoured rather than explained. These fables often have a political undercurrent that we can take or leave, depending on our mood. The past and the present co-exist, and while the focus is general Thai history and folklore, the features have a universal quality exploring love and loss, tradition and the supernatural. His rich reveries explore dreams, nature, and sexuality, alongside Western perceptions of Asia. His recent outing Ten Years in Thailand (2018) is a collaboration between three of his compatriots, and premiered during this year’s Sitges – Catalonia Film Festival.

Experimental in nature, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) is a film of captivating beauty that blends facts and fiction in a story passed from one person to another, Blissfully Yours (2002)is a languid affair that sees two illegal Burmese immigrants enjoys a leisurely afternoon at a remote rural backwater, in the politically charged location between Thailand and Myanmar). One of them is suffering from the after affects of hiding from the authorities in a septic tank. Tropical Malady (2004) sees a love affair gently blossom in the twilight zone between reality and the spirit world, and Uncle Boonmee (2010) also deals in this dreamlike world when a dying man communes with his family, past and present, roaming to the north of Thailand where spends his final days in the birthplace of his first life. Syndromes and a Century (2006) and psychic drama Cemetery of Splendour (2016) both deal with patients and their carers in a rural hospital setting in lush jungle. Bangkok and a countryside clinic is also the backdrop to the unconsummated love story Syndromes and a Century, one of  Weerasethakul’s more accessible films. Music plays a vital role in his features. More often than not, his lulling melodies and soft refrains complement the dreamlike narratives that ask us to abandon ourselves to reverie – and go with the flow. In Mekong Hotel (2012) guitar music accompanies a shifting tale of fact and fiction between a vampire and her daughter in a hotel situated by the Mekong River. Ambient sound in also a used to recreate the intensely sensuous nature of the early scenes of Syndromes and a Century. Traditional folks songs also feature in this autobiographical work that explores the director’s early days at home with his medic parents.

Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili works with film, video and mixed media. Her focus is on ethnic and political minorities examining the complex relationship between the individual and the community. She is also a Professor of Contemporary Art at The Oslo National Art Academy and a founding member of La Cinematheque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organisation based in Tangiers, Morocco. She was the recipient of the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University (2017-2018). Her latest film installation is Twenty-Two Hours (2018).

The three other short-listed artists are: Anna Boghiguian, Otobong Nkanga and Trevor Paglen. The prize will be awarded in January 2019.

NATIONAL MUSEUM CARDIFF | 26 OCTOBER – 24 JANUARY 2019  ARTES MUNDI

 

 

Working Woman (Isha Ovedet) 2017 ****

Dir.: Michal Aviad; Cast: Liron Ben-Slush, Menashe Noy, Oshi Cohen; Israel 2018, 93 min.

Best known her documentaries Michal Aviad (Invisible) sophomore feature is more a study of make incompetence than female empowerment. It tackles the timely issue of sexual harassment in the workplace in a detailed casestudy of a woman who has her work cut out both at home and in the office.

Orna (Ben-Slush) is feeling really positive about her new job in her former army boss’s property company. “Benny knows I’m hard working”, she tells her husband Ofer (Cohen), whose restaurant is struggling. But Ofer has his head in the clouds, with his foodie vanity project. Meanwhile in the world of real estate, Benny (Noy) starts his campaign to ‘groom’ Orna, immediately asking to wear a nice skirt instead of trousers, and letting her hair down “because it suits you”. But when he kisses the working mother of three, he over-steps the mark and makes up for it by offering Orna a promotion and securing an alcohol licence for Ofer’s restaurant.

Benny then whisks Orna off to Paris on the pretence of using her language skills for some company business. Carried away by the ambience, the makes another move on Orna but sadly fails to perform: “You are driving me crazy”, he complains, putting the blame (in time honoured male fashion) on this highly capable woman. Orna immediately leaves Benny’s company, but when he refuses to give her a reference, she is forced to take things into her own hands.

Liron Ben-Slush is the heart and soul of this absorbing drama about a positive woman caught between two impossible men, who both want to exploit her in different ways, relying on her good humour and generosity of spirit to get their own way. Ofer is like a forth child, expecting her to take carry the whole family, while pandering to his ego. Benny is the typical male chauvinist, determined to have his way with Orna, and blaming her when it all backfires. Orna feels guilty and responsible, and has to re-invent herself to survive in this subtle chamber piece, supported by its convincing cast. Aviad creates an important chapter in the ongoing #MeToo campaign. AS

SCREENING DURING UK Jewish Film Festival 2018

                                  

A Woman Captured (2017) ***

Dir.: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter; Documentary; Hungary 2017, 90 min.

Bernadett Tuza-Ritter (Cinetrain: Russian Winter) has certainly achieved something remarkable: her documentary about a Hungarian woman enslaved by an ordinary family is not only moving, but Tuza-Ritter can claim that her film really changed the life of the central character.

We meet Marish, a dishevelled woman of 53 (who looks thirty years older) being woken up early in the morning so she can feed her employer’s menagerie of animals in a backyard of the family home. And this is Europe. Marish has been held in captivity by her boss Eta for over eleven years. Her youngest daughter Vivi escaped the draconian demands of Eta, and lives nearby in the comparative safety of a state orphanage. Without holidays or any time off, Marish is permanently on call to her boss who lives a life of leisure. Tasked with housekeeping and the care of three unruly children, Garish also has to work a daily shift in the factory, giving her boss the monthly wage of 550 Forint to cover her “lodging and food”. Eta makes money out of Marish whenever there is a chance, and insults her into the bargain.. The filmmaker was forced to pay the mercenary Eta 300 Forint a month to gain access to film film Marish – and only under Eta’s strict auspices: Tuza-Ritter was not allowed to film the regular beatings Marish is subjected to in this miserable household. Tuza-Ritter phones the police, but is told that they are unable to take action. In Hungary domestic abuse can only be prosecuted where the victim is related to the aggressor.

To add insult to injury, Marish gets the blame when Eta’s kids break her favourite wine glasses; even the dog Lola is treated with more respect and care than this dejected female servant. Finally, Tuza-Ritter helps Marish to escape to a safe house in a city 200 km away from her tormentor. Although the filmmaker maintains a detached but decent attitude during their nighttime escape from the eta’s premises, Marish is still convinced that she will be betrayed. But when the woman confesses that her real name is Edith, and that Marish was her slave name, we realise that a psychological barrier has been broken. Soon Edith is re-united with her daughter Vivi, who is expecting a baby.

That slavery is alive and well in the EU came as a shock to the director, and will also horrify the audience. Both the police and the social services seem completely unfazed by this parlous situation. What is missing here is an enquiry as to why Marish became a slave in the first place? Marish doesn’t wear chains, so what exactly quantifies her “being held a slave”?  Clearly from the way she talks and behaves, there are indications that Edith has always suffered from low self-esteem and it soon emerges that she has a history of colluding with powerful figures in her life, allowing them to dominate her. She does not appear to have been locked up or in Eta’s house, or indeed, prevented from escaping, so she has clearly ‘acquiesced’ on some level to her imprisonment and cannot therefore technically be classified as a slave. But without knowing anything about her early childhood or upbringing these are only assumptions. It would appear she is just a victim of circumstance who has allowed another human being to take advantage of her for too long.

Tuza-Ritter’s camera is the witness of Edith’s ordeal, and the intimate images are often frightening: Edith is not even allowed to sleep in her own bedroom, but on a couch in the hallway. She is isolated, with no friends or contacts nearby. She is, literally, kept in the dark. A Woman Captured is a brave document, a unique achievement, because the filmmaker took action, when nobody else cared. But whether it’s a testament to modern slavery is questionable. Tuza-Ritter achieves an intensity akin to a Grimm’s fairy-tale, with Eta as the evil witch. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 OCTOBER 2018 | IDFA REVIEW 2017

Lajko in Space (2018) *** Warsaw Film Festival 2018

LAJKO – GYPSY IN SPACE (LAJKO – CIGANY AZ URBEN)

Dir.: Balazs Lengyel; Cast: Tamas Keresztes, JozsefGyabronka, Tibor Pallfy, Anna Boger, Bohdan Benink; Hungary 2018, 90 min.

Director/co-writer Balazs Lengyel shows no fear: his satire about the first man is Space – of course, a Hungarian, not Gagarin, as claimed by the Soviets – is a relentless attack on Stalinism, but the re-write of history is always funny, even if not always done in the best taste.

Young Lajko, a gypsy growing up in the Hungarian country site, has always been interested in Space travel. Unfortunately, one of his first attempts sends his Mum into space, together with the outdoor toilet. As a young man Lajko (Keresztes) has designed a moored balloon to take him into the stratosphere – but he ignores the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and is shot down by the Red Army. He is the victim of waterboarding, but his torturer has shot through too much money over the previous year, and is put in prison. Lajko can count on the help of his father Florian (Pallfy) and uncle Jeno (Gyabronka), the latter a party functionary. The three are sent to Baku, where the Soviet Space programme is being developed. Lajko has to compete with a Mongolian monk, a Baltic counter-revolutionary and Helga Mengele (Boger) to be the first one in Space. Helga is very upset, that “the good name of her father is by now forgotten”, even though he created ten different prototypes of an Aryan super-woman – of which she is the only survivor. When Brezhnev (Benink) arrives at the Space station, Florian steals his ring, and Jeno falls in love with the Soviet leader, admitting that he is gay for the first time. Lajko finally wins the race to be the first man in Space; meeting his mother there in the process. Needless to say, the beastly Russians put Lajko, Florian and Helga in a work camp (so that Gagarin can claim to be the winner), and poor uncle Jeno is shot dead, having just come to terms with being gay.

This is a romp, sometimes crude, but always enjoyable. DoPGyorgy Reder is very inventive, using different formats for the historical scenes, sometimes speeding up the tempo, like in silent movies. It is obvious that everyone had fun shooting this feature, and Lengyel always manages to keep the careering plot on the road. AS

SCREENING DURING WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 12-21 OCTOBER 2018

 

Yuva (2018) *** Warsaw Film Festival 2018

Dir/scr: Emre Yeksan | Drama | Turkey. 2018. 119′

From the depths of Southern Anatolia comes this exploration of subsistence in the wild. And although it very much connects with the narrative of the survival for remote communities; in this case, it sees a man trying to disconnect from his human companions in order to pursue life on his own in nature.

YUVA is writer/director Emre Yeksan’s follow-up to Körfez. Set in the heart of a wooded wilderness, Yuva relies on minimal dialogue and an evocative ambient soundtrack to guide us through a sensory rather than plot driven story of Veysel (Kutay Sandikci) who has left his urban past behind, along with his family, to seek solace in nature and the animal kingdom, Veysel is attempting to rewind his own process of evolution as a human, and so make a purer connection with his natural surroundings.

The verdant lushness of the scenery and the extraordinary otherworldly peace and quiet are the most pleasurable elements that Yeksan conveys together with his commendable sound designer and composer Mustafa Avci. Veysal appears out of the undergrowth carrying an injured animal to the base of a tree that will provide an enigmatic touchstone to this experimental drama (along with a red cross painted on the trunk), as the story unfolds. Veysel is clearly at one with his surroundings, hardly uttering a word until he is roused from his relaxed state of mind by his brother Hasan (Eray Cezayirlioglu) who arrives with some groceries and supplies. Clearly these two are close and very fond of one another and this is shown through kind gestures, one to the other. But the suggestive supernatural elements (poetic realist dreamscapes) are never properly developed. The pace soon quickens into something more febrile in the second act when this rural idyll is disturbed by the arrival of builders – the curse of modern day life – and their guns make it clear that Veysel is not welcome. Anyone who lives in an urban setting knows how miserable life becomes once the developers arrive with their schemes to make money, and more importantly noise and disruption, and this is will resonate with a worldwide audience. The coming of these sinister interlopers sees Veysel drawn back into the human sphere from which he has tried to detach himself. Perhaps Yeksan is hinting at a metaphor for a negative political climate, or even just the simple encroachment of family concerns that threaten to cloud our lives when we aim to escape for some respite.

YUVA eschews a traditional narrative and is experimental in nature, working best as a meditation in its woodland habitat, entrancing us with the ethereal sense of place captured by Jakub Giza’s mesmerising camerawork and breathtaking visuals that lull us into a sense of calm. When the ever loudening sound of chainsaws starts to rupture the placid serenity of it all, Veysel’s motivations seem entirely justified in his desire to escape. Yeksan creates a timely and innovative drama that echoes our atavistic human need to connect with nature, and to seek the peace that will contributes to our collective mental health. MT

SCREENING DURING WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL | 12-21 OCTOBER 2018

The Plan that came from the Bottom Up (2018) **** LFF 2018

Dir.: Steve Sprung; Documentary with shop stewards of Lucas Aerospace; Portugal/UK 2018, 212 min.

This film essay, the feature documentary debut of director/writer Steve Sprung, is a British history lesson about about politics, the working class and ecology. Five shop stewards of Lucas Aerospace, who helped to draw up the Lucas Aerospace (L.A.) Shop Steward Committee’s Alternative Corporate Plan in 1976, discuss their motivation, struggle and eventual defeat. The Alternative Corporate Plan was written up after a meeting of 34 Shop Stewards with the then Industry Minister Tony Benn in November 1974, and was called by the Financial Times “the most radical alternative plans ever been drawn up by workers for their company” and nominated for the 1979 Nobel Peace Price.

Lucas Aerospace was a company relaying very much on their armament production, even though it accounted only for just over 50% of the general turnover. In 1974 the company decided to make redundancies, “due to increased international competition”. The Alternative Corporate Plan was an answer, “because it irked the workers that while they could produce Concorde, they were unable to build affordable paraffin heaters for many suffering from the cold in winter”. Staff and manual workers came up with a list of our 150 products, which could replace the military hardware – over 180 organisations had put their proposals forward to the Combine. The argument was that the production of socially more useful goods would also mean that the state would not to have to pay unemployment benefit. The L.A. management rejected the proposals immediately, even though they had admitted that the market for armament products was shrinking. The list of alternative goods was long: it included medical equipment, transport vehicles, improved braking systems, energy conservation, oceanic equipment, and telechiric machines. A cry specific proposal included an expansion of 40% in the production of kidney dialysis machines, which were being manufactured on one of the L.A. sites. The Combine was successful in attracting funding from charitable bodies, which enabled them to set up the Centre for Alternative Industrial Systems (CAITS) at North East London Polytechnic and the Unit for the Development of Alternative Products (UDAP) at Coventry Polytechnic. But after Prime Minister Wilson replaced Benn, and took charge himself of the industry portfolio, he sided with the management of of L.A., and the Combine plan was not even discussed.

Newsreels and documentaries play a big part in recreating the 1970s in the UK which seems a very long time ago. But A Plan is visually dominated by the repeated documentation of the bloody wars L.A. products played such a major part in. The ethical dilemma is so clear that one wonders how successive governments tolerated and even supported a company like L.A.: Between 1971 and 1976, L.A. made a profit of 25 Million £, at the same time, it received grants from Labour/Tory governments worth 10.6. Million £, effectively paying real tax of 470 000 £. But then, today the government supports fossil fuels four times as much as sustainable energy.

The Plan is a reminder that although the black-and-white images seem outdated to us now, the underlying moral bankruptcy of successive government decisions has not changed. Lucas Aerospace doesn’t exist any more, parts of the company were sold off, others went bankrupt. AS

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018   

22 July (2018) ***

Dir.: Paul Greengrass ; Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Oigarden, Hilde Olausson; Norway/Iceland/USA 133 min.

British director/co-writer Paul Greengrass (United 93) imagines what actually happened during the Norwegian tragedy of 22. July 2011, when right-wing nationalist Anders Behring Breivik killed 69 children on the island of Utoya. Earlier in the day, he had already killed eight passers-by with a bomb in the diplomatic quarter of Oslo. The main focus here is aftermath on the island, and Greengrass ends with a moving court scene.

Anders Breivik (Lie) is a narcissistic killer who prepares for his atrocities meticulously – as if the world were already watching him. After the bombs go off near government offices, he sets out for the island of Utoya, where the Youth Section of the Norwegian Labour Party is meeting. After the killing spree Breivik is contained, treating the policemen who arrest him, with cold distain, as if to say “you should be helping me, not putting me in jail”. In prison, Breivik asks for a well-known liberal lawyer, Geir Lippesad (Oigarden), who takes on his defence, even though he is emotionally repelled by his new client. Lippesad was forced to move his children out of their local schools, as fellow parents could not understand him defending a monster like Breivik. The latter had never actually met a single member of the local Norwegian fascist scene. One of its leaders, who had communicated with Breivik via the internet whilst playing video-games (!) describes him in court as a loner, not worthy of being one of the movement’s leaders – whilst also condoning his actions. Breivik’s mother (Olausson) tries to apologise for what has happened, but blames it all on uncontrolled immigration.

After the attack, Greengrass then switches his focus to Viljar (Gravli), who has been close to death after being shot by Breivik, on the island. Learning to walk again, and living in fear of the shrapnel pieces near his spine moving and killing him, he confronts his attacker in a cathartic court scene. Breivik’s isolation and loneliness contrasts sharply with the solidarity of his family and fellow-survivors.

Apart from an over-schematic script, 22. July is laudable largely because Greengrass avoids sensationalism, and concentrates on the personalities of those involved. Lie gives a brilliant performance of the isolated, arrogant and self-controlled killer, who is unable to feel empathy for anybody – apart from himself. DoP Pal Ulrik Rokseth’s images treat the events like a documentary, keeping the audience involved without becoming over-emotional. This portrait of a self-obsessed, human killing machine traces all the ambiguity of his complex personality, without reaching a conclusion. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Austrian Films at the BFI London Film Festival 2018

 

 

AUSTRIAN FILMS BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Austrian cinema is always a worthwhile presence at the BFI London Film Festival, and this year is no exception with Sudabeh Mortezai’s streetwise drama JOY featuring in the main competition.

JOY (2018) Tuesday 16 & Wednesday 17 October

Sudabeh Mortezai (Macondo, LFF 2014) presents a vital and hugely affecting drama that tackles the vicious cycle of sex trafficking in modern Europe.

ANGELO (2018) Wednesday 17 & Thursday 18 October

The powerful story of Angelo Soliman, a forced Europeanised African who makes his way through Viennese society in the early 18th century without ever belonging.

STYX (2018) Thursday 11 & Saturday 13 October

A professional woman’s solo sailing journey turns into a deadly serious ethical dilemma in this unusual and taut political allegory. (*Germany-Austria co-production)

TWENTY-TWO HOURS  (2018) Tuesday 16 October

Bouchra Khalili’s meditation on revolutionary histories considers the poet Jean Genet’s secret 1970 visit to the United States at the invitation of the Black Panther Party. *Germany-USA-Norway-Austria co-production Screened in conjunction with PROMISED LANDS, directed by Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa. Austria-Germany-Uganda 2018. 19min

YOMEDDINE (2018) Thursday 18, Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 October

Egyptian filmmaker A.B. Shawky makes his feature debut with this utterly unique road movie which charts the friendship between a leper and a young orphan. *Egypt-Austria co-production

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018 

First Man (2018) **

Dir.: Damien Chazelle; Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Olivia Hamilton, Patrick Fugit, Derek Stayton, Corey Stoll; USA 2018,  135 min.

Based on the novel by James R. Hansen and scripted by Josh Singer, director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the overrated La la Land, is a mixture of Buddy movie and historical comic-strip, painting a picture of a time where everything was still OK in the USA. But like Lala Land, Chazelle has no gift for good storytelling: everything about his narrative is episodic, there are some stunning scenes, but they never form a whole, or bridge the gap between the personal and the factual in this space adventure story, which sometimes feels quite clunky.                     

Set between 1961 and 1969, First Man tells the story of Neil Armstrong (Gosling), the titular first man to set foot on the moon. Neil and his wife Janet (Foy) lose their baby daughter to a brain tumour, and we all know immediately where her wristband will end up. Most of Neil’s mates – Kyle Chandler (Stayton), Corey Stoll (Aldrin) and Elliot See (Fugit) come across as cyphers. Only Edward Higgins (Clarke) and his wife Pat (Hamilton) are fleshed out convincingly, but Higgins is written out half-way through, dying in a fire during a test run with two colleges. 

Ryan Gosling is not the ideal choice, being too introverted for the part, stonewalling his emotions, the actor’s face betraying his real feelings. In the end Janet has to force him to tell his two sons, that he might not return alive from the Apollo flight. Lots of time is wasted with technical explanations, the running time could have easily been cut by thirty minutes. We get newsreel flashes about the Vietnam War and other newsworthy topics of the period, but the real issues are never tackled. For example, Wernher Von Braun, the program director, was a staunch Nazi in charge of the V-Weapons in WWII, who used slave-labour, for which his boss Sauckl was executed, Von Braun’ status was changed from ‘committed Nazi’ to ‘Neutral’. It is true that the USSR also used Nazi scientists for their Sputnik programme, initiating the joke “We speak German in Space”. Last, but not least, Chazelle never challenges the validity of the whole undertaking: what did Armstrong’s fellow astronauts really die for? The scientific value of the Apollo project was limited, but the political victory over the USSR – who had won the first leg of the space race – was immense. One could expect at least expect some form of statement from the filmmakers.            

Overall First Man is as disjointed as it is patriotic, centred around a male culture of bonding which is never questioned. The political issues of the 1960s are used merely as a backdrop, the only important aspect is the male world order, which is re-enforced continuously. An undistinguished feature, told with the simplicity of a Boys-Own adventure. AS 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 28 AUG – 9 SEPT 2018 | NATIONWIDE FROM 12 October 2018

Mandy (2018) **

Dir.: Panos Cosmatos; Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache; USA/Belgium 2017, 121 min.

MANDY is a corruscating cosmic ‘boy’s own’ blow-out fuelled by Nicolas Cage’s well-known powers as the hell-raiser in the cultish extravaganza. But that’s about all. Panos Cosmatos dresses up a mundane script with some alarming visual effects driven forward by two dynamite performances. Cage is Red, a lumberjack who shares his woodland cabin with his shop-assistant girlfriend, the etherial Mandy (Riseborough). At night they watch cheesy TV-fiction. On her way back from work one night, Mandy is spotted by Satanic cult leader Jeremiah Sands (Roche), who immediately decides “he has to have her”. Living nearby with his mother and disciples in a ramshackle hut, Jeremiah then abducts Mandy, but when she laughs at his advances (in spite of being drugged), he has her burnt alive, forcing chained-up Red to look on, livid. Whilst Jeremiah can actually summon demons, there’s no matching righteous Red’s fury, who not only turns his skill to making lethal weapons, but is also handy with the chainsaw.

Using coloured filters, DoP Benjamin Loeb tries to pretend that this time-honoured story of a woman being abducted, drugged, tortured and killed has something to do with Art. Cage does his best to give an impersonation of an unleashed male, helping to make this reactionary charade a colossal success at the box-office. Watch it for the thundering score from the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 OCTOBER 2018  

1945 (2017) ***

Dir: Ferenc Török | Cast: Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Ági Szirtes, József Szarvas | Drama | Hungary 2017 | 91 min

Best known for his 2001 comedy drama Moscow Square, Ferenc Török has continued to hone his skills in TV work in his native Hungary. His latest film is an unsettling war-themed drama that takes place on the Hungarian puszta during the blistering heat of August 1945 where the local chemist is getting ready for his son’s wedding. In the sleepy afternoon torpor, two strange men arrive on the scene – and no one is glad to see them. As news of the Sámuels’ arrival seeps through the streets like a bad odour, these orthodox Jewish men dressed in black walk solemnly behind a horse drawn carriage, where their two wooden boxes – like children’s coffins – conceal a mysterious cargo. Clearly something has happened here that has left a sinister whiff of fear for all concerned, not least because of the local’s poor treatment of their Jewish neighbours during the war years. And as they past re-visits the present, the villagers know exactly why they should be scared.

Meanwhile, preparations for the evening wedding are underway. But the bride Kisrózsi (Dóra Sztarenki) is no virgin – she left her good-looking boyfriend Jancsi (Tamás Szabó Kimmel) to pursue a better offer from Arpad, who owns the profitable chemist store. But Arpad’s mother Anna (Eszter Nagy-Kálózy) has rumbled her and is well aware that Kisrózsi and Jancsi are still lovers. This appears to be a community seething in hatred, mistrust and envy, that comes from the outside and from within as they tolerate the constant strain of Soviet occupation.

The tone is very much like that of a darkly comic Midsommer Murders, as the Samuels’ tale intriguingly unfolds amidst a climate of fear and doom. Török and co-writer Gábor T. Szántó base their narrative on Homecoming, a short story where a guilty village serves as a metaphor for national shame, with each character determined to keep their secret in the face of the enemy they have wronged. DoP Elemér Ragályi’s beguiling black and white visuals recreate the 1940s in a mystery that relies on its ominous atmosphere and the strength of its performances, rather than dialogue, to tell a tale of vengeance and dishonour in post war Hungary.MT

NOW SCREENING NATIONWIDE from 12 October 2018

 

 

The Cannibal Club (2018)

Dir/Writer: Guto Parente |Ana Luiza Rios, Tavinho Teixeira | Thriller | Brazil | 75′

Satire is a dish best served with a slice of human flesh in this brilliantly dark, baroquely stylish Brazilian thriller from award-winning filmmaker Guto Parente, who co-directed My Own Private Hell. 

Ana Luiza Rios and Tavinho Teixeira play a wealthy couple in Forteleza who get more than they bargained for due to their carnivorous conniving. In this poor and crime-ridden corner of Brazil, the idle rich live a glorious lifestyle: the sun shines, their private villas are post-modernist and beach-fronted, and there’s more than enough obliging staff to cater to their fantasies, which invariably involve a ménage à trois with a good-looking servant who is then served up for dinner with a glass – or two – of Brazilian Syrah.

Gilda and Otavio are still desirable, along with their coterie of moneyed friends who include bisexual captain of industry Borges (Pedro Domingues). Octavio runs a successful company and belongs to a male only club who regularly meet over dinner to pontificate about the ills of modern life, followed by post prandial porn of the live and sensually Grand Guignol type.

Teixeira’s Octavio is particularly unappealing, an arrogant creep who finally gets his just deserts in the florid finale. Parente’s confidently vulgar narrative is so shamelessly bold it verges on the ridiculous. But The Cannibal Club makes for compulsive viewing punctuated by Fernando Catatau’s tango-style score and the lush backdrop of Fortaleza  Social connections are paramount, desires of the flesh are an hourly preoccupation. Orifices and appetites are voracious and must be filled and satisfied in an elegantly brutal way. And the razor sharp editing of some scenes is particularly masterful thanks to Luiz and Ricardo Pretti who contribute to this success of this slick, succinct and satisfying psychodrama. MT

NOW on BFI PLAYER  | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 PREMIERE

 

My 20th Century (1989) Bfi Player

Writer/Dir: Ildiko Enyedi | Cast: Dorota Segda, Oleg Yankoskiy, Paulus Manker, Gabor Mate, Peter Andorai | Drama | Hungary/West Germany | 104′ 

Enyedi’s intoxicating sensual concoction trips lightly but engagingly over one of the most fascinating and transformative periods in world history – the dawn of the 20th century, seen from the intriguing feminist perspective of two Eastern Europeans, identical twins Dora and Lili, who are born in a simple country household on the evening Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb in 1880. With technology rapidly advancing, could women’s rights ever hope to keep pace?

The orphaned identical twins will take completely different paths in life to discover a world dominated by men where they both nevertheless manage to thrive through their guile and intelligence. One becomes the enticing courtesan/mistress of Oleg Yankoskiy’s Capitalist Z, the other plays take the road less travelled as a radical revolutionary militant. Dorota Segda plays both women in a delicate tour de force that embraces the different possibilities now open to womenkind in a brave new world where their increased agency offers a sense of hope at the turn of the century. She shows how women can succeed if they really put their mind to it.

Still only 34 at the time, Enyedi’s complex but languid fractured narrative seems to amplify the film’s dramatic potential while DoP Tibor Máthé’s sumptuous visual wizardry pays filmic tribute to cinema itself, with the support from the Hamburg Film Board.

Russian star Oleg Yankovsky (Nostalghia) provides romantic support to both women in the lead male role – his slightly exotic looks adding allure to the convincing love scenes. He plays the enigmatic Z. The magical elan of this fairytale-style is further enhanced by twinkling stars and a tinkly original score from Laszlo Vidovszky.

The thematically rich storyline features a variety of animals: a dog in a laboratory sees a vision of the future; a zoo-bound chimpanzee describes how it came to be captured. There is a definite sense of wonder, euphoria and discovery that reflects the true avant-garde nature of the early 1900s – never has art or culture been so radically ground-breaking in the intervening years.

Imaginative and endlessly fascinating to watch this extraordinary debut won Enyedi the Camera D’Or at Cannes in 1989. She continues to experiment on a more realistic but visionary level with On Body and Soul that won the Golden Bear at Berlinale 2017 and just recently at with the overlong but admirable Story of My Wife (2021). MT

4K restoration of MY 20TH CENTURY made possible by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery.

 

 

 

Fragment of an Empire (1929) Oblomok Imperii ***** LFF 2018

Writer/Dir: Fridrikh Ermler (1898-1976) | Writer: Ekaterina Vinogradskiya | Drama | Russia | 96′

A young man who lost his memory during WWI seems to regains it many years later in Friedrich Ermler’s intriguingly cinematic silent drama. Elegantly rendered in glowing black and white Fragment of an Empire is often referred to as the most important film in Soviet Cinema. It certainly makes compelling viewing as a socio-political satire and outstanding critique of the soviet regime, all showcased in an inventively avant-garde arthouse drama that explores the process of remembrance through the medium of film.

The central character Filimonov (Feodor Nikitin) experiences the brash new postwar Soviet world of 1928, through his pre-war Tsarist-era eyes, a decade after WWI began. St Petersburg has now become Soviet Leningrad. The film opens in a stable where a dog who has just given birth to a large litter of puppies. This heart-rending sequence ends with the dog being shot as she looks up with a pleading vulnerability at a group of men who have discovered a soldier’s hiding place.

Made in the same year as Dziga Vertov’s energetic documentary Man with a Movie Camera, this is thematically a more ambitious and daring film that sets out to contemplate the social implications of the postwar period in Russia and to examine memory, through an entirely fresh perspective. Changing attitudes in the aftermath to hostilities have given rise to a new social and political landscape.

The hero (Fyodor Nikitin) gradually remembers he was married and sets out in his Cossack hat and overcoat across a landscape dominated by farming to find his wife (Lyudmila Semyonova) in his hometown of St Petersburg. In ten years the changes have been seismic. Large building soar up into the skyline, where once where small houses. He is completely dismayed by massive statues of Lenin and mesmerised by women wearing short skirts in the tram. The passing traffic bewilders him as he spins round trying to gain his bearings. Eventually he discovers his workplace has been taken over and his wife has re-married. His inquiries are regarded with derision by people he once new and trusted. The frenetic final act recalls Vertov’s film of the same year with its frenetic rhythms but the symbolism here is a sinister parody of Sovietism. MT

Fridrikh Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire has been described by Bryony Dixon as “a powerful personal story and the critique it allows of the revolution as seen by a soldier stuck in a Tsarist past. The film opens in the chaos of a bloody battle in 1914 and follows with an extraordinary evocation of the main protagonist’s returning memory. As played by regular Ermler lead Fiodor Nikitin, his response to the social changes he sees is both moving and politically astute”.

SCREENING ON 19 OCTOBER | BFI SOUTHBANK | Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Frank Bokius | Restoration by San Francisco Silent Film Festival and EYE Filmmuseum in partnership with Gosfilmofond of Russia

 

Tehran Taboo (2017) ****

Dir.: Ali Soozandeh; Animation; Elmira Rafizadeh, Bilal Yasar, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, Negar Mona Alizadeh, Arash Marandi; Austria/Germany, 2017, 96 min.

First time director Ali Soozandeh shows us the seedy tightly-belted underbelly of life in Tehran, where drugs, illegal sex and all sorts of corruption are still part of a daily routine. Using rotoscoped characters and a mixture of 3D and drawn backgrounds, he creates a vibrant picture of a place full of psychotic men and women punished for their hypocrisy.

The central character is Pari (Rafizadeh), a prostitute who takes her mute son Elias (Yasar) with her to work. The first sequence is symbolic of all what follows: Pari is giving a man a blowjob in the front of the car, whilst Elias is sitting in the back, experimenting with an condom. Suddenly, Pari’s customer spots his daughter on the pavement, she is walking hand-in-hand with a boyfriend. The customer, enraged, shouts at the young man calling him a pervert. He pushes Pari aside, and crashes his car.

Pari is trying in vain to get Elias enrolled at a special needs school. But her attempts are unsuccessful, because her husband is serving a long jail sentence for drug-dealing (“I gave them 20 million to avoid the death penalty, now they want ten million for my freedom”), he refuses to sign the application form and will not allow Pari a divorce. When she asks the clerical Judge Adel to help her, he denies her rights – but finds a nice flat for her where he can visit at his leisure, loving the rough sex she provides. In the apartment block Pari where poses as a nurse, we meet Sara (Ebrahimi), who’d rather work as a teacher than have children with her repressive husband Mohsen. Sara looks after Elias, while Pari uses Judge Abdel to get her son into a school. A third narrative strand involves Donya (Alizadeh), who has a one-night stand with musician/DJ Babak (Marandi) and needs an operation to have her hymen replaced for her marriage the following week. When Pari tries to help both Sara and Donya, she discovers that both women have secrets that will lead to their undoing.

Soozandeh makes great use of mirrors and other reflective backgrounds to show the reality, hiding behind the action in front. A typical example of male society is Sara’s father-in-law, a diabetic, who uses Elias to fetch the hidden chocolate from the shelves. He watches pornographic films in Elias’ presence – but is alert enough to quickly switch the TV channels to the state-controlled news as soon as Sara comes into the room. Although the narrative is sometimes too heavy-handed, Soozandeh succeeds in painting a picture of male debauchery and violence behind the curtain of religious purity. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 OCTOBER 2018

Le Cahier Noir | The Black Book of Father Dinis (2018) *** San Sebastian 2018

Dir: Valeria Sarmiento | Chile | Drama | 113′

Valeria Sarmiento follows her Locarno curio La Telenovela Errante (2017) with a classically-styled lavishly-mounted 18th century drama that follows the petripatetic exploits of an (unknowingly) aristocratic Italian nursemaid Laura (Lou de Laâge) after her employer dies in mysterious circumstances leaving her in sole charge of an infant son Sebastian.

Based on a literary work by Chilean novelist Camile Castelo Branco, and adapted for the screen by Carlos Saboga, this sedate and ambitious affair establishes an air of intrigue and uncertainty with an sinister orchestral score as Laura is hotly pursued by the saturnine  Marquis Lusault (Niels Schneider), who quickly ravages her before rakishly marrying someone of better birth – or so it initially appears – until Laura’s real heritage is revealed by  Stanislas Merhar’s priest with an ill-fitting wig. The drama then takes off across Europe visiting a series of sumptuously decorated stately palaces with little to distinguish whether they’re in France, Italy and England. No expense is spared in the costume department although everyone shares the same sepia-tinted lipstick (including the men).

Gracefully performed by its accomplished ensemble cast, The Black Book is an elegantly rendered potboiler that pays homage to Sarmiento’s late husband Raúl Ruiz, sharing the same sombre pacing as his masterpiece Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) while also referencing Sarmiento’s 2012 Lines of Wellington (prepared by Ruiz) although not its breadth of subject matter. A solid and engaging drama. MT

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 21 – 29 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

A Star is Born (2018) Netflix

Dir.: Bradley Cooper; Cast: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliot, Rafi Gavron; USA 2018, 135 min.

In his debut as a director and co-writer, Bradley Cooper offers a soppy Hollywood melodrama just the right side of tasteful – but only just. The forth remake of the narrative, based on a 1932 story by William A. Wellman and Robert Carson, is slightly superior to the Streisand/Kristofferson version of 1976, but very much in the shadow of Cukor’s 1954 outing starring Judy Garland and James Mason.

As expected with such a high profile cast, everything has to be much larger than life – or to put it simply, American. Clichés cannot be big enough, Ally’s rise can’t be too meteoritic, or the fall of Jack(son) Maine more utterly self-destructive. These are the rules of the game in Hollywood, and even for a mere 36 Million Dollars (not that much by today’s standard), you have to show where the money went.

As a director, Cooper has the decency to put Lady Gaga first, and apart from Jack’s last scene (rather ham-fisted), and some truly awful bathroom scenes which are cringeworthy in the extreme, he allows himself rather a moderate redneck performance, leaving Diva Gaga much space to go over the top. Yes, Jack beat up the man whose wife he seduced even when nearly totally blotto. But we’ve seen Cooper in much worse performances, like American Sniper. He tries to keep the tempo up, and some of the chases really create mayhem.

The support cast is actually, not surprisingly, more realistic than the lead pair: Sam Elliot as Jack’s brother Bobby, his long suffering manager, and Ally’s minder and executive Rez (Gavron) feel very contemporary. Bobby is resigned, his Honest-to-God, I’ve-seen-it-all attitude helps Ally to overcome the sadness of her loss, and Rez is very much his efficient younger counterpart: the ice-cold CEO who saves the day with algorithms and applied psychology.

The main criticism is the running time: 135 minutes is simply too generous in re-telling the not so particularly original story of a B-Picture with the budget of something much, much more. In the end, these production values make A Star is Born just above average. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

    

Anchor and Hope (2017) *** London Spanish Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Carlos-Marques Marcet; Cast: Oona Chaplin, Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer, Geraldine Chaplin; UK/Spain 2017, 111 min.

Re-uniting his leads Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer from 10000 KM, director/co-writer Carlos-Marques Marcet offers a modern love story with a twist, set around a houseboat in North London’s canals. Screening during this year’s London Spanish Film Festival this far from  soppy romcom is a barbed tale that proves all is fair in love, for its Eva (O. Chaplin), a 38 year old Salsa teacher who lives with Kat (Tena) on the cramped houseboat, and Roger (Verdaguer), Kat’s boisterous friend and dreadful womaniser, who soon joins the party. Eva uses the death of their cat to fulfil her longing for a child, and with the help of artificial insemination with Roger’s sperm her dream soon comes true. Then Eva’s mum Germaine (G. Chaplin) comes on board and lectures them about the responsibilities of parenthood, since neither of them has a permanent job. But the main problem is that Kat, and to a lesser degree David, want to stay free and unfettered teenagers for life. When Eva loses her baby, she accuses Kat of never wanting to be mother and leaves to stay with Germaine in Barcelona. But her  mother is not very welcoming, and soon we see Eva circling Kat and David on the houseboat like a hungry tiger in this intricate psychology drama. Eva and Kat are the sexual partners; but Kat and David are the spiritual couple, wanting to freewheel forever. While Kat is even more determined to keep the status quo, David, a much softer character behind his macho mask, comes to terms with some aspects of fatherhood. And it is exactly this realisation which drives Eva to despair: sexual orientation is secondary, when it comes to personal commitment and parenthood. Some cuts could benefit this overlong saga but overall Anchor and Hope is a well balanced story that questions how many, often colliding, relationships needs can be fulfilled. The three leads are brilliant, and DoP Dagmar Weaver-Madsen, another team member from 10000 KM, makes great use of the London settings. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON SPANISH FILM WEEKEND 26 – 30 SEPTEMBER 2018

Faces, Places (2017) ***

IMG_3618Dir: Agnes Varda, JR | Doc | French/Belgian | 91min

The diminutive Agnès Varda comes across as a warm social animal at the ripe age of 89.  Collaborating for the first time ever with another photographer, the Ali G lookalike and French creative force JR – possibly for his able assistance and van driving skills – the pair embark on a tour of France, not just to take pretty pictures, but as a tribute to the people they meet along the way. Travelling south from the Northern mining towns to the Midi and Savoie, their aim is to record the memory of ordinary citizens by pasting their oversized photographs for posterity, on old houses and monuments.

JR’s van is painted to look like an enormous camera, and contains a photo-booth that churns out the large photographic prints. It’s a clever idea and one that generates enormous pleasure all round. By the end of their journey, Varda will even have her toes and eyes emblazed on road tanks waggons, to carry her adventure forward. Through this interchange of photographs and conversations with locals, they visit the small towns of Bonnieux, Pirou, St Aubin and Sainte Marguerite where in conversation with farmers, postmen, waitresses and dockworkers Varda builds a special portrait of contemporary France that’s also frank and sometimes even controversial along the lines of: ‘why don’t more women drive heavy goods vehicles’, or, ‘should a goat always keep its horns?’.

Varda still has a keen eye, even though she now suffers macular degeneration and has to undergo painful regular hospital injections. Claiming that ‘chance’ has always been her best assistant she clearly has a positive view of life and reminisces over her industry friends: there is Henri Cartier Bresson and his wife Marine Franke, whose graves we visit, and Guy Bourdin whose photo ends up on a beach monument. And despite happy memories of her friendship with Jean Luc Godard, when turning up at his house for an invitation to tea, the veteran director churlishly fails to appear. MT

NATIONWIDE FROM 21 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

11 Films to See at the BFI London Film Festival 2018

 

The lineup for the 2018 BFI London Film Festival has been announced, and the public box office is open. The 12-day festival will show over 225 feature-length films from all over the globe – so here are some of the best we’ve seen from this year’s international festival circuit.

WILD LIFE (2018)

A teenage boy experiences the breakdown of his parents’ marriage in Paul Dano’s crisp coming of age family drama, set in 1960s Montana, and based on Richard Ford’s novel. Although once or twice veering into melodrama, actor turned filmmaker Dano maintains impressive control over his sleek and very lucid first film which is anchored by three masterful performances, and sees a young family disintegrate after the husband loses his job. WILDLIFE has a great deal in common with Retribution Road (2008), with its similar counterpoint of aspirational hope for a couple starting out on their life in a new town – in this case Great Falls, Montana. But here the perspective is very different – in Wildlife, the entire experience is seen from the unique perspective of a pubescent boy, Joe, played thoughtfully by young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould (The Visit).

WOMAN AT WAR (2018) – SACD Winner, Cannes Film Festival 2018

Benedict Erlingsson’s follow-up to Of Horses and Men is a lively, often funny eco-warrior drama that follows a single woman taking on the state of Iceland with surprising results. Lead actress Haldora Geirhardsdottir has an athletic schedule, running and hiding in the countryside, with helicopters and drones circling overhead. With a magnificent twist at the end, Woman at War doesn’t pull its punches: There are shades of Aki Kaurismaki, the dead pan humour taking away some of the tension of the countryside hunt for Halla. And Erlingsson makes a refreshing break from tradition in the super hero genre by casting a middle-aged woman, who is also super-fit, in the central role.

THE FAVOURITE (2018) Best Actress, Olivia Colman, Venice 2018.

The Favourite is going to be a firm favourite with mainstream audiences and cineastes alike. This latest arthouse drama is his first to be written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara who bring their English sensibilities to this quixotic Baroque satire that distills the essence of Kubrick, Greenaway and Molière in an irreverent and ravishingly witty metaphor for women’s treachery. Set around 1710 during the final moments of Queen Annes’s reign it presents an artful female centric view of courtly life seen from the unique perspective of three remarkable women while on the battlefields England is at war with the French. Despite its period setting The Favourite coins a world with exactly the same credentials as that of Brexit and Trump.

SUNSET – FIPRESCI Prize Venice 2018 

Laszlo Nemes follows his Oscar-winning triumph Son Of Saul with another fraught and achingly romantic fragment of the past again captured through his voyeuristic camera that traces the febrile events leading up to the shooting of Emperor Franz Ferdinand that changed the world forever Set in Budapest between 1913 and the outbreak of the First World War, Sunset reveals a labyrinth of enigma, intrigue, hostility, greed and lust as the central character played by Juli Jakab (Son of Saul) guides us through scenes of ravishing elegance and cataclysmic violence. What seems utter chaos gradually becomes more clear as the spiderweb is infiltrated. Nemes pays homage to the late Gabor Body whose Narcissus and Psyche, are the obvious touchstones to Sunset. On an historical level, Mathias Erdely’s images conjure up the fin-de-siècle fragility in the same way as Gabor’s masterpieces. 

BORDER – Winner, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2018 

BORDER is one of those bracingly original films. Melding fantasy and folklore while teetering on the edge of Gothic horror, it manages to be cleverly convincing and unbelievably weird at the same time. Fraught with undercurrents of sexual identity and self-realisation this gruesome rites of passage fable is another fabulous story with enduring appeal for the arthouse crowd and diehard fans of low key horror. Based on a short story by Let the Right One In creator John Ajvide Lindqvist it is Ali Abbasi’s follow up to Shelley and his first film with writing partner Isabella Ekloff. Abbasi masterfully manages the subtle strands of his storyline while keeping the tension taut and a mischievous humour bubbling under the surface.

DOGMAN Best Actor, Marcello Forte, Cannes 2018 | Palm Dog Winner 2018 

Matteo Garrone’s terrific revenge thriller returns to the filmmaker’s own stamping ground of Caserta with a richly thematic and compulsive exploration of male rivalry and belonging in a downtrodden, criminal-infested, football-playing community scratching a living in a seaside backwater. Life has always been tough in this neck of the woods, infested by gangland influences: it is a terrain that Garrone knows and describes well in his 2008 feature Gomorrah. A brutal brotherhood controls this bleak coastal wilderness where everyone relies on each other to survive. Dogman a gritty and violent film and often unbearably so, but there are moments of heart-rending tenderness – between his Marcello and his doggy dependants – where tears will certainly well up. Fonte won Best Award at Cannes for his skilful portrayal that switches subtly from sad loner to daring desperado.

MADELINE’S MADELINE  

Josephine Decker’s inventive, impressionistic dramas – Butter on the Latch (2013) /Though Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) are an acquired taste but one that marks her out as a distinctive female voice on the American indie circuit. And here she is at Sundance again with a multi-layered mother and daughter tale that is probably her best feature so far. With a stunning central performance from newcomer Helena Howard and a dash of cinematic chutzpah that sends this soaring, Madeline’s Madeline is a thing of beauty – intoxicating to watch, compellingly chaotic with a potently emotional storyline.

MUSEUM – Best Script Berlinale 2018

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ follow-up to his punchy debut Guëros, sees two wayward young Mexicans from Satellite City robbing the local archeological museum of its Mayan  treasures – simply out of boredom. MUSEUM is an offbeat but strangely captivating drama that gradually gets more entertaining, although it never quite feels completely satisfying, despite some stunningly inventive sequences and three convincing performances from Gael Garcia Bernal, Simon Russell Beale and Alfredo Castro (The Club). It’s largely down to local Mexican incompetence that these two amateurish dudes (Bernal/Ortizgris) get away with their heist in the first place. But what starts as a so-so domestic drama with the same aesthetic as No!, slowly starts to sizzle with suspense as the director deftly manages the film’s tonal shifts to surprise and even delight us – this is a film that deserves a watch for its sheer wakiness and inventive chutzpah. 

IN FABRIC 

Impeccable red talons slide a flick knife across a box to reveal its contours, a beautiful silky dress that can kill. Peter Strickland’s latest, highly-anticipated oddball feature again stars Sidse Babett Knudsen (The Duke of Burgundy) in a haunting ghost story that follows the fate of this bedevilled garment as it passes from owner to owner, with tragic consequences against the backdrop of the winter sales in a busy department store. This is a gem of a giallo with Strickland’s signature soundscape dominating, just as it did in Berberian Sound Studio. 

THE WILD PEAR TREE – Palme d’Or, Cannes 2018 

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s long-awaited follow-up to Winter Sleep melds his classic themes of family, fate and self-realisation into a leisurely and immersive 3-hour narrative that won him the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes. This is a sumptuous, visual treat to savour but you’ll never actually see a pear tree. 

THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD (2018)

There should be a sub-genre dedicated to films about the multi-talented force that was Orson Welles. Here Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies) has his turn with a focus on the final fifteen years of the director Welles as he pins his Hollywood comeback on a film called The Other Side of the Wind, a film within a film sees an ageing director trying to complete his final oeuvre. Welles’ film starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich was a hotchpotch of brilliance and tedium, in equal parts. Neville’s doc offers new insight into the creative legend with clarity and charismatic flourishes that would make Welles turn in his grave…with approval. MT

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

AQUARELA: Victor Kossakovsky, Eicca Toppinen; BEEN SO LONG: Tinge Krishnan, Michaela Coel, George Mackay, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Amanda Jenks; FAHRENHEIT 11/9: Michael Moore; THE HATE U GIVE: George Tillman Jr, Amandla Stenberg, Angie Thomas; MAKE ME UP: Rachel Maclean; OUT OF BLUE: Carol Morley, Patricia Clarkson; PETERLOO: Mike Leigh; RAFIKI: Wanuri Kahiu; THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD: Peter Jackson 

OFFICIAL COMPETITION

BIRDS OF PASSAGE: Ciro Guerra, David Gallego; DESTROYER: Karyn Kusama; HAPPY AS LAZZARO: Alice Rohrwacher; HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD.: Ben Wheatley; IN FABRIC: Peter Strickland; JOY: Sudabeh Mortezai; THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN: David Lowery; SHADOW: Zhao Xiaoding; SUNSET: László Nemes; TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG: Dominga Sotomayor

FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION

THE CHAMBERMAID: Lila Avilés; THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW: Soudade Kaadan; HOLIDAY: Isabella Eklöf; JOURNEY TO A MOTHER’S ROOM: Celia Rico Clavellino; ONLY YOU: Harry Wootliff; RAY & LIZ: Richard Billingham; SONI: Ivan Ayr; WILDLIFE: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

DREAM AWAY: Marouan Omara, Johanna Domke; EVELYN: Orlando von Einsiedel; JOHN MCENROE – IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION: Julien Faraut; THE PLAN THAT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM UP: Steve Sprung; PUTIN’S WITNESSES: Vitaly Mansky; THE RAFT: Marcus Lindeen; THEATRE OF WAR: Lola Arias, David Jackson, Sukrim Rai; WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE?: Roberto Minervini; YOUNG AND ALIVE: Matthieu Bareyre.

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 10-21 October 2018

 

 

 

 

Blindspot (2018) **** Toronto Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Tuva Novotny; Cast: Pia Tjelta, Oddgeir Thune, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Nora Mathea Æien, Ellen Heyersdahl, Per Frisch; Norway 2018, 102 min.

Tuva Novotny’s impressive and unflinching debut documents every parent’s worst nightmare. Shot in two long takes, we witness the suicide attempt of the teenage schoolgirl Thea, and the reactions of her family, as they try to cope with something they cannot understand. The most used phrase returning again and again, is “that Tea was happy”.But when an unexpected catastrophe happens, everything about their life is called into question.

Maria (Pia Tjelta), Anders (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), and their two children — Tea (Nora Mathea Øien) and son Bjorn enjoy a settling and happy life in Oslo. We during an average day playing handball at school, and walking home with her friend Anna (Heyersdale) and greeting her (step)mother Maria (Tjelta) and her little brother Bjorn in their third floor apartment, where she makes herself a sandwich, before writing a short note in her diary. She then jumps out of window. 

The second part features Maria – the camera focuses on her grief after finding her unconscious daughter in front of the apartment block. Her father Hasse (Frisch) comes to help her, calling an ambulance which takes her to hospital and the trauma team. The arrival of her biological father Anders (Christiansen) makes everything even more fraught as he is aggressive, insisting on seeing his daughter. We learn from him that Thea’s birth mother Line killed herself and was found by her daughter and father. Martin brings bad news, 

The experience of bereavement by parental suicide of children and young teenagers is not well understood, as evidenced by the lack of empirically supported interventions for this underserved sector of the population. All we know is that “there are extra layers of bereavement” for this group. The process of healing is not much helped by the fact that children have an “omnipotent” perspective and feel responsible for the death of the parent. Children under eighteen who suffer parental bereavement are three times more likely to commit suicide as children with living parents. And, for reasons not understood, girls are three times more likely to have traumatic reactions to parental suicide than boys.

DoP Jonas Alarik treats the narrative like a documentary, there is nothing superfluous in his images, particularly the close-ups are impressive, as well as Maria’s ride in the ambulance, when she is trying to understand how his could have happen to her “happy” daughter. Anders might have given a little clue, reporting at the hospital that Thea told him when she was younger “Daddy, when I die. I turn into a lovely flower you can pick and put on to the window sill”. A heart braking study of grief, flawlessly executed by Nowotny.

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 7 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 

Retrospekt (2018) **** Toronto Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Esther Rots; Cast: Circe Lethem, Martijn van der Veen, Lien Wildermersch, Teun Luijkx; Netherlands/Belgium 2018, 101 min.

Esther Rots’ follow-up to Can Go Through Skin is a portrait of psychological self-destruction told through three time-lines keeping the audience enthralled but also questioning the role of its plausible characters.

Mette (Lethem) is a busy working mother who runs a domestic violence support centre while coping with the latest addition to her  family, a daughter Michelle. Her marriage is under strain with her husband Simon (van der Veen) often away on business. Aware that Lee (Wildermersch) is also having trouble with her violent boyfriend Frank, she invites the young woman to help in the centre and stay with her during one of Simon’s long absences. Needless to say, Frank finds out where Lee is hiding and when Simon returns on the same night, confrontation in unavoidable and tragic consequences ensue leaving Mette wheel-chair bound but paradoxically bringing her closer to her estranged father – who is also in a wheelchair and suffering from dementia. The pair chatting to each other in their wheelchairs, is one of the highly symbolic scenes of this affecting indie features from the Dutch writer and director.

DoP Lennart Hillege deftly manages two different styles: from hyper-realism to women-in-peril scenes where the traumatise Mette, tries to get her mind around what really happened. The continuously changing time-frames help to crate an atmosphere, where the truth –  Rashamon-style –  becomes more and buried in an ecliptic avalanche questioning our initial perceptions of the protagonists during the course of the narrative. With its score of Brecht-like songs by composer Dan Gesin, Retrospekt is a haunting and enigmatic character study. AS

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Shadow 2018) **** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir: Zhang Yimou | Action Drama | China | 110’

Two-time winner of the Golden Lion at Venice for The Story Of Qiu Ju, and Not One Less, Chinese supremo Zhang Yimou relinquishes his charisteristic colour spectrum for a magnificent monochrome palette in his latest martial arts extravaganza that melds solemn Singing in the Rain set pieces with eye-popping wuxia credentials in a glorious return to form akin to Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

Grey has never looked so stunning in Yimou’s action scenes inspired by China’s tradition of ink-wash painting and creatively choreographed with the director’s signature style and inventiveness. In place of shields, lethal steel umbrellas cut and thrust in an epic tale set during China’s Three Kingdoms era during the Third century where the land of Pei is ruled by an unhinged maverick king (Zheng Kai). The king’s military commander (Deng Chao) has shown his skill on the battlefield, but running the kingdom is another matter needing political nous and diplomacy to survive. So he has trained a “shadow” (also played by Deng), who can fool the king, as well as Pei’s enemies, when required. Fighting to gain control of the walled city of Jing, the king and the commander join forces to plan a secret strategy. While the real king, a dissipated old warrior, has retreated to his lair to lick his world weary wounds, his wife Madam (Sun Li) has fallen for the younger and stronger double. 

During the extraordinary battle scenes the only contrast from the stunning steel grey, charcoal and white aesthetic is that of human flesh and blood evoking a palpable feeling of pain and suffering and bringing to mind the epics of Akira Kurosawa. This occasionally drawn out but intoxicating game of intrigue and duplicity slowly builds to a coruscating climax as Yimou manages the spectacular combat set pieces with extraordinary ingenuity both on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, the umbrellas bristling with blades as they cascade like gushing rivers of steel raining down on the floating Trojan horse centrepiece.

Aside from the visual mastery of it all Yimou offers dramatic character studies: Deng as a double-crossing demon, the gracefully feisty women Sun Li and Guan Xiaotong giving impressive performances. But it’s Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding and production designer Ma Kwong Kwai who really set the whole production alight. Another worthwhile and thoroughly enjoyable edition to Yimou’s wuxia wonderland. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

A Letter to a Friend in Gaza (2018) **** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Amos Gitai; Cast: Makram Khoury, Clara Khoury, Hilla Vidor, Amos Gitai, Amira Hass; Israel 2018, 34 min.

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct you cars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself (Say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).
Mahmoud Darwish, Think of others

Israeli director/co-writer Amos Gitai (Rabin, the last Day) uses poetry to confront Israel’s on-going decimation of their Palestinian neighbours. Inspired by Albert Camus’ “Letters to a German Friend” (1943-1944), Gitai and co-writer Makram Khouri both express their hope for a future when “Israeli children will ask their parents what they have done”; with Gitai stating “I love my country too much, that I will not become a nationalist”.

The images on the huge walls separating the two nations make the Berlin Wall look decisively less threatening in contrast: DoP Oded Kirma’s camera nearly touches the monstrosity. Other scenes show Palestinian youths with slingshots fighting a professional Israeli army with machine guns; and the last image of the documentary is an antique painting of David attacking the well armoured giant Goliath with his catapult.

But it is words that take centre stage: Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Think of others’ seems in parts like a direct reference to the destruction of water tanks in Palestine by the Israeli Defence Forces. But the poem ends lyrically.

The centrepiece is Amira Hass’ monologue about a hopeful future. Courageously, Gitai then sets the cat amongst the pigeons of today’s Israeli society: the parents’ response to their kids is that “they obeyed orders”. This was their excuse,  but it was also the excuse of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. Gitai once and for all sets a line in the sand, breaking a taboo: there is no longer any justification for the continuous war against the Palestinians, and there hasn’t been since the foundation of the State of Israel.

Allying himself with Camus on the question of the just war against the Nazis, Gitai comes very close to a “guilty verdict” for the State he fought for – and nearly died – as a soldier. He might have become the proverbial ‘candle in the dark’, but the likeliehood that the children of today’s Settler generation will leave their parents’ homes is very remote -metaphorically and practically. AS

SCREENING DURING VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

     

The River (Ozen) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Orizzonti

Dir/scr: Emir Baigazin. Kaz-Pol-Nor. 2018. 108mins

This spare and rhythmic final film in Kazakh auteur Emir Baigazin’s Asian trilogy serves as a simple but mesmerising metaphor for the dangers of the digial world exploring themes of repression, release and discovery in a remote corner of Kazakhstan.

Following on from Harmony Lessons (Uroki Garmonii,2013) and The Wounded Angel (Ranenyy Angel, 2016), The River (Ozen) captivates with its austere and gracefully composed sequences in a parable that seethes with expectation throughout its spare dramatic arc establishing its appeal to arthouse audiences from the opening scenes when we first meet the brothers in their dusty, windswept village where earthy sepia and bleached khaki prevails in Baigazin’s stark aesthetic.  

Five brothers cower under the obdurate cosh of their draconian father (Kuandyk Kystykbayev) who imposes a spartan regime of hard work and strict discipline. Like many austere fathers his intentions are protectionist rather than cruel, and the reason for this will soon become clear when a newcomer arrives in the village to disrupt the peaceful existence.

The oldest son Aslan (Zhalgas Klanov) is expected to act as second in command to his father and teach his brothers how to read and write. Unlike his father he offers some light relief to his siblings allowing them to swim in the fast-flowing river nearby, the benefits of nature are clear and the dangers self-apparent, Meanwhile in the outside world beyond their home the benefits of progress are more ambiguous,

This questionable garden of Eden is soon destabilised when Kanat (Eric Tazabekov) breezes into the village one day. Dressed in flashy yellow socks and a silver anorak, this bright young stranger also rocks a pair of headphones and carries a bleeping tablet. The boys are amazed by his swanky attire and intrigued by his computer with its News channel and games. 

The River is fraught will religious motifs from the Bible amongst them a wooden cross in the shaped scarecrow, and this all presages doom for the boys’ rural sanctuary. This is a the film whose spare credentials and minimalism belie its rich thematic content that make it an incisive and satisfying look at progress and loss of innocence. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Best DIRECTOR | ORIZZONTI 2018

Emma Peeters (2018) Venice Film Festival 2018 | Giornate degli Autori


Dir.: Nicole Palo; Cast: Monia Chokri, Fabrice Adde, Stephanie Crayencour, Andrea Ferrol, Anne Sylvain, Jean Henri Compere, Abdre Ferreol; Belgium 2018, 90 min.

Nicole Palo’s second feature is a charming but fluffy comedy about a Belgian would-be actress plagued by her embarrassing parents and fashion faux pas. Shot idyllically, mostly in Belleville Monia Chokri’s portrayal of the titular heroine is an impressive performance. 

Emma (Chokri) is in her mid-thirties and has made the decision to throw in the towel on her acting career in Paris and radically also to end her life. After visiting a funeral parlour – wearing her usual faux-sheep coat and looking very sheepish indeed – she attracts the attention of the owner Alex (Adde), whose struggle with reality is just as troubled. A good-bye visit to her annoyingly banal parents (Sylvain/Compere) in Belgium is followed by several unsuccessful attempts to get rid of her cat Jim, who clings on (clearly loving her jacket). And her friends are no great help either: Stephanie (Crayencour) is a blond, vacuous version of Emma (but a success with men of all sexual orientations) and is only interested in her friend when she wants to borrow her tiny flat to sleep with married men. Her ‘best friends’ Bob and Serge, gay hairdressers, think that a new haircut may lift her spirits. After Mum and Dad turn up for an uninvited visit, we begin to understand Emma’s pain. And when Alex finally gives Emma the promised suicide pill, we know that a happy-end awaits all concerned: Stephanie is pregnant by Bob and/or Serge, and Emma will be the god-mother.

There are shades of the late Solveig Ansbach here (Queen of Montreuil), but without her love of detail and anarchic complications. Palo just goes for the most obvious laughs, using Belleville as a background and creating a succharine atmosphere. On top there are half-baked characters like Bernadette (Ferreol), a lonely old woman who not well-disposed towards Emma. At best this quirky comedy drama could be described as endearing. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI 4 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

Joy (2018) Venice Film Festival | VENICE DAYS 2018

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai; Cast: Joy Anwulika Alphonsus, Prcious Mariam Sanusi, Angela Ekeleme Pius, Jane Okoh; Austria 2018, 100 min.

German born writer/director Sudabeh Mortezai (Macondo) spent her youth in Vienna and Teheran before studying film at UCLA. Her second feature is centred around Nigerian women sold by their families as sex-workers to Europe. In the prologue, we see the local shaman performing the ‘Juju’ ritual on one of these young women: the victims have to leave an intimate part of themselves behind so they don’t run away, and send money home regularly.

We meet Joy (Alphonsus) on a dark night Vienna where she is soliciting. Next to her stands young Precious (Sanusi), who has just arrived from Nigeria and does not want to sell her body, to pay back Madame (Pius), whom she owes 60,000 Euros. Back in the flat, where the girls live in cramped  conditions, Madame holds Joy responsible for Precious’ attitude and tells her that her debt will increase if she doesn’t encourage the young girl to work harder. For good measure, Precious is than raped by two men, her cries of help going unanswered. The brutal treatment makes Precious fall into line and she becomes the highest earner of the group. Madame expresses her thanks by selling her for a profit to Italian pimps. 

Meanwhile Joy and Precious are continually pestered by their families to send more money home. Joy’s family ‘invents’ a fake illnesses so her clients will take pity and pay her extra.  And Precious’ mother asks her to sleep with more more men: “Can you imagine, the woman who gave birth to me wants me to do do that!” Joy, who has a daughter Chioma (Okoh), for whose upkeep she pays a nanny, is sent with Precious to the Italian border, keeping her passport. Precious asks her many times to relinquish the passport, so that she can escape. But Joy is well aware that Madame’s vengeance would be be grim, and she reminds Precious: “This is a game of survival of the fittest. I would kill you if I needed to. Do not trust me!”. Her calculation proves right when Madame ‘releases’ her, which is not so generous as it looks since new and younger girls have arrived from Nigeria.

The director takes a detached approach throughout. The gruesome details of the women’s suffering – Joy is bleeding heavily after being raped by three men, but Madame does not allow her to seek medical help. The whole circle of violence, starting in Nigeria is repeated over and over again, because the authorities in Austria want Joy to testify against Madame, but won’t grant her immediate asylum.

JOY explores a real and continuous nightmare that is happening all the time, in nearly every European city. Shot starkly by DoP Clemens Hufnagl, mostly at night, the few interior scenes reveal the misery and fear that haunts women daily. A depressing but worthwhile film. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 29 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | VENICE DAYS AWARD WINNER 2018

 

 

La Quietud (2018) *** Venice Film Festival

Director.: Pablo Trapero; Cast: Martina Gusman, Bejo, Edgar Ramirez, Joaquin Furriel, Graciela Borges; Argentina 2018, 117 min.

Pablo Trapero (The Clan) takes another look  at Argentina’s traumatic past, pairing the political and the personal in this stylishly frivolous Tele-Novela drama, which has more secrets up its cheeky sleeve than the audience initially bargained for. Centred around two incestral sisters, Trapero  invokes the Bunuel films of his Mexican period, sticking to a strict inforcement of Freudian interpretations.

After her father’s stroke, Eugenia (Bejo) returns from Paris to Buenos Aires. She is meeting up with her sister Mia (Gusman) and mother Esmeralda (Borges), who live in the very inaptly called country villa The Quietude. The sisters are close and look uncannily the same, sharing more than just the taste for the same man. Eugenia’s husband Vincent (Ramirez), soon turns up  and is greeted by a more than friendly Mia, who fetches him from the airport. Eugenia reveals she is pregnant after a long time of trying. Her tyrannical mother is over-joyed, her lover Esteban (Furriel) claims that it is his baby, and wants a paternity test. Meanwhile the father’s health detirioates, and Esmeralda finally pulls the plug in the middle of the night. After his funeral, Mia gets drunk, and whilst her sister is driving her home, she causes an accident. 

But soon an unseemly past comes knocking: the family is accused to have profited from imprisoned victims of the 1980s Military dictatorship – they signed their property over to the lawyers hoping for clemency in return. Esmeraldo claims that it was her husband who went into prison to get the signatures, but Mia, her father’s favourite, sets out to resarch her claim. Trapero ends on an implausible but romantically happy-end  for the sisters.

The wildly oscillating plot does not hide the sincerity of the conflict: obvious, dishonesty has spoiled family life for a long time, and the patriarch’s death forces a solution which might have otherwise not happened. Like with Bunuel, the family is always a place to hide guilty secrets, and children are burdend with the sins of their parents. 

Furthermore, some siblings like to stretch out their idyllic childhood into adulthood because they are disappointed by life, and want to escape into the past. The narrative and ensemble acting is convincing, images are strictly limited by a TV-style format – a shame, because the close-ups dominate and take away some of the enjoyment of the Buenos Aires cityscapes and the local pampas. But overall The Quietude is a rollercoaster ride of light-hearted lust and petty infighting. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Suspiria (2018) ** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Luca Guadagnino, Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Cloe Grace Moretz, Lutz Ebersdorf; USA/Italy 2018, 152 min.

Luca Guadagnino follows his much praised Call Me By Your Name with a rather confused and overloaded vision of Dario Argento’s horror classic, using the original script by Argento and Daria Nicoldi, re-written by David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash). 

Unfortunately the Kajganich has added new material, setting the narrative in Berlin at the height of the Baader Meinhof crisis. A running time of 152 minutes also tests the audience severely.

In the dank Autumn of 1977, Susie Bannian (Johnson) arrives from Ohio at the famous Dance School TANZ, near the Wall in West Berlin. There is an unsettling atmosphere at the academy, the two leading teachers Blanc (a luminously sinuous Swinton) and Markos are fighting for supremacy, the conflict a battle of life and death. Susie soon becomes the lead dancer, relegating Patricia (Moretz) and Sara (Goth) to the lower echelons of the troupe.

When dancers start to disappear, the sinister infighting turns more and more bloody. Enter Dr. Joseph Klemperer (Ebersdorf), a relict from WWII, who is still searching for his Jewish wife sent to the Concentration Camp Teresienstadt, where she was killed. The psychiatrist feels deep guilt over her death. As the nastiness at the Academy unfurls, a Witches’ Coven is uncovered and Klemperer’s role becomes more and more murky – in tune with this muddled affair. 

DoP Sayonbhu Mukdeeprom creates magnificently macabre images, but in the long run this is not enough to save Susperia from emerging an awkward mixture of two films, both competing for our attention. The acting is also mixed, with Swinton being head and shoulders above the rest (quite literally) in achieving visionary eminence. In the end the German history lesson loses out to the horror strand, but the brake comes too late. A needless remake where less would have been so much more. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Mountain (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018

Dir: Rick Alverson | Cast: Tye Sheridan, Jeff Goldblum, Hannah Gross, Denis Lavant, Udo Kier | US Drama | 

Rick Alverson enforces his reputation as an arcane arthouse auteur in this drifting and broodingly melancholy film that follows the career of a suave peripatetic professor of lobotomies, seen through the eyes of a repressed young man in 1950s America.

Nothing is really different from today in this Edward Hopper-like world of alienation and conservatism where self expression, particularly from women, is curbed and stifled by a sharp poke in the eyes from Jeff Goldblum’s dapper despotic Dr Fiennes.

There is something unsettlingly surreal about The Mountain and the way it plays out with a glowering intent that solemnly visits the pristine emptiness of its spartan interiors and mournful rural backwaters.  It could be called visionary but it also feels overbearing in its arty pretentiousness. 

Alverson has selected a perfect cast for the doom-laden affair. Tye Sheridan, is a troubled young man whose mother has disappeared into an institution and whose figure-skating father (a mesmerising Udo Kier) dies during the early scenes in their airless home. Trained up as a medical photographer by the rangy doctor with his eye for the ladies and a whiff of eminence grise ruffling through his silver locks, the pair then cut a swathe through select California psychiatric institutions, helping ‘deranged’ patients to be more compliant by detaching their prefrontal cortex.

But as new psychotropic drugs become the treatment of preference, psychiatrists begin refusing Fiennes’ services and he slowly unravels taking Wally and his female friend with him. There is q classic cameo from Denis Lavant thrown in for good measure to complete the wacky weirdness of it all. An acquired taste and a hypnotic film to watch that could be a road best not travelled for others. MT 

VENICE FIOM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Friedkin Uncut (2018) Tribute to William Friedkin

Dir: Francesco Zippel | US-ITALY | 107 MINS | DOCUMENTARY | with William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, Willem Dafoe, Wes Anderson, Matthew McConaughey, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Shannon, Juno Temple

Wlliam Friedkin swaggers into the room and grabs a mug of dark coffee: “What interests me is how Hitler took a load of intelligent people down, whereas Jesus lifted them up”: He concludes “it’s a struggle for every human being to overcome their dark side”. 

William Friedkin, who is sadly no longer with us, must be one of the most quotable directors. Perfectly formed truisms just flood out of him in this amiable portrait from Francesco Zippel. Looking like an amiable astute tortoise with his smooth features and perfectly coiffed hair, he can be vociferous. When filming The French Connection he apparently shouted at his cinematographer: “What you’ve shown me so far sucks”. The two went on to make an all time classic that flopped at the box office. As Michael Shannon puts it: “Billy forces you to the dark place- he’s aware when something is phoney – he wants 200% because he’s giving 200%. Unlike Kubrick, he’s not looking for perfection, he’s looking for spontaneity.

Born in 1935 of Ukrainian Jewish parents who immigrated to the US, Friedkin did not realise the family was poor because everyone around them in their Chicago tenement was in the same boat. His father was a semi-professional soft ball player, his mother a warm and giving woman who he adored Young Friedkin started in the mail room of a TV station and worked his way up – in common with many other directors of the 1960s, but seeing Citizen Kane was the turning point that inspired him with the power of film and then he went on to Hollywood and was completely devolved of that notion. The rest is history.

Built around Friedkin’s pragmatic and pithy commentary Francesco Zippel’s doc well-structured documentary focuses on each of his films, intercut with commentary from the relevant talking heads and collaborators who discuss the way they worked with him. Friedkin is articulately frank and open about his motivations, which are interesting in themselves. A tinkly occasional score accompanies some extraordinary revelations: his film The people vs Paul Crump actually saved the man’s life. On the whole his films have a cinema vérité quality to them that is rooted in his documentary style, especially The French Connection that transports you ‘there in that era’ but the film still feels incredibly fresh and – in the view of Edgar Wright – more so than thrillers that are being made today. Infact FC is almost 95% based on truth, along with Bug and Killer Joe.  Friedkin liked facts and percentages rather than ephemera. 

Yet while filming he gets lost in the moment: Gina Gershon calls him a method director as he literally becomes part of the atmosphere during a shoot, making a suggestion and seeing what the actor does with it.

Wes Anderson likes his horror fare because the narrative pulls you in keeping you close to the characters are engaging because in Friedkin movies they’re built in reality. Casting his films to perfection avoids too many takes. Infact he’s very much a one take guy, a cording to Juno Temple who applauds the complexity of his female characters, who are sometimes even more complicated that his male characters. And he casts his films to perfection Max von Sydow was perfect in the Exorcist Ellen Burstyn  knew the territory as a lapsed Catholic herself. “He taught me how to be real in the fiction” she says.

We are treated to archive footage of an interview with Fritz Lang where the German emigre complains that his films made in Germany are worthless but al least he got to meet Goebels. Lang only appreciated the films he made in Hollywood. As a director you need ambition, luck and the Grace of God, and particularly the latter. But in the end “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”

In his lavishly hilltop home we are shown his drawings by Sergei Eisenstein before he discusses his film Cruising which was made inside the gay bars of New York but wasn’t a hit with the gay community on account of exposing their haunts in their raw reality. “I loved it as an exotic background for a murder mystery. But i don’t approach cinema from a political standpoint. Infact I don’t trust politics or politicians”.

He wanted to cast unknown actors in To Live and Die in LA (1985) and so low key stage actor Willem Defoe became electric casting opposite with William Petersen. In accordance with his documentary research credentials the film also involved some real counterfeiters, whom Friedkin got to know.

Friedkin never attended film school and doesn’t consider himself an artist but admires Antonioni and a Fellini and claims Kathryn Bigelow to be the best woman filmmaker working today. 

“Acting and filmmaking are professions. It’s a job. Out of this work there can come art – but it’s rare. when you start to believe in yourself as a artist – instead of telling a story with the utmost professionalism – that’s the end of a career. Antonioni and Fellini’s films are full of mood and texture”. Friedkin’s only regret was not having been able to transcend reality in his films. Sadly time is no longer on his side. MT

TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM FRIEDKIN 1935-2023| VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | CLASSICS | 31 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 

Tumbbad (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Critics’ Week

Dirs: Rahi Anil Barve, Adesh Prasad, Anand Ghandi | Horror Fantasy | 104′

This 19th Century set fantasy thriller is the first Indian feature (out of competition) to open Critics’ Week at Venice Film Festival, the arthouse sidebar that this year features nine films by first time directors from across the world.

TUMBBAD is a mythical story that has its roots back in Hindu folklore where the ‘Puranas’ (told primarily in Sanskrit, but also in regional languages) were often linked to deities such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi.  Six years in the making and directed by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad the stunning Pune-set parable story revolves around three generations of a Brahmin family exploring the roots of human greed. 

Blue-eyed mega star Sohum Shah is impressive as the stubbornly conniving bastard son of the village lord in the dank backwater of Tumbbad where he lives with his long-suffering wife and family. Obsessed with a mythical ancestral treasure, he suspects the secret of its whereabouts lies with his great-grandmother, a cursed witch who has been comotose for centuries in a damp underground sewer. Confronting her in this foul sunken pit puts him face to face with the guardian of the treasure, an evil fallen god. What starts with his lust for a few gold coins, quickly spirals into a reckless, perpetual yearning, spanning decades. Vinayak’s greed escalates until he unearths the biggest secret of all, something more valuable than the treasure itself.

This fast-paced parable contrasts elegant 1920s settings with ghastly, spine-chilling scenes that unravel in the remote monsoon-drenched location imbuing in its characters a sense of quiet desperation and tortured misery as they fight for survival spurred on by their quest. Jesper Kyd’s ominous orchestral score adds depth to this magical horror mystery. Kyd composed the music for Assassin’s Creed and Darksiders series.

TUMBBAD is one of a new generation of arthouse titles coming out of India. With its spookily crafted set pieces, convincing performances and imaginatively scripted folklore-based narrative it easily competes with the best titles currently on the fantasy drama stage. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | CRITICS WEEK 2018

L’EnKas (2018) *** Venice Film Festival 2018 | Orizzonti

Dir: Sarah Marx | Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire | Sandor Funtek | Drama | 85′

L’EnKas is a lucidly imagined slice of contemporary social realism described by its director Sarah Marx as “socially aware”. Her intention was to make a film about “ordinary people who weren’t born bad but who have had to follow illegal paths”. In other words, these are not natural born criminals but those who commit crime when the going gets tough. And although she takes no moral stand with her well-paced observational feature debut, its premise departs from a cock-eyed moral standpoint although its subject matter is as old as the hills. And her main character Ulysse (an impressively convincing Funtek) certainly gets off on the wrong footing, when he arrives home fresh out of prison for a minor offence. His main concern is to make as much money as possible but he is confronted by a stack of unpaid bills and a mother (Sandrine Bonnaire as you’ve never seen her before) who suffers from depression and needs treatment. So he comes up with a plan with his best friend, David. Selling a mixture of water and Ketamine, obtained from a contact who works in a Veterinary surgery, the two travel from rave to rave selling the drug mixture from their food truck.

And it’s a short-sighted idea that naturally sees the pair in trouble as their dreams crash and burn and their world comes toppling down. Meanwhile troubled mother Gabrielle is having private psychiatric care. Fresh and full of naturalistic performances L’EnKas is a strong debut that gets inside the simplistic minds of naive people, who fall, get hurt, get back up again, contradict themselves and have their own reasons for doing so. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 29 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 | ORIZZONTI

Open City Docs Festival | London 4 – 9 September 2018

Open City Documentary Festival is back for the eighth edition of the annual festival celebrating creative documentary and non-fiction filmmakers with a dynamic new programme for 2018. With 30 features and 48 shorts, 2 world premieres, 3 European premieres and 26 UK premieres across shorts and features from more than 30 countries, the festival will take place from the 4th – 9th September in a host of great venues across central London.

Marking the festivals’ Opening Night will be the UK Premiere of Baronesa (2017, Brazil, directed by Juliana Antunes. Her astonishing debut follows friends Andreia and Leid as they navigate the perilous reality of daily life in the favelas of Belo Horizonte. At first glance, their days seem calm and untroubled, but the threat of violence is never far away and Andreia dreams of moving to the safer neighbourhood of nearby Baronesa. Antunes spent five years in Belo Horizonte, working with a non-professional cast, to create a work of rare intimacy and authenticity which despite its simple structure emerges as a complex, multilayered and moving portrait of contemporary life in the favelas. Baronesa announces an exciting new voice in Brazilian cinema.

The Closing Night will be the UK Premiere of The Swing (2018) directed by Cyril Aris. A touching and emotionally rich film about keeping family truths hidden so as not to upset the patriarch. After sixty years of marriage, Antoine and Vivi have lost their most beloved daughter; but no one has dared to tell the bedridden nonagenarian Antoine, lest his heart crack. A simple solution, though everyone else in this densely interconnected family has then to live the same lie, giving no expression to their grief. A deeply affecting, beautifully shot cinematic novella; like all the best stories The Swing is a simple tale, but one that never short-changes its viewers.

For the Emerging International Filmmaker Award the following documentaries have been nominated: Angkar, dir. Neary Adeline Hay (France); Those Who Come, Will Hear, dir. Simon Plouffe (Canada); Home of the Resistance, dir. Ivan Ramljak (Croatia) and The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life, dir. Zita Erffa (Germany, Mexico). 

The festival will hold selected retrospectives of two unique voices in non-fiction filmmaking: The innovative found footage documentarian Penny Lane and Japanese pioneer of an action documentary’, Kazuo Hara. Both filmmakers will be at the festival to present their work.

For the full programme and tickets

 

Venice Film Festival 2018 | La Biennale

Alberto Barbera has announced a stunning line-up of highly anticipated new features and documentaries in celebration of this year’s 71st edition of Venice Film Festival which takes place on the Lido from 28 August until 8 September 2018. 30% of this year’s films are made by women which sounds more positive. Obviously the festival can only programme films offered for screening.

The festival kicks off on the 28th with a remastered 1920 version of THE GOLEM – HOW HE CAME TO BE (ab0ve) complete with musical accompaniment. This year’s festival opening film is Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Armstrong FIRST MAN. There are 21 features and documentaries in the main competition which boasts the latest films from Olivier Assayas (a publishing drama DOUBLE LIVES stars Juliette Binoche), Jacques Audiard (THE SISTERS BROTHERS), Joel and Ethan Coen’s 6-part Western THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS, Brady Corbet’smusical drama VOX LUX; Alfonso Cuaron with ROMA; Luca Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA sees Tilda Swinton playing 3 parts; Mike Leigh (PETERLOO), Yorgos Lanthimos with an 18th drama entitled THE FAVOURITE; Carlos Reygadas joins from his usual Cannes slot; and Julian Schnabel will present AT ETERNITY’S GATE a drama attempting to get inside the head of Vincent Van Gogh. Not to mention Laszlo Nemes’ Budapest WW1 drama NAPSZÁLLTA, a much awaited second feature and follow up to his Oscar winning Son of Saul.

The out of competition selection is equally exciting and thematically rich. There is Bradley Cooper’s directing debut A STAR IS BORN (left), Charles Manson-themed CHARLIE SAYS from Mary Herron; Amos Gitai’s A TRAMWAY IN JERUSALEM, and Zhang Yimou’s YING (SHADOW). And those whose enjoyed S Craig Zahler’s dynamite Brawl in Cell Block 99 will be pleased to hear that his DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE adds Mel Gibson to the previous cast of Jennifer Carpenter and Vince Vaughn. There will be an historic epic set in the time of the French Revolution: UN PEUPLE ET SON ROI features Gaspart Ulliel and Denis Lavant (who also stars in Rick Alverson’s Golden Lion hopeful THE MOUNTAIN) , and Amir Naderi’s MAGIC LANTERN which has the wonderful English talents of Jacqueline Bisset. And talking of England, Mike Leigh’s much gloated over historical epic PETERLOO finally makes it to the competition line-up

Documentary-wise there’s plenty to enjoy: Amos Gitai’s brief but timely A LETTER TO A FRIEND IN GAZA; Francesco Patierno’s CAMORRA which explores the infamous Italian organisation; Frederick Wiseman this time plunders Monrovia, Indiana for his source material; multi-award winning Russian documentarian Viktor Kossalkovsky will present his latest water-themed work AQUARELA; Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa’s film for this year’s festival is PROCESS (he’s the Ukrainian answer to Michael Winterbottom in terms of his prodigious output) this time focusing on the myriad lies surrounding Stalinism.

Out of Competition there are also blasts from the past including a hitherto unseen drama directed and co-written by Orson Welles and his pal Oja Kodar, starring Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston; and Bosnian director Emir Kusturica is back after his rocky time On The Milky Road with EL PEPE, UNA VIDA SUPREMA. 

And Malaysian auteur Tsai Ming-liang also makes a welcome return to Venice with his drama YOUR FACE. A multi-award winning talent on the Lido, his 2013 Stray Dogs won the Special Grand Jury Prize and Vive l’Amour roared away with the Golden Lion in 1994 (jointly with Milcho Manchevski’s Pred dozhdot).

Venice has a been a pioneer of 3D and VR since the screening of GRAVITY which opened the festival in 2013 amid much mal-functioning of 3D glasses at the press screening, and this year’s VR features include an excerpt from David Whelan’s 1943: BERLIN BLITZ which will be released ithis Autumn. This VR showcase experience is an accurate retelling of the events which happened inside a Lancaster bomber during one of the most well documented missions of World War II using original cockpit audio recorded 75 years ago. The endeavour is expected to be released on the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and Windows Mixed Reality platforms. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 28 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018 

 

 

 

San Sebastian Film Festival 2018

The San Sebastian Film Festival is Spain’s only A-list event running from 21 September until 29th in the North West Spanish town, often known by its Basque name of Donostia. This year celebrating its 66th edition, a selection of Spanish titles and international fare competes for the Golden Shell Award in venues such as the Kursaal and the Victoria Eugenia theatre. 

Joining the main competition will be the latest from Alfonso Cuaron, Jacques Audiard and Jia Zhangke also join the lineup of features already announced: Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born, in which he portrays a musical who falls for a struggling artist (Lady Gaga), Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Damien Chazelle’s First Man starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the moon, and Claire Foy. The film premieres at Venice where it open the festival running from 28 August 2018 on the Lido

This is the first time that Spike Lee will compete for an award in San Sebastian. His film BlacKkKlansman, the story of an African-American policeman who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, won the jury grand prix honor at Cannes and the audience award at the Locarno Film Festival. Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, also premieres at Venice, it is the story of a maid working in a middle-class district of Mexico City in the early 1970s.

THIS YEAR’S COMPETITION LINE-UP

EL AMOR MENOS PENSADO

JUAN VERA | ARGENTINA 

After 25 years of marriage, Marcos and Ana question themselves deeply on the subject of love, the nature of desire and faithfulness, making a decision that will change their lives forever.

 

ANGELO

MARKUS SCHLEINZER | AUSTRIA – LUXEMBOURG 

The story of Angelo, an African born in the 18th century, who is brought to Europe at the age of 10. Now a servant in the court of enlightened nobility, he skilfully employs his otherness to become an appreciated guest and attraction for the members of high society. Being close to the emperor, he decides to marry Magdalena, a young maidservant with whom he falls in love.

DER UNSCHULDIGE / THE INNOCENT

SIMON JAQUEMET | SWITZERLAND – GERMANY 

Ruth works in a neuroscience research lab, despite coming from an extremely traditionalist and conservative Christian family. She suddenly finds herself facing her past when her former lover reemerges after twenty years in jail, prompting her to question her feelings, her life and eventually even her faith.

EL REINO

RODRIGO SOROGOYEN | SPAIN – FRANCE 

Manuel, an influential deputy secretary of a regional government who has everything going his way for making the leap into national politics, sees how his perfect life falls to pieces after news leaks of his involvement in a corruption ring with Paco, one of his best friends. While the media starts reporting the extent of the scandal, the party closes ranks and only Paco comes …

ENTRE DOS AGUAS | ISAKI LACUESTA | SPAIN 

Isra and Cheíto are two Roma brothers: Isra was sent to prison for drug dealing and Cheíto signed up for the Marines. When Isra is released from prison and Cheíto returns from a long mission, they return to San Fernando. The reunion between the siblings brings memories of their father’s violent death when they were only boys. Twelve years have passed since La Leyenda del tiempo…

HIGH LIFE.

CLAIRE DENIS

FRANCE – GERMANY – UK – POLAND – USA 

Deep space. Beyond our solar system. Monte and his daughter Willow live together on board a spacecraft, in complete isolation. A solitary man, who uses his strict self-discipline as protection against desire (his own and that of others), Monte fathered the girl against his will. His sperm was used to inseminate Boyse, the young woman who gave birth to the girl.

ILLANG: THE WOLF BRIGADE

KIM JEE-WOON

SOUTH KOREA 

In 2029, after the governments of North and South Korea announce a 5-year plan to reunify the country, strong sanctions by the world’s most powerful nations cripple the economy and lead to a hellish period of chaos. With the appearance of an armed anti-government terrorist group called The Sect which opposes reunification, the President creates a new police division called …

LE CAHIER NOIR / THE BLACK BOOK

VALERIA SARMIENTO

FRANCE – PORTUGAL 

This is the story of the late eighteenth-century adventures of a singular couple formed by a little orphan with mysterious origins and his young Italian nurse of similarly uncertain birth. They lead us in their wake, from Rome to Paris, from Lisbon to London, from Parma to Venice. Always followed in the shadows, for reasons we don’t know, by a suspicious-looking Calabrian

QUIÉN TE CANTARÁ

CARLOS VERMUT

SPAIN – FRANCE 

Lila Cassen was the most successful Spanish singer of the nineties until she mysteriously vanished from one day to the next. Ten years later Lila is preparing her triumphant stage comeback; however, shortly before the long-awaited date she is involved in an accident and loses her memory. Violeta’s life is dominated by her conflictive daughter Marta. Every night she finds escape..

ROJO

BENJAMÍN NAISHTAT

ARGENTINA – BRAZIL – FRANCE – NETHERLANDS – GERMANY 

In the mid-70s, a stranger arrives in a quiet provincial town. In a restaurant, for no apparent reason, he sets about attacking Claudio, a well-known lawyer. The community supports the lawyer and humiliates the stranger, who is thrown out. Later, on the way home, the man intercepts Claudio and his wife Susana once again, determined to wreak his terrible revenge on Claudio.

VISION

NAOMI KAWASE

JAPAN – FRANCE 

Jeanne leaves for Japan in search of a rare medicinal plant. During the trip, she meets Tomo, a forest ranger, who accompanies her on her quest and guides her through the traces of her past. 20 years ago, in the forests of Yoshino, Jeanne lived her first love.

YULI

ICÍAR BOLLAÍN

SPAIN – CUBA – UK – GERMANY 

Yuli is the nickname given to Carlos Acosta by his father, Pedro, who considers him the son of Ogun, an African god and a fighter. As a child Yuli avoids discipline and education, learning from the streets of an impoverished and abandoned Havana. His father, however, has other ideas, and knowing that his son has a natural talent for dance, sends him to the National Ballet Schoo…

GIGANTES

ENRIQUE URBIZU, JORGE DORADO

SPAIN 

OUT OF competition

For decades the Guerrero brothers have controlled the flow of drugs from the peninsula to the rest of Europe. Now they’re faced with one of the most crucial moments in their history. The eldest brother, Daniel, is released from jail after fifteen years, eager to recover his place in the family. The world Daniel left behind no longer exists. His father Abraham is sick, ..

DANTZA

TELMO ESNAL

SPAIN 

Special Screenings

The storm breaks after a hard day’s work in the fields. When the rain eases off life springs up from the previously barren land. Fruit grows and ripens, survives disease and becomes the apples which give life to cider. Then comes the time to harvest, offer toasts and celebrate love. A story about the cycle of life and death, the fight for survival. Where the passage of time…

TIEMPO DESPUÉS

JOSÉ LUIS CUERDA

SPAIN – PORTUGAL 

Special Screenings

In 9177, give or take a thousand years (there’s no point in being finicky about these details) the whole world, and, according to some authors, the universe too, has been reduced to a single Representative Building and squalid suburbs inhabited by all of the out-of-work and hungry in the cosmos. One of the down and outs, José María, decides that by facing up to the difficul…

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL

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SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL | 21 – 29 SEPTEMBER 2018

 

The Guardians (2017) ****

Dir.: Xavier Beauvois |  Cast: Nathalie Baye, Iris Bry, Laura Smet, Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Girand, Mathilde Viseux; France 2017 | 134′

Xavier Beauvois imagines the heroic sacrifices made by the women left at home during the Great War (1914-18) and shows shows that he has come a long way since his kitchen-sink debut feature Nord (1991). Based on the 1924 novel by Gouncourt winning author Ernest Perochon, and stunningly shot by Caroline Champetier, THE GUARDIANS is a celebration of female emancipation, played by a brilliant ensemble cast led by Nathalie Baye as a compelling matriarch.

Widow Hortense (Baye) is left in charge of the Paridier farm after her sons Constant (Girond) and Georges (Descours) are sent to the Front; they are soon joined by her daughter Solange’s (Smet) husband Clovis (Rabourdin). Helped by her father Henri (Bonneau), Hortense not only manages the farm-hands, but works the land herself in a bid to ensure that their livelihood continues while the men make occasional visits from the Front. In spite of her best efforts, she has to hire a newcomer, the orphan Francine (the outstanding debutant Bry) who is not only a good worker, but initiates the acquisition of a tractor and a harvesting machine. When Georges comes back from the front for a week, he falls in love with Francine to the chagrin of local girl Marguerite (Viseux) who was favoured by Hortense to marry her son.

Without making an idyll of nature, Champetier frames every shot with great care making fabulous use of the transcendent light, so that the soft hues of the terroir form a glowing backdrop to the toiling humans  The predominantly female workers are gracefully framed as they toil away in the fields and even though their work is gruelling, there is always a certain rhythmic elegance at play. This is a complete contrast to Riefenstahl’s Olympia films where female athletes were shown in short, hectic clips, focusing on an immediate target, like robots robbed of their human qualities. Beauvois lets the camera linger, allowing the scenes to play out naturally. Admittedly, there is some self-indulgence, which manifests itself in the running time, but like Thomas Hardy, some novels need to be transferred to the big screen in their full length – and this is one. Lusciously photographed, but poignant in its dramatic conflicts, THE GUARDIANS is almost a masterpiece. AS

Now SCREENING nationwide in arthouse cinemas courtesy of Curzon

Maeve (1981) Mubi

Dir.: Pat Murphy; Cast: Mary Jackson, Trudy Kelly, John Keegan, Mark Mulholland, Brid Brennan, Liam Doyle; UK/Ireland/Australia 1981, 110 min.

Irish feminist filmmaker Pat Murphy is a unique voice in a male-dominated industry, rather like her titular heroine Maeve. Born in 1958, Pat has so far directed three features: Anne Devlin (1984); Nora (2000) and Tana Bana (2010), and one feature-length documentary. Challenging aesthetically and politically, her debut Maeve is an uncompromising piece of filmmaking with a rather enigmatic storyline.

Set during the ‘Troubles’, twenty-year old Maeve Sweeney (Jackson) has been working in London and goes back to her family home in Belfast for a holiday with her parents, Martin (Mulholland) and Eileen (Kelly), and younger sister Roisin (Brennan). Many of the issues with her boyfriend Liam (Keegan) will be played out to the full during the course of the narrative which jumps between past and the present where we first meet young Maeve in 1980. Feminism is all the rage in London where Maeve has got used to the new sense of freedom. Being back in Ulster with its provincial way of life and traditional attitudes take her back to her upbringing, and not always in a good way. Her sister is extremely conventional, and Liam and her parents keep to their traditional ways, embracing the ongoing Republican struggle. In a key scene, Maeve and Liam are looking down on Belfast from a hill, discussing female liberation and the past. Liam takes a Republican view and does not want to live in a country dominated by British rule. But Maeve disagrees: “You are talking about a false memory… the way you want to remember excludes me, I get remembered out of existence.” To which Liam retorts “But it’s better than living no history at all.”

A family outing does not help Maeve to identify with the Celtic mythology of supremacy, and in a pub she challenges Liam’s hard-core Provisional friends. But everything here is fragmented – her family have had to leave their original home in a Protestant district. But the “Troubles” are very much a part of life: Roisin is stopped after dark by British patrols, telling her sister about a near-rape by an occupying soldier. And the rumbling sound of gunfire is audible most nights.

Murphy tries to unpack her feelings rationally, but she sometimes fails to show how social memory and action are often concealed behind the myths and false memory of the past and present. Maeve’s newly found feminism is at odds with her heritage, and this romanticised struggle for the past is sometimes just an idealised way of returning to the comfort it gave then. It’s a storyline that very much resonates with the UK today, although without the violence.

The director challenges the ‘male gaze’ with a long, non-voyeuristic shot of the naked bodies of Maeve and her sister, inviting the audience to question traditional forms of degrading female bodies as objects of lust. DoP Robert Smith uses light to show the demarcation line between Maeve and the ones she has left behind. Overall Maeve is a very brave undertaking, even though melodrama and political history does not always sit in harmony. But Mary Jackson keeps everything together with a brilliant performance that combines fighting spirit and melancholic recognition of a Northern Irish reality which no longer makes her feel at home, or at ease.

NOW ON MUBI | Blu-ray, iTunes and Amazon Prime and the BFI 

The Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin (2018) **** Locarno Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Benjamin Crotty; Cast: Alexis Manetti, Antoine Cholet, Pauline Jacquard, Caroline Deruas; France 2018, 26 min.

Winner of the Mantarraya award at this year’s Locarno Film festival, Benjamin Crotty’s quirky exploration of everything French is cleverly conceived and inventive, both aesthetically and in its execution. THE GLORIOUS ACCEPTANCE is a social and political satire – somewhere between stand-up and Black Adder – biting and highly entertaining. It makes fun of said Chauvinism, but it also pampers to it. A true original.

Nicolas Chauvin (Manenti), legendary one-eyed farmer-soldier of the Napoleonic Wars, comes back to receive an imaginary award while regaling us with a potted history of his grim and glorious career during an outlandish stage appearance that could have been drawn from the tradition of Roman theatre, or even the alazon of Ancient Greek comedy. We’re then transported back to the place of his purported birth in 1820, the navel port of Rochefort. Derring-do was clearly the done thing for this original chauvinist who displays his excessive and unreasonable patriotism, emerging as quite the hero by bravely jumping off battlements and diving into moats without a by your leave to escape the clutches of a glass-eyed chain-mailed enemy, who later kills Nic’s charming female companion (Caroline Deruas). The two men then fiercely debate Chauvin’s psychological identity – did he repress his Oedipus complex and project his mother’s faults onto others, so creating so his paranoia? Another scene change sees him in a bar where he dallies with his next conquest (Pauline Jacquard): all this after a hymn, however barbed, to everything French, Messi plays football on the big screen. Finally, we are back on the stage where Chauvin thanks everybody from Eurosport to François Holland, bearing in mind the president sold weapons worth 8.3 billion in 2016. The elitist classes know no shame. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 1-10 AUGUST 2018

A Land Imagined (2018) *** Golden Leopard winner | Locarno 2018

Dir: Yeo Siew Hua | Drama | 95′ 

A Land Imagined could have been rather a good noirish thriller, judging from the early scenes which see a slightly sleazy Singapore detective hot on the heels of a missing migrant worker in Singapore’s crowded commercial district. What follows is a moody and sensuously cinematic arthouse drama with a subtle moral message that initially would have us believe that those who fetch up in this rich island seeking to improve their lot are somehow hard done by – or even meet a sticky end. Actor writer and director Yeo Siew Hua instead subverts expectations opting instead for a more unstructured approach that mirrors the film’s title but results in a downbeat outcome that will disappoint those hoping for twists and turns and a satisfying denouement.

Lonely reclamation construction worker Wang Bi Cheng (Liu Xiaoyi) has disappeared after forming a virtual friendship with a mysterious gamer. Detective Lok (Peter Yu) is the world weary cypher who gives nothing away in his search for the missing man, as gradually his trail loses focus as he aimlessly scours the streets and kicks a beer bottle along the sand-dunes at night. Wang is in no hurry to get away as he wanders in a febrile trance through sad cyber-cafes. His Bangladeshi co-worker and friend Ajit (Ishtiaque Zico) is one of the only decent, likeable characters here, the other human link is Mindy (Luna Kwok), a whip-smart cafe worker who offers him feisty company but is certainly no fool. Wang feels his chances rapidly melting away in the quicksand of this existential corner of Hell. The tone is ominous as the story drifts dreamily in a neon-lit goldfish bowl.

DoP Hideho Urata paints the working districts of the affluent hub of South Asia as an unsettling mirage where all is not what it seems. Lights twinkle softly in the distant nightscapes seen from the pearl white beaches of the reclamation land; but the sand has been imported from Malaysia. Mounds of aggregate and cement loom up like pyramids in the dusky night air. The breezy jazz score somehow allays our fears that this will not end well for our migrant worker, while groups of Bangladeshi workers dance themselves into a frenzy with mournful tunes from back home.

Lok’s attempts to get under the skin of his quarry in an effort to bring his search to a conclusion but in the end the drama drifts without any questions being answered, leaving us to ponder the existence of another artificial world created by a disenfranchised workforce uprooted from their homes and families and sucked into a meaningless existence of that serves no purpose other than to simply stay alive. MT

SCREENING IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Those Who Work (2018) **** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir/Writer: Antoine Russbach, Emmanuel Marre | Switzerland,Belgium | Cast: Olivier Gourmet | August 2018 | 100′

Premiering here at Locarno Film Festival, this hugely enjoyable and absorbing drama from Swiss director Antoine Russbach is uplifted by a compelling performance from Olivier Gourmet as Frank, a dedicated father of five who devotes his life to work in cargo shipping.

A strong narrative is the key to this modest parable and what starts as a potential hijack thriller in the style of Tobias Lindholm’s recent outing, soon develops into a richly thematic character study about a man’s tough decision during a crisis that loses him his job and potentially everything else he holds dear and eventually leads to some deep soul-searching. Deeply shaken, betrayed by a system to which he has given everything, Frank (Gourmet) finds his back against the wall but his tough upbringing and committed work ethic keeps him grounded in reality with a feelgood outcome that feels satisfying and rewarding in this world of political correctness.

In Frank’s world there are only two types of people: those who work to achieve a level of success so they can look after and provide for those who enjoy the benefits of the standard of living that he is able to provide. A risk-taker and a pragmatist who takes pride in the ability to deliver his company’s goods on time and with a healthy profit margin, Frank is a both a hero and an anti-hero, depending on which side of the fence you stand on this thorny issue. But to his credit, he is a self-made and self-reliant worker who has risen from an extremely modest rural background. He’s is also a calm and diligent father who always gives his kids time and consideration, particularly his youngest Mathilde (Adele Bochatay in a thoughtful debut). His wife is an understanding and devoted homemaker who cares for their comfortable house in the outskirts of Antwerp and the couple enjoy a happy marriage. Inadvertently, his kids have developed a sense of entitlement and have grown to expect the things their father can provide: the latest mobile phone and a luxurious swimming pool – but this is par for the course of today’s affluent society. And men are most fulfilled when they can are successful in their chosen careers and can provide for their family.

When the crew of his one of his container vessels inadvertently fails to spot a migrant on board, Frank is forced to make a decision in order to save his clients and his company considerable losses, and the delay of the cargo. In short, the shops will not get their goods in the time and the consumer will suffer with higher prices. The unwelcome interloper on board thought he was heading for Europe – not further afield – and has started to freak out on board, frightening to cause a mutiny amongst the sailors and disrupt the smooth running of the vessel with his suspected outbreak of Ebola virus. It’s a terrible dilemma and Frank deals with the crisis calmly and in a pragmatic way that nevertheless contravenes human rights and company guidelines. Although commercially he has saved the day, in the aftermath he becomes a scapegoat, falling from grace with his employers and his family. There follows a dark night of the soul, but Frank makes it through to the morning thanks to his steely resolve and a strong need to protect and look after his family. Antoine Russbach has made a supremely intelligent and powerful moral parable that deserves to be seen by all the family. MT

FILMMAKERS OF THE PRESENT | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 1-11 August 2018

 

Menocchio 2018 *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Alberto Fasulo | Drama | Italy | 103′

Alberto Fasulo’s lavishly mounted imagined drama, having its premiere here at Locarno Film Festival, examines the ethical and moral issues surrounding the purported heresy of Domenico Scandella (1532–1599), also known as Menocchio, a miller from Montereale, Italy, who in the 16th century was tried by the Inquisition for his unorthodox religious views, and burnt at the stake.

Fasulo won the top prize at Rome 2013 with Tir. This, his fourth film is a costumed period piece that plays out from the POV of the inquisition’s interrogator as he encourages Scandella’s friends and associates to denounce the honest miller. Fasulo invites us into a God-fearing world where the close-knit community are dominated by the Catholic Church and potently in thrall to their religious convictions.

This exquisitely-crafted arthouse has the look and gravitas of the films of Italian masters such as Olmi or even the Taviani brothers. Each frame is elegantly composed telling the simple chronological storyline. Much of action takes place in the cloistered candlelit confinement of the ancient prison where Menocchio, his draw expression captured in the flickering candlelight, is interrogated about his views and beliefs that question the virgin birth. And Menocchio repeatedly sticks to his principles refusing to ask for forgiveness or change his mind, knowing full well that fatal punishment awaits him. These scenes contrast with the fresh and summery outdoors of the Friuli region were his associates are put to the test, some of the speaking in the region’s dialect.

Performed by a cast of mostly non-professional actors Menocchio is a quality drama that while shedding light on a little-known episode in history really needed the charismatic charge of a well-known actor to raise its worthwhile subject matter. MT.

IN COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

#Female Pleasure (2018) **** Locarno Film Festival 2018

Dir: Rebecca Miller | Documentary with Deborah Feldman, Vithika Yadav, Rokudenashiko, Leyla Hussein, Doris Wagner; Germany/Switzerland/UK/USA/Japan 2018, 95 min.

Writer/director Barbara Miller (Forbidden Voices), has travelled the world to connect with five different women with one thing in common: the struggle against religious/state sponsored male superiority. Some are even joined by sympathetic menfolk slowly turning the wheel of history. Miller’s straightforward, non-judgemental approach allows the women full reign to share their opinions.

Deborah Feldman, a Hasidic Jew from New York, courageously left her arranged marriage with her little son, splitting from an extended family who are now lost forever. She wants to raise her son to respect women.“The Torah”, she says, “is the word of men”. In Orthodox circles there is a feeling that women are necessary but, at the same time, are the enemy. On a walkabout Jerusalem she passes huge street signs that say:“Please do not pass through this neighbourhood in in-modest clothes: closed blouse with long sleeves, no skirts, no trousers, no tight fitting clothes”. She is emphatic “that orthodox women in arranged marriages do not have the same constitutional protection as other women”. Finding a life outside her old community with a new partner, she goes on fighting the cause.

Meanwhile in India, Vithika Yadav runs a self-help website that supports girls in overcoming the prejudices of Hindu teaching, which has veered very much from Ghandi’s approach to an aggressive male ideology, often held responsible for the many rape cases in this country. Vithika is the first woman in her family to reject an arranged marriage. According to her, Hindu teaching claims “women are the root of all sins”, Indian society is geared toward male desire and satisfaction.Yadav’s website is a great start, but she takes things even further by organising street theatre and demonstrations, trying to rope men into the fight. On the subject of rape, she is very clear: “You all see it, but you don’t do anything”. ‘LOVE matters’, is one of their slogans, and slowly more and more young men are joining Yadav’s movement.

Japanese manga artist and “Vagina defender” Rokudenashiko from Tokyo has a spirited approach to the issue, but the pretty drawing of the female sex organ on her website has already leading to her arrest by ten(!) police officers on the grounds of obscenity. Before her trial she calls a press conference telling the audience “the female body is seen as a sex toy for men. Hard core porn films are legally produced and sold, yet my art is seen as obscene”. She claims Japanese men are very brutal in bed yet pretend to be unaware of the pain they inflict. Even comics portraying images of young girls being raped are allowed to be published in Japan. There is a yearly parade of ‘Penis Worship’ and the artist and her friends make fun of this, sucking sugary phallus-sized sweets. During filming, Rokudenashiko is convicted for spreading obscene art and even sailing a canoe in the shape of a vagina on a nearby lake. She and her lawyers are determined to have the verdict overturned. “As women, we are defined by jealousy”. Buddhist teaching says, ‘that due to the sinfulness of our bodies, women have to suffer eternal torment and the Blood Bowl Hell’”. Her protests have actually found her a sympathetic boyfriend in the shape of Mike, a rock singer who does not smoke or drink and has even composed a song to support her cause. Her parting shot is typical “Long live the vagina!”

Leyla Hussein is a highly articulate and likeable Somali woman living in London where her cause is the global issue of FGM – 200 million women and girls are the victims. “Men have authority over women according to the Quran which says ‘those wives from whom you fear disobedience, beat them’. Often very young woman are forced into arranged marriages when they are still teenagers. “Let’s call arranged marriage by its proper name: Legalized paedophilia.” In London she runs a centre and a website to fight FMG where she describes exactly what FMG does to the female body – some of the younger men can hardly watch. But she is happiest back in Kenya, where Masaai support her cause: “Masaai women have no fun with sex, and that’s frustrating for men too. We have to spread the word!”

In Germany, Doris Wagner joined a Catholic order at a young age. She was systematically raped by her superior but when she reported him to the Mother Superior, the woman shouted at her; then forgave her. She feels that the Catholic Church frames women as  seductresses: “I ask myself: was the Church really founded to do good, or was it all along just intended to support the structure run by men?’ Doris now lives with her partner and son. She is writing her PHD theses “feeling like born again”.

In this substantial and engaging documentary Miller allows her contributors to voice their concerns freely in a way that is both informative and empowering for those affected by the issues. Often amusing, it occasionally takes sides but, crucially, it also raises awareness of women’s plight with a lightness of touch, showing the way forward for men to join the movement for a more liberal and pleasurable society, that can only benefit them in the long run. She feels that women should not feel imprisoned by their gender, and the sooner men learn this, the better it is for us all. Change is possible, but, as Miller point out, it is a long way off in some societies.

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 AUGUST 2018 | IN COMPETITION.

 

 

 

 

 

Acid Forest (2018) *** Locarno International Film Festival 2018

Dir: Rugile Barzdziukaite | Doc | Lithuania | 63′

Rugile Barzdziukaite describes her eco-film as a creative documentary. It is set in her native Lithuania where a strange phenomenon has occurred in the forested region of the Curonian Spit, a scenic peninsular edged by the Baltic from one side and the lagoon from the other. ACID FOREST makes its premiere at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Taking her cue from the likes of documentarians Sergei Loznitsa and Jem Cohen, Barzdziukaite’s debut feature often sees the funny side of this blot on the landscape. This humour comes out of the spontaneous comments made by unsuspecting visitors to the otherwise appealing UNESCO world heritage site, known for its natural resources and high-end beach resorts.

Training his camera on a look-out platform in the midst of the acid forest, her DoP Dovydas Korba gets a bird’s eye view not only of the tourists, but also the black cormorants who migrated back to the area nearly twenty years ago in 1989, after becoming extinct, and have since laid waste to the native pine trees with their acid-rich droppings that fall from the nesting places. where these destructive birds roost and bring up their young. But it’s not all bad. Deciduous trees have now started thrive in the area, feeding on the cormorants fishy manure. And so gradually the forest is mutating from one of pines to one of oaks and ashes. And this narrative very much chimes with the cycles of human migration that have happened all the world since time immemorial. Acid Forest is a an unusual but fitting metaphor for the surreal world that we live in. MT

OUT OF COMPETITION | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

Diane (2018)*** Locarno International Film Festival

Dir/Writer: Kent Jones | Cast: Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Estelle Parson, Andre Martin, Deirdre O’Connell, Phyllis Summerville, Ray Iannicelli US | 90′

Kent Jones has made some dynamite documentaries: Hitchcock Truffaut, A Letter to Elia; Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows. His feature debut is an earnest and perceptive drama about an ordinary woman forced to find inner strength when her family crumbles around her. Diane could also be a US version of our long-running BBC4 series The Archers with its cheesy and occasionally awkward moments of ‘raw’ sincerity very on the maudlin. It pictures Diane padding around in a pink fluffy housecoat making chicken casserole to take to a sick friend, or having one margarita too many while unwinding in the local bar. This is not Hollywood or New York but somewhere like Denver Colorado where the characters sit around in thick cardies, pouring tasteless coffee into giant mugs and reminiscing over the dead and dying in their local community. What saves it and actually makes it rather watchable is the impressive cast that Jones has assembled: Mary Kay Place gives a subtle but stunning performance as the titular heroine a divorced do-gooder whose son (Jake Lacy) has lost his way. Deirdre O’Connell is wonderfully convincing as her cousin Donna dying from cancer, and Andrea Martin simpers as her trusted friend. The whole thing plays out like ‘an every day story of countryfolk’ (The Archers’ tagline), as they support one another, do good in the community and occasionally argue but gradually work through their issues. Diane is never hard-edged, but honest and straightforward, despite occasionally striking a bum note – the scenes exploring Diane’s spiritual quest feel rather bogus as does the character of her aunt  Mame (Estelle Parsons does her best). All in all, this is a well-played and acutely observed domestic drama that reflects, in part, the world we now live in. MT

SCREENING AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 AUGUST 2018

El Mar La Mar (2017)

Dirs: Joshua Bonnetta, J.P. Sniadecki | USA 2017 | English, Spanish |Doc | 94 min · Colour

Renowned documentarian J P Sniedecki teams up with Joshua Bonetti for this episodic reverie that scratches at the edges of fantasy horror as its gradually emerging narrative explores strange occurrences in the Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the United States (rather than the seascapes suggested in its obstruse title).

The opening scene, entitled Rio (River), is a dizzying affair bordering on nausea as the camera flickers alongside a waterside seen peeping through vegetation. The second is called Costas (coasts) but it is difficult to make out its obscure subject matter, as the mood gradually grows more unsettling.

Disparate reports of strange sightings occur daily in this sparsely populated and inhospitatble region and nameless locals narrate their experiences against blacked out footage: visits from travellers and immigrants making their way from Mexico seem totally unprepared for the horrors that await them: snakes, insects, fierce climatic changes and spiky vegetation are some of the perils of this dangerous route, not to mention the human element in the shape of border guards, both official and self-appointed, who are are known to open gunfire both day and night.

The directors’ approach has a highly bewildering feel, and as the mood grows increasingly sinister, faceless voices talk of traces of human remains and even dead bodies sadly left to decompose without trace, save for their faded clothing. Abandoned rucksacks, shoes and toys are testament to this trail of tragedy, gradually becoming part of the gruesome landscape.

EL MAR LA MAR‘s polyphonic soundtrack, disembodied voices and 16-mm visuals are a stark and strangely beguiling tribute to human endeavour, recording for posterity those who never made it in their quest to seek a more financially rewarding life. Sometimes the grass is not greener. MT

AWARDED A SPECIAL MENTION AT BERLINALE 2017 | FORUM SECTION

Sicilian Ghost Story (2017) ****

Dirs/scr Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza| Italy/France/Switzerland, 2017. 122′

Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza made their names with Mafia thriller Salvo at Cannes several years ago, and returned in 2017 with another Sicilian-set slow-burner that adds teenage romance and Gothic fantasy to their signature Mafiosi mix to create this modern day Romeo & Juliet styled fantasy drama.

This is a stunningly crafted, magical fairytale enriched and heightened by the visual wizardry of Luca Bigazzi (The Great Beauty) but despite its touching storyline and convincing performances SICILIAN GHOST STORY is slightly overlong in telling the truth-based tale of teenager Giuseppe Di Matteo (Gaetano Fernandez) who was kidnapped in 1993 in order prevent his Mafia supergrass father, Santino, from spilling the beans. His ordeal is seen through the eyes of little Luna (Julia Jedlikowska), who holds a constant candle for her schoolfriend so bright, that the two form a psychic connection throughout his captivity, as he clings to her letter as his guiding light to salvation.

With its echoes of Grimm’s Fairytales (the enchanted wood) and Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (through the girl’s red duffel coat) the directors pay homage to best examples of fantasy meets reality. The film also recognises the fact that children escape into a world of fantasy when reality becomes too traumatic for them to cope.

Bigazzi intensifies the drama with his masterful techniques enhancing the vibrancy of Sicily’s landscapes and interiors with heady and luscious hues. At atmospheric soundtrack harnesses the ambient sounds of the forest to amazing effect. And newcomers Julia Jedlikowska and Gaetano Fernandez bring extraordinary intensity to their roles as Luna and Giuseppe in this thematically well-managed and haunting slice of Sicilian recent history. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 AUGUST 2018

Leo comes Alive | Leo McCarey Retrospective

Although Leo McCarey (1898-1969) was feted during his career winning three Oscars and nominated for a further 36 (!), he seems to have fallen out of fashion. Today he is remembered for just three outings: The Marx Brother’s 1933 vehicle Duck Soup (pictured), An Affair to Remember (1957), actually a remake of his superior Love Affair from 1937, and the The Awful Truth. To my knowledge, there are no book-length biographies currently in print, rather odd, if you consider that McCarey directed 23 decent features.

Our critic Richard Chatten remembers first discovering An Affair to Remember back in the seventies when it was dismissed simply as a glossy but inferior Fox remake by McCarey of his own thirties classic. The reputation the more recent film now possesses probably owes more to the title song and to the fact that everyone in You’ve Got Mail – itself a remake of The Shop Around the Corner – encountered by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan claims to have seen An Affair to Remember and to have loved it, rather than to its intrinsic merits. Due to those anomalies that film history is often prone to, the latter film is now perversely accorded the status of a ‘classic’, with the original now languishing in undeserved obscurity.

After ‘High School’ McCarey actually started out as a prize fighter before bowing to the will of his father and studying law at USC. Enterprisingly he then took over a copper mine, but the venture went bankrupt and his career as a lawyer also faltered. He next turned his hand to song-writing but although he composed over a thousand songs during his lifetime, he would have been unable to make a living from the craft.

In 1919 came his lucky break as assistant to Tod Browning at Universal. Later joining the Hal Roach Studio, he made it from gag man to Vice President. But more importantly, he was to pair Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in these ventures. McCarey’s checkered life experiences provide rich material for his films: Bing Crosby would play a failed songwriter in Love Affair, there is boxing content both in The Milky Way (1936) and The Bells of St. Mary (1945). Whilst liking “a little bit of the fairy tale” in his films, McCarey became a director of features just as the sound system was launching, giving him the opportunity to work with stars early on in his career. And there was always a steely side of reality imbedded in his escapist endeavours: The Kid from Spain (1932) with Eddie Cantor, Belle of the Nineties (1934) with Mae West, Six of a Kind (1934) with WC Fields and Milky Way with Harold Lloyd.

Often criticised for being ‘a director of great moments’, McCarey made it to the big time as a serious filmmaker in 1935 with Ruggles of Red Cap. Charles Laughton plays a British butler who has to serve two American ‘Nouveau Riche’ social climbers when his master ‘loses’ him in a card game. Ruggles is a blueprint for what would follow: the absurd interactions of protagonists who either try to help or undermine each other, but always with the same result: chaos.

In 1937 McCarey won his first Oscar for The Awful Truth. It stars Irene Dunne and Gary Grant (his first great success; he actually had a cunning resemblance to McCarey), as a separated couple, who try to help each other, finding a new partner, but only succeeding only in sabotaging their best efforts. It says a lot about McCarey, that he “would have rather won for Make Way for Tomorrow, shot in the same year. Make Way is the story of Lucy Cooper (Beulah Bondi) and her husband Barkley (Victor Moore) who find out on the day of their family reunion that their house is foreclosed. They move in with their middle-aged children, but separately: Mum with son George, Barkley with daughter Cora. This is, in spite of the situational humour, a real tragedy, and would inspire the great Japanese director Ozu for his Tokyo Story.

After winning his second and third Oscars for Going my Way (Best Original Script and Best Director), the story of a popular Irish priest Chuck O’Malley (Crosby), who is more interested in boxing and songs than the lecturing; Good Sam in 1948 marked the beginning of his decline. Between 1948 and his death in 1969 McCarey would only direct five more features: alcohol, drugs and illnesses taking their toll. Somehow the humanist got lost in the perfidious way of Un-American-House Committee witch hunts. My Son John (1952) is the sob story of a mother who discovers that her titular son John (Robert Walker, who died before shooting was complete), is a communist. Not much better is The Devil Never Sleeps (aka Satan Never Sleeps), his last feature from 1962 where a native Christian missionary woman in China is raped by a communist soldier who later recants his ideology and helps her to flee the country.

Whilst McCarey’s detractors are entitled to point out that he is by no means an auteur in the sense of Hitchcock or even Capra (with whom he shares many parallels), this was mainly due to the breadth and versatility of his career which started out in slapstick and ended in social commentary. To McCarey images are mostly secondary; rhythm and sound dominate throughout his oeuvre. But the themes and motifs feature throughout make him unique in the canon of the American cinema. @AndreSimonoviesz

A major LEO McCAREY retrospective formed part of LOCARNO Film Festival 2018  

The Heiresses (2018) ****

Dir: Marcelo Martinessi | Cast: Margarita Irun, Ana Ivanova, Ana Brun

Paraguayan actress Ana Brun won a Silver Bear for her dignified portrait of loss and loneliness in Marcelo Martinessi’s finely-tuned first feature.

The Heiresses shares similar thematic concerns with a number of recent South American features recalling a gilded past such as  Jorge Thielen Armand’s Caracas-set La Soledad (2017) and Argentinian drama Tigre (2017) that played at last year’s East End Film Festival.

Living in reduced circumstances in a well-appointed but shabby apartment in the capital Asuncion, Chela (Brun) has been forced slowly to sell off her prized heirlooms in legal negotiations handled by a trusted friend, Carmela (Alicia Guerra), to save her debt-ridden but considerably more jovial partner of 30 years Chiquita (Irun) who is threatened with a spell ‘inside’. Martinessi’s elegant script enigmatically weaves tentative romantic undertones and female solidarity into his texturally rich and atmospherically evocative storyline often transporting the introspective Chela into a dreamlike reverie consistent with her daily dabbling as a painter.

But an unexpected request from her more flush and considerably less guarded next door neighbour Pituca ( Maria Martins) ushers in a gradual change of circumstances allowing Chela to step out of the sidelines and into the limelight as she slowly regains confidence and a new sense of direction availing herself of a long disused Mercedes to ferry local ladies who lunch to and from each others homes for games of bridge and social tittle tattle. And it is during these leisurely afternoons that the drama gains a gently humorous twist and an opportunity for Chela to broaden her social and romantic inclinations, and to come into contact with the languorously seductive Angy (a feline Ana Ivanova).

Delicately drawn in subdued tones and sombre interior settings The Heiresses is an intimate female-centric affair that draws seething suspense from its hauntingly enigmatic minor-key and acutely observed characterisations of the former elite going about their elderly lives in leafy and affluent Asuncion. But danger is never far away in the over-crowded streets and backwaters of the city.

Men are absent but frequently alluded to in invariably dismissive or even derogatory tones: for what they haven’t done or have done badly, not only on a personal but on a national level. By definition women have learnt to be resilient, forbearing and generally self-reliant and there is considerable warmth and solidarity amongst them, and even though the usual bouts of bitchiness occasionally creep in they are tripped over lightly and soon forgotten. The gay pair have ceased to be close in the intervening years of financial hardship (“have you used my toothbrush again” Chela chides Chiquita) but still cling fastidiously to their routines and rituals: the hair coiffed and perfumed; the jewellery proudly displayed; the morning coffee meticulously prepared and served by the willing housekeeper (Nilda Gonzalez), each cup and accoutrement in its correct place or there’s hell to pay. And it’s these rigorous daily moments that hold their lives together, while everything seems to be gradually falling apart.

Chiquita’s eventual spell in the local women’s prison provides seamy contrast to their sedate life behind domestic doors where the splendour of yesteryear is reduced to ghostly shadows and peeling paper on the wall where once hung masterpieces and family treasures. And when Chela mobilises the ancient Mercedes there’s still a certain diffidence until she gets herself back into gear. But soon her distant memories of the glory days seep back as the casual nonchalance of Angy’s feral joie de vivre proves intoxicating. And it’s here that The Heiresses draws comparison with Sebastian Lelio’s Gloria, as Chela’s slow but sure emergence from emotional confinement finally starts to emerge again quietly but defiantly in this nuanced, slow-burning but compelling drama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 10 AUGUST 2018

 

 

Open City Docs Festival 2018 | 4-9 September 2018

Open City Documentary Festival is back this Autumn for the eighth year running with a dynamic new programme celebrating documentary and non-fiction filmmaking taking place  from the 4th – 9th September in a host of great venues across central London.

This year – through films, audio and immersive (VR/AR) projects, across screenings, special events, parties, panels, workshops and masterclasses – Open City Documentary Festival will be celebrating the art of non-fiction.

The Festival opens with the UK Premiere of Baronesa (2017, Brazil, 71’), directed by Juliana Antunes and in partnership with MUBI. Her astonishing debut follows friends Andreia and Leid as they navigate the perilous reality of daily life in the favelas of Belo Horizonte. At first glance, their days seem calm and untroubled, but the threat of violence is never far away and Andreia dreams of moving to the safer neighbourhood of nearby Baronesa. Antunes spent five years in Belo Horizonte, working with a non-professional cast, to create a work of rare intimacy and authenticity which—despite its simple structure—emerges as a complex, multilayered and moving portrait of contemporary life in the favelas. Baronesa announces an exciting new voice in Brazilian cinema.

The Closing Night will be the UK Premiere of The Swing (2018, Lebanon, 74’) directed by Cyril Aris. An assured, emotionally rich film about the lies a family tells to keep their patriarch happy and the unattended costs of their falsehood. After sixty years of marriage, Antoine and Vivi have lost their most beloved daughter; but no one has dared to tell the bedridden nonagenarian Antoine, lest his heart crack. A simple solution, though everyone else in this densely interconnected family has then to live the same lie, giving no expression to their grief. A deeply affecting, beautifully shot cinematic novella; like all the best stories The Swing is a simple tale, but one that never short-changes its viewers.

This year the festival hosts an outstanding Jury panel for each of its competitive Awards. For the Open City Award the following documentaries have been nominated: Baronesa, dir. Juliana Antunes (Brazil); Casanova Gene, dir. Luise Donschen (Germany); Flight of a Bullet, dir. Beata Bubenec (Russia); and The Swing, dir. Cyril Aris (Lebanon). The Jury will be chaired by esteemed director Sophie Fiennes (Grace Jones: Bloodlight, Bami), and features Beatrice Gibson, Nelly Ben Hayoun, May Adadol Ingawanij and Mehelli Modi.

For the Emerging International Filmmaker Award the following documentaries have been nominated: Angkar, dir. Neary Adeline Hay (France); Those Who Come, Will Hear, dir. Simon Plouffe (Canada); Home of the Resistance, dir. Ivan Ramljak (Croatia) and The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life, dir. Zita Erffa (Germany, Mexico). The award will be Chaired by independent Dutch documentary programme cultural advisor and filmmaker Tessa Boerman (Zwart Belicht), Luciano Barisone, Cecile Emeke, Chiara Marañón and Tadhg O’Sullivan.

There will be two retrospectives in honour of non-fiction filmmaking: The innovative found footage documentarian Penny Lane and Japanese pioneer of ‘action documentary’, Kazuo Hara. Both filmmakers will be at the festival to present their work.

For the first time the festival has invited artists to present films that have informed their own practice, with special selections from DJ and producer Nabihah Iqbal and filmmaker Marc Isaacs as well as short films chosen by a number of the filmmakers with new work at the festival, screening before their own features.

The festival will also be hosting an Industry Bootcamp aimed at students and recent graduates. These sessions will be about preparing for the next steps in your career and getting ready to enter the industry. Each event is £5, or free with student accreditation.

Open City Documentary Festival is looking forward to hosting a number of exciting festival parties this year including the Opening and Closing Night Receptions at the Regent Street Cinema as well as the Nabihah Iqbal after-party at the ICA, where the DJ, Producer & NTS Radio presenter presents an evening of music inspired by 1972 documentary Winter Soldier, featuring protest songs and music from the anti-war movement from 1950-1975. Other various festival parties will be listed in the festival programme.

OPEN CITY DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 4-9 SEPTEMBER 2018 

 

Blossom Valley (2018) **** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Laszlo Csuja; Cast: Reti Laszlo, Berenyi Bianca, Kozma Karoly; Hungary 2018, 83 min.

The original Hungarian title of Laszlo Csuja’s debut drama is symbolic: Viragvölgy is the last stop on a children’s railway that runs through Buda Heights and the woods near Budapest.

BLOSSOM VALLEY’s impressive cast of non-professionals, Laszlo Reti (a former Special Olympics skating champion) and Bianka Berenyi) performer and lead singer of Cannibal EU are largely the reason why this eerie, melancholic and angst-ridden road fairytale won the Grand Jury Price of the ‘East – West Section” of this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Just for the hell of it, feisty Bianka (Bianka Berényi) has decided to kidnap a baby but she soon meets young Laci (László Réti), who provides a calming influence despite having been declared mentally unfit to make his own decisions. The couple and their new baby settle into a family unit of sorts and – after stealing a caravan – the police are soon in hot pursuit of the trio.

Bianca is a borderline sociopath who loves nothing more than attention and mischief. Like Laci, she has issues with regressive development, but unlike him – naïve and wanting to please – she has a certain malice, which is hidden behind a childlike demeanour. Her attention span is limited, she must be entertained and worshiped permanently. Contrary to her ex-boyfriends, who see her at a nuisance, Laci adores her non-stop, accepting most of her changing moods.

Mentored by Enyedi Ildico (On Body and Soul, last year’s Berlinale winner), Csuja, very much like Enyedi, goes all out to achieve a frightening atmosphere managing the film’s tonal shifts with surprising dexterity and adding a punk rock twist to the mix. The baby – played by two sets of twins, one actually named Laura – is in constant danger, but the ‘parents’ are too focused on themselves, even though there are some moments of closeness and intimacy. The impulsive Bianca and the love smitten Laci are always a step away from disaster.

Gergely Vass’s images are full of saturated colours, the scenes in the countryside are full of magic and the car journey’s a nightmare, but there are moments of grim social realism too. All said and done though, this zany drama belongs to the leading actors. MT

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER | EAST OF WEST | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

First Reformed (2017)***** | Sundance London

Dir: Paul Schrader | Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried | US | Thriller | 108′

Paul Schrader’s FIRST REFORMED is a sleek and elegant beast; economical, eco-themed and uncompromising yet firing on all cylinders, powered by Ethan Hawke as an anguished Christian minister fraught with spiritual and existential thoughtfulness.

The film’s richly textured themes of religious tradition, radicalisation and global warming underpin a graceful story of faith, hope, despair and finally love, redeeming all. And we wrestle and ruminate with Hawke on his personal journey from a sombre starting point to a place of peace in a rich character study that sees Schrader back on form after his ill-advised experiments with The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog.

Hawke is Toller, a sorrowing military chaplain whose marriage has failed due to the death of his son. In a white wooden-clad church in upstate New York, he has a new start in life leading a congregation that includes Mary (Seyfried), a pregnant woman who seeks his moral support over her activist husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). It soon emerges that Michael wants to get rid of their child due to his disenchantment with the corporate world he holds responsible for climate change and pollution.

There are comparisons here with Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver and Light Sleeper which also explore despair and disenchantment, although Toller is a much more down to earth decent character than John LeTour (Defoe) and Travis Bickle (De Niro) from the outset, and only seems to lose his sense of direction when his health deteriorates, and cancer becomes a possibility, leading him into a dark place of soul-searching made blacker by a tragedy involving Mary and Michael.

Toller also becomes convinced that a local businessman, sponsoring the church renovations, is actually responsible for environmental pollution on a large scale, and this presents a moral dilemma that further challenges the minster’s troubled state of mind. As the film slides between reality and somewhere more sinister. he desperately tries to lead his followers maintaining respect, compassion and dignity. Seyfried plays Mary as an open and honest woman whose motivations at first seem enigmatic but soon become clear as the two share a mutual sense of desperation and denial. There are strong performances also from Cedric the Entertainer, as a Toller’s ecclesiastical mentor and Esther, a fellow pastor who falls foul of Toller, despite her best intentions, inspiring one of the film’s most killer lines: ” I despise you: you bring out the worst in me”. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | PREVIEW SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE LONDON

The Guilty (2018) Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Gustav Moller | Doc | Danish | 85′

If you enjoyed Locke (2013) then The Guilty will come as a disappointment. Running along similar lines as Steven Knight’s gripping ‘phone-call drama, this rather bland affair from Danish director Gustav Muller focuses entirely on a uniformed official speaking into a headset in an emergency call center, The Guilty  intrigues but never quite hits the high notes of the Tom Hardy dominated thriller – not least because Olivia Colman and Ruth Wilson added that extra ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the proceedings.

In his feature debut, filmmaker Moller gives us a tense time, but 85 minutes is too long to be looking at a little known actor wearing a blue shirt, as we drift off into a reverie about what to have for dinner after the film. There will no doubt be some viewers who will find this a winner, namely the Ecumenical Jury at Baltic Debuts Film Festival (2018) who awarded it their prize. But with an English-language script and a more starry performance (Tom Hardy?) this could well be terrific.

The narrative revolves round a demoted former officer Asger Holm (a decent Jakob Cedergren) who has the task of answering distress calls, the first is from a man claiming he’s been mugged by a woman in his car. As the camera slides back to reveals Holm’s monitor, and location is the red light district, this is somewhat of a non- starter. Then comes a stressed out woman’s voice (Jessica Dinnage, who we never see) speaking from inside a car, claiming she’s been abducted and forced to leave her children at home. All this is reflected through Holm’s facial expressions viewed intensively through Jasper Spanning’s intimate camera shots, with the sound effects of cries and traffic noises in the background. Lighting is sombre and almost sinister, as he sits in the semi-darkness giving a slight Noirish feel to the piece. Emil Nygaard Albertsen’s script is tightly packed, although the ultimate reveal doesn’t quite have the dramatic heft we’re hoping for. Clearly Holm is looking to redeem himself and make up for his past misdemeanours, and this extra dimension adds grist to the mill in firing up his desire to save the woman’s life. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Dream Away (2018) *** Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Marouan Omara, Johanna Domke | Documentary | Germany/Egypt 2018  | 86 min.

Egyptian filmmaker Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke a visual artist from Germany create a near-absurdist portrait of Sun Rise, a deserted luxury hotel in Sharm El-Sheik in southern Egypt. The whole place is geared-up for Western tourists – but there are hardly any there nowadays, and the staff are left wondering about the future: will their pay-cuts end in redundancy? How can they reconcile their traditional upbringing with the western lifestyle forced upon them in their own homeland. The Arab Sprig and the confusion of the post revolutionary era has robbed the entire place of its livelihood, where once it offered warm seas, fabulous coral gardens as one of the best places for Winter sunshine and diving. And nobody is a winner now.

Horreya Hassan is a member of the housekeeping team, a euphemist title for a cleaner. She is looked down upon by members of the entertainment/animation team such as Shaima Reda (“To share a room with a member of Housekeeping, outraging”). Horreya is finally accepted by the women from Animation, who dance in front of a empty space where the audience used to be. Horreya tries to make up for her lowly status by reading self-help books which tell her “How to connect the mind gaps”. Meanwhile, D J Taki (Khaled Ahmend) has to support an ill mother, and has a foreign girl friend, although in the old days he used to see things from his parents’ point of view. Now, a female member of the animation team is divorced and enjoys running around in bunny costume at night in the eerie desert. Driver Hossam (Abo Salama) is married to a much older but very wealthy woman who has bought him an expensive Dodge. He defends himself with his friends: “It’s okay to marry an older woman, really”. Masseur Alaa (Abo El Kassem), dreams about foreign women wanting a “private massage”. But when he talks one of his friends into giving up a staff room, we watch him treating a mannequin, whose arm comes lose during the process.  All fear they’ll be sacked eventually, but at the same time know “that staying here you will get stuck”.

DoP Jacob Beurle evocative images create a atmospheric  sense of place, particularly in the desert scenes, which have a strong other-wordly character. A more structured approach  make have worked better; but then, life in the void somehow invites the fluent and elliptical style of the filmmakers. Dream Away is a melancholic portrait of a young generation left to fight for a new identity: trying hard to copy the Western heroes of all the films they watch, they are still stuck in a country which is on the brink of a return to traditional authoritarianism.AS

SCREENING DURING KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Swimming with Men (2018) **

Dir: Oliver Parker | Writer: Aschlin Ditta | Cast: Charlotte Riley, Rupert Graves, Rob Brydon, Nathaniel Parker,  Adheel Akhtar, Thomas Turgoose, Daniel Mays, Jim Carter | UK Comedy | 96′

Oliver Parker is clearly feeling for middle-aged men. His latest film is a  comedy that means well in tackling marriage breakdown and mid-life crisis from a male perspective. It sees Rob Brydon’s bored accountant Eric driven neurotic by his partner’s new success in politics (Jane Horrocks in fine form), while he sits on the sidelines, a disillusioned accountant – so what’s new?. The only thing that makes Eric happy is a dip in the local swimming baths where he bumps into a motley crew of jaded men also down on their luck, but not all past it. Agreeing to keep their personal lives strictly off-poolside, they gradually begin to find the life aquatic gives them a reason for living again. And limbering up with the encouragement of coach Susan (Charlotte Riley) they discover that swimming in sync is the answer to their woes, but not their flabby waistlines. So off they go to Milan.

Sound great, doesn’t it? And you could see where Parker was coming from. The problem is that the direction and writing are the only things out of sync in a comedy of woes that needed to be much tighter and funnier. There are some heartfelt performance from a brilliant British cast (Christian Rubeck is luminous as the token German),  and you can’t help feeling for these guys, particularly Luke (Rupert Graves) and (Thomas Turgoose). But there are hardly any laughs to be had from Ditta’s script, which mostly just feels embarrassingly over the top, or miserably maudlin, and too many lingering close-ups are nobody’s idea of fun.

SWIMMING WITH MEN | nationwide From July 6.

Volcano (2018)

Dir: Roman Bondarchuk | Writer: Dar’ya Averchenko, Alla Tyutyunnyk | Cast: Serhiy Stepansky, Viktor Zhdanov | Comedy Drama | 106′

Roman Bondarchuk honed his craft during the Maidan uprising as co-director of the documentary Euromaidan followed by Ukrainian Sheriffs his tragicomic look at  lawless village life. His feature debut is a visually alluring, darkly sarcastic, wildly nostalgic portrait of quiet desperation set in a surreal backwater.         

In one of the most impressively-crafted opening sequences of this year, Lukas (Stepansky) an OSCE interpreter from Kiev, disembarks from a ferry in a car escorting four delegates that promptly breaks down on the road to a conference in the city of Beryslaw (Kherson). With no mobile signal, he stumbles off despondently looking for help in what seems like a forgotten Ukraine, abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, of which it had been a part. The only sign of modern life is a dam that provided electricity   but at a human cost in flooding local villages – to whose memory the feature is dedicated. 

Lukas soon finds himself in a dusty smallholding where he meets Vova (Zhadanov), an ageing veteran of the Soviet system, and once was the director of a fishing collective. “After 1989”, he complains to Lukas, “they grabbed everything and paid me off with glue, and there’s no market for it”. Vova sees Lukas as his ticket out of the daily misery. But the two women in his household are dead against him leaving: his possessive mother (Sotsenko), who drove away Vova’s wife accusing her of infidelity, and an attractive daughter Marushka (Deilyk), who is keen for to him stay, for other reasons. Desperate to break away from this timewarp, Lukas’ existential angst takes over and after losing his belongings at a raucous party, he is beaten up by two soldiers, waking up in a deep manmade hole in the ground, from which there is no escape. After Vova rescues him, Lukas will have to make a choice. 

VOLCANO is clearly a metaphor for the current status quo and the contradictions of modern Ukraine echo all around: “Weren’t you a hero of Maidan?”, Lukas demands to know from Vova. The answer is, of course “yes’, but the reality of everyday life in this war-torn country is anything but heroic: this is a society stuck in the dark ages of the early 20th century – despite mobile ‘phones. Wages are so low that hardly anyone bothers to work, living on bribes and petty crime. While hating the Russians for stealing their country, they ambiguously hark back to a time of order and stability, paid for by repression. 

DoP Vadim Ilkov catches this nostalgia evocatively on the widescreen, and the under-water shots of the flooded villages are particularly impressive. Bondarchuk directs with great sensibility, never denouncing his protagonists, who are seen as children asked to play adults in a world whose rules they do no understand any more. The director tells the slow-burning story of loss and self-determination: the traditions that once made them proud are distant memories as they cling on to the  void between a past and a present they fear, not to mention a future of more uncertainty. Moving and passionate. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 10 November 2021 | PREMIERED AT KARLOVY VARY 2018

53 Wars (2018) Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2018 ****

Dir: Ewa Bukowska | Drama | Poland | 79′

Ewa Bukowska’s stunning feature debut is a visceral impressionist portrait of anxiety, longing and psychotic meltdown seen through the eyes of a woman whose husband is a war correspondent in Chechnya. Based on a best selling book by Grazyna Jagielska, Bukowska builds up a collage of snatched memories, archive footage, thoughts and scenes from the couple’s life together and apart to palpably convey how it really feels to yearn passionately and to fear desperately for a loved one until it hurts, quite literally.

Anchored by a quivering, neurotic tour de force by Magdalena Poplawska (she also appears in this year’s festival’s Panic Attack) this tightly scripted and searingly affective psychological thriller mesmerises during its compact running time. Bukowska makes use an evocative score of romantic tunes, requiems, electronic buzzings and moments of deafening silence as she deftly manages the subtle tonal shifts between the heart-pounding good times when the couple are united, during love-making and with their little son, and those of sheer, dry-mouthed palpitating terror when Anka imagines Witek (Michal Zurawski) dead or on a gurney in some foreign hospital.

Eventually dark dread and purple passion meld into one chasm of terror as Anka downloads her angst-ridden neurosis to everyone in her sphere  – summed up in an extraordinary scene where her head-splitting palpitations are chanelled into a builder’s jammering drill in the street outside. She begs him to stop – but the angst is inside her own head. Later she threatens an innocent woman passer-by in a hijab to ‘stay away from her husband”. Stylishly captured in intimate close-up and on the widescreen by DoP Tomasz Naumiuk this is an inventive and unique way to show how anxiety can eventually take over and become completely destructive. Clearly fear eats the soul. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 29 JUNE – 7 JULY 2018 | EAST OF THE WEST

Bridges of Time | Laika Tilti (2018) **** | Karlovy Vary 2018

Dirs: Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys | Doc | 90′

This meditative essay from Latvian writer Kristine Bride and Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys captures the essence of the Baltic New Wave through a series of velvet vignettes and short films from the lesser-known filmmakers of the 1960s. Taking each director in turn, this doc compendium shows how – in contrast to the French, English and Italian pioneers of stark social realism and cinéma vérité – these cinematic auteurs were developing a more sensory, romantic and often whimsical approach even though their stylistically diverse work was still primarily concerned with stories of everyday life: raising children, studying nature and providing food for their families and local communities.

Book-ended with a deeply affecting and poetic portrait of childbirth, we experience Baltic bird life and animal welfare, school children reciting their own poetry, folklore in Estonia, bringing home the catch of Baltic herring in Latvia, a Lithuanian marriage ceremony and even a visit to Israel. What makes this so enjoyable is its overwhelmingly tender and often amusing approach to life. Absolutely enchanting and expertly crafted. MT

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

Suleiman Mountain (2017) | East of West Grand Prix | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Dir; Elizaveta Stishova | Cast: Daniel Daiybekov, Turgunai Erkinbekova, Perizat Ermanbaeva | Drama | Kyrgyzstan | 101′

Enlivened by offbeat humour and vibrant widescreen images reflecting the rugged beauty of this wild Central Asian nation, SULEIMAN MOUNTAIN is the first feature from Russian filmmaker Elizaveta Stishova. Largely funded by European finance this appealing arthouse drama explores an unconventional journey of discovery – both literal and metaphorical – for its passionate central characters: a woman, her long-lost son and husband and his other younger wife. In a drama fraught with tense uncertainty and often brutal rituals involving folklore and shamanism – a scene involving an unconscious woman is particularly alarming – Kyrgyzstan emerges as a region caught between the modern world and one of ancient traditions where women – predictably – get a rough deal as they compete vehemently for the attention of self-seeking macho men, in the hope that somehow, by smothering them with love and attention, they can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Sadly, twas ever thus.

Kazakhstani actor Asset Imangaliev plays the maverick male at the centre of the story, who cleverly plays his two wives off against one another. Karabas is an opportunistic adventurer who cons his way through life veering from violent outbursts to twinkling smiles as he tries to charm the pants off everyone he meets. Recently reunited with the couple’s thoughtfully endearing son Uluk, his older wife is a healing soul, desperately trying to hold the family together, while her coltish younger rival is also pregnant with Karabas’ child.

Kyrgyzstan initially feels exotic and remote, but the touching human story at its core is as familiar and everlasting as the hills. Stishova has certainly made a watchable and lively debut. MT

EAST OF THE WEST 2018 | KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 2018

 

Reflections in the Dust (2018) ***

Dir.: Luke Sullivan; Cast: Sarah Houbolt, Robin Royce Queere, Aldo Fedalo, Ali Aitken; Australia 2018, 75 min.

Young Australian director/writer Luke Sullivan (You’re Not Thinking Straight) really pushes the boundaries out in this ominous post-aplocalyptic tale that combines elements of documentary and fiction by doing away with a conventional narrative, and casting a severely sight-impaired actress Sarah Houbolt, who is suffering from Hallermann/Steiff syndrome, in the lead role. And he succeeds. REFLECTIONS IN THE DUST breathes through claustrophobic, vivid imagery accompanied by an unsettling soundtrack.

In this tragic portrait of loneliness, we first meet Freckles (Houbolt) muttering ‘I don’t believe in love because I’ve never seen it’ to a faceless interviewer in the opening moments of the film. She ekes out an existence with her father who is an ageing paranoid schizophrenic clown (Queere) near a lakeside swamp, where the  act out a father daughter relationship, scavenging for food from washed up detritus. The clown oscillates between tenderness and aggression towards Freckles, who often blackens her face with shoe polish, and plays with an action man toy who she talks to like a child. One day she meets a moustachioed stranger in a beret, who reveals that her ‘Mom’ died in a circus accident, but the clown becomes aggressive towards the man and tells him to: “Go back! You are mad”. And later when a gypsy woman (Aitken) brushes Freckles’ hair lovingly, the clown sinks into a catatonic stupor, as he loses his adopted identity, acting out in bizarre ways: swinging a hammer, biting a tree and licking its bark. As fear, paranoia and anger consume these lost souls, the film sporadically switches between this fictional world and increasingly traumatic real-life interviews, until it reaches a shocking conclusion.

 It would be too easy to compare Reflections to a Beckett play or a drama by Tarkovsky, but Sullivan’s docu-drama is unique. This is total dystopia where everything is reduced to its lowest common denominator. The central characters play out base identities in re-enacting family life – symbolically, the few pieces of simple furniture slowly sink into the swamp.

DoP Ryan Barry-Cotter uses very little light for his grainy black-and-white images, and it comes as a shock when garish colour images occasionally flood the screen for a few seconds. But what really stands out is Houbolt’s tour de force that conveys the anguish of person lost in a world of voices and vague images. The ex-paralympian swimmer is simply stunning in her expressionist angst, in a performance that will resonate for a for a very long time.

Director Luke Sullivan is at the forefront of the next generation of Australian filmmakers. At a remarkably young age, he is now in the company of renowned Australian directors including Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence), Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah) and David Michôd (The Rover) who have previously screened at Karlovy Vary. MT

World premiere at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2018 | IMAGINA 

Loves of a Blonde (1965) | Lasky Jedne Plavovlasky | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 |

Dir.: Milos Forman; Cast: Hana Brejchova, Vladimir Pucholt, Vladimir Mensik, Milada Jezkova, Josef Sebanek; Czechoslovakia 1965, 90 min.

Loves of a Blonde, the second feature film by director/co-writer Milos Forman, who died this April age 86, is a bleak comedy about sex – but mostly about the absence of it. But couched in this seemingly innocuous little gem is a subtle and subversive critique of Stalinism that kept Eastern Europe under the cosh – politically and socially – during the grim 1960s, before the Prague Spring – for a while – put an end to it all.

In a small Czechoslovakian town, dominated by a shoe factory, the Forman attempts to inject a little fun  by inviting some soldiers to a ball, dominated by women who outnumbered the male of the sex by a staggering 16:1 ratio. But instead of hunky young men, pot-bellied reservists came to town, and gave those women no satisfaction at all. But there is one exception in the shape of Andula (Brejchova), who falls for Milda (Pucholt) the band’s pianist of the band, who comes from Prague. During their ‘accidental’ encounter Milda almost injures himself, trying to shut the blind and after the tender one-night stand, the musician goes back to Prague, and back to his parents. But that’s not the end of it, when Andula turns up with her suitcase to py him a visit, the whole debacle turns into the most hilarious ménage-à-trois in film history.

Almost three generations of viewers have been cheered as well as moved by this amusing tale which bears all the attributes of modern storytelling – a plot without classical dramatisation, an open ending, and straightforward characterisation. Even very early on in his career, Miloš Forman had already proved he was capable of creating an impression of sheer authenticity.

Visually Blonde is un-remarkable, shot in creamy, grainless, black and white by DoP Miroslav Ondricek who accentuates the shadows and the claustrophobic interiors of this rather touching scenario, where the working class are seen as an amorphous mass, struggling to gain individuality in a system where instead of collective joy, grey misery dominates but with a solidarity that is strangely comforting despite its hopelessness. Forman would repeat his melancholy chronicle of stunning mediocrity in his next feature The Fireman’s Ball. AS

LOVES OF A BLOND | KVIFF OPENING FILM IN TRIBUTE TO MILOS FORMAN | 29 JUNE 2018 | FIREWORK DISPLAY 

  

 

Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 | Award Winners

THE MICHAEL POWELL AWARD FOR BEST BRITISH FEATURE FILM

The winner of the prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film, which honours imagination and creativity in British filmmaking, went to British filmmaker Matt Palmer’s debut feature, CALIBRE, which received its World Premiere at the Festival.

The winner was chosen a Jury comprised of Ana Ularu, Jason Connery and Iain de Caestecker

THE AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE IN A BRITISH FEATURE FILM

The award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film went jointly to actresses Liv Hill and Sinead Matthews for their roles in JELLYFISH and was also selected by the Michael Powell jurors.

 

THE AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

The award for Best International Feature Film went to Cyril Shäublin’s THOSE WHO ARE FINE, which received its UK Premiere at this year’s Festival. The winner was chosen by the International Jury comprised of Gráinne Humphreys, Simin Motamed-Arya and Yung Kha.

THE AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

The award for Best Documentary Feature Film went to Kevin Macdonald’s much-anticipated WHITNEY. This year’s jury was comprised of Gaston J-M Kaboré, Nada Cirjanic and Kate Muir.

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 20 June – 1 July 2018

Claire’s Camera (2017) *** | London Korean Film Festival

Dir: Hong Sang-so | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Shahira Fahmy, Kim Min-hee, Jun-yeong Jeong | Drama | Sth Korea | 69min

There are similarities between Hong Sang-soo’s latest seaside drama Claire’s Camera and his Korean set comedy In Another Country. But not only does this latest lack the mordant humour of his 2012 outing it also drifts along aimlessly, the tangible chemistry between its central characters played by gracefully Isabelle Huppert and Kim Min-Hee almost making up for its unengaging narrative, posing as improvisation, yet often stretching our impatience to the maximum.

Set in an around Cannes, this whimsical whisp of a story almost brushes off the blatant marital infidelity that is quite blatantly its central premise. Sales agent Manhee (Kim Min-hee) is fired by her female boss for sleeping with the director So (Jung Jinyoung) she is representing at the festival. Her boss refuses to give her a chance to explain and it soon emerges that she is in a relationship with So, and is clearly jealous of the young Manhee.

Meanwhile, Huppert is delicately caught in the crossfire as a dilettante in the Riviera there to enjoy the festival ambiance. The results are a mildly amusing play on jealousy, social awkwardness and the more subtle aspects of the female ego in matters of love. MT

REGENT STREET CINEMA | 23 JULY 2018 | AS PART OF THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL TEASER SCREENINGS

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017) Tribute

Dir: Stephen Nomura Schible (US, Japan, 100’, Japanese/English s/t English/Italian)

Five years in the making, Stephen Nomura’s discreet yet resonant portrait Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda brings us face to face with the Oscar-winning Japanese composer of synth-pop and electronica at a time where he was being treated for cancer and was writing Async his first album in eight years. Sadly he lost his fight on 28 March 2023, aged only 71.

The documentary follows Sakamoto as he survives a near death experience, and we first meet him in his homeland tinkling the ivories of a Yamaha baby grand piano that has also lived through trauma in the shape of the 2011 tsunami. Showing his deep humanity and social engagement as an artist, Sakamoto rocks a protective jacket as he boldly explores the restricted contamination zone of the Fukishima nuclear disaster demonstrating his allegiance to those who have suffered by joining a protest at the Japanese prime minister’s Tokyo residence. In further honour of these tragedies he later performs with elegant finesse the theme tune from Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence dedicating this soigné arrangement to the victims.

To say Sakamoto is a poster boy for such calamities as the 9/11 attacks, Iraq war and climate change would be trite and kack-handed but these concerns have certainly inspired his work for a quarter of a century and his calm demeanour and contemplative nature do seem apposite qualities in a creative genius who, at 65, has certainly lived through troubled times. With his mop of silver hair and striking gracefulness he is an appealing performer who is at pains to dress stylishly and eat healthily, attributes that compliment his work, and his candidness in talking about his creative process marks him out as a man of integrity and great intelligence.

Nomura Schible keeps his film sleek and yet reasonably loose in structure without resorting to talking heads or periphera – this is a snapshot of a point in time. There are also excerpts from Sakamoto’s Oscar-winning work on film scores for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky; together with Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant, and archive footage of the master conducting the relevant film pieces. These dovetail into scenes in his domestic milieu where he is pictured composing on the computer and playing his piano, a Steinway (naturellement). MT

NOW OUT ON Mubi | VENICE REVIEW 2017

 

New Directors for the Berlinale

The Berlinale turns over a new leaf as Carlo Chatrian takes over as artistic director and Mariette Rissenbeek as executive director of the International Film Festival starting in 2020.

Carlo Chatrian, born in Turin in 1971, is a film journalist and has directed the Locarno Film Festival since 2013, where he has proved that he can successfully curate and lead an art house audience festival. He stands for an artistically ambitious mix of programming and for a focus on discovering new talents. He and the new executive director, Mariette Rissenbeek, will head the Berlinale starting in 2020. Mariette Rissenbeek (born in Posterholt, The Netherlands in 1956) has long headed German Films, the information and advising centre for the international distribution of German films, as managing director. Her successful career in the film industry makes her the ideal choice for this position: She has many years of experience in working with all the important film festivals around the world and has an extensive network of national and international contacts in the film industry.

BERLINALE 2019 | 7 – 17 FEBRUARY 2019

 

Tim Robbins | Honoured at Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018

Oscar-winning Tim Robbins will be celebrated at this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival with a Crystal Globe for his Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema as an actor, director, screenwriter, producer and musician. Robbins won his Academy Award for his performance as Best Supporting in Mystic River (2003) and was later nominated for a best director Oscar for Dead Man Walking (1995). 

Tim Robbins grew up surrounded by artists from an early age and began his acting career on the New York stage with the experimental theatre ensemble The Actor’s Gang, which under his guidance earned widespread audience acclaim and more than a hundred critics’ awards. 

This early success led to various roles in TV and a film career that flourished with his performance in Ron Shelton’s popular sports film Bull Durham (1988). Proof of his undeniable talent followed with his role in the drama Jacob ’s Ladder (1990), and Robbins went on to work with legendary indie director Robert Altman – taking the sardonic lead role in Altman’s The Player (1992) which won him a Golden Globe and the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. 

Honing his skills behind the camera, Robbins’ directorial debut was the impressive drama Bob Roberts (1992 left) which he scripted, co-scored (with his brother David), and also appeared in the title role, singing many of the songs himself.  And the following year he was back with Robert Altman to film Short Cuts (1993). The ensemble cast won a Special Golden Globe and also took home the Volpi Cup from the Venice Film Festival. 

There followed appearances in the Coen brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), another outing with Robert Altman (the comedy from the world of fashion Prêt-à-Porter, 1994), and his work with Frank Darabont on The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which was nominated for seven Oscars. In 1996 Dead Man Walking earned him an Oscar nomination for best director, while his partner Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for best actress. His next auteur outing, Cradle Will Rock (1999) above, which premiered at Cannes, explored the relationship between the individual artist and society during a tumultuous time in the U.S. though this time in another era. As with Dead Man Walking, Robbins produced, and the music was written by his brother David. 

After Stephen Frears’s romantic comedy High Fidelity (2000) and Michel Gondry’s bizarre Human Nature (2001) – based on a script by Charlie Kaufman – Robbins appeared in one of his most successful roles – in Clint Eastwood’s crime drama Mystic River (2004), for which both Robbins and lead actor Sean Penn won an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Recently Robbins has appeared in Marjorie Prime (2017) and HBOs The Brink (2016) and Here And Now (2018). 

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | 29 JUNE – 7 JULY 2018 | TIM ROBBINS WILL PRESENT BOB ROBERTS and CRADLE WILL ROCK and perform with his ensemble The Rogues Gallery Band. 

Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 | Preview

New films from RADU JUDE, ANA KATZ and SÉBASTIEN PILOTE headline the main competition at the 53rd edition of the Czech Republic’s premier festival that unspools in the spa town of Karlovy Vary from 29 June until 7 July 2018.

The ten world and two international premieres in this year’s official competition include Jude’s follow-up to his sombre genocide documentary Dead Nation (2107). I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians is another exploration of the timely topic of national identity and culture. Argentinian filmmaker Ana Katz’s will present her bittersweet family drama  Sueño Florianópolis. The Fireflies Are Gone, is the story of a rebellious yet charismatic teenager, directed by Canadian filmmaker Sébastien Pilote. The line-up also features Russian filmmaker Ivan Tverdovsky’s poetic new film Jumpman and Peter Brunner’s dark Austrian-American drama To the Night, starring Caleb Landry Jones, while Israeli director Joseph Madmony will be at KVIFF with a subtly moving drama Redemption, that explores a fathers fight to save his daughter and his own musical dream. co-directed by cinematographer Boaz Y. Yako

Other titles competing for the festival’s Crystal Globe include: Miriam Lies (Natlia Cabral, Oriol Estrada, Dominican Republic/Spain); Brothers (Omur Atay, Turkey); and History of Love (Sonja Prosenc, Slovenia.)

The  East of the West competition strand  features the latest from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia — and opens with Crystal Swan, a debut from Belarusian filmmaker Darya Zhuk in a selection from 12 female directors, including Iranian director Nima Eghlima’s social drama Amir and Elizaveta Stishova’s touching family drama Suleiman Mountain, that debuted at last year’s PYIFF.

In the Documentary strand, there is Putin’s Witness an exciting look behind the Kremlin’s Iron Curtain exposing new archive footage, from exiled Russian director Vitaly Mansky, Bridges of Time, a poetic essay from Lithuanian directors Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys and filmmaker Marouan Omara explores the abandoned luxury Egyptian resort Sharm El Sheikh: Dream Away. Meanwhile, Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls,  looks at the  American middle class during a day in a traditional U.S. sports bar and plays out of competition.

OFFICIAL SELECTION – COMPETITION

I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians | Radu Jude | WP | 140′

Radu Jude’s follow up to his sombre study of wartime genocide (Dead Nation) is a more upbeat but potent feature that follows a young Romanian artist’s meticulous plans to reconstruct an historical event from 1941, when the Romanian Army carried out ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front.

Panic Attack |Paweł Maślona | Poland | IP | 100′ 

Paweł Maślona’s debut is a dark comedy that looks at the cinematic potential of the emotional phenomenon known as the ‘panic attack’ seen through the experiences of a group of Poles in contemporary Warsaw.

The Fireflies are Gone | Sébastien Pilote | Canada | 96′ | WP

The sleepy town where Léo lives is a dead end, as far as her hopes and dreams are concerned. but happiness and self realisation beckons once she escapes her mother’s influence in this stylistically precise, pop-impressionistic film about a girl’s quest to find out who she really is. Featuring the captivating performance by Karelle Tremblay.

Domestique/ Director: Adam Sedlák | Czech Rep, Slovak Rep | 116′ WP

Adam Sedlák’s claustrophobic black and white drama explores our desire to succeed both professionally and personally in this grim domestic portrait of a top national cyclist and obsessional bicycle racer.

 

Geula/Redemption | Joseph Madmony\Boaz Yehonatan Yaakov Israel, 2018, 100′, WP

A deeply religious Jewish widower combines his love of music with his desperate bid to save his daughter in this gently moving drama from Israeli duo, Madmony and Yaakov.

 

Brothers /Kardeşler |  Ömür Atay | Turkey, Germany, Bulgaria, 2017, 103′  | WP

Directed with an assured hand, this intimate debut explores guilt and punishment in a close family set-up, showing how difficult it is to choose between moral rectitude, family, and tradition.

Miriam Lies\ Miriam miente| Oriol Estrada, Natalia Cabral |  90′ | WP

Shy girl Miriam is excited about her 15th birthday and wants to invite her online boyfriend to the celebrations, but the anticipated blind date only complicates things in this delicately drawn teenage portrait of growing up, competitiveness, and confusion.

Podbrosy / Jumpman / Skokan
Director: Ivan I. Tverdovskiy
Russia, 2018, 86 min, International premiere

Young Oksana put Denis in an orphanage, unable to cope with a new baby, but sixteen years later she wants to make amends for her neglect in Ivan Tverdovskiy’s follow-up to his stunning drama Zoology.

Sueño Florianópolis | Ana Katz | Argentina, Brazil, France, 2018, 103\, WP

Lucrecia, Pedro, and their teenage kids Julian and Florencia set out from Buenos Aires one sweltering day to the Brazilian summer resort of Florianópolis. Renowned Argentinian director Ana Katz draws upon gentle humor and light melancholy to relate a tale of first love, past lovers, fateful encounters, and fleeting joys.

To the Night | Peter Brunner | Austria, USA, 2018, 102 min, WP

As a child Norman survived a fire that killed the rest of his family. Married with a child, he is still struggling with the resulting trauma, in this atmospheric and visually spectacular study of troubled adulthood, portrayed impressively by Caleb Landry Jones.

 

Winter Flies | Všechno bude | Olmo Omerzu | 85′, World premiere

Capturing the mischievous essence of boyhood, this Slovenian bromance sees two eccentric souls Mára and Heduš set out into the frozen wastes in search of adventure.

 

History of Love | Sonja Prosenc | Slovenia, Italy, Norway, 2018, 105′ |  WP

In her freewheeling and gently poetic third feature, Sonja Prosenc explores family ties and bereavement through the story of  seventeen-year-old Ivan.

 

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

The Best Thing You Can Do with Your Life |  Zita Erffa | Ger/mex 93′

Erffa examines why her brother entered a conservative Roman Catholic order, severing all ties with the outside world in this fresh, inquiring documentary that works both as a self-healing document and a study of family estrangement.

Cielo | Alison McAlpine | Canada, Chile, 2017, 78′

After every scorching day in the Chilean Atacama desert of Atacama the night sky reveals an enigmatic gateway to the universe in this powerful cinematic experience brought to us by Canadian director Alison McAlpine (Second Sight).

Dream Away | Marouan Omara, Johanna Domke Germany, Egypt, | 86 min, WP

Sharm El Sheikh offered a paradise of golden beaches and coral gardens. But the Arab Spring and the confusion of the post revolutionary period robbed both the local workers and holiday makers of this exotic playground in the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The film offers a melancholy portrait of the resort’s dwindling employees who feverishly dream among the abandoned hotel suites.

In the Stillness of Sounds | Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer | France | 90′

Marc Namblard, looks at the sedative effects of sound in this observational discourse on the tranquillity of the forest that permeates the very heart of man.

Bridges of Time / Mosty času | Director: Audrius Stonys, Kristīne Briede | Lith/Latvia/Est | 80′

Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys’s meditative documentary essay portrays the less- remembered generation of cinema poets of the Baltic New Wave. With finesse, they push beyond the barriers of the common historiographic investigation to offer a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation.

A Little Wisdom / Malá moudrostDYuqi Kang
Canada, Nepal, China, 2017, 92 min, European premiere

An isolated Buddhist monastery in southern Nepal not only provides refuge for monks, but also for orphans up to the age of sixteen. Far removed from civilisation, the boys learn about strict discipline and order yet, like all children, they hanker after adventure. An observational documentary which captures both the routine of the passing days and the vagaries of boyhood.

Breaking News / Mimořádná zpráva: Tomáš Bojar | Czech Republic | 75′, World premiere

A carefully composed observation of two newsrooms which, in March 2017, tried to cover the Czech president’s decision whether or not to run for re-election. Two teams of reporters, one extraordinary event, and two takes on one“objective” piece of news.

Putin’s Witnesses / Vitaly Mansky | Latvia, Switzerland, Czech Republic, 2018, 102 min, World premiere

On December 31, 1999 Vladimir Putin became president of Russia and renowned documentarist Vitaly Mansky draws on witness accounts of the aftermath. He then rounds it off with his own fascinating perspective and longtime experience of a man only separated by a movie camera from the frontline of Russian politics.

The Swing / Cyril Aris | Lebanon, 2018, 74 min, World premiere

Viviane and Antoine have lived together for 65 years, and while she still has her strength, he has long been bedridden. And so no one is able or has any desire to tell the weakened old man the distressing news that his beloved daughter has suddenly died. Indeed, the grief might cause his own death… A heavy, lyrical portrait tempered by familial love.

Inside Mosul / V Mosulu | Jana Andert | Czech Republic | 70 min, World premiere

A shock therapy of news coverage from the front line. Documentarist Jana Andert spent eight months with an elite Iraqi Army unit in the battle for Mosul, occupied by Islamic State fighters from 2014 to June 2017. An unflinching report from a city in ruins, robbed of its soul by one of the worst catastrophes of modern times.

Walden | Daniel Zimmermann | Switzerland, Austria, 2018, 100 min, World premiere

Gentle birdsong filters through dense forest vegetation only to be drowned out by the sudden roar of chainsaws. Thus begins a documentary comprising a mere thirteen 360° panning shots, whose uncompromising formal concept is not an easy watch. But as soon as we align our breathing with the slow rhythm of the shots, we can witness the paradoxical migration of wood from Austrian forests to a secret, far-off destination.

L’Île au trésor / Treasure Island | Guillaume Brac | France, 2018, 97 min, World premiere

The summer season at a recreation centre near Paris is in full swing, so there is no shortage of amusing interludes at the crowded swimming pool. A glimpse into the mindset of the visitors and employees of the extensive park – original French natives and immigrants who come here to relax, for want of a  more exotic holiday destination.

EAST OF THE WEST – COMPETITION

Crystal Swan / Crystal Swan  | Dir: Darya Zhuk | Bel,Germ, US, Russ, 2017, 95 min, WP

This year’s East of the West competition opens with Darya Zhuk’s spirited debut drama set in post Soviet Minsk where a young woman with a law degree dreams of going to the USA to work as a DJ.

53 Wars /53 wojny | Dir: Ewa Bukowska | Pol 2018, 79′ 

Anka is becoming extremely anxious about her war correspondent husband Witek, but where do you draw the line between reality and vivid imagination? An evocative psychological drama adapted from the autobiographical novel by Grażyna Jagielska about experiencing war second-hand: we don’t have to be there for it to have a destructive influence on our lives.

Amir | Dir: Nima Eghlima | Iran, 2018, 106′ | WP

Now in his thirties, Amir is beleaguered by other peoples’ problems, while he tries to keep his own family together. Amir is a timely film about contemporary Iran, about a generation whose private lives are determined more by the rules of society than by their own will.

Bear with Us/Chata na prodej | Dir: Tomáš Pavlíček | Czech Rep, 2018, 77′  WP

A family decides to sell a lovely cottage as none of them has visited it for some time, so they all decide to spend one last day there before the end. This slow-burning comedy is a riff on nostalgia with echoes of a Jaroslav Papoušek screenplay, and takes an agreeably detached view of the Czech phenomenon of weekending in the country.

Moments/Chvilky | Dir: Beata Parkanová | Czech/Slovak Reps, 2018, 95′ WP

This amusing and mature debut explores how explores how a young woman eventually takes control of her life despite her overbearing family.

Glyubokie Reki /Deep Rivers | Dir: Vladimir Bitokov | Russ, 2018, 75′

Under the watchful eye of Aleksandr Sokurov comes another searingly vivid and visually remarkable debut with profound humanistic appeal. Set in a stark landscape, the intense conflict of a family of lumberjacks comes to a head when the youngest returns to take the place of his sick father.

Breathing Into Marble | Dir: Giedrė Beinoriūtė | Lith, Latvia, Croatia, 2018, 97′ 

Lithuanian director Giedrė Beinoriūtė brings us a taut psychological drama debut adapted from the award-winning novel of the same name that sees a well-to-do family under pressure when they adopt a withdrawn little boy from the local orphanage.

Pause / Pauza | Dir: Tonia Mishiali | Greece, Cyprus, 2017, 96 min, World premiere

Elpida is trapped in a loveless marriage to a heartless, despotic man, and to make matters worse, she’s also going through the menopause. Emotional and physical changes affect her perception of reality in this formally mature, muted psychological drama that confront the issues surrounding the position of women in a patriarchal society.

Suleiman Gora / Suleiman Mountain | Director: Elizaveta Stishova
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, 2017, 101′

Drama and comedy collide in this vivid Kyrgyzstani road movie that sees a couple haunted by ghosts of the past who come back to stay, possibly for good.

Via Carpatia |Dir: Klara Kochańska, Kasper Bajon | Poland, 2018, 71 min, WP

Julia and Piotr and his mother decide on an alternative holiday| a trip across the Balkans, to a refugee camp on the Macedonian-Greek border. Student Academy Award holder Klara Kochańska makes her debut with this intimate, cinema verite road movie characterised by subtle performances.

Virágvölgy / Blossom Valley | Dir” László Csuja | Hungary, 2018, 83 min, WP

An punky, brash road movie about young lovers on the run, interwoven with poetic and realistic images. Psychotic Bianka kidnaps a child and dupes the trusting Laci into thinking that it’s his. Together they form an instant family who set off in a caravan, fleeing the law and a bunch of crooks.

Volcano / Vulkán | Dir: Roman Bondarchuk | Ukr,Ger, 2018, 106, WP

One day Lukas, employed as an interpreter for an OSCE mission, becomes lost in the middle of the steppe in southern Ukraine. His journey towards self-recognition andhappiness will be flanked by a series of strange encounters and bizarre situations…Roman Bondarchuk’s novel feature debut is a tragicomedy whose striking visuals aidhim in fleshing out the colorful world of southern Ukraine, a place which still bears unmistakable traces of the distant and not-too-distant past.

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 29 JUNE –  July 

 

Hereditary (2018) ***

Dir: Ari Aster | Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Bryne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, 125′ US | Horror

Hereditary is in the upper echelons of atmospheric character-driven horror fare, but the film doesn’t end well for its characters – or the audience, for that matter. Superb in execution, characterisation and tropes, Ari Aster’s feature debut comes unstuck in a meandering narrative that simply doesn’t know where to go in the final act. And that’s the tragedy. Like an over-excited child at its first birthday party, Hereditary knows its been good and shared its new toys, and desperately wants the show to go on, but it’s also strung out and eventually driven to tears by exhaustion.

Favouring buttoned-up tension and tone-setting over blood and gore, this claustrophobic arthouse piece feels clammy rather than chilling, along the lines of The Babadook and It Comes At Night. Aster is clearly a consummate storyteller with tricks up his sleeve, but his desire to underpin a spiritual ghost story with traditional folklore goes awry in the final denouement.

And what a grim lot his Graham family are. Living in their morbid house in the dank Pacific Northwest, they make a morose and dysfunctional foursome, headed by Gabriel Bryne’s simpering Dad, Steve, who seems lost behind a pair of opaque ‘specsavers’. Meanwhile Toni Collette is miserable and malign-looking as Annie, the Mom who didn’t get on with her own Mom, and is regretting it as she reads her fumbling funeral elegy which follows a newspaper death announcement  in the opening scene. The couple have two teenage kids, petulant Peter (Alex Wolff) and zombie-like Charlie (Milly Shapiro) who is prone to tongue-clucking – a aural motif that will haunt you for the foreseeable future, bringing back memories of that well worn phrase from Cold Comfort Farm: “something nasty in the woodshed”.

When another woeful tragedy befalls this hapless household, the family dynamic turns stultifying, both to watch and experience. And this tonal claustrophobia takes a hold of the solar plexus for the rest of the story as Aster masterfully guides us through an increasingly grim and gruesome series of events that bring the sword of Damocles firmly down over all and sundry. To compensate for her feelings of loss and confusion, Annie decides to seek refuge in bereavement counselling and this course of action leads to her dabbling in the occult. But from this moment forward the film veers from suspense to disappointment and boredom, as increasingly matters just don’t stack up and Aster resorts to an outlandish scenario to compensate.

Collette, Byrne (who is used to coping with this kind of melodramatic meltdown) and Wolff are impressive in their subtle portrayal of family members steadily losing the plot, in more ways than one. Ann Dowd joins the fun as bereaved mother Joan who is purportedly there to help Annie in her Spiritual awakening, but actually makes matters worse in unleashing a sinister side to the matriarch’s hitherto grounded personality. And here Collette is extraordinary in a sustained performance as Aster’s multi-faceted anti-heroine whose grief and desperation know no bounds as she gradually – and literally – dissembles. But our sympathies ultimately lie with Bryne’s Steve, who plays the most decent character of the lot, and we feel for him as he holds out to the bitter end, trying to see the light but knowing full well, in his bemused bewilderment, that he taken on another film that will eventually end in a shambles. MT

SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE LONDON 2018 |NOW ON RELEASE

Edinburgh International Film Festival | 20 June – 1 July 2018

Artistic Director Mark Adams unveiled this year’s programme for Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), with 121 new features, including 21 world premieres, from 48 countries across the globe.

Highlights include Haifaa al-Mansour’s long-awaited follow-up to WadjdaMARY SHELLEY, with Elle Fanning taking on the role of Mary Wollstonecraft, the World Premiere of Stephen Moyer’s directorial debut, THE PARTING GLASS, starring Melissa Leo, Cynthia Nixon, Denis O’Hare, Anna Paquin (who also produces), Rhys Ifans and Ed Asnerand an IN PERSON events with guests including the award-winning English writer and director David Hare, the much-loved Welsh comedian Rob Brydon and star of the compelling Gothic drama THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE, actor George MacKay, as well as the Opening and Closing Gala premieres of PUZZLE and SWIMMING WITH MEN.

BEST OF BRITISH

This year’s Best of British strand includes exclusive world premieres of Simon Fellows’ thriller STEEL COUNTRY, featuring a captivating performance from Andrew Scott as Donald, a truck driver turned detective; comedy classic OLD BOYS starring Alex Lawther; the debut feature of writer-director Tom Beard, TWO FOR JOY, a powerful coming-of-age drama starring Samantha Morton and Billie Piper; oddball comedy-drama EATEN BY LIONS; striking debut from writer and director Adam Morse, LUCID, starring Billy Zane and Sadie Frost; Jamie Adams’ British comedy SONGBIRD, featuring Cobie Smulders. Audiences can also look forward to a special screening of Mandie Fletcher’s delightfully fun rom-com PATRICK.

AMERICAN DREAMS 

This year the AMERICAN DREAMS strand has the quirky indie comedy UNICORN STORE, the directorialOscar-winning actress Brie Larson in which she stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Joan Cusack; the heart-warming HEARTS BEAT LOUD starring Nick Offerman; glossy noir thriller, TERMINAL, starring and produced by Margot Robbie and starring Simon Pegg and Dexter Fletcher; IDEAL HOME in which Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan play a bickering gay couple who find themselves thrust into parenthood; 1980s set spy thriller starring Jon Hamm, THE NEGOTIATOR; and PAPILLON, starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek.

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES

Notable features include 3/4  Ilian Metev’s glowing cinema verity portrait of family life. Malgorzata Szumovska’s oddball drama MUG that explores the aftermath of a face transplant; Aida Begic’s touching transmigration tale NEVER LEAVE ME highlighting how young Syrian lives have been affected by war; actor-turned-director Mélanie Laurent’s fourth feature DIVING, and Hannaleena Hauru’s thought-provoking THICK LASHES OF LAURI MANTYVAARA and the brooding and atmospheric drama THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE starring George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth and Matthew Stagg.

WORLD PERSPECTIVES 

This offer a fascinating snapshot of developing world-cinema themes and styles such as BO Hu’s epic Chinese drama AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL; Berlinale award-winning South American dram THE HEIRESSESGIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY, a touching but darkly funny tale of a Chinese mother and daughter and Kylie Minogue starrer FLAMMABLE CHILDREN , a raucous comedy set in Aussie beachside suburbia in the 1970s. THE BUTTERFLY TREE starring Melissa George and Ben Elton’s THREE SUMMERS starring Robert Sheehan and set at an Australian folk music festival.

DOCUMENTARIES

This year’s EIFF programme features a strong musical theme from Kevin Macdonald’s illuminating biopic WHITNEY, about the life and times of superstar Whitney Houston; GEORGE MICHAEL: FREEDOM – THE DIRECTOR’S CUT narrated by George Michael himself and ALMOST FASHIONABLE: A FILM ABOUT TRAVIS directed by Scottish lead-singer Fran Healy. Audiences will be inspired by the creativity of Orson Welles in Mark Cousins’ THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES; HAL, a film portrait of the acclaimed 1970s director Hal Ashby; LIFE AFTER FLASH, a fascinating exploration into the life of actor Sam J. Jones.

DOWNRIGHT STRANGE

As the sun sets, audiences will be able to journey into the dark and often downright strange side of cinema, with a selection of genre-busting edge-of-your-seat gems including: the gloriously grisly psychosexual romp PIERCING starring Mia Wasikowska; the world premieres of Matthew Holness’ POSSUM and SOLIS staring Steven Ogg as an astronaut who finds himself trapped in an escape pod heading toward the sun; dark and bloody period drama THE MOST ASSASSINATED WOMAN IN THE WORLD and the futuristic WHITE CHAMBER starring Shauna Macdonald.

FOCUS ON CANADA 

The country focus for the Festival’s 72nd edition will be Canada, allowing audiences to take a cinematic tour of the country and its culture, offering insight as well as entertainment, from filmmakers new and already established. HOCHELAGA, LAND OF THE SOULS is an informative look at Quebec’s history; but possibly best to avoid the unconvincing FAKE TATTOOS opting instead for WALL, a striking animated essay about Israel from director Cam Christiansen and FIRST STRIPES a compelling look into the Canadian military from Jean-Francois Caissy.

Weather permitting, the Festival’s pop-up outdoor cinema event Film Fest in the City with Mackays (15 – 17 June) will kick off the festivities early, with the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival running from 20 June – 1 July, 2018.

Tickets go on sale to Filmhouse Members on Wednesday 23 May at 12noon and on sale to the public on Friday 25 May at 10am. www.edfilmfest.org.uk.

 

 

l’Amant Double (2017) ***

Dir: François Ozon | Cast: Jeremie Renier, Marine Vacth | Drama | France | 104min

François Ozon is back with a meandering 90s-style erotic thriller that starts as an upbeat, intriguing psychodrama hinting at hidden depths, but then loses its sting in the final stages. Poking fun at its female-centric themes, the film opens with an eye-watering gynaecological close-up – if only the script was as tight as its heroine’s tooshie.

The female anatomy belongs to pouting pixie-like minx Chloe (Marine Vacth) who is bored in her new job at a trashy art museum. Just as well, because her love life is complex and full of energetic sexual encounters that kick off when she falls for her dishy psychoanalyst Paul (Jeremie Renier). But when they move in together Chloe is alarmed to discover Paul is not who he seems. Firking around in his things she finds his passport with a different name and realises her lover has an analyst twin brother, which at first he denies. Pretending to need therapy, she tracks down the identical sibling (Renier flips deftly between the two), and soon they too are having rampant sex.

Ozon’s twin theme recalls the obsessive psycho thrillers of Brian De Palma and Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and even The Brood, where emotional confusion casts doubt on the central character’s state of mind. This is Marine Vacth’s second collaboration with Ozon since she sprung to fame in his 2013 drama Young and Beautiful, and here she plays a similar type who is slightly disdainful and dissatisfied with her life. Despite Paul’s amorous and easy-going nature, Chloe is curiously drawn to the more difficult character of his brother – Jeremie Renier excels in both roles. Ozon, as playful as ever, then resorts to his box of kinky tricks as Chloe turns dominatrix, in a twist obviously worked into the narrative to delight French audiences – who love this kind of thing. From then on L’AMANT DOUBLE broadens into an exploration of Chloe’s gynaecological and psychosexual issues, scuppering the suspense and  the impact of the ultimate reveal.

Thank God for Jacqueline Bissett whose vignette spices up the dragged out denouement, and Myriam Boyer who brings some light relief as the nosy neighbour with a penchant for cats. If only Ozon would return to his more satisfying early thrillers, such as Under the Sand (2000)Swimming Pool (2003) or the serious dramas such as Frantz (2016).

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

 

Ismael’s Ghosts (2017) **

Dir: Arnaud Desplechin | Cast: Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric | Hippolyte Girardot, Alba Rohrwacher | Drama | 110min | France

Cannes 70th Anniversary got off to a wildly pretentious start with Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling fantasy melodrama made watchable by sparkling performances from two of France’s leading female stars: Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The histrionic storyline follows Matthieu Amalric, in his usual tortured turn as a neurotic chain-smoking writer whose wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) was declared missing 20 years previously. Emotionally unstable, he falls for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s charming and calming single astrophysicist, whose cross to bear is raising her disabled brother – who never actually appears.

Into this budding romantic mêlée plops the delicately distraite adventurist Carlotta who has been wandering the globe, much to the chagrin of her dying father and her husband.  She now turns up out of the blue to reclaim her husband and have his baby. Is she a ghost or a real person, do we really care? She puts a spanner in the works for all concerned – and only to illuminate Ismael’s ambivalence about what he really wants from a partner, and out of life in general. At this point Desplechin’s adds a exotic twist to proceedings involving Louis Garrel, who plays a diplomat hired by the French government, to a mythical North African country with his new bride, a playful Alba Rohwacher. And this is where the film loses its way (and our interest) as it slips backwards and forwards, careening between sparks of quirky humour, wild reverie and erotic moments where Cotillard reveals all but, judiciously, Gainsbourg remains gracefully un-décolletée – and strangely more interesting and appealing – as Ismael’s true love).

Funny how Déplechin’s female characters are eminently more interesting but only ever exist to serve his one-dimentional men. That said, there is much to admire in this hotchpotch: a sweepingly romantic score that punctuates the occasional moments of intrigue, Irina Lubtchansky’s intricate camerawork that conveys claustrophobia in tight corridors, and soaring delirium in widescreen shots; but nothing ultimately hangs together. ISMAEL’S GHOSTS is best remembered as a vehicle for Garrel, Gainsbourg, and Cotillard, and some flashes of momentary brilliance in a rather disturbed nightmare . MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

1987: When the Day Comes (2017) Korean Film Festival

Dir: Jung Joon-hwan | Political Thriller | South Korea |

With an impressive ensemble cast and polemic real-life story, director Jang Joon-hwan’s powerful portrayal of the events that led to Korea’s historic June Democratic Uprising was as much a hit with audiences as it was with critics when it stormed the box-office at the start of this year.

In 1980s South Korea, the military regime of President Chun Doo-hwan pushes the masses to breaking point with its widespread corruption and oppression. In 1987, a series of events will be set in motion through which the heroic actions of ordinary people from all walks of life result in nationwide protests, altering the course of the nation’s history forever.

When a student protester dies under police interrogation, the order is given to quickly cremate the body, effectively burying the evidence. Unfortunately for Director Park (Kim Yoon-seok, The Fortress), the head of the Anti-Communism Investigations Bureau in Seoul desperately trying to cover up the crime, Prosecutor Choi (Ha Jung-woo, Assassination) is not playing ball. Suspecting foul play, Choi refuses the request and insists on an autopsy. When it’s discovered torture was the likely cause, the race is on to bring the crime to light. Prison guard Han (Yoo Hai-jin, Confidential Assignment) his niece Yeon-hee (Kim Tae-ri, The Handmaiden) and idealistic student Han-yeol (Gang Dong-won, A Violent Prosecutor) are just some of the ordinary people who put their lives on the line to uncover the truth.

Highly regarded director Jang Joon-hwan (Save the Green Planet, 2003) has made his most ambitious film to-date with this fast-paced, tightly plotted political thriller based on the shocking true events of 1987 Korea. Like last year’s A Taxi Driver, 1987: When the Day Comes gives the blockbuster treatment to a turbulent period, resulting in an exciting thrill-ride of a film that never loses sight of the human drama at its core. Korean Film Festival Review

HEADLINING UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Teaser Screenings | Monday 18 June  | Picturehouse Central

Dogman ***** (2018) | Cannes Film Festival | Best Actor Award

Dir: Matteo Garrone | Ugo Chiti | Adamo Dionisi, Francesco Acquaroli, Edoardo Pesce, Laura Pizzirani | Drama | 120′ | Italy

The second Italian hero of Cannes Film Festival appears in Matteo Garrone’s terrific revenge thriller that returns to the filmmaker’s own stamping ground of Caserta with a richly thematic and compulsive exploration of male rivalry and belonging in a downtrodden criminal-infested football-playing community scratching a living.

Life has always been tough in this neck of the woods, infested by gangland influences: it is a terrain that Garrone knows and describes well in his 2008 feature Gomorrah. A brutal brotherhood controls this bleak beachside wilderness where everyone relies on each other to survive.

At the heart of DOGMAN is a tour de force turn from actor turned director Marcello Fonte who plays an endearing and diminutive dog grooming supremo who although popular and kind, has formed a toxic twosome with local hoodlum and sociopath Simone, a thorn in his side who is dragging him constantly into trouble. Marcello’s wife has cleared off and he has a young daughter Sofia (Alida Baldari Calabria) to look after –  and dog-grooming hardly makes ends meet, so to keep Simone sweet he supplies him with cocaine and courtesies, though secretly he wishes him dead.

Marcello possesses the same innate goodness as Lazzaro in Rohrwacher’s drama that played earlier in the competition line -up. And he’s gifted and patient with the dogs brought into his shop, and in one scene he actually goes out of his way to rescue a chihuahua who has been nearly frozen to death in a botched robbery. In short, Garrone uses similar ‘good and evil’ theme as Scorsese in his New York street thrillers where one good person is perpetually trying to redeem the others, against the odds and often at his own expense. Marcello is keen on his friends and is popular and wants to keep it that way, but Simone is a liability and one day will lead him to tragedy.

This is a gritty and violent film and often unbearably so, but there are moments of heart-rending tenderness – between his Marcello and his dependants – where tears will certainly well up. Fonte won Best Award at Cannes for his skilful portrayal that switches subtly from sad loner to desperado.

Garrone sets the desolate scene resonantly with his brilliant lighting and inventive camerawork, this time working with DoP Nicolai Bruel, who paints this part of Italy with an almost gothic desperation highlighted by Michele Braga’s mournful musical score. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL  2018| BEST ACTOR AWARD MARCELLO FONTE

The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018)**** | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov | Writer: Roelof Jan Minneboo | Cast: Sultan Abzalov, Tulemis Alishev, Dinara Baktybaeva, Kulzhamilya Belzhanova | Drama | Fr/Kazakhstan |

Roelof Jan Minneboo is a Dutch writer and script doctor who works with budding independent filmmakers to give their distinctive stories a voice. He has done this so far with the late Somalian director Abdi Jama for Queleh, with Georgian director George Ovashvilli’s Corn Island which went on to win the main prize at Karlovy Vary in 2014 and with Armenian Ilgar Najaf whose Pomegranate Orchard (2017) picked up a several awards last year for his story of a prodigal son. This is his second collaboration with Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov, after the director won the Free Spirit Award at Warsaw for his debut  The Owners (2014).

The title’s logline: Love will always be above life, fear, death and money, is an encouraging start and The Gentle Indifference of the World never disappoints with its captivating style and unusual narrative inspired by Kazakh Steppe legends. Each frame of this stunningly filmed piece of cinema is an absolute gem, once again embracing the free-spirited and unique cinematic voice that is Yerzhanov, directing with inventive conviction in a strangely poetic and offbeat thriller. Unexpected humour, gentleness and violence emerge from the bizarre yet simple tale about feisty Kazakh folk who are not afraid of taking the law into their own hands in the big sky countryside of the lle Alatau Steppe and in the corrupt city of Almaty.

After her father’s sudden death, the central character Sultanat (a gracefully charismatic Dinara Baktybaeva) is forced to move from her idyllic rural home to Almaty to raise money to pay off family debts so her mother can avoid a prison sentence. With only her faithful friend Kuandyk (Dyussembaev) for emotional support, city life proves tough for this ravishing beautiful young woman and even when her uncle comes up with a suitable husband to do the honours financially, Sultanat soon finds him wanting. She has been close friends with the faithful but penniless Kuandyk since they were little, but can their bond survive in the tough urban setting where cold reality lurks at every turn, and love must triumph over money and power which continually trump its survival? An extraordinary and evergreen story, beautifully told. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8 – 19 MAY | UN CERTAIN REGARD

 

 

 

Shoplifters (2018)**** | Cannes Film Festival | Winner Palme d’Or (2018)

Writer/Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda | Cast: Kirin Kiki, Lily Franky, Sosuke Ikematsu | Drama |121′

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of parenting, After the Storm, has much in common with this perceptive and often ambiguous satire about a family of small-time crooks and the misguided theft they commit for compassionate reasons, with devastating consequences. SHOPLIFTERS is a worthwhile addition to the auteur’s preoccupations with family life and father and motherhood – both real and imagined, and is possibly his best work so far.

In Tokyo, part-time workers Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) complement their meagre income with a sideline in shoplifting. Aided and abetted by son Shota (Kairi Jyo), they often swipe groceries from the local store near the flat they share with fellow grifter Noboyu (Sakura Andô), teenager Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), who turns the most lucrative tricks of the lot.

One day they take pity on an abused and timid teenager called Juri (Miyu Sasaki), offering her board and lodging in their already cramped home. This simple act of kindness is the catalyst for change in the family dynamic unleashing previously hidden motivations that range from short-sightedness to self-aggrandisement, and even narcissistic pride.

A tonal shift from upbeat bonhomie to gloomy sadness takes place in the film’s third segment when the family anticipate their emotional loss and start to fear the backlash of their rash altruism, and its damning formal retribution. Koreeda and his cast bring out  tremendous pathos in this well-meaning family, and while we feel for them as do-gooders, – in the true sense of the word – they are crucially also law-breakers. And this is the J B Priestleyan crux of this clever and beautifully crafted caper reflecting the subtle nuances of Japanese society. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | WINNER | PALME D’OR 2018

https://youtu.be/3zJ3_JZnH_Q

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Stanley Kubrick; Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack; UK/USA 1968; 141 min.

Christopher Nolan presents a Warner Bros 70mm print struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative in Cannes this year. This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits. Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, Katharina Kubrick, his coproducer Jan Harlan and director Christopher Nolan were in attendance.

But who better to define Science Fiction than Arthur C. Clarke, co-author of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, on whose short story of the same name Kubrick’s film is based: “Science fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen – though often you wish it would”. This rather cautious outlook is also at the heart of Kubrick’s film, which does not engage us with the thrills of conventional Sci-Fi films – neither Clark nor Kubrick could come up with plausible aliens and the film is the better for it – presenting, rather, a visual/philosophical treaty. To start with, 95 of the 141 minutes are without dialogue, dominated by classical music and/or images – the dialogue could have easily been written on the inter-titles used in silent films. Needless to say, there are no statements or solutions just questions about a future, which remains enigmatic and open to all sorts of interpretations in the final images.

The first Homo-Sapiens opens the proceedings: some apes are thrilled by the appearance of a strangely glittering monolith – inspired by his awe. One of them uses a bone as tool, jubilantly throwing it into the air, where it transforms into a spaceship. Part two opens with the discovery that the same monolith has been found on the moon. It transpires that it is sending electronic signals to Jupiter. We witness space flights, as ordinary and routine as rail travel. Part three is set in 2001, when a secret mission is send to Jupiter, to find out if Aliens are responsible for the signals from the moon. There are five astronauts on board of the spaceship; three of them are scientists, kept in coffin-like boxes, put into an artificially induced coma. Commander Bowman (Duella) and his deputy Poole (Lockwood) are keeping an eye on the instruments, but their work-rate is minimal, since the super-computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), who is infallible, is in charge of the journey. When Bowman and Poole find out that HAL is malfunctioning, they huddle in a closet to resolve the matter, but HAL is able to lip read and tries to do away with the whole crew. Firstly he kills the three scientists, then he cuts Poole’s air supply off when he is out in space. Bowman tries to rescue him but HAL sabotages his efforts. The computer than locks the space ship, to leave Bowman in space, but the commander outsmarts him and switches him off, HAL pleading like a human, for his life. After a journey illuminated by whirling colours, Bowman ends up in a flat full of Louis XV furniture, where he quickly grows old and dies. At the foot of his bed stands the monolith like a sentinel.

Music plays a central role in decoding the film: The opening scene is dominated by Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathrustra” (a re-occurring theme of the film; the docking sequences of part two are accompanied by the Johann Strauss’ waltz “An der schönen blauen Donau”; Bowman’s and Poole’s lonely life on board of the spaceship is mournfully underscored by Aran Khatchaturian’s “Gayane’ Ballet Suite and György Ligeti’s Requiem is the leitmotif of the whole film.

Even after 50 years, and without any CGI, the images of A SPACE ODYSSEY are still fresh and do not give away the real age of the film. Kubrick used simple tricks, like the scene with the ballpen in the spaceship, which seems to float, but was in reality only glued to a plate of glass. The images of the astronauts floating in space were achieved with circus equipment and models in real size, filmed against a black background, the camera shooting from the floor upwards. This way, the ropes under the ceiling were hidden by the body of the stuntman; the audience has the illusion, to watch him floating from a sideways position. Music and visuals are dominating; the underlying philosophical questions, particularly the role of the computer, are still  topical and evergreen and overall 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY still feels modern and wonderful to watch. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | SPECIAL SCREENING

The Load (2018) | Directors’ Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival 2018

 Writer/Dir. Ognjen Glavonić |  Drama | 98’

Ognjen Glavonić won various awards for Depth Two, a documentary about the grim discovery of war graves in his native Serbia. THE LOAD is his debut drama that fought its way out of the country inspired by the region’s 1999 NATO onslaught to tell another story from this harrowing period of Balkan history, a quietly devastating one that haunts with its slow burning revelation looming tragically out of the dreary landscape of longterm war.

This is a place full of dour-faced officials going through the motions in a country were hope has been washed away with the winter rain and bombs still cascade in the distance like incendiary stars. A few roadside blossoms tell us spring has arrived and tired-looking truck driver Vlada (Leon Lucev) is making his daily grind towards Belgrade from Kosovo with a load locked in his beaten-up lorry, the contents unknown. His instructions are clear : no stopping or diversions, he must keep a low profile until he reaches his destination.

On his way the journey starts uneventfully but at a crossing a smouldering car crash has blocked the the route to the capital. And a rather blasé teenager hitchhiker Pava (Pavle Čemerikić) offers to show him the way to his destination, tempting Vlada to bend the rules. As it happens Pava is clueless about map-reading, but doesn’t really mind that he has let Vlada down. Clearly, he represents the younger generation, shielded from the coldface of war from protective parents like Vlada, who, inured to disappointment and setbacks, motors on resigned, his face etched with the gruelling inevitability of his lot and eventually the pair start to bond.

The tone is brooding, morose and vagually doom-laden as the men push on framed in close-up and on the widescreen by Tatjana Krstevski whose superb washed out visual also featured in Depth Two).  The two men drive on until Paja blithely announces his departure to hitchike to German and look for better things. But nature of his Vlada’s business requires him to be responsible and slowly the gruesome truth dawns making the inevitable realisation all the more haunting. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2018

 

Ash is Purest White (2018) Mubi

Dir: Zhangke Jia | Cast: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Xiaogang Feng | Drama | China | 140’

ASH IS PUREST WHITE portrays the eventful relationship between a Chinese petty criminal and the woman whose loyalty to him never dies. This rolling contemplative saga occasionally veers off the beaten track with its indulgent running time of 141 minutes but will still appeal to the director’s ardent followers, featuring the same rough-edged characters who we first meet in 2001 and follow until the bittersweet denouement on New year’s Eve 2018.

Star of Shanxi’s creative community, Jia Zhang-ke trained as an architect near his native mining town of Fenyang, just South of Beijing, and brings his aesthetic flair and some magnificent landscapes to this lasting love story set in a dying era. The director’s forte is his graceful way of portraying China’s traditional way of life with its penchant for ceremonial drumming and white-gloved officials, with the chaotic new era vibrantly captured in Eric Gautier’s resplendent camerawork.

Opening in 2001in his Shanxi homeland, his wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao plays the confident delicate local beauty Qiao, who frequents the nightclub of her boyfriend Guo Bin (Liao Fan/Black Coal, Thin Ice). And she is no arm candy, establishing herself as a keen advocate of the traditional jianghu codes of loyalty while embracing the modern world, spryly dancing to Village People’s YMCA. 

Respectful of her ageing father she is more playfully assertive with Bin, and when he is assaulted by thugs on motorbikes, she manages to save him by firing shots into the air in a brutal scene that really takes your breath away, but also secures her a spell in prison where she is unwilling to grass on her boyfriend about the ownership of the firearm.

The second act is an upbeat affair that follows Qiao’s release in 2006, and treats us to a sumptuous journey down the Yangtze River in another nod to the sinking glory of the old China versus the brash new world. Qin has proved a feckless boyfriend and is no longer on the scene, but Qiao is keen not to let him slip away so easily, after her sustained loyalty. And when she is robbed of her cash and passport, she bounces back cleverly in some amusing scenes where she gate-crashes a wedding to enjoy the banquet, desperate for food. Qiao finally confronts Bin in a soulful and moving episode that is visually captivating for its exquisitely calm contemplation of the end of their romance. 

As we leave Qiao she is running a gambling hall, and Bin is back in her life, attracted to her strength of character and tenacity. The two actors are mesmerising to watch in their commandingly restrained yet natural performances, exuding a fascinating chemistry that will remain in the memory for a long time after the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

Cannes Classics 2018

 

This year’s Cannes Classic sidebar has one or two priceless gems glittering in its antique crown. Apart from well-known legends: Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Wilder’s Apartment, Varda’s One Sings, The Other Doesn’t and Bondarchuks’ War and Peace, there are some worthwhile lesser known features not be missed.

To start with, there is Henry Decoin’s Beating Heart from 1940, a fitting tribute to leading star Danielle Darrieux, who died last year aged 100. The couple were married while filming this screwball comedy, which was remade in Hollywood in 1946. Darrieux plays Arlette, a young girl running away from a reform school, only to join a school for pick-pockets, run by a Fagin-like character. He instructs her to steal an ambassador’s watch, but Arlette falls in love with him. Like in most of Decoin’s well-structured films, the tempo plays a big role. Decoin was often overlooked as a director, largely because of his rather uneven output, but his post-war noir masterpieces like La Chatte (1958) are really stunning. 

Jacques Rivette is famous for his playful features such as Céline and Juliette go Boating, but his one and only excursion into mainstream, La Religieuse (1966), based on a Diderot novel, is full of anarchic fun. Suzanne Simonin (Anna Karina), is incarcerated in a cloister against her will, and soon falls foul of not one, but three Mother-Superiors: they treat her sadistically, tenderly, or as an object for plain lesbian lust – but Suzanne stays pure. This anti-clerical romp was very popular at the box office, and served as a liberating force for Karina who finally got a divorce from JL Godard after having acted in their final collaboration, Made in USA, in the same year.

Hyenas (1992), directed by Senegalese filmmaker Djibri Diop Mambety (1945-1998), is a re-telling of the Durrenmatt play ‘Der Besuch der alten Dame’ (Visit of an old Lady). Set in an impoverished African village, the old lady in question is very rich – but she has not forgotten how her lover (now the Mayor) had treated her when she was pregnant with his child. She asks the townsfolk a simple question: do they want to participate in her wealth and punish the guilty man, or would they prefer clean hands and poverty. Colourful and very passionate, this adaption of a Swiss play works very well in its African setting.

Diamonds of the Night. Adapted from a short story by Arnošt Lustig, Diamonds in the Night follows two boys (Ladislav Jánsky and Antonín Kumbera) on the run through the forest after escaping a train taking between concentration camps. Showing in the Cannes Classics sidebar, it tributes the Czech New Wave director Jan Nemec whose concept of “pure film”, urged audiences to relate their own experience to the ephemeral fractured narrative he masterfully puts together in this cinematic wartime escape drama..

Youssef Chahine (1926-2008), Egypt’s most famous director, was very critical of radical elements of the Muslim faith. Destiny (1997)  is set in the 12th century in the Spanish province of Andalusia, then ruled by Muslims. The Caliph appoints the liberal philosopher Averros as a high court judge. But his wise and humane judgement become the butt of criticism by a group of radical Muslims, who want to banish the Caliph, using Averros as a means to and end. After a long inner struggle, the Caliph sends the philosopher into exile, but the radicals lose out: Averros’ rule of law has gained popularity all over the province. Chahine, as always, directs with great sensibility, and a brilliant use of colour. 

Finally, there is La Hora de los Hornos (The hour of the Furnace) from Fernando Solanas, a documentary which could only be shown in his homeland of Argentina in 1973, five years after its premiere in 1968. Exploring a central theme of worldwide insurrection, from student unrest in the USA to Czech resistance against the Soviet invasion, Solanas paints a picture of an utopian liberation. Even Argentina, which never really had the slightest hope of a proper democracy – never mind a revolution – is shown as ripe for revolution on behalf of the working masses. Running for over four hours, La Hora is a document of hope, well-structured, passionate and idealistic – but unfortunately overtaken by a grim reality. Still, it is a worthwhile, monumental effort.  AS

THE FULL CLASSICS LINE-UP                 

Beating Heart (Battement de cœur) by Henri Decoin (1939, 1h37, France)
2K Restoration presented by Gaumont in association with the CNC. Image works carried out by Eclair, sound restored by L.E. Diapason in partnership with Eclair.

Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves  by Vittorio De Sica (1948, 1h29, Italy)
Presented by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Stefano Libassi’s Compass Film and Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. Restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Stefano Libassi’s Compass Film, in collaboration with Arthur Cohn, Euro Immobilfin and Artédis, and with the support of Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. Restoration carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

Enamorada by Emilio Fernández (1946, 1h39, Mexico)
Presented by The Film Foundation. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with Fundacion Televisa AC and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funded by the Material World Charitable Foundation. The film will be introduced by Martin Scorsese.

Tôkyô monogatari (Tokyo Story / Voyage à Tokyo) by Yasujiro Ozu (1953, 2h15, Japan)
Presented by Shochiku. Digital restoration by Shochiku Co., Ltd., in cooperation with The Japan Foundation. For the 4K restoration, the duplicated 35mm negative was provided by Shochiku, managed by Shochiku MediaWorX Inc. and conducted by IMAGICA Corp. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films.

Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (1958, 2h08, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus. 4K digital restoration from the VistaVision negative done by Universal Studios. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

The Apartment by Billy Wilder (1960, 2h05, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus with the co-operation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 4K digital restoration from the original camera negative. Digital restoration completed by Cineteca di Bologna, Colour Grading by Sheri Eissenburg at Roundabout in Los Angeles. Supervised on behalf of Park Circus by Grover Crisp.

Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night) by Jan Němec (1964, 1h08, Czech Republic)
Presented by the National Film Archive, Prague. The restoration was done by the Universal Production Partners studio in Prague, under the supervision of the National Film Archive, Prague.

Voyna i mir. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky (War and Peace. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky) 

by Sergey Bondarchuk (1965, 2h27, Russia)
Presented by Mosfilm Cinema Concern. Digital frame-by-frame restoration of image and sound from 2K scan. Producer of the restoration: Karen Shakhnazarov.

La Religieuse (The Nun)

by Jacques Rivette (1965, 2h15, France)
Presented by Studiocanal. 4K restoration from the original camera negative. Sound restauration from the sound negative (only matching element). Works carried out by L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory under the supervision of Studiocanal and Ms. Véronique Manniez-Rivette with the help of the CNC, the Cinémathèque française and the Fonds culturel franco-américain.

Četri balti krekli (Four White Shirts) 

by Rolands Kalnins (1967, 1h20, Latvia)
Presented by National Film Centre of Latvia. 4K Scan and 3K Digital Restoration from the original 35mm image internegative and print positive materials mastered in 2K. Restoration financed by the National Film Centre of Latvia, the restoration made by Locomotive Productions (Latvia). Director Rolands Kalnins in attendance.

La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) 

by Fernando Solanas (1968, 1h25, Argentina)
Presented by CINAIN – Cinemateca y Archivo de la Imagen Nacional. 4K Restoration from the original negatives, thanks to Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), in Buenos Aires. With the supervision of director Fernando “Pino” Solanas. French Distribution: Blaq Out. Fernando Solanas in attendance.

Specialists / Gli specialisti)

by Sergio Corbucci (1969, 1h45, France, Italy, Germany)
Presented by TF1 Studio. Full version previously unseen restored in 4K from the original Technicolor-Techniscope image negative and French and Italian magnetic tapes by TF1 Studio. Digital work carried out by L’Image Retrouvée laboratory, Paris / Bologne. French theater distribution: Carlotta Films. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

João a faca e o rio (João and the Knife)

by George Sluizer (1971, 1h30, the Netherlands)
Presented by EYE Filmmuseum, Stoneraft Film in association with Haghefilm Digital. A full 4K restoration of the original 35mm Techniscope camera negative shot by Jan de Bont. By bypassing the originally required analogue blow up to Cinemascope, this digital restoration presents a direct-from-negative colour richness and image sharpness never seen before.

Blow for Blow

by Marin Karmitz (1972, 1h30, France)
Presented by MK2. Restoration carried out by Eclair from the original negative in 2K with the help of the CNC and supervised by director Marin Karmitz. The film will be re-released in French movie theaters on May 16th, 2018. Marin Karmitz in attendance.

L’une chante, l’autre pas (One Sings the Other Doesn’t)

by Agnès Varda (1977, 2h, France)
Presented by Ciné Tamaris.
The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with Agnès Varda in attendance.
2k digital restoration from the original negative and restoration, color grading under the supervision of Agnès Varda and Charlie Van Damme. With the support of the CNC, of the fondation Raja, Danièle Marcovici  & IM production Isabel Marant, with the support of Women in Motion / KERING. International Sales MK2 films. Distribution in theaters: Ciné Tamaris (the film will be released in France on July, 4th, 2018).

Grease

by Randal Kleiser (1978, 1h50, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus and Paramount Pictures. 4K digital restoration from the original camera negative. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with John Travolta in attendance.

Fad,jal

by Safi Faye (1979, 1h52, Senegal, France)
Presented by the CNC and Safi Faye. Digital restoration carried out from the 2K scan of the 16mm negatives. Restoration made by the CNC laboratory. Safi Faye in attendance.

Five and the Skin (Cinq et la peau)

by Pierre Rissient (1981, 1h35, France, Philippines)
Presented by TF1 Studio. 4K restoration from the original camera negative and the French magnetic tape by TF1 Studio with the support of the CNC and the collaboration of director Pierre Rissient. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films. Pierre Rissient in attendance.

A Ilha dos Amores (The Island of Love)

by Paulo Rocha (1982, 2h49, Portugal, Japan)
Presented by Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema. 4K wet gate scan of two 35mm image and sound interpositives struck in a Japanese film lab in 1996. Digital grading was made by La Cinemaquina (Lisbon, Portugal) using a 35mm distribution print from 1982 as a reference. Digital restoration of the image was made by IrmaLucia Efeitos Especiais (Lisbon, Portugal).

Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Café)

by Percy Adlon (1987, 1h44, Germany)
Presented by Studiocanal. 4k Scan and restoration. Work led by Alpha Omega Digital in Munich and carried out under the continuous supervision of director Percy Adlon. Original negative, kept in Los Angeles in excellent condition, processed in Munich for scanning and image by image restoration. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with Percy Adlon in attendance.

Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue)

by Luc Besson (1988, 2h18, France, United States of America, Italy)
Presented by Gaumont. A 2K restauration. Image work carried out by Eclair, sound restored by L.E Diapason in partnership with Eclair. A screening organized to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the screening of the film opening the Festival de Cannes in 1988. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

Driving Miss Daisy

by Bruce Beresford (1989, 1h40, United States of America)
Presented by Pathé. 4K restoration made from 35mm original image and sound negatives. Restoration carried out by Pathé L’image Retrouvée laboratory (Paris/Bologne) with the collaboration of director Bruce Beresford.

Cyrano de Bergerac

by Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1990, 2h15, France)
Presented by Lagardère Studios Distribution. Scan from the original negative and 4K restoration carried out by L’Image Retrouvée for Lagardère Studios Distribution with the support of the CNC, the Cinémathèque française, the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain, Arte France–Unité Cinéma, Pathé et Mr. Francis Kurkdjian. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films (in progress). Jean-Paul Rappeneau in attendance.

Hyenas

by Djibril Diop Mambety (1992, 1h50, Senegal, France, Switzerland)
Lamb

by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1963, 18 min, Senegal) Presented by La Cinémathèque de l’Institut français, Orange and PSV Films. Digital restoration made from 2K scan of the 35mm negatives. Restoration carried out by Eclair.

El Massir (Destiny) 

by Youssef Chahine (1997, 2h15, Egypt, France)
A preview of the full retrospective which will take place at the Cinémathèque française in October 2018, the film will be presented by Orange Studio and MISR International films with the support of the CNC, fostered by the Cinémathèque française. 4K restauration at Éclair Ymagis laboratory by Orange Studio, MISR International Films and the Cinémathèque française with the support of the CNC. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 71st EDITION | 8 -19 MAY 2018

Sheffield Doc Fest | 7 – 12 June 2018

Sheffield Doc/Fest celebrates its 25th edition this year with a diverse programme that features not only documentaries but also interactive and immersive projects, including 7 virtual reality installations in the Alternate Realities Exhibition and works by the British collaborator duo Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (20,000 Days on Earth), along with the usual industry talks. 

The festival opens on 7 June with the world premiere of Sean McAllister’s A Northern Soul that sees the director reflect on changes to his Yorkshire hometown: a city divided by Brexit and simultaneously celebrated as UK City of Culture, hit by austerity. 
Amongst the other features to look out are:
A DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS | Dir: Simon Lereng | 91′
While the war in Ukraine and Russia rages on beyond their village, a simple family go about their ordinary life in this gentle observational story that won the First Appearance award for its director at IDFA 2017
A WOMAN CAPTURED | Dir: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter | 89′ 
Slavery is a European invention, and still exists, or so we’re led to believe in this extraordinary story about who a woman down on her luck who  becomes trapped and abused in a more manipulative woman’s household. Is this really slavery or just one person’s power over another? You decide.
CENTRAL AIRPORT TEMPELHOF | Dir: Karim Ainouz | 97′
Director Karim Ainouz finds a dark, ironic vein of humour in Berlin’s defunct city airport where massive hangers house Germany’s emergency asylum seekers, where the local Germans do their best to accommodate their new arrivals.
OBSCURO BAROCCO | Dir: Evangelia Kranioti | 60′
A visually ravishing metamorphosis takes place under the gaudy lights of the Rio de Janeiro carnival in this Berlinale (2018) Teddy Award winning documentary that explores the transgender world of the Brazilian capital.
FLOW (World Premiere, Chile) Dir:  Nicolas Molina | 82′
FLOW observes the human connection between two rivers: the Ganges in India and the Biobio in Chile. It proposes a poetic journey blending both civilisations through the flow of one great river.
SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 7-12 JUNE 2018

Copenhagen Architectural Film Festival 2018 | Home and Belonging

Where better to attend a cinematic celebration of the built environment than Europe’s Architectural design capital Copenhagen which celebrates its 5th edition on May 3rd ­16th, 2018. Copenhagen has repeatedly been ranked as the world’s most liveable city and is famous for its architecture. The festival has developed a programme appealing to professionals as well as ‘amateurs’ and is the biggest of its kind in Scandinavia ­presenting a large public programme of film screenings both in the open air, in cinemas and in private homes, seminars, debates, exhibitions and workshops. all taking place in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg.

Once again this year the festival maintains a strong focus on the moving image media with a curated film programme, including film premiers, classics and a portrait series on among others starchitects Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid and Lene Tranberg.

There’s plenty on offer, and the following events are particularly worth attending:

  1. Indian architect Anupama Kundoo ­takes you through a curated film program, several workshops and lectures.
  2. Film screening and Q&A with architect Arno Brandlhuber and filmmaker Christopher Roth, 4) A retrospective on the works of Békà & Lemoine at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
  3. Visit the landmarks of Copenhagen by bike together with the city architect.
  4. See the new portrait film on Danish starchitect Lene Tranberg and her studio’s work with the new landmark Axel Towers on­site.

And while you’re there go visit the new BLOX by acclaimed architecture office OMA (Rem Koolhaas) which will open during the festival on the 6th of May 2018.

ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL 2018
Copenhagen Architecture Festival presents it’s 5th edition in May 3rd ­ 16th, 2018 involving the cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg. The festival is the largest of its kind in Scandinavia.

Additionally to CAFx 2018 events: Opening of BLOX ­ a new innovative hub downtown Copenhagen, designed by the famous Dutch company OMA (Rem Koolhaas).

The Young Karl Marx (2017) ***

Dir: Raoul Peck |France / Germany / Belgium | Drama | 112 min · Colour

Interesting to discover that, according to Raoul Peck (I am Not Your Negro), the young and unemployed Karl Marx lived on the money of a capitalist he despised, while writing his community treaty Das Capital, and fathering two children. This is one of many revealing facts uncovered in this worthy period drama – which is rather pleased with itself despite being about as enjoyable as a wet weekend with Diane Abbott and one of her migraines.

Played convincingly by August Diehl (Salt), the 26 year old lived with his heiress wife Jenny in exile in Paris, where he is pictured as a rather arrogant flaneur habitually in debt and plagued by existential anxieties. Initially dismissing German factory heir Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske) as a dandy, the pair go on to develop a veritable bromance when Marx discovers Engels has just published a study on the miserable impoverishment of the English proletariat, and has distanced himself from his father – despite remaining on the payroll, hence financing Marx.

From then on this becomes a political procedural as the pair, assisted by Jenny and Engel’s factory shop steward wife Mary Burns (Hannah Steele), continue to work tirelessly and admirably to provide a theoretical foundation for revolution and to improve workers’ rights and abolish child labour. Soon their aim is not merely to interpret the world, but to change it with a work entitled Critic of the Critical Critique and subsequently, the Communist Manifesto.

Pascal Bonitzer’s brisk workmanlike script follows a linear narrative; Alexei Aigui (I am Not Your Negro) and animates it with an earnestly dramatic score, with unimaginative visuals conveying the drabness of Victorian England to great effect in a rather lacklustre but informative period drama. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 MAY 2018

 

Canada Now | 3-6 May 2018

CANADA NOW 2018 is a showcase of New Canadian Cinema in the UK, beginning with a weekend of screenings and events from the 3rd – 6th May at the Curzon Soho, featuring outstanding new pieces of filmmaking alongside a brand new digital restoration of a repertory classic. From Sunday July 1st 2018, in celebration of Canada Day, the films will begin a nationwide tour of cinemas and venues across the UK. Here is the line-up in full. 

ALL YOU CAN EAT BUDDHA | Ian Lagarde, 2017 85′

This oddball vacation comedy curio starts off well but rapidly goes pear-shaped, largely due to the flaccid pacing and increasingly imploding narrative that follows a holidaying man who develops a mysterious appetite and supernatural powers in an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEZOCD_ufk

BLACK COP  | Cory Bowles, 2017 – 91′

A black police officer turns activist and seeks revenge on his own colleagues after  being egregiously profiled and assaulted by them, in this stylish and intermittently engaging political satire by actor-director Cory Bowles (Trailer Park Boys). 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHLDGsZRELA

CARDINALS | Grayson Moore & Aidan Shipley, 2017 – 84 mins

Years after murdering her neighbour under the guise of drink driving, Valerie returns home from prison to find that the son of the deceased has lingering suspicions. An impressive, well-acted debut despite its tonally uneven denouement.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjOw0ug3Bqw

HOCHELAGA, LAND OF SOULS, HOCHELAGA, TERRE DES ÂMES | François Girard, 2017 100 *

Oscar winner François Girard (The Red Violin), returns with an ambitious time-travelling fantasy spanning eight centuries of layered indigenous, colonial, and contemporary histories. Starring Vincent Perez and Linus Roache, this works best as an intriguing piece of historical voyeurism rather than as a cogent drama exploring the aftermath of a sinkhole opening up in a downtown Montreal football stadium causing the city’s past and present to intersect.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oArz1hEwwtY

*Touring programme only

I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING  | Patricia Rozema, 1987 – 81′

Patricia Rozema’s Cannes-awarded debut feature – a charming, whimsical story about a waifish daydreamer with artistic aspirations – is now an arthouse classic and one of the most profitable Canadian films ever made, and an important milestone in both queer cinema and the development of Canadian film industry.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzNbLSo7A4

LET THERE BE LIGHT  | Mila Aung-Thwin, Van Royko, 2017 – 80′

Directed by Mila Aung-Thwin (The Vote) and Van Royko (Kodeline), this unconvincing documentary attempts to explore fusion research and how it may help solve the global energy crisis.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IicYGhFEII8

MARY GOES ROUND  – Molly McGlynn, 2017 – 87′ 

Establishing Molly McGlynn as a talent in the making, her debut feature centres on a substance abuse counsellor (Mary/Aya Cash) with a drinking problem. After getting arrested for drink driving and losing her job, Mary returns to her hometown where she is forced to come to terms with her estranged father and form a bond with her teenage half-sister whom she’s never met. Although over-melodramatic at times, Mary Goes Round has its heart in the right place. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqI4pQh1jEA

MEDITATION PARK | Mina Shum, 2017 – 94′

The reason to see this upbeat relationship drama is for Cheng Pei Pei’s superb turn as a devoted wife and mother, who questions her marriage when she discovers an orange thong in her husband’s pocket. Her efforts to find out the truth send her on an unexpected journey of liberation. Sandrah Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) is also terrific.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQhbqJcjjM

RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD | Catherine Bainbridge & Alfonso Maiorana, 2017 – 103′

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World is a well-structured, resonant music biopic to light a profound and missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. Featuring music icons Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, Buffy Saint-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo and Taboo, RUMBLE shows how these pioneering Native musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hovJUoyxulc

VENUS | Eisha Marjara, 2017 *

Eisha Marjara’s articulate, absorbing, and lively gender shifting comedy, Venus, is the witty tale of Sid (featuring New York-based actor Debargo Sanyal in a brilliant performance), a transitioning woman whose life takes a surprising turn when a 14-year-old boy named Ralph arrives at her door with the surprising announcement that he is her son.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsL6QLUae8o

*Touring programme only

CANADA NOW | 3-6  MAY 2018 | CURZON LONDON | 1 July onwards NATIONWIDE TOUR

Cannes Film Festival 2018 | On the Croisette – off the cuff update

Festival bigwig Thierry Frémaux warned us to expect shocks and surprises from this year’s festival line-up, distilled down from over 1900 features to an intriguing list of 18 – and there will be a few more additions before May 8th. The main question is “where are the stars?” or better still “Where is Isabelle Huppert” doyenne of the Croisette – up to now. The answer seems to be that they are on the jury – presided by Cate Blanchett, who is joined by Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Denis Villeneuve, Robert Guédiguian, Ava Duvernay, Khadja Nin, Chang Chen and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Last year’s 70th Anniversary bumper issue seems to have swept in a more eclectic and sleek selection of features in the competition line-up vying for the coveted Palme D’Or. There are new films from veterans Jean-Luc Godard (The Image Book), Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) and Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War), and some very long films – 9 exceed two hours. Three female filmmakers make the main competition in the shape of Caramel director Nadine Labaki with Capernaum, Alice Rohrwacher with Lazzaro Felice and Eve Husson presenting Girls of the Sun. Kazakh filmmaker Sergei Dvortsevoy rose to indie fame at Cannes Un Certain Regard 2008 with his touching title Tulpan, and he is back now in the main competition line-up with a hot contender in the shape of AYKA or My Little One. 

Scanning through the selection for British fare – the Ron Howard “directed” (Thierry’s words not mine) Solo, A Star Wars Story stars Thandie Newton, Paul Bethany and Emilia Clarke but no sign of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo. And although Matteo Garrone’s Dogman is there and is a hot contender for this year’s Palme, the much-awaited Jacques Audiard latest The Sisters Brothers, and Joanna Hogg’s hopeful The Souvenir Parts I and II are nowhere to be seen- but Lars von Trier is still very much ‘de trop’ on the Riviera, or so it would seem. Thierry is still thinking about this one. And on reflection he has now added The House That Jack Built – out of competition.

Apart from Godard, there are two other French titles: Stéphane Brizé will present At War, and Christophe Honoré’s Sorry Angel – in competition, and these features will open shortly afterwards in the local cinemas – to keep the Cannois happy. The Un Certain Regard sidebar has 6 feature debuts in a line-up of 15. And the special screening section offers Wang Bing’s Dead Souls with its 8 hour running time  allowing for a quick petit-dej on the Croisette before the following days’ viewing starts!

It Follows director David Robert Mitchell will be in Cannes with his eagerly anticipated follow-up Under the Silver Lake. And Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke  brings another Palme d’Or hopeful in the shape of Ash is Purest White, starring his wife and long-term collaborator Tao Zhao.  First time director A B Shawky presents the only debut feature in the competition strand Yomeddine – a leper road movie from Egypt – and it’s a comedy!. Iranians Jafar Panahi (Three Faces) and Asghar Farhadi (Everybody Knows) also make the list – with Farhadi’s film starring Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem and opening the festival this year.

So out with the old guard – Naomi Kawase included – and in with the new – is Thierry’s message this year. Let’s hope it’s a good one. And stay tuned for more additions and coverage from the sidebars Un Certain Regard, ACID, Semaine de la Critique and Directors’ Fornight. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8 -22 MAY 2018

COMPETITION LINE-Up

EVERY BODY KNOWS – Asghar Farhadi

AT WAR - Stéphane Brizé 

DOGMAN – Matteo Garrone

LE LIVRE D’IMAGE – Jean-Luc Godard

NETEMO SAMETEMO (ASAKO I & II) (ASAKO I & II) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi

SORRY ANGEL – Christophe Honore

GIRLS OF THE SUN – Eva Husson

ASH IS PUREST WHITE – Zia Zhangke

SHOPLIFTERS – Kor-eda Hirokazu

CAPERNAUM – Nadine Labaki

BUH-NING (BURNING) – Lee Chang-Dong

BLACKKKLANSMAN – Spike Lee

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE – David Robert Mitchell

THREE FACES – Jafar Panahi

ZIMNA WOJNA/Cold War – Pawel Pawlikowski

LAZZARO FELICE – Alice Rohrwacher

LETO – Kirill Serebrennikov

YOMEDDINE – A B Shawky

KNIFE + HEART – Yann Gonzalez

AYKA –  Sergey Dvortsevoy, director of Tulpan, winner of the Prize Un Certain Regard in 2008.

These two films by Yann Gonzalez and Sergey Dvortsevoy are both directors’ second feature. It will be their first time in Competition.

AHLAT AGACI (THE WILD PEAR TREE) – Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Palme d’or 2014 for Winter Sleep.

The Competition 2018 will be composed of 21 films.

SHADOW – Zhang Yimou (out of competition)

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT – Lars von Trier (out of competition)

_______________________________________________

 71st CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-20 MAY 2018

 

 

Lean on Pete (2017)***

Dir: Andrew Haigh | Great Britain / 121’ | Cast: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny

Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) directs Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny in a rather uneven rites of passage Pacific western about a boy who bonds with an old racehorse, and based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.

This is a film to be seen for its captivating performances rather than its meandering narrative that abandons the central soulmates (fifteen year old Charlie and his horse Lean on Pete) midday through to explore how the teen resorts to petty crime in order to survive as an orphan. We first meet him living alone with his sweary Dad Ray (Fimmel) in Portland,Oregon; Ray loves his sensitive son, but is too selfish to care for him since his mother left town due to Ray’s philandering. So when a vengeful husband kills Ray, Charlie is left alone and desperate to find his aunt Margy, who fell out with Ray, for obvious reasons. Teaming up with the disreputable horse trainer Del (Buscemi in fine fettle), the two are soon joined by jockey Bonnie (Sevigny), leaving Charlie in the cold again, when Bonnie takes over Del’s attention. So Charlie sets off on a mission to save the ageing racehorse, Lean on Pete, who is bound for Mexico – an euphemistic term for the slaughter house. Their soulful journey across the luminous desert landscape is painful for both, and ends in tragedy, leaving Charlie on an elusive quest for aunt Margy in Laramie, Wyoming.

LEAN ON PETE is a lightly-plotted family film, apart from the animal tragedy. Magnus Nordenhof Jonck’s stunning images make up for an unsatisfying storyline that starts full of promise then Peters out, limping aimlessly for two full hours. Haigh tries to see the good in everyone, often stepping over the line to out-and-out sentimentality, but his central character does not deliver. Professionally produced and well-acted, particularly by Plummer, who won the De Laurentis Prize in Venice for Best Newcomer Actor, LEAN ON PETE is not only lean of plot; but all the social realist rough edges are polished too: Charlie keeps a stiff upper lip and takes it on the chin, but somehow his soul takes a short cut into rocky terrain rather than finding redemption in pastures new. Some critics called it “a modern Huckleberry Finn” – but that would be insulting to Mark Twain.

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 27 APRIL 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ron Howard | Writers: Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan | Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany | US | Action adventure | 135′ 

In 2002, it was Star Wars – Episode II – Attack of the Clones and in 2005, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. In 2018, what is one of the greatest legends in the history of cinema has returned to the red carpet here at Cannes, presented Out of Competition.

The saga’s second spin-off is the latest film of the Star Wars galaxy by Ron Howard bringing together Han Solo, his faithful Chewbacca, the crooked Lando Calrissian, the Millenium Falcon and of course the droids. This adventure takes us back to the youth of the famous smuggler, ace pilot and charming scoundrel, Han Solo. Written by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and directed by Ron Howard, who starred in George Lucas’ classic American Graffiti and directed numerous popular and critical hits such as Apollo 13 (1995) or A Beautiful Mind (2002, Oscars for best film and director).

Alongside Alden Ehrenreich (Blue Jasmine, 2013) who plays Han Solo, it has local Hampstead resident Thandie Newton (Jefferson in Paris); Woody Harrelson (No Country For Old Men), Emilia Clarke (Terminator Genisys), Donald Glover (The Martian), , Phoebe Waller-Bridge (The Iron Lady), Joonas Suotamo (Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi) and Paul Bettany (Dogville).

Sundance London 2018 | 31 May – 3 June

Once again Robert Redford brings twelve of the best indie feature films that premiered in Utah this January, with opportunities to talk to the filmmakers and cast in a jamboree that kicks off on the long weekend of 31 May until 3 June.

Desiree Akhavan picked up the Grand Jury Prize for her comedy drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post in the original US festival, and seven films are directed by women along with a thrilling array of female leads on screen, and this year’s festival champions their voices with Toni Collette (Hereditary) amongst the stars to grace this glittering occasion taking place in Picturehouse Central, Leicester Square. Robert Redford will also be in attendance.

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (Director: Jim Hosking,

Screenwriters: Jim Hosking, David Wike) – Lulu Danger’s unsatisfying marriage takes a fortunate turn for the worse when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform an event called ‘An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn For One Magical Night Only’.

Principal cast: Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Jemaine Clement, Matt Berry, Craig Robinson

Eighth Grade (Director/Screenwriter: Bo Burnham) – Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

Principal cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton

Generation Wealth (Director: Lauren Greenfield) – Lauren Greenfield’s postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, image-obsessed culture. Simultaneously personal journey and historical essay, the film bears witness to the global boom–bust economy, the corrupted American Dream and the human costs of late stage capitalism, narcissism and greed.

Principal cast: Florian Homm, Tiffany Masters, Jaqueline Siegel

Half the Picture (Director: Amy Adrion) – At a pivotal moment for gender equality in Hollywood, successful women directors tell the stories of their art, lives and careers. Having endured a long history of systemic discrimination, women filmmakers may be getting the first glimpse of a future that values their voices equally.

Principal cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Babbit, Emily Best

Hereditary (Director/Screenwriter: Ari Aster) – After their reclusive grandmother passes away, the Graham family tries to escape the dark fate they’ve inherited.

Principal cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, Milly Shapiro

Leave No Trace (Director: Debra Granik, Screenwriters: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini) – A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. A small mistake tips them off to authorities sending them on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

Principal cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Director: Desiree Akhavan, Screenwriters: Desiree Akhavan, Cecilia Frugiuele) –1993: after being caught having sex with the prom queen, a girl is forced into a gay conversion therapy center. Based on Emily Danforth’s acclaimed and controversial coming-of-age novel.

Principal cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher Jr., Jennifer Ehle.

Never Goin’ Back (Director/Screenwriter: Augustine Frizzell) –Jessie and Angela, high school dropout BFFs, are taking a week off to chill at the beach. Too bad their house got robbed, rent’s due, they’re about to get fired and they’re broke. Now they’ve gotta avoid eviction, stay out of jail and get to the beach, no matter what!!!

Principal cast: Maia Mitchell, Cami Morrone, Kyle Mooney, Joel Allen, Kendal Smith, Matthew Holcomb

Skate Kitchen (Director: Crystal Moselle, Screenwriters: Crystal Moselle, Ashlihan Unaldi) – Camille’s life as a lonely suburban teenager changes dramatically when she befriends a group of girl skateboarders. As she journeys deeper into this raw New York City subculture, she begins to understand the true meaning of friendship as well as her inner self.

Principal cast: Rachelle Vinberg, Dede Lovelace, Jaden Smith, Nina Moran, Ajani Russell, Kabrina Adams

The Tale (Director/Screenwriter: Jennifer Fox) – An investigation into one woman’s memory as she’s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive; based on the filmmaker’s own story.

Principal cast: Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Ellen Burstyn, Common

Yardie (Director: Idris Elba, Screenwriters: Brock Norman Brock, Martin Stellman) – Jamaica, 1973. When a young boy witnesses his brother’s assassination, a powerful Don gives him a home. Ten years later he is sent on a mission to London. He reunites with his girlfriend and their daughter, but then the past catches up with them. Based on Victor Headley’s novel.

Principal cast: Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, Fraser James, Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Cleary

SURPRISE FILM! Following on from last year’s first ever surprise film, the hit rap story Patti Cake$, Sundance Film Festival: London will again feature a surprise showing.  No details as yet, but it was a favourite among audiences in Utah, and with just one screening this will be among the hottest of the hot tickets. The title will be revealed only when the opening credits roll. My bets are on Gustav Möller’s The Guilty, which picked up the World Cinema Audience Award back in January; or possibly Rudy Valdez’ drug documentary The Sentence, or it could even be Burden, which took the US Dramatic Audience Award for its story of a love affair between a villain and a woman who saves his soul. 

SUNDANCE LONDON RUNS FROM 31 MAY – 3 JUNE 2018 | TICKETS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Isle (2018)

Dir: Matthew Butler Hart | Fantasy Horror | Conleth Hill, Alex Hassell, Tori Butler Hart, Fisayo Akinade, Alix Wilton Regan, Emma King, Graham Butler | 96′ | UK

Matthew Butler Hart crafts a beautiful and believable horror fantasy set in nineteenth century Scotland and exploring a mythological folk tale of sirens and succubi. Although lacking the weighty social themes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch this is an impressive period piece that delivers an ominous sense of dread throughout its well-paced and compact running time.

On a remote island off the Scottish coast three sailors find themselves washed ashore after a mysterious shipwreck. They soon meet the four remaining islanders who are living with a terrible secret history that has haunted their dwindling community. Clues to the mystery are telegraphed by eerie sound effects and subtle visual cues, and a satisfying conclusion is delivered in the film’s final reveal.

Tori Hart’s imaginative script conflates Greek mythology with British folkloric tales such as The Wicker Man and nautical literary fare such as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) to develop its own distinct narrative based on a community struggling to survive its unsettling past. This is a classically-styled quality British production with convincing performances from Alex Hassell (Suburbicon) as Captain Oliver Gosling, and Tori Butler Hart who plays the enigmatic female lead Lanthe, one of the island’s four remaining residents who holds the key to the weird goings on, along with her father Douglas (Games of Thrones’ Conleth Hill). Peter Wellington makes atmospheric use of the misty, wind-swept seascapes of Scotland and Suffolk to create an affective fantasy horror story. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 3 May 2019 NATIONWIDE

One or the Other (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Adam Kossoff; Documentary; Israel/UK, 60 min.

Adam Kossoff’s (The Anarchist Rabbi) illuminating essay film about the titular question of homeland versus nation state, researches this topic with references to the building and existence of the State of Israel, using different forms of images to explain the difference between official and personal history. To illustrate his point aesthetically, Kossoff often uses 8- or 16 mm home movies inserted in the middle of the main images.

Whilst watching images of fleeing Palestinians during the Israeli/Arab War of 1948, Kossoff also shows example of Hollywood style movies, showing Israelis as heroes. He references the many Jewish organisations in the diaspora who asked their own governments for financial support for a country they did not want to live in. The saying “Next year in Jerusalem” clouded many a European Jewish childhood in the 1950s and 60s, leaving the younger generation in limbo between their native country, and the mythical Jewish nation of Israel, their parents never intended to join.

Kossoff is very strong on emblematic issues; whilst Israel has declared the olive tree the symbol of the State, it has never the less destroyed over 800 000 Palestinians olive trees since 1967, together with many Palestinian homes in Haifa and Tel Aviv, the owners fleeing to save their lives. The same home are now being sold to Israelis because their former owners do not currently possess the finance required by the Jewish Trust administering the properties. So, when these buildings are sold, it is a final act. Kossoff comments “the nation state is not interested in justice, but self preservation”.

In the “Battle of Jenin” in April 2002, when IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) flattened the refuge camp which existed since this 1948 War, about 50 people were killed, most of them in their own houses. The actually casualty figures is still in dispute, but one of the bulldozer drivers showed no regret, blaming Palestinian “terrorists” for the fighting, and telling gruesome stories about him drinking whiskey to last the three day battle. Official films of the D9, praising this vehicle of destruction for its invulnerability, are gut-wrenching in their bellicose language. In another newsreel excerpt, the commentator points to Arabs reading their own newspapers, commenting “they have newspapers in their own language, even though they are a minority, when they had once been a majority”.

Finally, a reminder that Israel replaced Yiddish, spoken by many of the first wave settlers with a modern version of ancient Hebrew. Criticism came from many writers and Rabbis warning “those who had forced this biblical language on to the people, do not believe in the biblical meaning of it. It might lead to their destruction. This language has been reconstructed to define itself against others”.

Ending on a long shot of an old postcard “Visit Palestine”, over which the credits roll, this essay with texts by Walter Benjamin, Mahmood Darwish, Tanya Reinhart and Susan Sontag ends on a melancholic note. It certainly points to the evils of the Nation State, its only fault is in failing to mention that Israel is not alone in annexing territories and burying the history its citizens. AS

22 April 2018 |THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Marriage (2017) East End Film Festival 2018


Dir.: Blerta Zeqiri; Cast: Alban Ukaj, Adriana Matoshi, Genc Salihu, Vjosa Abazi; Albania/Kosovo 2017, 97 min.

Blerta Zeqiri’s debut feature is set in Kosovo’s capital Pristina and features – surprisingly – a gay/straight ménage-a-trois. Shot in warm colours by the handheld camera of DoP Sevdije Kastrati, The Marriage always comes up with new twists, keeping us engaged throughout

We first meet Bekim (Ukaj) and his finance Anita (Matoshi) at the border between Kosovo and Serbia, where this Kosovar couple is waiting to identify the bodies Anita’s parents, who were killed in Kosovo War of 1999. This gruesome scene in a makeshift tent is a pitiful sight especially as Anita cannot identify her parents. On the way home in their car to Pristina, were Bekim runs a bar and Anita works in fashion shop, they discuss of Nol (Genc), a musician, who had a successful career in Paris and has now come back to their village. Anita is well aware of the friendship between the two men, but does not know that they have been lovers for a long time. In Bekim’s bar, both men lie to Anita, claiming hat they are depressed because Nol had to give up the love of his life – the implications are clear, that this person is a woman. Later Bekim goes a step further, and tells Anita that Nol is the lover his married sister Zana (Abazi).

What emerges is a story of lies and obfuscation based partly on shame – Islam takes a hard line decrying homosexuality – but this is compounded by a man’s inability to be straight and honest with his wife. Nol too is clearly is confused and is unable, despite his feelings, to be frank with Bekim, refusing to leave the village with and start again in France.

The gay sex is very graphic, on the whole Blerta never shrinks from showing a realistic picture of the male relationship. The atmosphere in the bar scene is testosterone-laden, and when Bekim is approached by a  man who wants to use his bar for an LGBT celebration, Bekim refuses and leaves the table angrily. Neither Bekim’s nor Anita’s extended family has an idea about Bekim’s sexual orientation, gaydom is unacceptable for them. Zeqiri never shrinks from showing the duplicity, Bekim’s fear and betrayal are always played out in the crassest possible way. This is a very brave debut, with brilliant ensemble acting and realistic ending. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Malaga Film Festival | 13 -22 April 2018

The 21st Edition of Malaga Film Festival kicks off later this week with the accent on Spanish and Latin American titles. All screenings are shown in Spanish and their original languages.

The Official competition awards the Golden Biznaga to the winning title and there is also a strong documentary strand of 46 features (including World Premieres) and a sidebar screening 72 shorts. Malaga festival is easily accessible, taking place in the smattering of Belle Epoque and arthouse cinemas of the Old Town, in the shadow of the city’s Alcazaba. These comprise the large Cervantes Theatre (for the opening gala), the Albéniz Cinema and the Echegaray Theatre, and the events are well-attended by the locals and a small international crowd. Tickets are reasonably priced at 6 euros making the festival a worthwhile weekend destination for Spanish speakers, after the Easter crowds have left.

MALAGA FILM FESTIVAL | 13-22 APRIL 2018

 

 

Canada Now Festival | 3-6 May 2018

CANADA NOW festival brings the best of new Canadian cinema to the Curzon Soho London, before a ten-film national tour of the UK .

The festival opens with the London premiere of RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD, a searingly entertaining feature documentary exploring the Indigenous influence on blues, folk, jazz, rock, rap and metal. The Festival will close with LET THERE BE LIGHT, a documentary based on the true story of how scientists from 37 countries have come together in the south of France in an attempt to build the most complex machine ever attempted: An artificial sun.

Alongside seven premieres, CANADA NOW also includes a repertory screening of Patricia Rozema’s 1987 masterpiece I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING. 

This second edition tackles a broad range of stories, from issues of race in BLACK COP, to matters of the heart in MEDITATION PARK and from addiction drama in MARY GOES ROUND to matters of divine intervention in ALL YOU CAN EAT BUDDHA.

CANADA NOW | MAY 2018 | NATIONWIDE 

House Without Roof (2017) **** | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Soleen Yusef; Cast: Mina Sadic, Sasun Sayan, Murat Seven, Wedad Sabri, Ahmet Zirek; Iraq/Germany/Qatar 2016, 117 min.

Writer/director Soleen Yusef was born to Kurdish parents, and emigrated to Germany with her family when she was nine. The intricate script is one of the highlights of this self-assured and densely plotted debut, a convincingly fraught road movie, which is actually her graduation film from the Baden-Würtemberg Film School.

After the fall of Sadam Hussein, Kurdish siblings Liya (Sadic), Jan (Sayan) and Alan (Seven) are not getting on well in their new life in Germany. Their mother Gule (Sabri) wants to go back with them  to their Kurdish homeland, but the rather wayward Alan will have nothing of it. Gule dies suddenly and her Will reveals the request to be buried next to her husband – a hero from the war against Iraq in 1990 – on Kurdish soil. The three siblings cannot agree about anything so make their separate ways back to Duhok, where Liya meets a taxi driver, who will play a significant role in the forthcoming odyssey. They all finally come together in the house of uncle Ferad (Zirek), and it becomes clear that well-balanced Jan (whose wife is expecting a child back in Germany) has a secret. When Ferad categorically denies the siblings the right to bury their mother next to their father, the real facts starts to emerge about this so-called father who was anything but a hero: he was a traitor who took his own life. Their final journey back to the village is fraught with ups and down as the truth is finally revealed.

Yusef deftly masters her material, keeping the plot together, despite near-surrealistic incident made more bizarre by the awkward trio conversing in German. Liya, whose name means ‘Patience’ in translation, is just the opposite. DoP Stephan Burchardt’s lively handheld camera creates the right look for this topsy-turvy family drama, mixing close-ups mixed with long panning shots over the glorious landscape. Sadic leads the brilliant cast, never wavering from her efforts to put her foot down in a male dominated society – even if she has to copy some bad habits of the opposite sex. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017) **** | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir: Mouly Surya  Writer: Rama Adi| Drama | Indonesia | 92′

There a dark humour to this feminist parable set in the enchanting widescreen skyscapes and exotic shady interiors of a remote Indonesian village in the South Pacific, where revenge is a dish best served with calm and a dash of strychnine by the central character Marlina, played gracefully and with deadpan conviction by Marsha Timothy.

Although Mouly Surya’s third feature is a modern story from a Muslim country it feels distinctly stuck in the Dark Ages, certainly where attitudes towards to the fairer sex are concerned. Played out in four segments, as the title suggests, the film explores how a young widow deals with the aftermath of being robbed of her livestock and then raped by seven bandits who seem to think they have done her a favour. Clearly the pleasure is hers, as we discover early on in this amusingly arcane tale.

Yunus Pasolang’s limpid lensing and Zeke Khaseli and Yudhi Arfani’s redolent trumpet soundtrack often bring to mind a Sergio Leone Western, albeit one set in Sumba Island, to the north east of Australia. This languid drama takes its time and is surprisingly gentle and poetic in contrast to its violent subject matter. There are also touches of surreal artistry at play: in one scene Marlina is followed down the dusty road in the sweltering heat by her headless rapist – or perhaps it’s just a mirage. But the tone is gently upbeat, the pace leisurely but bristling with a low level tension as the story unfurls in a seemingly lawless community where casual violence is prone to rear its head at any given moment, and not just on the part of the male population.

Indonesian men clearly think themselves the superior sex, and are a querulous and unsympathetic lot, but women are not always supportive of each other either, in the Solomon Islands. Marlina is plainly irritated by the heavily pregnant Novi (Dea Panendra) who talks none stop and insists on following her to the Police station in the hope of protection and further attack from the rest of the gang. Marlina’s gruesome package is clearly a talking point amongst locals during their bus journey — but the pair eventually reach their destination despite in an eventful journey that’s as breathtaking as it is satisfyingly weird. MT

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 2018 | 12 April 2018

London Spanish Film Festival | 13-15 April 2018

The Eighth London Spanish Film festival takes place in London from 13-15 April offering a chance to see recent festival outings that may only get a limited release in the UK

MAY GOD SAVE US | Que Dios nos perdone ****
Dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen, with Antonio de la Torre, Roberto Álamo, Javier Pereira | Spain | 2016 | 127 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Two detectives work out their own troubled relationship when investigating a series of brutal crimes against elderly women. The rather aggressive Alfaro and the stuttering, insecure Velarde are played convincingly by Álamo and de la Torre respectively. Set during the Pope’s visit to Spain in the hot summer of 2011, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s crime drama is a rich character study, examining social tensions, the role of the police and Spanish Catholicism.

Friday’s screening will be followed by a Q&A with Antonio de la Torre

Fri 13 April | 6.10pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema Sun 15 April | 5.45pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

THE BOOKSHOP ***

Dir. Isabel Coixet, with Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, James Lance | Spain/UK/Germany | 2017 | 113 min. | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Vertigo

Isabel Coixet’s rather turgid drama is enlivened by three superb performances from Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson in this screen adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 feminist novel that sees a young widow (Mortimer) struggling with the ruthless opposition from a local grand dame (Clarkson) when she opens a literary emporium in a small English town, tempting an elegant batchelor out of reclusive retirement and into her arms. Enriched by a voiceover from Julie Christie and Alfonso de Vilallonga’s score, the film garnered several Goyas for Best Film as well as Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards for Coixet.

Fri 13 April | 8.50pm | £12, conc. £11 | Regent Street Cinema

CAN’T SAY GOODBYE | No sé decir adiós ***
Dir. Lino Escalera, with Juan Diego, Nathalie Poza, Lola Dueñas | Spain | 2017 | 96 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | London premiere

Anchored by a standout performance from Nathalie Poza, Lino Escalera’s award-winning feature debut is an intense and emotional road movie that explores contemporary and traditional Spanish values through the story of a young woman and her estranged and ailing father.

Sat 14 April |6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

ABRACADABRA

Dir. Pablo Berger, with Maribel Verdú, Antonio de la Torre, José Mota, Josep Maria Pou, Priscilla Delgado, Quim Gutiérrez, Julián Villagrán | Spain/France/Belgium | 2017 | 96 min. | In Spanish with English subtitles

Maribel Verdu stars as a long-suffering football widow in Pablo Berger’s zany domestic melodrama with touches of magic realism and horror thrown into the mix. An intense and inventive follow-up to his 2012 hit Blancanieves.

Followed by a Q&A with actor Antonio de la Torre
Sat 14 April | 8.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Regent Street Cinema

SUNDAY’S ILLNESS | La enfermedad de los domingos

Dir. Ramón Salazar, with Susi Sánchez, Bárbara Lennie, Greta Fernández, Miguel Ángel Solá, Richard Bohringer, Manuel Castillo | Spain | 2018 | 113 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish and French with English subtitles | UK premiere

A mother and daughter reunion is at the core of Ramon Salazar’s thematically rich character drama that explores the complex tensions and the mixed love-hate emotions between a daughter and her stoic mother. Barbara Lennie and Susi Sanchez acts their hearts out supported by Ricardo de Gracia’s photography, Sylvia Steinbrecht’s art direction and Clara Bilbao’s costumes.

Sun 15 April | 4.30pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema

LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE | Muchos hijos, un mono y un castillo

Dir. Gustavo Salmerón, with Julieta Salmerón, Gustavo Salmerón | Spain | 2017 | 90 min. | doc | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Dogwoof

Lots of kids, a monkey and a castle were Julieta Salmerón’s dreams as a little girl. And she got them all. Gustavo Salmerón, better known in Spain for his work as an actor, this is a documentary tribute to his mother who emerges a delightfully pragmatic woman, optimistic and somewhat extraordinary as well as eccentric; she keeps some of her grandfather’s backbones and her parents’ ashes and teeth at home.The film garnered several awards including Best Documentary at the Goyas and Karlovy Vary, a became a box office hit in Spain.

Sun 15 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL | 13-15 APRIL 2018 

Tigre (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Silvina Schnicer/Ulises Porra Guardiola | Drama | Arg | 90′

Although a mother and son reunion is at the heart of this atmospheric debut from Argentinian duo Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola, it is the rapport and shared histories of the female characters that makes this so engaging and enjoyable.

TIGRE follows sixty-something Rina and her friend Elena back to the ramshackle family estancia where they hope to enjoy an extended get together in the Tigre Delta. The sweltering humidity and local mores of the lush tropical river setting lend a surreal almost sinister undertone to proceedings. But this is not just a summer retreat, Rina needs the help of her estranged son to stand firm against the developers, who are threatening to take over land which has always been in their family and part of their heritage. And it’s this thorny thread that drives the narrative forward, providing an astringent tension in contrast to the relaxed reveries of the female characters.

TIGRE  shares similar thematic concerns with fellow Argentinian Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Idea of a Lake and there are also comparisons to be drawn with Jorge Thielen Armand’s recent docu-drama La Soledad in which a family’s last bastion, a dilapidated villa in Caracas, provide a fitting metaphor for Venezuela’s current economic crisis. Armand’s poetic paean to his grandparents home is a mournful one full of exotic birdsong, and here too the ambient sounds of nature provide the necessary calm to comtemplate this issues at play. Clearly, property and home are the salient elements in a woman’s life when menfolk are absent or unreliable, as they appear to be again here in Argentina. Unfortunately, the directors weaken the film’s dramatic heft with a preponderance of disparate elements, that while offering intrigue, detract from the central narrative. Despite all this and the film’s rather tricksy ending, TIGRE is a beguiling and lushly cinematic feature underpinned by its weighty social and cultural themes. MT

SCREENING AT EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 APRIL 2018

Wonderstruck (2017) ***

Dir: Todd Haynes | Cast: Julianne Moore, Toby Jones, Michelle Williams | Amy Hargreaves | US | Drama | 120min

Scripted by Brian Selznick based on his 2011 novel, Todd Haynes follows his gorgeously sumptuous Carol with twee and self-indulgent schmaltz. It follows similarly nostalgic lines, the childhood wonder and magic connected to happy memories of the past. But the retrospective often magical reveries finally emerging in a narrative voiceover require us to marvel at the serendipity of fate. Often we remember what we chose to and clothe it in swathes of golden glory. Wonderstruck is by no means a bad film but it often feels disingenuous and sentimentally saccharine – it is a film that congratulates itself it a glow of smugness composed of an intertwining narrative that sashays back and forth about two aurally-impaired children who grow up at different moments in time, who are lonely and head for the bright lights of the city away from the unhappiness of their rural homes.

Ben (Oakes Fegley) is a troubled kid from Gunflint, Minnesota whose single mother (Michelle Williams) was killed in a car crash before he got to know the identity of his father. When he hits the big time arriving in 1970s New York (a lovely imaginative scenes and one of the best in the film) he finds a book with a message to his mother from a person called Danny and decides to follow up on the address written there. The narrative then flips back to 1927 where Rose (Millicent Simmonds) is entranced by a Hollywood silent movie star Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). Rose also makes her way to the big City to see her idol perform on the stage. And the two stories collide through their characters’ mutual fascination with the Museum of Natural History. Rose’s strand is the weaker and least convincing of the two. To say that her love of silent movies is connected to her deafness is rather glib and completely overlooks the vital component of orchestral accompaniment that brings this form alive. Although Ben’s strand is more engaging it lacks the ability to deal with major plotholes and inconsistencies that culminate in its absurd denouement. Wonderstuck is certainly well-meaning but ends up being worthy and caught up with its own importance in some of the longueurs in the museum. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018

 

 

Walk This Way | European Hidden Gems Collection 2018

Walk this Way brings a new season of selected arthouse titles to enjoy at home on VoD. These are films that have found critical claim on the festival circuit and are now available to view online before they get a theatrical release.

HOME (Belgium 2016) sees 17 year old Kevin out of prison and into his aunt’s house where he starts an apprenticeship in her local store. Kevin gets on well with his cousin Sammy and his circle of friends, and soon meets John whose mother is in a crisis. From Venice Orizzonti Best Director  Fien Troch

Renars Vimba’s impressive debut MELLOW MUD (2016) deals with the loneliness, disillusionment and first love as seen through the eyes of an orphaned teenager living in the remote rural beauty of Latvia with her grandma and young brother. But when tragedy strikes out of the blue, Raya (Elina Vaska) is forced to face consequences that even an adult would find challenging. Crystal Bear Winner | Generation 14plus Berlinale |  

WALK THIS WAY WILL DISTRIBUTE 34 FILMS IN 8 COUNTRIES ON GLOBAL PLATFORMS ITUNES, GOOGLE PLAY, AMAZON, SONY in the Original Versions with English Subtitles | from 9 April 2018 

 

Thoroughbreds (2017) ***

Dir.: Corey Finley; Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francis Swift; US 2016, 91′

THOROUGHBREDS is an impressive debut by director Corey Finley, who adapted the stylish neo-noir thriller from his own play. It’s a razor sharp portrayal of the set it sends up, but just a little bit to sleek to be totally convincing.

In wealthy, rural Connecticut, school friends Amanda (Cooke) and Lily (Taylor-Joy) are re-united by Amanda’s mother (Swift), who has sensed that Lily is an outcast after killing a sick horse in a very gruesome way. Amanda is fully aware of this, and she tries to lure Lily into a plot to murder her obnoxious stepfather Mark (Sparks) who wants her to go to a college for mal-adjusted students instead of one of her choice. Lily comes up with a great idea involving local lowlife Tim (Yelchin, superb in his last role). The pair try to trick Tim into doing the deadly deed, but he gets cold feet at the last minute. After accusing Amanda of being “not high on empathy” – fair statement – Lily is asked not to drink a knock-out cocktail by Amanda, who mixed it. But Lily is hell-bent on proving that she can outdo her friend.

The teenagers are a merciless duo, not really evil but full of malicious intent stemming from the privileges of their upbringing. There is also a good amount of believing all sort of half-baked theories, and finally, in Lily’s case, a sense of morbidity – drawing comparison with Heavenly Creatures. Yelchin is brilliant in the role of the sex-offender who seems to fall into the trap set for him, but just in time gets his neck out of a noose so carefully designed for him by the girls. Amanda’s step-dad is very menacing, the sounds of a rowing machine he seems to be addicted to, mix eerily with Erik Friedlander’s atonal score. Lyle Vincent’s handheld camera shows the teens’ disturbing dialogues against the opulent backdrop: the night time is their favoured setting, during the day they fade, like vampires, into a washed-out blue. Finley directs with great panache, his characters all more or less damaged, are trapped from the get-go. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018 NATIONWIDE

120 BPM (2017) ***

Dir: Robin Campillo Writer: Robin Campillo | Cast: Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adele Haenel, Yves Heck, Coralie Russier | 135min | Drama | French

Robin Campillo’s follow up to Eastern Boys is a cinéma vérité style drama that reflects  his own years as an AIDS activist during Mitterand’s 1990s government. It makes a brave and honest attempt to communicate the frustration felt by many sufferers of the disease through an organisation that calls itself Act Up.

120 BEATS feels quite conventional in style, and clearly Campillo feels so strongly about the film’s themes that he has decided not to be too ambitious artistically – the result is rather bland and overlong at 142 minutes, but certainly valuable as a lasting testament to the era, and a fight that continues. Most impressive are the naturalistic performances, particularly from Hanaele as the strong-minded Sophie, and the evocative score with tunes from Bronski Beat.

The film opens with during a rowdy meeting of Act Up in a brightly lit venue where clicking of fingers replaces clapping as a signal of approval. The group’s members, not all sufferes, are encouraged to be vocal and expressive. There follows a raucous demonstration in the offices of a drug company refusing to release its test results. There are romantic interludes with rather overplayed graphic sex that takes place between the feisty young Chilean French Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who has fully blown Aids,  as he falls for HIV-negative Nathan (Arnaud Valois). Their relationship is only really examined in the light of Sean’s illness and none of characters is fleshed out enough for us to engage with their plight, which is a shame.

Artistically there are one or two inventive flourishes such as when the sparkles from the disco lights are transformed into the virus, but it’s clear that Campillo does not want to cloud his central message with aesthetic mastery. Also, the aggressive energy generated by some of the more unappealing characters make it difficult for us to feel for them in their plight, despite Campillo’s witty script. Beats per Minutes has garnered much critical acclaim for its important subject matter, but a worthy theme alone does not make film brilliant and this is a decent but unremarkable third feature from Campillo. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 6 APRIL THROUGH CURZON | PREVIEWING AT BFI FLARE

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco (2017)

Dir.: James Crump; Documentary with Antonio Lopez, Juan Ramos, Corey Tippin, Karl Lagerfeld, Jessica Lange; USA 2017, 90 min.

James Crump (Black White + Gray) pays homage to one of the most original fashion illustrators of the last century: Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) and his creative partner Juan Ramos (1942-1995) revolutionised not only the way fashion designers and illustrators worked together, but how they discovered models like Jerry Hall and Grace Jones, who might otherwise have never become world famous.

Meeting at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the 60s, and pair set up shop in a studio above Carnegie Hall. Antonio was the extrovert artist, Juan the “art director” who stood behind his creative partner to provide structure and ideas. Although both men came from Puerto Rico, the were products of their unique New York milieu: Antonio grew up in Brooklyn and Juan in Harlem. Max’s Kansas Hotel and Hotel Chelsea feature heavily here. As does Andy Warhol who was a rival for a long time, before he exchanged portraits with Juan.

Their social ‘sets’ were strictly separated, with the exception of Donna Jordan. One could not think of more different characters: Warhol, the observer who waited until a situation developed, and Lopez, who worked for hours feverishly, needing only his muses like Jessica Lange, Patti D’Arbanville and Grace Jones (to name a few) for inspiration – and Juan for “editing”.

Lopez brought fashion to a new level: streetwise, sexy and extravagant. At a time when counter-culture exploded onto the scene these were heady times: the LGBT movement was making its mark and the Vietnam War brought millions of protesters onto the streets. The bi-sexual Antonio was a “sex machine”, changing partners on a regular basis, but often staying friends with his past paramours. His relationship with Jerry Hall – the two even got “married”, was one of the most enduring.

In 1969 Antonio and Juan moved with their entourage to Paris, where they worked with Carl Lagerfeld, an intimate enemy of Yves-Saint Laurent. The duo helped Lagerfeld to establish a pret-a-porter culture, signalling the end of the classical fashion industry – particularly the mannequins, who had hardly moved on the catwalk, now walked at a funereal pace. Antonio’s fashion models danced like disco queens. Racial taboos were broken too: Pat Cleveland was perhaps the first ever black super model.

Given access to Lopez drawings, photographs, 8-mm and 16-mm films by the designer’s heir, Paul Caranicas, Crump has realised the fantasy of his teenage years in rural Indiana, “when Lopez magical life and milieu aroused me to no end and made me fantasize about the early 1970 in New York and Paris”.

With music by Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes, this feature is a hell of a ride: the dawn of a new style of living, the innocence of this first generation, who challenged gender as well as art, their innocence and unawareness of the future would bring Aids, and both Antonio and Juan would become victims. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Brasilia: Life After Design (2017) *** | East End Film Festival 2018


Dir: Bart Simpson | Doc | US | 90’

In Brasilia: Life After Design, Bart Simpson takes a novel approach in  exploring the social, economic and political aftermath of modernist ‘starchitect’ Oscar Niemeyer’s inventive urban planning project that created Brazil’s new national capital in 1960, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located on high plateau in the country’s centre-western region, it comprises a metropolitan area now estimated to be the Latin American country’s third most populous. It is divided into various economic districts (Banking, Embassy etc) it moved the seat of government away from Rio de Janeiro and into a more central location. The film asks the question? Can you create a perfect city from scratch? What emerges is interesting. Although you can in theory, when the human element is added, it doesn’t always go according to plan.

Niemeyer and his partner Costa wanted to create a utopian city, designing Brasilia on a cross-axial grid and allowing for generous green areas where mid-sized trees where planted into aligned avenues to give a ‘ready made’ environment from the outset. A Monumental Axis accommodated government, monuments and institutions and a Residential Axis housed the inhabitants. Costa’s intention with housing superblocks was to have small self-contained and self-sufficient neighborhoods and uniform buildings with apartments of two or three different categories, where he hope to facilitate the integration of upper and middle classes sharing the same residential area. But sadly Brasilia has not been the success story originally intended for various reasons.

And this is in part due to the region’s hostile landscape. Niemeyer and Costa worked with government support to create the ‘Plano Piloto’, an innovative built environment intended to reshape the way people interact and behave within its confines. Rather than an organic city, Brasilia was imposed on its terrain, over a period five years. And despite its sophisticated architecture and status as a capital city, all the problems of contemporary Brazilian society soon surfaced there despite best laid plans – from unemployment to crime and social divide. Brasilia has failed to accommodate its burgeoning population.

So how is life after design for the people that live there? We meet a street vendor who is struggling to find a clientele due to the vast open boulevards; a mother whose job is a difficult commute to from her kids’ school; economic instability and social alienation and a general lack of neighbourly-ness induced by the built environment, despite high quality architecture. A building can look good but be impractical or hostile to live in. So a success on the drawing board, can actually be a disaster when it hits the reality of the streets.

Stunningly shot on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, Simpson’s documentary is chockfull of sophisticated facades and impressive building designs, capturing the city’s geometric shapes, pleasing symmetry and glamorous skylines. But on a personal level there are clearly concerns for those who have made it their home. Simpson’s film offers fascinating insight for travellers, historians, designers and those interested in its themes, although thr lack of a distinct dramatic arc may make it less absorbing for mainstream viewers. MT

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/213263235

 

Mellow Mud | Es Esmu Seit (2016) | European Hidden Gems Collection

Dir.: Renars Vimba; Cast: Elina Vaska, Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls, Edgars Samitis, Ruta Bitgere, Zane Jancevska; Latvia 2016, 106 min.

Renars Vimba makes his filmmaking debut with an intense coming-of-age story, brilliantly acted by Elina Vaska who brings emotional depth to the subtle changes between tomboyishness and womanhood. Vimba too directs with a spare economy that never overstates the pent-up emotions of his heroine.

Seventeen-year old Raja (Elina Vaska) and her much younger brother Robis (Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls) are left to fend for themselves after tragedy touches their modest life in rural Latvia, leaving them bereft of their parents and at the mercy of their difficult grandmother (Bitgere), who soon after succumbs to a heart attack. Raja decides to bury the old woman, telling nobody of her demise, not even their social worker (Jancevska). But sudden responsibility for her brother and the family’s orchard, which she takes over at the expense of her education, is a sobering experience. With a bit of resourcefulness and strong English skills Raja decides to enter a nationwide English competition which she wins, to surprise of everyone, apart from herself. The prize is a trip to London and a short-lived affair with her teacher (Edgars Samitis), which is doomed, largely due to their age difference. Baffled and hurt, Raja sets off to London to find her mother, who left her address on an envelope. Meanwhile, Robis is taken into an orphanage after the social worker finds out they are both orphans.

Drawing comparisons with the work of Ian McEwan (Cement Garden), the Dardennes Brothers, and the black-and-white images of 1960s British Realism, DoP Arnar Thor Thorisson uses bleached, muted colours, and shades of grey to underpin this lean affair that tackles thorny issues of childhood abandonment and prescient resignation. The London scenes are extremely powerful, Raja shrinking literally in the harsh and hectic life of the metropolis. This is a melancholic journey about loss, disillusionment and the total absence of adult responsibility.

SCREENING DURING THE EUROPEAN HIDDEN GEMS FILM COLLECTION

 

 

 

 

Battle of the Sexes (2017) | **** | Bfi Flare Film Festival

Dir: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton | Writer: Simon Beaufoy | Cast: Steve Carell, Emma Stone | Sport Biopic
Emma Stone and Steve Carell star as sparkling adversaries in this colourful period recreation of the legendary 1973 tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King that made public her fight for equality in women’s tennis.

Battle of the Sexes engagingly captures the zeitgeist of the era focusing on the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs which was a turning point in the politics of their game, flagging up a protest over the pay gap between men and women on the professional circuit. Scripted by Academy Award winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (Little Miss Sunshine), Battle of the Sexes is a fitting tribute to that iconic moment.

Stone is impressive in the role of King who had decided to fund her own tour with Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) as her manager. Carell plays the suitably back-footed Riggs whose finances were depleted since his previous championship. His troubled emotional life also haunts his game and he misguidedly proffers a publicity stunt in the shape of a challenge involving a $100,000 winner-take-all match.

Beaufoy’s script cleverly contrasts the game’s blatant sexuality during a ‘pioneering era of sexual revolution’ with King’s extraordinary talent as a player – along with likes of other female champions of the time such as Yvonne Goolagong and Virginia Wade. MT

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 21 MARCH – 1 APRIL 2018 

 

The Structure of Crystal | Struktura Krysztalu (1969) | Kinoteka 2018

Dir.: Krzysztof Zanussi; Cast: Barbara Wrzesinska, Jan Myslowicz, Andrzej Zarnecki; Poland 1969, 75 min.

In his feature debut, Polish veteran Krzysztof Zanussi examines the nature of friendship and male rivalry and explores whether a bond of shared history can still reunite us years later, or whether change and the passage of time is destined to drive us apart. The Structure of Crystal is an caustic psychodrama that has been compared to the work of Bresson, a filmmaker Zanussi very much admires.

Jan (Myslowicz) is a highly regarded chemist who has left the fast lane and competitive life of Warsaw behind to marry a local schoolteacher and earth mother, Anna (Wrzesinska) in a country village. Anna’s remote family home provides an idyllic retreat for the couple and their two children and for a time life is good. Until they invite another chemist and former colleague, Marek (Zarnecki), to stay. Marek has worked in the USA, and his photos of New York provide a bracing contrast to the couple’s placid rural existence. But the two men are soon arguing over work issues and Anna is a little bit too flirty with this man from ‘the big smoke’, although she also complains about the men’s “egoistical” attitude. Jan starts to come over as a martyr, trying to justify his country existence on environmental grounds, over his life in Warsaw. He tries to undermine  his rather racy city colleague taking the moral high ground– the usual male rivalry is played out but Jan is unsure whether he’s made the right choice. Zanussi, who studied chemistry himself (“I loved chemistry, but it did not love me”) was a documentary filmmaker before he turned his talents to filmmaking and this is borne out in DoP Stefan Matyjaszkiewicz’s long panning shots that circle the protagonists, showing them as objects in the domestic environment – the human interaction intruding upon the peaceful, balanced rhythm of the setting. A reflective and humane ‘Kammerspiel’. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | LONDON

Bestia (1917) ** | Kinoteka London 2018

Writer-Director Aleksander Hertz | Cast: Pola Negri, Witold Kuncewicz, Jan Pawłowski, Maria Dulęba, Mia Mara. Melodrama | Poland / 67 min (incomplete)

Aleksander Hertz’s Bestia was one of the last of several films made by his company Sfinks starring his protégé Pola Negri under her real name Apolonia Chałupiec before she left for Germany in 1917, and, alas, the only one still surviving. Released in America in 1921 and slightly re-edited as The Polish Dancer to herald Negri’s arrival in Hollywood after making her name internationally in the German films of Ernst Lubitsch; it is to this version that Bestia owes its survival, and this was the version screened at Ognisko Polskie in partnership with this year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival.

Although popular playing A Woman of the World, (which became the title of one of her Hollywood vehicles), Negri in The Beast (to give it it’s literal title in English) proves far more sinned against than sinning; her choice of male company having done her no favours.

Bestia starts well with Miss Negri staying out late carousing with a bunch of drunken ne’er-do-wells (showing that Polish youth were as interested in the same things a hundred years ago as they remain today), and before long she has the world (and various men) at her feet as a raunchy cabaret dancer. Unfortunately she falls for a spineless stage door Johnny named Alexi, who neglects to inform her that he’s married, while the film’s emphasis shifts from Negri to Alexi’s dithering over whether or not to leave his wife. Negri’s honorable decision to reimburse money she’d earlier borrowed without permission from an oaf called Dimitri meanwhile seriously rebounds on her to her cost and it all ends in tears, with retribution meted out that bears little relation to the sins actually committed. RICHARD CHATTEN

KINOTEKA LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 7 -29 MARCH 2018

BFI Flare Film Festival | 21 March – 1 April 2018

London is the setting for the UK’s longest running LGBTQ film event which began in 1986 as Gay’s Own Pictures. Since then it has also become the largest LGBTQ film event in the UK with this year’s edition boasting 56 feature films, an expanded industry programme, selected films on BFI Player VOD service, and a series of special events and archive screenings. With its partner fiveFilms4freedom it offers LGBT short films for free across the world and promoted through the British Council’s global networks.

Opening the festival this year is Talit Shalom-Ezer’s poignant lesbian love story MY DAYS OF MERCY written by Joe Barton, who scripted TV’s Troy, and featuring Kate Mara and Ellen Page. The European premiere of moral fable POSTCARDS FROM LONDON is the closing gala, telling a revealing story of a suburban teenager (Harris Dickinson) arriving in the West End where he falls in with a gang of high class male escorts ‘The Raconteurs’. Set in a vibrant, neon-lit, imaginary vision of Soho, the film works as a beautifully shot homage to the spirit of Derek Jarman and a celebration of the homo-erotic in Baroque art, and is Steve McLean’s long-awaited follow-up to his 1994 Sundance and Indie Spirit-nominated drama POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA. This year ‘Second Chance Sunday offers the opportunity to watch the on-demand repeat screenings of the audience festival favourites.

Other films to look out for are Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde-themed passion project THE HAPPY PRINCE in which he also stars alongside Colin Firth and Emily Watson. Robin Campillo’s rousing celebration of AIDS activism 120 BPM. MAURICE, a sumptuous restoration of the 1987 adaptation of E M Forster’s gay novel starring James Wilby and Rupert Graves. THE WOUND, an illuminating South African story of initiation in a rural village.

On the documentary front it’r worth seeing TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS that explores how a transgender Alzheimer’s patient deals with the harrowing inevitable, and ANTONIO LOPEZ 1970 a compelling and vibrant portrait of the bisexual illustrator who changed the fashion world. 

Avant-garde Berlinale Teddy feature HARD PAINT presents a startlingly cinematic look at how a college drop-out deals with his needs, and Locarno favourite, a saucy Sao Paolo-set vampire drama GOOD MANNERS approaches its love story with hand-crafted tenderness and visual allure.

There will also be another chance to see Francis Lea’s Berlinale awarded GOD’S OWN COUNTRY; Billie Jean King’s thrilling account of her fight for equality in women’s tennis BATTLE OF THE SEXES and the one of the best films of 2017 CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. 

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | LONDON 21  March – 1 April www.bfi.org.uk/Flare

 

 

Butterfly Kisses (2017) **** Kinoteka Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Rafael Kapelinski; Cast: Theo Stevenson, Rosie Day, Liam Whitling, Byron Lyons, Thomas Turgoose, Charlotte Beaumont; UK 2017, 89 min.

Polish born director Rafael Kapelinski, who studied with Andrei Wajda in Lodz and got an MA from the NFTS, has directed a disturbing, haunting debut feature, which in many ways – not least due to Nick Cooke’s brilliant black-and-white images DoP Nick Cooke – resembles Michael Winterbottom’s first feature Butterfly Kiss from 1995.

Written by Greer Ellison, Butterfly Kisses is set in a South London estate where the three main characters, teenagers Jake (Stevenson), Kyle (Whiting) and Jared (Lyons), spend their days aimlessly gorging on internet porn and in a bar run by Shrek (Turgoose), which has an in-house drug dealer. This is mainly about showing off to each other, and, like a couple after 40 years of marriage, scoring points. Fathers are absent in the army, or literally dying. But Jake is worse off, because his friends know that he is still a virgin – the only one of the trio – in spite of his rather pretty good looks. When Zara (Day) moves into the tower block, Jake, ogling her from his window, gets a part-time job looking after her much younger sister Amy (Beaumont). After Kyle and Jared talk Zara into sleeping with Jake, we learn his dark secret: From here on onwards, Butterfly Kisses steams like a derailed train into oblivion.

Saving us from any graphic horrors, Kapelinski makes watching this even more painful. Nathan Klein’s score relies heavily on the organ, underlining the apocalyptic narrative. A voice-over by Kyle at the start of the feature, tells us about a day in school, when everyone put an anonymous confession  into a box, the contents were then read out aloud, each not knowing who had written what. Stealing Mars bars from the old owner of the corner shop seemed just like the internet porn – a mild transgression compared with Jake’s dark secret. Butterfly Kisses shows us that the clichés of life on council estates, are just the fruits of juvenile neglect – not the true evil lurking behind Jake’s boyish features. AS

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 29 MARCH 2018

Sweet Country (2017) ****

Dir: Warwick Thornton | Sam Neill, Bryan Brown | Drama | Australia | 101′

SWEET COUNTRY is a good-looking, strong and silent type of Aussie Western providing a scenic and enjoyable ride towards a rather predictable finale. Warwick Thornton cut his teeth as a cinematographer and it certainly shows in this follow up to his 2013 outing, The Darkside.

SWEET COUNTRY crackles with racial tension in a stark outback landscape full of macho white males and their well-meaning Aboriginal workers who inhabit three remote outposts near Alice Springs in the South. Sam Neill plays Fred Smith, a respectful Christian rancher who enjoys an easygoing relationship with his Aboriginal worker Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber). On a neighbouring ranch, we meet the churlish Mick Kennedy (Thomas M Wright) who despises his workforce amongst whom is his half Aboriginal son Philomac (twins Tremayne and Trevon Doolan take turns to play the role). But worst of all is the hateful Harry March (Ewen Leslie), who one day asks to borrow Smith’s workers for a cattle branding job.

Harry abuses both husband and wife and eventually tempers flare and Sam shoots him dead in self-defence. Suddenly we are transported to an unknown frontier town complete with saloon and makeshift cinema, where Bryan Brown’s grizzled police chief Fletcher is investigating the murder with his horseback soldiers. There appear to be three distinct types here in 19th Australia: the white population;  Sam and Lizzie who look civilised dressed in period garb, and diverse packs of native Aboriginals who frequently enter the picture killing one of Fletcher’s men, a guy called Minty, with a boomerang. A court procedural follows but Sam and Lizzie remain tight-lipped over the affair. What emerges is both clever and slightly predictable but culminates in the thrilling final denouement of this ravishing Australian thriller. MT

 Warwick Thornton was born in Alice Springs, Australia. He studied cinematography at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He is the director of the short films Green Bush(05) and Nana (07), as well as the feature Samson and Delilah(09), which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes. Sweet Country (17) is his latest film.

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 9 MARCH 2018

Kinoteka 2018 | 7 – 29 March 2018

London hosts KINOTEKA Film Festival for the 16th year running. This year celebrates 100 years of Polish independence with the latest cutting edge cinema and some lesser known archival gems now ripe for rediscovery, along with Q&As, masterclasses and musical entertainment. The festival also offers unique insight into Poland’s rich cultural history through cult classics, biopics, women in cinema and a drama from the liberated Nazi concentration camps. And some distinctly contemporary drama that captures the zeitgeist of Poland in the 21st century such as Rafael Kapelinski’s 2017 scabrously dark drama Butterfly Kisses.

The Opening Night Gala commemorates the life of Krzysztof Krauze and his fruitful partnership with wife/co-director, Joanna Kos-Krauze with a screening of Karlovy Vary Award-winning Birds Are Singing in Kigali, a film exploring the life of two women who escape the genocide in Rwanda. There will also be a another chance to see her 2013 biopic drama Papusza that follows the rise and fall of gypsy-poetess Bronislawa Wajs, widely known as Papusza. And Urszula Antoniak’s award-winning drama Beyond Words.

NEW POLISH CINEMA IS A WOMAN:

This year’s contemporary strand has a particularly focus on female directors. Anna Jadowska’s Wild Roses depicts a mother’s loneliness and struggle to come to terms with her life. Kasia Adamik’s Amok follows the true story of a committed murderer who incriminates himself by writing a novel revealing the killing. There will also be a chance to see the UK premiere of Maria Sadowska’s biopic Sztuka Kochania about the Polish sexologist Michalina Wislocka, who wrote the bestseller The Art of Loving – the first published guide to sexual health from behind the Iron Curtain.

#PL100INDEPENDENCE

This strand offers an opportunity to delve into the archives for some cult classic dramas, comedies and rare Polish silent films. Aleksander Hertz’s Bestia (1917) stars Pola Negri as a wild girl who escapes her parents’ clutches only attract the attentions of a married manJan Nowina-Przbylski’s black and white comedy Love Manoeuvres (1935) sees a couple desperate to get out of an arranged marriage, in a fitting double bill with Juliusz Gardan’s cross-dressing comedy Is Lucyna A Girl? (1934) about a young woman who defies social norms to become an engineer. The celebration will also include an immersive 1920s style ballroom party, featuring special cocktails and a DJ.

CELEBRATING JEWISH-POLISH CINEMA

This year’s festival showcases the rich contribution of Jewish talent in Polish cinema. Kinoteka joins forces with Polish National Center for Jewish Film, to screen a 1937 Yiddish film (Der Purimshpiler) The Jester. The Southern Polish interwar story follows a troubadour who who arrives  in a small village where he upsets the status quo by falling for his new employer’s daughter. Wartime is also the central theme in The Reconciliation, Maciej Sobieszczański’s post-war drama set against the backdrop of the recently liberated Nazi concentration camps that were then used by the Communist party to imprison and eliminate traitors.

Krzysztof Zanussi will be back again this year ‘in conversation’ about one of his earliest films, The Structure of Crystal (1969) (17 March, ICA). Andrzej Klimowski, one of Polish most celebrated graphic designers will be in town for a masterclass aimed at new and emerging filmmakers looking to create poster artwork. He designed this year’s festival poster.

SUPPER CLUB CINEMA

On 23 March, Kinoteka hosts a gourmet evening featuring the delicious cuisine of rising chef Flavia Borawska, accompanied by a film screening of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s classic Double Life of Veronique.

Closing Night Gala – Henryk Szaro’s epic love story The Call of the Sea (1927) has been digitally restored and will play with a specially-commissioned live score performed by a five-piece ensemble led by pianist and composer Taz Modi, at the Barbican.

FESTIVAL GUESTS 

Jakub Gierszał (TBC)

The leading man in three films in this years’ New Polish Cinema segment. In 2012, he won the EFP Shooting Star prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and since then has worked steadily in both Poland and abroad.

Joanna Kos-Krauze

With only four director and writer’s credits in her dossier, Kos-Krauze is already one of the most talked about Polish filmmakers working today. She tells truthful stories about times gone by and people who made a small but culturally significant impact. Kos-Krauze will introduce Papusza (2013) and take part in a Q&A following a screening of My Nikifor (2004) at BFI Southbank on Thursday 8 March.

Maria Sadowska

Director, writer and actress, Sadowska is a triple threat in the industry today. Her latest film, The Art of Loving will be screened at Regent Street Cinema on 11th March. The Story of Michalina Wisłocka (2017) was nominated for a Golden Frog and Golden Lion at the Camerimage and Polish Film Festivals respectively.

Krzysztof Zanussi

Director, writer and Polish film legend, Krzysztof Zanussi has been making films since he was nineteen years-old and now at seventy-eight he’s showing no signs of stopping. The director has eighty-one credits to his name so far, including Ether which he’s currently filming.

KINOTEKA 2018 | 7 -29 MARCH 2018

Garbage (2018) * * | Berlinale 2018 | Panorama

Dir: Qaushiq Mukherjee | Cast: Tanmay Dhanania, Trimala Adhikari, Satarupa Das, Gitanjali Dang, Shruti Viswan, Satchit Puranik | Drama | India | 105′ | World premiere

Bengali director Q, best known for Gandu, pushes forward a punishing political and societal agenda in this narratively slack but stylishly filmic story of exploitative hatred in a lush paradise of Goa.

Drugged by its own breath-taking beauty this is a lurid thriller full of livid anger and pain revolving around two women who are humiliated by men, and then get their revenge. We are made to feel nothing for these empty characters, they exist merely to represent Q’s hatred of social media, right wing politics, religious extremism and pretty much everything else. GARBAGE has us believe that in contemporary India all relationships are exploitative and nobody wins in the end; although the finale provides a cinematically sickening masculine takedown. GARBAGE is another sorrowful snapshot of strife from a nation where female status lags far behind male, despite burgeoning economic growth and rapid technological advancements. But the saddest character is actually a submissive and sexually-repressed taxi-driver Phanishwar (the sultry sylph-like Tanmay Dhanania) who keeps a female maid (Satarupta Das) chained to his kitchen wall. He doesn’t abuse her sexually, as he’s impotent due to testicular cancer and more preoccupied with pleasuring his own master, the religious extremist guru Baba (Satchit Puranik) whose radical rants he promotes on social media, where he also salivates over salacious porn videos. One of these features Rami (Trimala Adhikari), who by a strange coincidence gets into his taxi the following day. A deja-vue moment leads Phanishwar to obsess about having sex with her, but he’s too low on self-esteem to manage it. But Rami (Trimala Adhirkari) is having none of his lust. Being a victim to revenge porn is not what she has in mind as a highly savvy medic, but she doesn’t shy away from a lesbian love-in with the alluring Simone (Gitanjali Dang). Lakshman Chandra Anand is a real wizard behind the camera creating some impressive scenes in lush tropical landscapes with expert precision. Sadly his images are wasted on this empty vessel of style over substance. Q has a great team behind him and some laudable thematic pretensions, but his angry bile makes this a toxic experience, poisoning a picture that could been impressive in the right hands. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY | PANORAMA

 

Rainbow (2017)

Dir.: Paolo Taviani; Cast: Luca Marinelli, Valentina Belle, Lorenzo Richelmy, Anna Ferruzzo; Italy/France 2017, 84 min.

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s elegant historical drama, a doomed love-triangle, gets caught up in the tumultuous upheaval of the Second World War and the partisan resistance in Italy. Written by the brothers and based on the 1963 novel by Beppe Fenoglio, Paolo Taviani’s direction is a nostalgic outing  celebrating  the pre-WWII past, but with little to say about the fighting between partisans and Black-Shirts.

Milton (Marinelli) is fighting with the partisans in the winter of 1944/5, when he stumbles upon a villa in the remote countryside once the scene of his love affair for the beautiful Flavia (Belle). They were both students at the time, and loved to play old records. But Milton was jealous of fellow-student Giorgio (Richelmy), who also lusted after the young woman. Entering the villa, Milton meets the housekeeper (Ferruzzo), who remembers him from the olden days. She praises him, but has little to say about Giorgio, who, often visited Flavia after Milton left the scene, making it clear that, “nothing bad happened”.  In the middle of the civil war, Milton tries in vain to thrash things out with fellow partisan Giorgio, who been taken prisoner by the Fascists.

DoP Simone Zampagni creates lovely images of the stylish interiors and rough mountain landscapes, but Taviani never comes to grips with the story: it is really like two films in one, with the director and his co-writing brother distinctly preferring the glorious setting of the past to the mudslinging fighting and intrigues played out at the HQs of both Fascist and partisans. But worse, everything said about war, friendship and jealousy is just trite and banal. Rainbow dies a slow, beautiful death, losing itself in the permanent fog of this beautiful but visionless piece of nostalgia. AS

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 7-11 MARCH 2018 | LONDON UK

Cinema Made in Italy Festival 7 -11 March 2018

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY returns to London’s Ciné Lumière, showcasing the latest releases from Italy complete with film-maker Q&A sessions. This year’s line-up includes eight new Italian films and a 1977 classic title A SPECIAL DAY (Una Giornata Particolare), directed by the late maestro Ettore Scola and starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

SCREENING PROGRAMME – CINEMA MADE IN ITALY 2018

RAINBOW – (UNA QUESTIONE PRIVATA)  6.30 pm  | 7 March           

Intro and Q&A with Paolo Taviani (director)

AMORI CHE NON SANNO STARE AL MONDO | 6.15 pm | 8 March

Intro and Q&A with Francesca Comencini (director)

HANNAH | 6.30 pm  | 9 March 

Intro and Q&A with Andrea Pallaoro (director)

LOVE AND BULLETS | 8.40 pm  | 9 March 

Intro and Q&A with Antonio and Marco Manetti (directors)

THE INTRUDER | 6.30 pm  | 10 March               

FORTUNATA | 8.40 pm | 10 March 

 

Intro and Q&A with Jasmine Trinca (actress)

A SPECIAL DAY | 2.00 pm | 11 March 

CINDERELLA THE CAT | 4.00 pm | 11 March         

Intro and Q&A with Alessandro Rak (director)

UNA FAMIGLIA | 6.30 pm  | 11 March 

Intro and Q&A with Sebastiano Riso (director)

VENUE AND BOX OFFICE INFORMATION

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | LONDON 7-11 MARCH 2018 

 

 

 

The Interpreter (2018) * * * * * | Berlinale 2018 Special

Wri/Dir: Martin Šulík | DoP: Martin Štrba | German, Slovak, 113′ | Cast: Peter Simonischek, Jiří Menzel, Zuzana Mauréry, Anita Szvrcsek, Anna Rakovská, Eva Kramerová, Réka Derzsi, Attila Mokos, Karol Šimon, Igor Hrabinský | World premiere | Drama

Peter Simonischek senses danger when he opens the front door of his elegant Vienna appartment to a well-dressed Jiří Menzel, who later emerges as the interpreter Ali Ungár in this war-themed drama levened by the same piquant humour the Austrian actor brought to Maren Ade’s satire Toni Erdman. A Slovakian Jew, Ali lost his parents during the war, and has tracked down the whereabouts of the SS officer responsible for their deaths. Georg (Peter Simonischek) quickly informs him that his father is dead. The atmosphere gently thaws as the pair gradually discover that the war has deeply affected them both in quite different ways. And Ali is not the only one keen to trace his roots. Georg recalls an eventful childhood filled with pride at his often absent officer father. Ali’s memories are swathed in dark shadows of loss and humiliation and he is still deeply traumatised by the loss of his parents. Keen to maintain his distance from a man he considers his vicarious enemy, he agrees to take Georg back with him to Slovakia charging a daily fee as his interpreter, and the two set off on an illuminating, and often tenderly moving journey to the past and themselves.

The Interpreter is above all a penetrating and poignant character piece punctuated by picaresque humour, Martin Šulík and co-scripter Marek Lescák deftly and sensitively conflate tragedy with comedy with meaningful results. Unlike the inflammatory Black 47 (2018) which revisits history stirring up hatred and stoking anger, The Interpreter is a far more conciliatory piece that seeks to promote understanding and pouring healing balm over still-smarting wounds in an enlightening exploration of a lesser known episode of the Holocaust – at least to more Western audiences. Martin Strba’s stylish camerawork captures sleek Viennese interiors and the transcendent tranquility of the Slovakian countryside in Spring.

The Second World War and its devastating effects are not the central thrust of the narrative, The Interpreter is a tribute that offers a refreshing take on events seen from the perspective of a generation who clearly remember things differently. The reveal in the final scene doesn’t come as a game-changer but offers further insight into the minds involved: Ali’s personality has been shaped by mistrust from childhood, but Georg is more instinctual in his reaction to events, which clearly mark him as the past unfolds. Both Menzel and Simonischek are brilliant in their depictions of men who are the products of their circumstances. Midnight Run and The Odd Couple spring to mind. Both men are endearing is their respective ways: Georg a wily, ebullient, womaniser; the curmudgeonly Ali proves an old-fashioned ally, but nobody’s fool. War has no winners or losers here but deeply effects us all. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

https://vimeo.com/254993281

Ryūichi Sakamoto: Async at the Park Avenue Armoury **** Berlinale 2018

Dir: Stephen Nomura Schible | Doc | USA, Japan 2018 | Without dialogue, 65 min

In April 2017 Japanese composer, pianist and music producer Ryūichi Sakamoto made a guest appearance for two evenings in the Veteran’s Room, an small 200-seater hall at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Experienced music documentarian Stephen Nomura Schible, filmed this the intimate gathering, the first for eight years since the Sakamoto’s recovery from cancer. Async is not just a musical experience but also a visual one: a huge screen under ceiling of the auditorium fills up with images and videos.

After his first solo album in 1978, Sakamoto’s career concentrated on a fusion of synth pop, techno and house genres. But he also branched out into film music, winning an Oscar for co-writing the score for Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, followed by more recent work for Brian de Palma and Pedro Almodavar. So it comes as no surprise that async is very much influenced by visuals and images. “This album is probably the one most influenced by moving images. Movies always inspire me. So when I am feeling empty I start watching a movie. Kung Fu films are so inspiring, so wild”. Unlike the music of the 18th century, which is very much rigid in its formal design, Sakomoto wants to make music as a spontaneous invention. “My desire was the only rule”. The music – with various instruments, western, Japanese and even a sheet of glass – creates a soundtrack for an imaginary film by Andrei Tarkovsky. The composer admits that he is very jealous of his music heard by an audience, “I did not want anyone to hear it”. The 5.1 surround channel underscores the cinematographic experience, one experiences music and images as if present.

If you’ve never heard music by Sakamoto, let your mind wander, and you will soon find your head was filled with associations from the images/music –nothing spectacular or specific, just a pleasant sliding into wellbeing. Even as a great fan of Baroque music, with its very clear formal limits, it never occurred to me that I would feel any asynchrony in the performance – it simply invites the viewer to wander away and dream. AS

BERLINALE SPECIAL | 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

https://vimeo.com/254826110

 

Lemonade * * * * (2018) | Berlinale 2018 | Panorama

Dir: Ioana Uricaru | Cast:  Mălina Manovici, Steve Bacic, Dylan Scott Smith, Milan Hurduc, Ruxandra Maniu | Romania, Canada, Germany | Drama | 88 min

Ioana Uricaru directs this absorbing immigration truth-based drama from a linear script she co-wrote with Tatiana Ionascu and with the support of Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu and Canadian finance. Exposing the often ugly corrupt and officious underbelly of US officialdom, it follows Mara, a nurse from Romania, who marries one of her patients (Daniel/Dylan Smith) while on a working visit the USA, and tries make her new life with her husband 3 year old son legal and above board. With a sensitive central performance from Mălina Manovici whose winning personality as Mara makes for an absorbing watch, this intelligent film conflates a New Wave drama with a taut psycho-thriller, managing its tonal shifts with surprising dexterity.

When the police ask Mara if Romanian is an Arabic language, you realise the depth of ignorance we are dealing with is ludicrous. But this is not the worse part: Mara’s aggressively inappropriate immigration official (a sleazy Steve Bacic from TV’s Arrow) asks her for a blow-job; and during a hospital visit, she is give an injection without her consent  “because it’s free”. Yet the arm of the law comes down heavily when she leaves Dragoš alone in the appartment. It then emerges that her husband Daniel has a ‘criminal record’ from abusing a minor. Despite all this Mara presses on obdurately remembering the Romanian saying: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Luminously lensed by Friede Clausz, this is a well-paced debut that doesn’t overstay its welcome, from a talented female team. MT

BERLINALE 15 -25 FEBRUARY 2018 | PANORAMA

The Tree | Drvo * * * (2018) | Berlinale 2018

Dir: Andre Gil Mata | Petar Fradelic, Sanja Vrzic, Filip Zivanovic | Bosnia| Portugal | 104′

Admirers of slow cinema will delight in this beautifully crafted laborious drama from Portuguese auteur Andre Gil Mata. It follows an old man whose task is to collect water in war-torn Bosnia. At a snail’s pace, the old boy leaves his ramshackle hovel and painstakingly makes his way down to the river’s edge while doing his rounds collecting bottles from the houses he passes on the way. Accompanying him on this meticulous journey through swirling snow is his faithful canine. The sound of bombs and artillery sound in the distance, signalling some kind of conflict in this timeless, dark and gloomy setting. The tone is best described as Fadoesque. After nearly an hour he reaches the river where a boat awaits him as he gingerly sets off gliding gradually through the moonlight and mist. After a while, he sees a figure on the riverbank who then hurries off into the distance, and the man climbs ashore. It would be churlish to say that this feels like watching paint dry, but it certainly does. There are many who delight in this filmmaker’s fare which has echoes of Hungarian master Bela Tarr in its gentle rhythm and cadence. Some find it all mesmerising while others describe the experience as akin to “pulling teeth” or even “Chinese torture”.  In the right mood, it is certainly somnolent. The riverside figure who ran away later emerges as the man’s companion on his return journey, water bottles replete. And this languidly morose segment is regaled with unintelligible dialogue. Cineastes often conflate slow cinema with profundity, and this is certainly the case here.  The Tree will prove delightful for some, purgatory for others. You decide. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Khook | The Pig (2018)*** | Berlinale 2018


Dir/Writer: Mani Haghighi | Cast: Hassan Majooni, Leila Hatami, Leili Rashidi | Comedy | Iran

Narcissism is rife in the creative world and Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi (A Dragon Arrives) mines its funny side in this surreal screwball satire. The Pig’s Telenovela-ish style and garish visual aesthetic may not appeal to everyone, and some of the arcane humour may just go over Western viewers’ heads in sending up the Iranian middle classes who spend their days on the tennis court or channel their artistic energy into louche fancy dress parties (styled here by designer Negar Nemati’s in vibrant pinks and reds), hamstrung by the government’s strict censorship controls.

In downtown Tehran a serial killer is on the loose, but he doesn’t pick any old victim – the heads he decapitates belong to famous film directors, and black-listed helmer Hasan Kasmai (Hasan Majuni) is furious that he’s still alive, and despite his mother’s assurances that he deserves to die on account of his brilliance, Hasan remains petulant at being ignored especially as one of victims is Rakshan Bani-Etemad, who has championed women’s issues and bravely challenged the censorship code.

Haghigi’s political piece – which he also produced – sees Iran as a matriarchal society where men are adored and cosseted, particularly by their mothers and wives, who have the last word. Hasan is really just a grouchy Grufalo whose bedroom is cluttered with rock posters and man toys and whose affair with Shiva (a gently humorous Leila Hatami) is doomed to fail due his inactivity film-wise. Despite its flaws and rather unsatisfactory ending, The Pig is a brave attempt to send up Iranian politics and poke affectionate fun at ego-driven artists without offending. It will either win your heart or do you head in. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Fake Tattoos * * (2017) | Berlinale 2018

Dir.: Pascale Plante; Cast: Anthony Therrien, Rose-Marie Perreault, LysandreNadeau, Brigitte Poupart, Nicole-Sylvie Lagarde; Canada 2017, 87 min.

Unlike many new filmmakers, Pascale Plante plays it low-key with this open-ended, bittersweet love mystery that eventually gets lost in its own enigmatic quality.

Theo (Therrien) meets Mag (Perrault) on his 18th birthday, on their way out of a rock concert. They hit it off at once and like the same music, and tattoos – Theo having a talent for drawing them. He lives with his mother (Poupart), but soon moves out to his sister’s, four hours drive away. Mag is a year older than Theo; she looks after her little sister (Nadeau), while her mother (Lagarde) is busy on the dating scene. Theo and Mag Clearly enjoy sex, but we learn next to nothing about them. But Theo has a doomladen quality about him, and slowly he starts to retreat into himself, distancing himself from his mates when he meets wheelchair-bound Kev.

But Plante lets go of her material towards the end: many scenes go on for much too long and the slow-motion sex sequences don’t help the underwhelming narrative, leaving the audience detached despite some strong performances and resplendent images from Vincent Allard. AS

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Unsane (2018) Mubi

Dir: Steven Soderbergh | Cast: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Amy Irving, Juno Temple | Thriller | US

The expression ‘fact is stranger than fiction’ is a glib way of describing certain experiences in our increasingly bizarre world of today. But this unnerving twisty toe-clencher is exactly that. The times we live in are uncertain and strange, anything can happen and it invariably does. And Steven Soderbergh conflates the real and the unreal in his 2018 feature UNSANE, scripted by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer..

Shot on an iPhone (but not so you’d notice) it stars Claire Foy as Sawyer Valentini an ostensibly straightforward career girl whose life becoming increasingly stressful when she is involuntarily confined to a mental institution, after seeking professional advice to avoid a stalker. Many may find this storyline outlandish but there are those who can attest to the manifold ways that stalkers and high-performing psychotics can gain access to remedies in law enabling them to slip through the net and continue menacing their victims, often incriminating them in the process. Pushed over the edge by PSD, Sawyer is forced into a twilight zone of the real and the imaginary when her stalker (Joshua Leonard) appears as a male nurse in the facility where she is now a patient.

This is a compelling and pacy thriller that grips and startles with its psychological meltdown. Soderbergh makes a convincing case for the stalker in creating an antiheroine who is often unsympathetic and as equally hard-edged as her sociopathic hunter who also exhibits traits that are plausible and even appealing, until the final reveal. Soderbergh punctuates the terror with plenty of dark humour and Jay Pharaoh is appealing as Sawyer’s close friend and ally. Juno Temple is the fly in the ointment, playing against her usual type as a trailer trashy fellow inmate. There’s a claustrophobic haunting quality to the iPhone’s gritty indie grittiness. A quick-witted film that keeps you guessing as it careens from panic to paranoia finally delivering a conclusion that satisfies and startles. MT.

NOW ON MUBi | BERLINALE 2018 REVIEW

The Happy Prince (2018) *** Berlinale 2018

Dir: Rupert Everett | Cast: Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Emily Watson

Rupert Everett has made no secret of his appreciation for the British playwright Oscar Wilde having played him in various film and stage adaptations with The Happy Prince being the latest. His debut as director and writer draws comparisons with the theatre outing The Judas Kiss where the focus is Wilde’s controversial relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas – better known as Bosie – a crime that led to several years in a hard larbour camp for which the writer received a posthumous pardon last year.

Taking its title from Wilde’s fairy tale parable about the friendship between a statue and a swallow finding the Kingdom of Heaven after sacrificing their worldly treasures – Wilde is pictured in the opening scene reading this bedtime story to his children in flashback, and at the end, to his protégées, a pair of French urchins (Benjamin Voisin and Matteo Salamone).

In between Everett avoids a straightforward narrative opting for an impressionistic hagiographic hotpotch of visually alluring vignettes that follow Everett’s Wilde as the self-indulgent raconteur of his own decadent final years as a raddled Victorian roué in exile roaming the flesh pots of France and Italy on a flight of fancy, courtesy of a generous allowance from his estranged and undeservedly berated wife Constance (Emily Watson). During this interlude, Wilde emerges as a bloated narcissistic lush mourning his unfinished love affair with the rather fey Bosie (Colin Morgan), while dallying with the more reasonable Robbie Ross, his literary agent. He eventually reunites with Bosie in scenes that suggest their affair is fired as much by lust as by mutual understanding. Everett makes the decision to flip from French to English accentuating the rather pretentious tone of the piece and detracting from the moments of coruscating wit that pepper Wilde’s caustic repartee.

Although the result is an ethereal feast for the eyes this is a film far too floaty and dramatically unsubstantial to sustain the attention for its 103 minutes, despite some sterling underpinnings from Everett himself, Colin Firth as Wilde’s old habitué Reggie Turner and a thoughtful but underwritten Emily Watson. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 18 June 2018 | Berlinale 2018 review

First Stripes | Premieres Armes * * * (2018) | Berlinale 2018


Dir.: Jean-Francois Caissy; Documentary; Canada 208, 106 min.

After visiting a care home for the elderly (La Belle Visite), Canadian documentarian Jean-Francois Caissy turns his camera on those starting out in life: young recruits embarking on a 12-week training course for the Canadian Army share their hopes and aims with the director in this informative film.

Some have joined up personal reasons – one young man had promised his father on his dead bed that he would join the Army – but most men are looking for a new challenge. In common with other armies, the Canadian Force is not just about combat training, soldiers can train in engineering and and medicine. Women recruits are still a minority in the challenging male dominated environment, and men are kept firmly under control, although one female recruit talks about the verbal “disrespect”, she encountered. Most of the training is spent teaching males basic hygiene. They don’t seemed to have learnt how to wash their bed linen or clothes. They also lie blatantly about the use of their mobiles outside the prescribed hours. All in all, they come over as immature and hopelessly egocentric. The instructors constantly adopt new ways of making them grow up – but it’s a difficult task.

The women are, on the whole, very serious. One phones her young child regularly, telling the father how privileged he is to be spending every day with his son. Another is delighted to be told  “that she is ready for a great adventure”, at the end of the course. Her instructor also mentions -bizarrely – how ‘inanely’ suited she is to a military career. One man gives combat training the thumbs down and does not want to be talked into joining the fighting unit, although he is eminently suited – he prefers to stay with the non-combat unit he had chosen at the start. There is a plan amongst some of the instructors to “turn back to the 80s style of training”. But by the end it’s clear that the Canadian Army is at home in the 21st century; most of the conflict is banal and the overall tone is very civilised – like Canadian society as a whole.

Caissy mixes training drills with close-up camerawork, and DoP Nicolas Canniccioni familiarises us with the recruits’ faces, with lingering shots and clear framing. First Stripes is a sober but absorbing portrait of modern army training that avoids any sensationalism. AS

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Black 47 * (2018) Berlinale 2018

Dir: Lance Daly | Cast: Hugo Weaving, James Frecheville, Stephen Rea, Barry Keoghan, Freddie Fox | Ireland | Drama

Lance Daly’s dreary historical revenge drama revisits the peak of Ireland’s potato famine (1847) from the perspective of a raw and wretched Irish ranger who has served the British Army abroad. The malcontent has a particular axe to grind in this story, and his weapon of choice is a vicious shortened sabre that slices through anyone who gets in his way when his plans to escape the rain-soaked Emerald Isle for pastures new in America are scuppered.

Martin Feeney (a deeply sinister looking Frecheville), has deserted the Imperial army and finds his way back to Ireland to find his family has been largely wiped out and his brother hanged by the local English judge. His neighbours are now outcasts in their own country and Feeney launches a bitter vendetta, clearly posing a a threat to the powers that be. So along comes Captain Hannah (Hugo Weaving) who is tasked by the English, against his will, to track Feeney down.

If Daly’s plan was to worsen British Irish relations further by drudging up a miserable period of the nation’s past, at least he could have made a better more well-balanced job of it than this rather predictable, one-sided and cliche-ridden piece of cinema. The Great Famine was clearly a complete nightmare for both sides. Ireland had become part of the United Kingdom in 1801 but sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics causing religious wars during the 17th century had been made worse by the country’s prevailing economic problems in the 19th century and a general fall in global food prices, and Britain’s change to free trade in the 1840s only really benefited the industrialised North where Protestants predominated. The South relied on agriculture and was badly affected by the Famine which was exacerbated by poor weather. So torrential rain, religious differences and the well-known Colonial arrogance of the era, coalesced to create an unmitigated human disaster. It’s only reasonable that a decent tribute should be made but BLACK 47 was no the way to do it. It shows how Irish families were dying, while the English overlords were mercilessly exporting the little grain that was produced, and to make matters even worse, new eviction laws wreaked havoc among the poverty-stricken population producing the equivalent wide-scale homelessness and mortality seen – on a much larger scale – during Stalin’s policy of collectivism.

In this rather clumsy affair, the English are naturally painted as baddies, the cast are forced to be caricatures of pompous prigs, with the most unspeakably racist dialogue to deliver, which they do with aplomb, but flounder with the native Gaelic. There is the Boris Johnson-quiffed officer Pope (Freddie Fox) and his subaltern (Barry Keoghan from The Killing of a Sacred Deer) ). Even Jim Broadbent plays against his normal liberal type as the sneering snob Lord Kilmichael. Irishman Stephen Rea kisses the proverbial Blarney Stone as a wandering troubadour Conneely, who offers to help the English with his ‘lore of the land’. From the get-go  you wouldn’t trust him to post a letter, and he’s perfect in the part giving a peerless performance as a sly and slippery savant, flight of foot and mind.

And what a gift this story could have been if more equitable hands had mined the rich vein of dramatic potential in this land of misty seascapes, rich folklore and canny characters smouldering in wait for the British army. Instead we get a one-sided and schematic narrative with the English painted as unremitting rogues and a support cast of zombie-like faceless Irish freaks drifting around in bleached-out set pieces. Each scene is as predictable and the last. The only part with any real nuance, aside from Stephen Rea’s, is Hugo Weaving’s Hannah. There is breadth to his character and he plays the dark horse ’til the final hurdle. But what a travesty the rest of it is. Clearly Black 47 is intended as a flag-waving crowd-pleaser for the Irish, but it is a lazy, feel-bad movie for British audiences, opening old wounds and striking another blow for diplomacy, offering little hope for reconciliation over events that happened in the dim and  distant past. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2018

The Real Estate (2018)**** | Berlinale 2018

xDir: Mans Mansson | Writer: Axel Petersen | Cast: Léonore Ekstrand, Christer Levin, Christian Saldert | Drama | Sweden | 88′

There’s no denying the similarities between the Grenfell tragedy and this caustic character thriller which shows that owning property can be as horrendous as not owning it. THE REAL ESTATE also offers a bracing blast of inventiveness to this year’s Berlinale line-up in a narrative that relies on its dissonant electronic score as much as its vibrant often chaotic images. In the wake of the European housing crisis this Swedish experience explores what happens when an elderly expat inherits a large block of flats from her father, forcing her to return home to Sweden and deal with the estate.

This darkly abrasive drama is not made easier to stomach due to its unlikeable characters. Nojet (Léonore Ekstrand) and her brother-in-law and nephew lock horns over her inheritance when it emerges that the men have sold illegal leases to the tenants on the 7th floor, not only making a sale of the block almost impossible – due to these existing tenants’ rights – but also revealing their widescale mismanagement of the property and trousering of the resulting funds: the heiress is faced with an intractable situation from which she cannot simply even walk away.

Described by the filmmakers Axel Petersén and Måns Månsso as a ‘family affair’ allowed them to get up really close and personal with Léonore Ekstrand, the only professional actor here who gives a feisty turn as a hard-nosed wealthy woman who had clearly retreated to sunnier climes, but retirement has not softened her toughness when it comes to business. After the funeral service and crematorium scene – pictured at hideously close quarters – Nojet gets down and dirty with her claws out. There’s an uncomfortable detachment here which has much in common with Ulrich Seidl or even Jonathan Glazer and the Swedes keep the tension taut with a jagged and unpredictable tale which sees Nojet decamp to the countryside home of her father’s lawyer, played by a dissipated Christer Levin, who has a lethal arsenal of weapons and is also a rather good cook. As with Grenfell, it soon emerges through Nojet’s door to door enquiries at the block that many of the inhabitants are subletting illegally or are immigrants. She gets intimate with a potential buyer who gives the property (and then Nojet herself) a good going over, but then backs off due to the inherent complications.

The ingenious plotline and bracing aesthetic is certainly a shot in the arm for avant-garde cinema, but may shoot itself in the foot beyond diehard arthouse audiences. This is an unsettlingly aggressive film with its hard-angled baleful bitterness, but those who stick with it may even applaud is sensory onslaught and shaky handheld camerawork. This is an intrepid and caustic film about sharks. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

The Prayer * * * (2018) | Berlinale 2018


Dir: Cedric Kahn | Fanny Burdino | Cast: Anthony Bajon, Damien Chapelle, Alex Brendemuhl, Hanna Schygulla | Drama | France | 107′

Best known for his 2004 drama Red Lights, based on Georges Simenon’s novel, French filmmaker Cédric Kahn returns to Berlin with this traditional but drifting coming of age love story that explores the road to salvation for a teenage boy who joins a Christian retreat after becoming lost in a world of drugs and drinking.

Newcomer Anthony Bajon leads an impressive cast that includes Damien Chapelle and Hannah Schygulla’s mother superior, and while he makes a great screen debut expressing the confusion and anguish of puberty, the real star of the film is Bruno Dumont’s regular DoP Yves Cape whose widescreen images evoke the fresh verdance and soul-regenerating benefits of the Auvergne in springtime. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | SILVER BEAR Best Actor | Anthony Bajon

The Silk and the Flame (2018)* * * | Berlinale 2018

Dir.: Jordan Schiele; Documentary with Yao Shuo, Fu Qin, Ma Qin; USA 2018, 87 min.

Shot in moody black and white, Jordan Schiele’s documentary sees the future colliding heartbreakingly with the past and rural family life in a village in Henan, central China.

Yao, a gay man in his late thirties, arrives from Beijing to celebrate the New Year along with three billion or so other workers who make this annual pilgrimage to be with their families. The journey takes nearly four days, not the usual nine hours. Yao is successful in a modern sense, with an MA his salary helps his extended family to survive in the 21st century. His parents are still waiting for him to settle down but he keeps his sexuality a secret, out of guilt, and events invents fake girl friend, who just happens to be in Korea over the New Year. The whole family watches him Skype her on his mobile.

Schiele joins Yao on his journey south and tries to talk world politics with his bedridden father Fu Qin – who was forced to beg in his childhood and has suffered two strokes. Yao’s deaf and dumb mother Mu Qin, is also a full-time carer to her husband, coping with his total immobility. The family room of the ramshackle house is dominated by a poster of the young Mao – Yao tells us that his father prays both to Mao and Jesus to make him mobile again. Yao’s brother Fu Qin is clearly the family favourite but Yao is always aware of his otherness: Managing the expectations of his family and former teacher are a constant concern. “I never visited him with a girl, and now the first friend I introduce to him is a man”. A sombre ending, when the two men drive away in their car after the festive season, concludes this gloomy visit – the fireworks providing the only upbeat moments.

Everybody seems to talk all the time about their happy family life but Schiele makes clear that the opposite is mostly the case. Yao even contemplates marrying a woman just to keep his family happy. Such are the pressures of the ties that bind. For all its cultural differences, China is no different from anywhere else: underneath the multi-layered family conflicts everyone keep the status quo. An eerie atmosphere of repression and denial makes for an often strange, but fascinating watch. AS

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

The Cranes Are Flying | Letjat schurawli (1957) Berlinale Classics 2018

Dir.: Mikhail Kalatozov; Cast: Tatjana Samoylava, Aleksey Batalov, Vasily Merkuryev, Aleksandr Shvorin; USSR 1957, 95 min.

Mikhail Kalatosov (1903-1973) led Soviet cinema back to the lyricism of Pudovkin and Eisenstein, and broke with the hollow realism and personality cult of the Stalin era. The director owes much to the collaboration of DoP Sergei Urussevsky and editor Marya Timofeyeva – even though the actress Tatjana Samoylava, in the centre role of Veronika, got most of the attention at Cannes Film Festival in 1958, where The Cranes won the Palme D’Or and Samoylava Best Actress.

Boris (Batalov) and Veronika are a happy couple when Germany invades the Soviet Union in June 1941. Boris immediately joins the Red Army, to defend the Motherland, but is soon killed at the front. Veronika is unnaware of his death, and after her parents are killed in an air raid, she moves in with her uncle Fyodor (Merkuryev), a surgeon, and his cousin Mark (Shvorin), a pianist, who rapes Veronica during an air raid, and she is forced to marry him. When Fyodor discovers that Mark has bribed the authorities to avoid being drafted, he throws him out of the house. Veronica wants to commit suicide, but is saved at the last moment, when she spots an abandoned child, needing her help. Only at the end of the war does she accept that Boris is dead, giving the flowers she brought him to the returning soldiers.

Kalatosov (I am Cuba, The Red Tent) breaks many taboos of the Stalin period – where it was unconscionable to admit that citizens bribed officials in order to avoid conscription. Rape, even in this very nuanced form, had never been shown before. And a heroine, who even seriously contemplated suicide  – never mind being a second away from it – had no place in a cinema throttled to death by censorship.

Urussevsky’s often handheld camera is extremely mobile, and his moody black-and-white images glow in depicting a private and public world in chaos. Samoylava’s heartfelt acting is never sentimental and Kalatosov helps the re-birth of Soviet cinema by going back to the masters of the first hour after the revolution. Without any exaggeration, one can say that this feature deservedly buried Stalinist film culture in the muckheap of history.

AS
*****

Teatro de Guerra (2018) * * * | Berlinale 2018 Forum

Dir/Writer: Lola Arias | Doc | Argentina, Spain 2018

The Falklands War (1982-84)  took the lives of 655 Argentinian and 255 British soldiers. It ended in Argentina’s military defeat and in territorial claims on both sides that remain contentious to this day.
Experimental in nature, this frank and often moving film essay from Argentinian artist and filmmaker Lola Arias tries to discover if past trauma can ever be resolved by collectively revisiting the memories by giving soldiers from both sides a chance to explore their feelings and even re-enact their experiences 34 years after hostilities officially ended. This is an illuminating piece of filmmaking that puts us at the cutting edge of the combat through face to face interviews; news footage and staged episodes of the conflict enacted by those who actually took part.

Now in their early 50s, the 12 veterans from both sides, bear their souls in a piece that swings between moments of anguish and absurd comedy. At one point the men even break into song and perform together in a rock band, emoting and finding a cathartic outlet for their anxiety from the past. This makes for an interactive cinema – the soldiers finding a space to release their trauma and viewers experiencing the full throttle of their pain – and even elation. An engaging piece of cinema that grapples with the coal face of conflict in new and inventive ways. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | BERLINALE FORUM PRIZE | ECUMENICAL JURY | CICAE ART CINEMA AWARD

 

Cross My Heart | Les Rois Mongols (2018) | Berlinale 2018

Dir.: Luc Picard; Cast: Milya Corveil-Gauvreau, Henry Picard, Anthony Bouchard, Alexis Guay, Clare Coulter; Canada 2017, 101 min.

Director Luc Picard (Esimesac) and  Nicole Belanger adapt her book into a moving feature about children caught up in the world of adults and their often heartless pragmatism.

At the height of the ‘October Crisis’ in Canada, when separatists of the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front) kidnapped and killed the Deputy Prime Minister Pierre Laporte on October 17th 1970, four children from Montreal took a leaf out of the book of adult politics and staged their own kidnapping. Teenager Manon (Corveil-Gauvreau) overhears her mother talking to a social worker about her plans to separate her kids to the care of foster parents: their father is dying of cancer, and the mother is near a nervous breakdown. During the father’s illness, Manon and Mimi often stayed at their aunt’s house with their two cousins. Martin has a crush on Manon,  a good Catholic girl. She first asks Jesus for help, but after nothing happens, loses her faith. Martin, on the other hand, promises to help. Inspired by the actions of his student brother Paul, he suggests a kidnapping might put paid to the break up of Manon’s family. The two teenagers abduct a wheelchair-bound neighbour (Coulter) and escape into a cabin in the north of the country, taking the enthusiastic Mimi and Denis with them. But they leave the ransom note – a near exact copy of the actual kidnapping demand, signed Family Cell instead of Chernier Cell. Later, in the cold cabin, the five bond after a shaky beginning: the old lady is a good grandmother to the little boys in spite of her lack of French, and the teenagers make it to the first kiss, before the police intervene. Manon is put into a home for juvenile delinquents – but her quest to free her brother is only a step away from becoming reality.

Picard describes the different worlds of adults and children with much imagination: they just want to be adults before their time. Their naivety and lack of judgement leads them to behave it a way that may work in the world of kids, but not in a world corrupted by adult scheming. The biggest difference between these two universes is adult adjustment – which children like Manon and Mimi – see as treachery. All four young actors are brilliant, and DoP Francois Dutil’s images are the stunnung stuff of fairy tales. The world of the adults is suitably grey and brown; the kids’ kingdom full of vibrant brillliance. This is a film for children and adults who still see themselves as kids, at heart. And who haven’t forgotten the power of make believe and magic. AS

BERLINALE 14 -24 FEBRUARY 2018 | Crystal Bear for the Best Film Generation Kplus

Grass (2018) | Berlinale 2018 Forum

Dir: Hong Sangsoo | Drama | Cast: Kim Minhee, Jung Jinyoung, Ki Joobong, Seo Younghwa, Kim Saebyuk, Ahn Jaehong, Gong Minjeung | Korea 2018 | Korea, 66 min

GRASS is Hong Sangsoo’s shortest film so far but he returns once again to familiar territory, this time in black and white, a exploring the dynamic between men and women when they first meet. And this one is as light-hearted as ever and takes place in a single location in the Korean capital of Seoul: a cafe with classical music. Strains of Wagner and Schubert can be heard as his regular muse Kim Min-hee, but this time there’s a twist. The heroine is using the other customers in the place as characters in a series of stories, even adapting their conversations for the dialogue while the food and Korean soju flows.

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Figlia Mia (2018) **** | Berlinale 2018

Dir: Laura Bispuri | Francesca Manieri | Cast: Valeria Golino, Alba Rohrwacher, Udo Kier, Sara Casu | Drama | Italy

A new crop of talented directors have breathed life into contemporary Italian cinema, with fascinating stories capturing the country’s vibrant history and regions. Paolo Sorentino’s The Great Beauty and The Consequences of Love are set in Rome and Ticino; Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by your Name/A Bigger Splash champion Emilia Romagna and Pantellaria, and Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders takes place in Tuscany, but and all luxuriate in their stunning scenery and unique sense of place. Laura Bispuri follows her debut Sworn Virgin – a story of a woman who travels from Albania to modern day Milan, with this gut-wrenching motherhood ménage à trois, marking her out as a distinctive cinematic voice with her stories of women coping in challenging circumstances.

FIGLIA MIA is set in summertime Sardinia, amongst a simple fishing community in an ancient coastal setting. This is about a little girl called Vittoria who suddenly senses that a woman she gets to know during her school holidays (Angelica, Alba Rohrwacher in a career best) is actually her real mother – rather than Tina (a captivating Valeria Golino) the loving woman she’s grown up with. Angelica is irresponsible but charismatic: one of those women who lives and loves for the moment – mostly out of control, and incapable of looking after her dogs and horses, let alone another human being. At first, like in a love affair, Vittoria falls for Angelica’s sense of fun, but is always glad to return to the calm security Tina provides. And as Vittoria becomes more obsessed with Angelica, Tina, feels jealous and threatened.

Bispuri’s narrative unfurls in an unhurried fashion while the women instinctive play their parts – this is a deeply affecting tale that will resonate with anyone who’s been affected by the issues at stake. Themes of identity, belonging and loss all macerate in the heady heat of this sweltering Mediterranean island, where a tightly-knit community are thrown together for better and for worst. The only character who holds the power is Angelica, and she couldn’t give a damn. While Tina’s desperate fear of losing her child, her feminine identity, and also of being humiliated, are powerfully expressed in Golino’s visceral tour de force. Sardinia corruscates in Vladan Radovic’s  stunning cinematography, its potent emotion and windswept beauty recalling the Taviani Brothers’ Padre Padrone another memorable Italian inter-generational tale of the ties that bind and threaten to divide. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

https://vimeo.com/255511153

 

The Omission *** (2018) | Panorama

Dir.: Sebastian Schjaer; Cast: Sofia Brito, Malena Hernandez-Diaz, Lisandro Rodriguez, Laura Lopez Moyano, Pablo Sigal; Argentina/Franc/Germany 2017, 90′.

Sebastian Schjaer has set his beguiling, enigmatic debut high in the mountains of Argentine’s Tierra del Fuego. Like a puzzle, the pieces fall slowly into place, before a surprise ending questions everything we have seen before in this slim but affecting drama.

We first meet Paula (Brito) on a bus in Buenos Aires. She is heading south to the mountain region to work in a hotel during the holiday season and as a part-time tour guide to raise money to fund a better life with her boyfriend Diego (Sigal) – the two have a five-year old daughter, Malena (Hernandez-Diaz) who is being looked after by Laura’s aunt (Lopez Mayano), while she saves up for a visa to Canada to visit Diego’s parents. One dark morning Paula meets a photographer, Manuel, and begins to rethink her sketchily laid out plans. But when the hotel management cheats her out of her wages, Paula starts seeing Manuel (Rodriguez) who is so smitten that he agrees pays her for sex. On top of it, he arranges for Paula to be employed as a photographer.

Paula seems to be running away from something: we often see her in transit, buses and cars – and again and again, running. She seems afraid of any emotional contact, apart from her relationship with her daughter, whom she adores. But Paula treats both the men in her life with utter detachment. Her self-esteem is brittle, and she quails away from making decisions. Viewing her life from the outside in, she seems to exude a strength which men find appealing. They flock to her, asking for her commitment, which she is not (yet) ready to give. Every step she takes is an intermediate one, the goal perhaps even unknown to her.

Schjaer directs with great sensibility, and Ines Ducacastella’s (mostly) handheld camerawork  vibrantly catches Paula in perpetual motion. What emerges in the end is a portrait of a woman who is on the way to self-definition under her own terms. AS

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY | PANORAMA

Cobain (2018) *** | Berlinale 2018

Dir: Nanouk Leopold | Cast: Bas Keizer, Naomi Vellissariou; Wim Opbrouck, Dana Marineci | DRAMA | Netherlands/Belgium/Germany 2018, 93′.

Director Nanouk Leopold (It’s all so quiet) and producer/writer Stienette Bosklopper have created a small, intimate social drama, which is carried by the lead actors and the imaginative images of DoP Frank van den Eeden, which always favour expressionism over realism.

We first meet the 15-year old runaway after he is caught for fare-avoidance in the metro. Cobain (Keizer) is living in a care home, and is due to be released to foster parents. Hating his name (“Nobody can spell it, and who want’s to be called after a guy who shot himself?”), he is searching for his single mother Mia. He only lasts a day at the foster home before  he is on the road again. When he eventually meets Mia – who goes on calling him ‘my little man’ – she is pregnant, and still on drugs. It does not help, that Cobain’s next port of call is the sinister Wickmeyer (Opbrouck), pimp and drug dealer, and once Mia’s employer. Cobain, following Wickmeyer like a lapdog, soon finds out that one of his ‘girls’, Adele (Marineci), has withheld some payment from her boss, and Cobain, who has just put lipstick on, forces her to sleep with him as price for his silence. He seems happiest with the pet iguana: looking more and more the child he really is. When Mia turns up at Winkmeyer’s, the latter insults her, and forces Cobain to take sides. After a visit to the hospital, Cobain learns, that his mother is still taking drugs, and endangering the baby. In his desperation, he takes his mother to a remote countryside house, and locks her in. Whilst well meaning, he has no idea about the dramatic consequences of his action.

Neglected all his life, Cobain, is unsure about everything, even of his sexual orientation. The adults he meets, are either paid for giving him attention, like the social workers, or even more unstable than himself, like his mother and the Winkmeyer set-up. There is a sad, but funny scene in the house, where the girls lounge around, one of them is a sex-manual reading in halting Dutch: “When you have mastered the missionary position, it is time to go on to more advanced practices.” They are all exploited by Winckmeyer, and Cobain might put lipstick on, to show solidarity with the women. And this evaluation becomes true, when the ‘boss’ attacks him, with clear sexual undertones, before ordering Adele into a bedroom.

The images are often dreamy, when Cobain closes his eyes, his field of vision becomes blurred, and he possibly thinks of a better world. Cobain is most at piece at the countryside, even his mother is positively impressed by the outdoor silence. The long rides on the motorcycle are reminiscent of the Dardenne Brothers, and Leopold is equal to their sensitive directing style. Overall, Cobain is a melancholic moody drama, with shades of the old fashioned French poetic realism. AS

BERLINALE 14 – 24 FEBRUARY 2018

 

Eva (2018) * * * | Berlinale 2018


Dir: Benoit Jacquot | Gilles Taurand | James Hadley Chase | Cast Isabelle Huppert, Gaspard Ulliel, Julia Roy | Drama | France | 100

Benoit Jacquot (‘A Single Girl’) and Isabelle Huppert (‘Elle’) are together in this enjoyable but unconvincing adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s sixties bestseller Eva.

Annecy is the snow-capped setting for this often unsettling menage a trois that would have us believe that a good-looking young gigolo (Gaspard Ulliel) leaves his luscious blond babe (Julia Roy) and falls in thrall to an ageing geisha girl (Isabelle Huppert) whose stick is ‘treat ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen.

But what starts an alluring affair rapidly loses its way. That said It’s typically French, flirty and fun. Jacquot and scripter Gilles Taurand’s version opens as wannabe something Bertrand (Ulliel), is tending to the needs of a dying writer – whether as carer or call boy is never made clear here. As the old man chokes, Bertrand makes off with his manuscript of a play entitled Passwords, hoping to make it to the bright lights which he does with his wealthy girlfriend in tow. But the second play poses a problem and his producer (Richard Berry) is becoming impatient.

Despite its light-hearted overtones there’s a menacing Hitchockian undertow that keeps the noirish tension tight and ticking over as the action unfurls with its rather unsavoury characters that definitely have a retro twang of the Sixties. Isabelle Huppert does her stuff with perky aplomb but we never really buy into the dicy dynamic between her and Ulliel which eventually leads to his undoing. quickly becomes an obsession that will ruin his life in a drama, that while entertaining to a certain extent is ultimately rather empty.

BERLINALE 15-25 February 2018 | COMPETITION

Horizon (2018) * * * * Berlinale 2018

Dir.: Tinatin Kajrishvilli; Cast: George Bochorishvilli, Ia Sukhitashvilli, Jano Izoria, Lika Okroshvilli, Nana Datunnashvilli, Sergo Buiglishvilli; Georgia/Sweden 2018, 105 min.

Director/co-writer Tinatin Kajrishvilli (Brides) creates an atmospheric, elegiac portrait of lost love and self-destruction. Set mainly in the ravishing countryside of Georgia, Horizonti is full of passion and longing, a paean to the past that echoes a Chekov play.

Still in his thirties, Giorgi (an impressive George Bochorishvilli) lives a life straight out of the 19th century. Separating from his wife Ana (Ia Sukhitashi) has been a traumatic process – at heart he is a brooding, disillusioned romantic and he retreats to the coast where the region’s swamps and lakes suit his gloomy temperament. Ana has left him for Nico (Buiglishvilli) so Giorgi now takes refuge in the company of elderly Georgians who also mourn the old country.

There is Larisa (Datunashvilli), who dies on the eve of her journey to attend a wedding in the city: she does want to leave the slightly crazy Valiko, who always lets the chicken run free – and plays billiards alone. Only Jano (Izoria), a friend from George’s past, and Marika (Okroshidze) are of Georgi’s generation. But even though Ana has made it clear she is going to marry Niko soon, Giorgi does not want to accept reality: he always uses their two sons as an excuse to visit Ana, whose wedding to Nico is now imminent.

They spend a miserable time in a hotel near the sea, before Giorgi sets out to bury himself for ever in an outpost near the lakes.The snowy countryside is breath-taking, Irakli Akhalkatsi’s visual are mostly widescreen impressionistic paintings: a wounded animal, George becomes one with the landscape. Doom-laden from the beginning, he even looses his zest for hunting and starts drinking again. There is a symbolic walk along the seaside, Ana with her new husband  Niko, and the two children. At the end it is Ana who is lost in the boat, taking her back to the city: Giorgi was like a feral animal, who liked to roam – she certainly loved him once, but now she has finally set him free. AS

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Central Airport THF **** | Berlinale 2018 Forum

Dir.: Karim Ainouz; Documentary; Germany/France/Brazil 2018,97’

Brazilian director Karim Ainouz, whose feature Praia do Futuro ran at Berlinale a few years ago, is also known for his installations. This informs his entertaining rather nuanced documentary about the Berlin Flughafen Tempelhof and its refuge camp, which falls very much between the two genres.

Ainouz underlines the absurdity of the situation: as a Syrian refugee how can you integrate smoothly into the high tech capital such as Berlin? Far more than a language problem, it’s a cultural gulf where even the most supportive German administrator struggles to accommodate the new visitors’ trauma – however well meaning they might be. Ainouz plays it shrewdly using minimal dialogue and subtle camerawork, including time-lapse, to convey the confusion as two worlds meet and try to get along. There’s a lowkey tongue in cheek humour between the well-meaning German “Ordnungsliebe” (love of order) with the chaos of the emigrants’ lives. Confrontation was eased to some degree when the refugees found work in the camp’s administration, but it put these administrators into a double-bind: they had to keep both their German bosses and the refugees happy.

Central Airport Berlin Tempelhof opened in 1923, the main building followed three years later. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they vowed to build the largest airport in the world, but the war curtailed their efforts so the airport never became a central piece of Albert Speer’s Germania, the new gigantic capital planned to replace Berlin. At the end of the war, the US Air Force took over the airport, which was to play a big role in the Cold War. After its closure in 2008, Tempelhof became the largest heritage site in Europe and the old runways and the neighbouring fields were used as a “Vergnügunspark” (pleasure ground).

In 2015/16 the German government offered refuge to Syrians and other war-torn victims, but their sheer numbers defied the planners and in Berlin it was decided to house the refuges in the old airport’s huge hangars which very much resemble the setting for a horror film – no wonder, given their history. Security patrols are on 24 hour duty; a fence divides the pleasure ground from the camp facilities. The scene could not be more surreal: German families having a good time in the park, while on the other side of the fence, newcomers struggle to learn a new language and cope in their new homeland. Meanwhile, inside the hangars the contrast between the willing hostages and their sympathetic German hosts continues. German Christmas trees and carols are often lost on the families, who are mainly Muslims. Teenagers adapt more easily, but 18-year old Ibrahim Al Hussain still prefers his old village in the Syrian countryside. A sign on the wall in one of the hangers beats testament to their anguish: ‘I yearn for the dust of Syria’. When the first refugees entered the facility, they were told it would be for six weeks. Many have been here for three years. Al Hussain is one of the luckier ones and will soon start his integration and language course. But for many others, there will be just another harsh winter, with the old runways looking frozen tundra rather than sunny fields.

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRIZE WINNER

https://vimeo.com/255007386

Damsel (2018) | Berlinale 2018

Dir: David Zellner | Nathan Zellner | Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Robert Forster, David Zellner | Comedy Western | US | 113′

David and Nathan Zellner’s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was a strange and subtly humorous mid-West mystery drama that screened at Berlinale in 2014. The brothers are back at Berlin again this year with a full on comedy Western that totally upends conventions and challenges gender roles. It stars Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska and Robert Forster.

DAMSEL is playful and beautiful to look at in its stunning Goblin Valley Utah setting, but its efforts to be inventive is really what really appeals, apart from a brilliant off the cuff script and, despite from the gun-toting and the darker themes of lovelorn loneliness, there’s an upbeat frisky playfulness that has much in common with Cat Balloo and Altman’s McCabe and Mrs Millar.

The film opens as a jaded Christian missionary (Foster) is bemoaning his efforts to proselytise the Native Indians, While waiting for a stagecoach back East, a pithy tete a tete plays out with a young man (a thoughtfully appealing David Z) who’s heading West, after tragedy, to look for a new start.  Suddenly something weird then happens and a more carefree mood carries us  through to a windswept beach in Oregon where Samuel Alabaster (a jaunty Pattinson), has arrived with a miniature Palomino pony Butterscotch, and is making his way into a redneck town where he meets up with David Zellner as the newly-styled Parson Henry.

With his jaunty charm and chipper breeziness Samuel is a man a with a mission – he’s got a proposal in mind and wants the parson to come with him, offering a generous reward. The two head off to the remote home of Samuel’s true love Penelope (Mia Wasikowska) where, brimming with excitement, he intends to make her his bride. His cheeky bravado wins the parson’s trust during their eventful treck, but when they arrive at their destination, it soon becomes clear that Samuel has misjudged the mood romance-wise.

Penelope is a feisty individual but sadly she lack depth – and after the cheerful opening credits – where she’s seen dancing with Samuel in better days, Wasikowska soon becomes a storm cloud without a silver lining of any kind. David’s Parson Henry, meanwhile is a man looking for a mother, rather than a mission. He gives a sensitive performance but his character is so sweet and self-deprecating he’s rather to good for this world, and any other – for that matter. So Robert Pattison’s Samuel gets the juiciest role with he pulls of with great charm, and there are some terrific turns from the support cast. The Brothers’ quirky sense of humour is an acquired taste but its certainly unique and some of the comedic incongruity even echoes early scenes from Blazing Saddles. DAMSEL is a real breath of fresh air. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

https://youtu.be/L6t07LFf5hQ

Kishon (2018) * * * * | Berlinale 2018 | Market EFM

Dir.: Eliav Lilti; Documentary with Renana Kishon, Rafael Kishon, Amir Kishon; Israel 2017, 87 min.

Directed and co-written by Eliav Lilti (Urban Tale), this portrait of Israeli writer, filmmaker and playwright Ephraim Kishon (1924-2005) is mainly told by and from the perspective of his three children. It is not a hagiography of the man who wrote 50 books, 9 plays and directed 5 films, but a tribute to a whole life dominated by the Holocaust, which Kishon survived, but whose shadow he could never escape.

Born in Budapest as Ferenc Hoffmann into a middle-class Jewish family, university was not an option because of the racial laws, so he started to make jewellery instead, before being deported to the camps: “The Jews of Hungary felt safe; they said ’well, even the doctor of the leader Admiral Horthy is Jewish’. But then Horthy send his doctor to Auschwitz and the Jews saw their fatal mistake”.  Kishon survived due to his talent as a chess player: “I did not dare to lose a match to the commandant, because he would have sent me back to the forced labour force”.  Escaping, he found his way back to Budapest where he was reunited with his parents and his sister, who had been saved by a neighbour, whilst the rest of the large family was murdered.

Under Stalinism he made a career with a satirical magazine under the name of Kisthon, also winning a contest for best play which focused on the persecution of all bald people – serving as a metaphor for the Jews – because they had been declared “bad” by the state. He got his prize money but the play was never staged as one of Hungary’s leading politicians, Matyas Rakosy, was famous for his baldness. In 1949 Kisthon emigrated to Israel, where the border clerk renamed him Ephraim Kishon.

After learning Ivrit (Hebrew) whilst working as a janitor in a kibbutz, he took up writing again in his new language. His books and plays were very successfully, and his debut film Sallah Shabati (1964) was nominated for a Foreign Oscar. After what was to be his last film, The Fox in the Chicken Coop (1978) turned out to be a flop, Kishon felt unwelcome in Israel and set up a second home in Appenzell (Switzerland) in 1981. With his books selling in their millions, he was by now more popular in Europe than in Israel. In Germany, “the children of my executioners are queuing for hours to get a signed copy of my books.” He even started writing in German, one of the books called “Mein Kamm” (My Comb). Needless to say what the Israeli reaction was. But Kishon defends himself: “It was not just the Germans; Hungary, Romania and many more states supported the Holocaust. There were 110 000 Waffen-SS volunteers in the Netherlands. If you want a total boycott, you can’t set foot in Europe”.

His children Renana, Rafael (Rafi) and Amir talk about a rather strange upbringing. Driving with thier father in the car, they had to listen to the speeches of Hitler and other leading Nazis. And at bedtime, their father would give them Hitler salute: “That was very typical for my father”, says Renana. He also joked about his time in the camps: “The soda was very flat, no sparkle”. On the other hand, the children were allowed to watch Clockwork Orange and other adult films: “There was no censorship”. The boys could read the Playboy, which their father flaunted at the table. When Sara, his wife of 35 years and mother of his children, was dying of cancer “it turned out, that Dad was not a Mother Theresa. He never took her for treatments, and when she died, he was not present, he could not bring himself to see her”, says Renana tearfully. Whilst Kishon cried a few days after her death whilst receiving the Israel Prize for Life Achievement, he could not refrain from criticising that “it is like a state pardon, to get this prize. It is usually giving to left wingers, who love the Palestinians, and not the settlers.” Renana testifies, that he was always jealous of Amos Oz; and Kishon was angry, that he was not decorated for his writing alone, he felt snubbed, because he was foremost a writer.
Lilti and co-creator Arik Bernstein have integrated cartoons of Kishon, and a animated version of the long interview, Kishon gave to his friend, the journalist Yaron London in Appenzell in the mid-90ies. There are many special effects, like the cartoon versions of Kishon and London walking in 40ies Budapest, whilst the Jews are being deported onto trucks. Kishon is so much more than a biography: it is a history lesson about the force of evil, and its longevity. AS

KISHON is screening as part of Go2Films new line-up in BERLINALE EFM | 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

Museum (20180 | Berlinale Film Festival 2018

Dir: Alonso Ruizpalacios Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Leonardo Ortizgris, Alfredo Castro, Simon Russell Beale, Lisa Owen, Bernardo

 In Alonso Ruizpalacios’ follow-up to his punchy debut Gueros, two wayward young Mexicans from Satellite City are bored with their provincial life so decide to rob the local archeological museum of its Mayan and After treasures in an offbeat but strangely captivating drama that gradually gets more entertaining, although it never quite feels completely satisfying, despite some stunningly inventive sequences and three convincing performances from Gael Garcia Bernal, Simon Russell Beale and Alfredo Castro (The Club).

And it’s largely down to local Mexican incompetence that these two amateurish dudes (Bernal/Ortizgris) get away with their heist in the first place. But what starts as a so-so domestic drama with the same aesthetic as No!, slowly starts to sizzle with suspense as the director deftly manages the film’s tonal shifts to surprise and even delight us – this is a film that deserves a watch for its sheer wakiness and inventive chutzpah. 

It all starts in the early 1970s when Mexico’s rich heritage is being transported from original sites to provide interest in a brand new modernist museum in Satellite. During the Christmas holidays the two sneak away from their families and – in a terrifically tense robbery scene – slowly steal their plunder and make off through ventilation ducts when the alarm finally kick in. One of surreal effects is that Bernal imagines a vision of Pakal, a Mayan king, at the end of the tunnel.

Amazed at how easy it all was, the naive pair then set off to the Mayan site of Palenque to start liquidating funds through their various sources. On the way, they even get through border patrols who are more interested in Bernal’s celebrity (this is all part of Ruizpalacios and his his scripter’s quirky script). But their first hopeful Bosco (Bernardo Velasco), gives them the bum’s rush and they swiftly move on. Acapulco beckons and Simon Russell Beale’s vignette as a wealthy dealer is one of the scenes to savour, adding a certain upmarket whiff to proceedings, and the boys gets their knuckles rapped for wasting his time, retreating to a sleazy  nightclub and more playful fun – thing time involving Sherezada Rios (Leticia Bredice/The Difficult Life of an Easy Woman. 

Bernal plays it all with gusto in a role that sees him flipping from sweet-talking swindler to foolhardy fantasist when he switches off the headlights of their fast-moving car.

Quoting American shaman Carlos Castaneda, he indulges in some very Mexican fantasies about death, invincibility and warriorhood – then stupidly acts them out by switching off his headlights on a pitch-black highway. But reality finally bites in the satisfying denouement when he crashes down to earth with a clip round the ear from his father (a grave Alfredo Castro) forcing him to face his demons, and not only the ones he has stolen. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

The Interpreter (2018) | Berlinale 2018 Special

Wri/Dir: Martin Šulík | DoP: Martin Štrba | German, Slovak, 113′ | Cast: Peter Simonischek, Jiří Menzel, Zuzana Mauréry, Anita Szvrcsek, Anna Rakovská, Eva Kramerová, Réka Derzsi, Attila Mokos, Karol Šimon, Igor Hrabinský | World premiere | Drama

In Martin Šulík’s thriller, Peter Simonischek senses danger when he opens front door of his elegant Vienna appartment to a well-dressed old man Ali Ungár (Jiří Menzel), who later emerges the interpreter in this war-themed drama levened by the same piquant humour as the Austrian actor brought to last year’s standout Toni Erdman.  Orphaned by WW2, he has located the home of the SS Officer who might have killed his parents – or at the very least, knows the location of their final resting place. He instead meets Georg (Peter Simonischek) who informs him that he’s actually the son of the Nazi, and that his father is long dead. A darkly comic exchange follows and Ali heads home to Bratislava.

Ali is short of money and so he grudgingly agrees to meet Georg when he shows up, suggesting an expedition. Georg wants to visit the places his absent father spent time in during the war, and wants Ali to guide him – with a daily fee, naturally. Georg is surprisingly jovial considering he’s planning a tour of holocaust hotspots. This section of the film plays like a geriatric road trip, complete with a jaunty soundtrack. There’s an ironic detachment to the humour, but the tones grows more sober as the crucial nub of the narrative is revealed. A reveal very late in the game makes a delicious twist to proceedings but the film doesn’t hang its hat on this one turn of events.

Both Menzel and Simonischek are brilliant; each are endearing in contrasting ways. Georg is a louche and opportunistic ladies’ man, Ali a serious-minded traditional. Georg’s easy-going glibness collides with Ali’s buttoned up decency: the contradiction provides a frisson and a feels genuine and real. Flipping between comedy and tragedy, Martin Šulík’s buddy drama works through their war-themed conflicts – with a timely resonance that makes The Interpreter feels both retro and refreshingly contemporary. Two ageing men who are keen to free themselves from the past each with a different style but both private and, in a way, isolated. Jiří Menzel plays the role is world-weary and worldly-wise Ali, Peter Simonischek is Georg, the light-hearted maverick with a difficult secret past. The Interpreter is one the best thrillers to come along for some time. MT

BERLINALE SPECIAL PRESENTATION | BERLINALE 2018

https://vimeo.com/254993281

Dovlatov (2018) * * * | Berlinale 2018

Dir: Aleksey German Jr. | Cast: Artur Beschastny, Danila Kozlovsky, Milan Maric, Anton Shagin | 126′

Aleksey German Jr certainly knows how to create a stylish film. Under Electric Clouds was awarded a Silver Bear for Artistic Contribution for Cinematography in 2015, so it is a shame his latest offering about the literary heroes of Russia is another gorgeous cover to a rather empty book.

Set in 1971, it follows the festivities surrounding Leningrad’s October Revolution two decades after the death of Stalin, and is seen from the perspective of budding writer Sergei Dovlatov who, subsequently became a well known author read by millions. Here played by Milan Maric he has moved back in with his mother and is experiencing recurring dreams about Leonid Brezhnev. Communism is very much alive and kicking. But sadly, like a glossy magazine with juicy headlines, this filmic foray never really mines the dramatic potential of the weighty themes and characters it attempts to celebrate.

For all its aspirations Dovlatov is a pseudo intellectual schmooze that glories in an unknown breezy jazz score in the style of Krysztoff Komeda and some soigné cinematography, never quite convinces us of its characters’ desperate misery over their failure to get published. Łukasz Żal’s roving camera haunts the smoky venues where the literati glide endlessly engaged in alcohol-fuelled debate, but we feel little for their plight as real people. We’re expected to oh and ah as Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and Brodsky parade before us but despite their eventual acknowledgement as literary geniuses here they feel here like cardboard cutouts in a school play. Well-clothed and fed, they just swing around Moscow like a group of disenchanted uni students bemoaning their lack of a publisher. One or two dramatic moments puncture the day to day literary lock-down of these writers’ bland existence, but there are no standout performances to speak of: even Dovlatov remains a colourless cypher despite his intellectual pretensions, fecklessly neglects his kid and his intelligent wife (Helena Sujecka). An opportunity to lift the lid on the real lives and characters of these literary giants and the importance of their work has been sadly missed. MT

BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018 | SILVER BEAR for Outstanding Artistic Contribution | Costume and production Design

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) ** Berlinale 2018

Dir: Gus Van Sant | Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black, Udo Kier | Biopic | US 113′

Joaquin Phoenix plays a recovering alcoholic artist in Gus Van Sant’s latest drama. And it’s a gruelling journey padded with scenes of fuzzy humour, based on the autobiography of prolific cartoonist John Callahan whose drawings lighten the load. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot chronicles the aftermath of an accident which leaves him quadriplegic, his doodles providing a creative outlet for his bitter frustration and struggle to come off the wagon, in a reduced physical state.

On and off screen lover-cum-nurse Annu (Rooney Mara) gives him affectionate support along with John (Joaquin Phoenix) his patron, gay philanthropist Donnie (Jonah Hill). Feelgood but toothless, Don’t Worry is also quite tedious to watch as the frequent flashbacks shows the before and after, Phoenix often wallowing in self-pity and milking his melancholy for all he can get. But there are amusing scenes where he rides his wheelchair in traffic and up skateboard ramps. When it comes to paraplegic comedy dramas, Kills on Wheels (2016) did it better, along with the memorable Untouchable (2011).

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot tries to be touching and soulful in its portrait of redemption. And despite its strong cast, it just adds insult to injury. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | BERLINALE REVIEW 2018

Willem Defoe | Berlinale Homage 2018

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival is awarding the American actor Willem Defoe with an Honorary Golden Bear in recognition of his career featuring over 100 performances and spanning nearly 40 years since his 1981 debut in Kathryn Bigelow’s debut drama The Loveless. His enormous technical range as an actor extends all the way from the personification of the unfathomably evil to the portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth. In addition to his celebrated cinematic appearances, Dafoe has also pursued a parallel career in theatre, his other passion.

Born in Wisconsin in 1955, Willem Dafoe began studying theatre formally at the age of 17. In 1977, he was one of the founding members of the renowned New York theatre ensemble “The Wooster Group”, where he remained a member for several decades. In addition to his activities on stage, Dafoe increasingly began to turn his attention to film work starting in the early 1980s. Walter’s Hill’s Streets of Fire (1984) was soon followed by William Friedkin’s police thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) where he played ruthless counterfeiter Eric “Ric” Masters, a villain who will stop at nothing to rival his adversaries.

In 1986, Dafoe’s portrayal of Sergeant Elias Grodin in Oliver Stone’s anti-war drama Platoon would expose him to a wider audience. He received his first Academy Award nomination for his performance in the break-through film. Two years later, Martin Scorsese successfully recruited him to fill the leading role as Jesus Christ in his hotly debated literary adaptation The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Still in the same year, Dafoe co-starred alongside Gene Hackman in director Alan Parker’s civil-rights-era drama Mississippi Burning (1988) (right). In the film, Dafoe plays a young FBI agent fighting against racism and the Ku Klux Klan.

Many multifaceted roles would follow, in films such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Wim Wenders’ In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close! 1993) and The English Patient (1996). In the year 2000, Dafoe shined as Max Schreck in the horror film Shadow of the Vampire by director E. Elias Merhige. His brilliant turn as a member of the undead earned him his second Academy Award nomination.

In 2002 Dafoe appeared under the direction of Paul Schrader in the biopic Auto Focus. In 2004 Dafoe collaborated with director Wes Anderson on the latter’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Parallel to these appearances, he slipped into the role of Norman Osborn, aka the villainous “Green Goblin”, three times for the Spider-Man movie franchise (in 2002, 2004 and 2007).

In 2009 Danish director Lars von Trier cast him as the male lead alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg in his psycho-thriller Antichrist – the film became the subject of controversy due to scenes featuring graphic sex and violence. In 2011 Dafoe put on an extraordinary acting performance once again as a lonely hunter in Daniel Nettheim’s thriller The Hunter. Three years later, in Abel Ferrara’s biopic (right) Pasolini Dafoe portrayed the Italian filmmaker in the final period of his life, shortly before his murder.

Last year Dafoe has appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s feature Murder on the Orient Express (2017). The German-American joint effort The Sleeping Shepherd (directed by Frank Hudec) is currently in pre-production. He has also finished filming under the direction of Julian Schnabel for At Eternity’s Gate, in which he plays Vincent van Gogh. Dafoe’s role in The Florida Project earned him both a nomination for the British BAFTA Awards and recently his third nomination for an Academy Award, in the category of Best Supporting Actor.

The ten films of the Berlinale Homage:

 

Antichrist (Denmark / Germany / France / Sweden / Italy / Poland 2009, Director: Lars von Trier)
Auto Focus (USA 2002, Director: Paul Schrader)
The Hunter (Australia 2011, Director: Daniel Nettheim) (image/left)
The Last Temptation of Christ (USA / Canada 1988, Director: Martin Scorsese)
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (USA 2004, Director: Wes Anderson)
Mississippi Burning (USA 1988, Director: Alan Parker)
Pasolini (France / Italy / Belgium 2014, Director: Abel Ferrara)
Platoon (USA 1986, Director: Oliver Stone)
Shadow of the Vampire (USA / United Kingdom / Luxembourg 2000, Director: E. Elias Merhige)
To Live and Die in L.A. (USA 1985, Director: William Friedkin)

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | 14 – 24 FEBRUARY 2018 

Berlinale Competition titles | 15-25 February 2018

The Berlin Film Festival  – Competition line-up complete

Directors including Benoit Jacquot, Gus Van Sant, Alexey German Jr, Małgorzata Szumowska, Thomas Stuber and Laura Bispuri will compete in this year’s Competition while Isabel Coixet and Lars Kraume feature in the Berlinale Special strand.

Berlinale will open for the first time with an animation feature, Isle of Dogs, by Wes Anderson, in a dazzling line-up of World premieres starring the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara and Jack Black. For Alexei German Jr, this is his second Berlin’s competition title since Under Electric Clouds in 2015. He returns with a feature that follows several days in the life of Russian writer Sergei Dovlatov.

Jacquot’s thriller Eva, played by Isabelle Huppert, a playwright encounters a mysterious woman when he takes shelter in a chalet during a violent snowstorm. The feature is based on James Hadley Chase’s novel Eve is the sixth time the French director Jacquot and Huppert have worked together. Jeanne Moreau originally played her part in a 1962 adaptation directed by Joseph Losey. This latest version World premieres at Sundance in January. Stuber’s drama In The Aisles stars Toni Erdmann actress Sandra Hüller, while Bispuri’s drama Daughter Of Mine, explores a young girl’s relationship with both her biological and adoptive mothers. This is the second time Alexei German Jr’s work plays in competition since his 2015 feature Under Electric Clouds.

Meanwhile, Coixet’s drama The Bookshop sees British Actress Emily Mortimer playing a woman who decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield.

Competition Line-up

U – 22 July (Norway) 

Dir: Erik Poppe (The King’s Choice)

Cast: Brede Fristad, Ada Eide, Andrea Berntzen, Ingeborg Enes

World Premiere

7 Days in Entebbe | USA/UK |

Dir: José Padilha (The Elite Squad, Garapa) |

Cast: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl, Eddie Marsan, Lior Ashkenazi, Denis Menochet, Ben Schnetzer

World premiere – Out of competition

Ága | Bulgaria/Ger/France

Dir: Milko Lazarov (Otchuzhdenie) | Cast:Mikhail Aprosimov, Feodosia Ivanova, Galina Tikhonova, Sergey Egorov, Afanasiy Kylaev | World premiere – Out of competition

Ang panahon ng halimaw (Season of the Devil) | Philippines

Dir: Lav Diaz (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, The Woman Who Left)

Cast: Piolo Pascual, Shaina Magdayao, Pinky Amador, Bituin Escalante, Hazel Orencio, Joel Saracho, Bart Guingona, Angel Aquino,  | World premiere

Museo (Museum) | Mex | Dir Alonso Ruizpalacios (Güeros)

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Leonardo Ortizgris, Alfredo Castro, Simon Russell Beale, Bernardo Velasco, Leticia Brédice, Ilse Salas, Lisa Owen
World premiere

 

Unsane  | USA
By Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, The Good German)

Dir: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple, Aimee Mullins, Amy Irving

World premiere – Out of competition

3 Tage in Quiberon 3 DAYS IN QUIBERON  

Germany / Austria / France
Dir: Emily Atef (Molly’s Way, The Stranger In Me)
With Marie Bäumer, Birgit Minichmayr, Charly Hübner, Robert Gwisdek, Denis Lavant
World premiere

 

Black 47 
Ireland / Luxembourg
By Lance Daly (Kisses, The Good Doctor)
With Hugo Weaving, James Frecheville, Stephen Rea, Freddie Fox, Barry Keoghan, Moe Dunford, Sarah Greene, Jim Broadbent
World premiere – Out of competition

Damsel 
USA
By David Zellner, Nathan Zellner (Kid-Thing, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter)
With Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Robert Forster, Joe Billingiere | International premiere

 

Eldorado – Documentary
Switzerland / Germany
By Markus Imhoof (The Boat Is Full, More Than Honey)
World premiere – Out of competition

 

Las herederas (The Heiresses)
Paraguay / Germany / Uruguay / Norway / Brazil / France
By Marcelo Martinessi
With Ana Brun, Margarita Irún, Ana Ivanova
World premiere – First Feature

 

Khook (Pig)
Iran
By Mani Haghighi (Modest Reception, A Dragon Arrives!)
With Hasan Majuni, Leila Hatami, Leili Rashidi, Parinaz Izadyar, Ali Bagheri
World premiere

 

La prière (The Prayer)
France
By Cédric Kahn (Red Lights, Wild Life)
With Anthony Bajon, Damien Chapelle, Alex Brendemühl, Louise Grinberg, Hanna Schygulla
World premiere

Toppen av ingenting (The Real Estate)
Sweden / United Kingdom
By Måns Månsson (The Yard, Mr Governor), Axel Petersén (Avalon)
With Léonore Ekstrand, Christer Levin, Christian Saldert, Olof Rhodin, Carl Johan Merner, Don Bennechi
World premiere

Touch Me Not
Romania / Germany / Czech Republic / Bulgaria / France
By Adina Pintilie (Don’t Get Me Wrong)
With Laura Benson, Tómas Lemarquis, Christian Bayerlein, Grit Uhlemann, Hanna Hofmann, Seani Love, Irmena Chichikova
World premiere – First Feature

Transit
Germany / France
By Christian Petzold (Yella, Barbara, Phoenix)
With Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Lilien Batman, Maryam Zaree, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, Sebastian Hülk, Emilie de Preissac, Antoine Oppenheim
World premiere

 

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot  USA

By Gus Van Sant (Milk, Promised Land) | With Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black, Udo Kier

World premieres at Sundance.

 

Dovlatov | Russian Federation / Poland / Serbia | World Premiere | Director: Alexey German Jr. (Paper Soldier, Under Electric Clouds | With Milan Maric, Danila Kozlovsky, Helena Sujecka, Artur Beschastny, Elena Lyadova

World premiere

 

Eva | France | World Premiere | Director: Benoit Jacquot (Three Hearts, Diary of a Chambermaid)  | With Isabelle Huppert, Gaspard Ulliel, Julia Roy, Richard Berry

World premiere

 

Figlia mia (Daughter of Mine) | Italy / Germany / Switzerland |  Director: Laura Bispuri (Sworn Virgin)  With Valeria Golino, Alba Rohrwacher, Sara Casu, Udo Kier | World premiere

 

In den Gängen (In the Aisles) | Germany | World Premiere | Director: Thomas Stuber (Teenage Angst, A Heavy Heart) | With Franz Rogowski, Sandra Hüller, Peter Kurth

 

 

Mein Bruder heißt Robert und ist ein Idiot  | Germany | World Premi| Direction: Philip Gröning (Into Great Silence, The Police Officer’s Wife | With Josef Mattes, Julia Zange, Urs Jucker, Stefan Konarske, Zita Aretz, Karolina Porcari, Vitus Zeplichal

Twarz (Mug) | Poland | Director: Małgorzata Szumowska (In the Name of, Body) | World Premiere  | With Mateusz Kościukiewicz, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Małgorzata Gorol, Roman Gancarczyk, Dariusz Chojnacki, Robert Talarczyk, Anna Tomaszewska, Martyna Krzysztofik

World Premiere

 Berlinale Special Gala

The Bookshop  | Spain / United Kingdom / Germany Premiere | Director: Isabel Coixet (Things I Never Told You, My Life Without Me, The Secret Life of Words | With Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson

 

 

 

Das schweigende Klassenzimmer (The Silent Revolution) | Germany | Word Premiere | Director: Lars Kraume (The People vs. Fritz Bauer) | With Leonard Scheicher, Tom Gramenz, Lena Klenke, Jonas Dassler, Florian Lukas, Jördis Triebel, Michael Gwisdek, Ronald Zehrfeld, Burghart Klaußner

Special at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele

 

 

Gurrumul – Documentary
Australia
By Paul Williams
International premiere – Debut film
In Cooperation with NATIVe

Viaje a los Pueblos Fumigados – Documentary
Argentina
By Fernando Solanas (The Hour Of The Furnaces, Tangos, The Exile Of Gardel, Memoria del saqueo – A Social Genocide)
World premiere

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 -25 FEBRUARY 2018 | COMPETITION TITLES

 

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2018 | 7 – 16 March 2018

The 22nd edition of the London Human Rights Watch Film Festival opens in time for International Womens Day, on 8th March. The festival includes 14 award-winning international documentary and feature films, half of them directed by women. The opening night film Naila and the Uprising directed by Julia Bacha shines a light on the role of the women’s leaders of the First Intifada (which took place 30 years ago) who not only led a popular civil resistance campaign for national liberation, they also fought tirelessly for their rights as women. As ever the programme reaches many corners of the globe, from Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, Qatar to Pakistan, France, USA, Venezuela, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo and the closing night film from Liberia which follows environmental activist Silas Siakor as he empowers local people to fight illegal land grab.  It’s a worthwhile and watchable programme rather than a worthy one we particularly recommend:

THE POETESS 

March 9 | 8.45pm | Barbican | March 10 | 8.30pm | BFI Southbank both with Stefanie Brockhaus Q&A

Saudi poetess Hissa Hilal made headlines around the world as the first woman to reach the finals of the Arab world’s biggest televised poetry competition, “Million’s Poet.” The Poetess is the inspiring story of a woman risking her personal safety and seizing an opportunity, live on TV in front of 75 million viewers, to use her wit and lyricism to critique patriarchal society and religious extremism, and to urge a more peaceful Islam.

THIS IS CONGO

March 7 | 6.15pm RIBA London | Benefit Night screening with Q&A with Dir Daniel McCabe + Fergal Keane (BBC)

A whistleblower, a patriotic military commander, a mineral dealer, and a displaced tailor share a glimpse of life amid Africa’s longest continuing conflict. Over the last two decades, the Democratic Republic of Congo has seen more than 5 million conflict-related deaths, multiple changes of government, and the wholesale impoverishment of its people. This is Congo provides an immersive and unfiltered look at this lush, mineral-rich country, from the rise of Rwandan and Ugandan-backed M23 rebels in the North Kivu region of Congo in 2012 to the present day via four profoundly resilient characters.

WOMEN OF THE VENEZUELAN CHAOS.

March 13 | 8.40pm | Barbican & March 15 | 6.15 Barbican with Q&As on both nights with Dir: Margarita Cadenas

What is going on in Venezuela at the moment? Embodying strength and stoicism, five Venezuelan women from diverse backgrounds each draw a portrait of their country as it suffers under the worst crisis in its history amid extreme food and medicine shortages, a broken justice system, and widespread fear. The women share what life is really like for them and their families as the truth of the country’s difficulties are repeatedly denied by the government. Featuring stunning visuals and creative soundscapes, Women of the Venezuelan Chaos presentsa uniquely beautiful country and people, who remain resilient and resourceful despite the immense challenges they face.

12 DAYS

March 10 | 4.00pm | Barbican | March 11 4.00pm Barbican

Every year in France, 92,000 people are placed under psychiatric care without their consent. By law, the hospital has 12 days to bring each patient before a judge. Relying on little information beyond doctor recommendations, a crucial decision must be made: will the patient be forced to stay or granted the freedom to leave? Focusing primarily on these public hearings, renowned filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon captures the raw and vulnerable interactions at the border of justice and psychiatry, humanity and bureaucracy. Absorbing and thought-provoking, 12 Days gives a platform to those whose voices are so rarely considered. Golden Eye Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2017

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 16 MARCH 2018

Green Book (2018) ****

Dir: Peter Farelly | Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Curry | Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardelini, Sebastian Maniscalco | US Drama | 130′

An African American classical pianist and his Italian working class driver travel towards better understand in this charismatically crafted road movie from Peter Farelly (Dumb and Dumber).

Green Book is the latest in crop of racially aware films and certainly one of the most moving and enjoyable. It sees the suave classical musician and a bulky Bronx bouncer continually at odds in a stylish road movie that travels to greater understanding in the US Deep South of the Sixties. Paradoxically, the bouncer is white, the pianist black. But it doesn’t end there. There is also a delicately handled homophobic issue at play. The movie is given extra mileage and a hint of humour by a distinctive duo of Viggo Mortensen and Ali Mahershala.

The title refers to Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book, which was published annually from 1936-1966 to advise black travellers where they could safely graze and stay during the dangerous days of Jim Crow and the sundown laws. Nick Vallelonga bases his script on a real friendship that arose during a tour made by the regal musician Don Shirley (Ali) and his driver who remained close until their deaths in 2013. Being classically trained, the Jamaican-born Shirley could turn his hand to tinkling the ivories in any musical style from classic to impro music, and prides himself on his aristocratic background and fluency in several languages. But his Southern tour needs the protection of a white man and Viggo Mortensen’s straight-talking family geezer Tony Villalonga fits the bill.

In his latest drama Peter Farelly isn’t afraid to experiment or go to the dark side of racialism but also knows when to pull back. Sean Porter’s luminous cinematography really sets the night on fire with his glowing glimpses of New York, Alabama and Louisiana as the two motor south in their turquoise Cadillac.

Character-wise this is a knockout: Viggo Mortensen really inhabits the short-fused Italian who is never without a cigarette or a meal in his mouth. In contrast Mahershala exudes style and panache as the prim but troubled troubadour who lives in a penthouse above Carnegie Hall, decorated with his personal throne and elephant tusks. 

Musical references are plenty and Shirley “plays like Liberace but better.” and these musical sequences from Chopin to Jazz are so convincing we’re left wondering whether playing the paino is another of this Mahershala’s many talents. MT

Screening NATIONWIDE | MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 premiere

Ingmar Bergman | A Definitive Film Season | January 2018

Ernst Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) was a Swedish director, writer, and who also produced in television, theatre and radio. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential filmmakers of all time, who made over 60 feature films and documentaries during his long career that focused on themes such as death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.

Persona headlines  a short retrospective of the Swedish director’s films to celebrate his centenary year which opens in January. Also released in selected cinemas UK-wide will be The Touch (1971) on 23 February and The Magic Flute (1975) on 16 March. In addition, Summer with Monika (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957/left) and Cries and Whispers (1972) will be available to cinemas through the BFI so that they can mount their own mini-retrospectives during this centenary year.

BFI Southbank’s Ingmar Bergman: A Definitive Film Season, includes virtually everything Bergman wrote for the screen, taking in well-known films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and Wild Strawberries(1957), and ground-breaking TV series like Scenes From a Marriage (1973) to lesser known titles, and those scripted by Bergman and directed by his collaborators. All in all more than 50 films directed or written by Bergman, as well as several TV series, will screen at the BFI accompanied by an ambitious events programme, designed to bring Bergman and his work to life for a new generation. This will include discussions, immersive experiences and talent-led events.

Bergman also directed over 170 plays. From 1953, he forged a powerful creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. In his dramas he regularly cast Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ulmann; Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin. His homeland of Sweden was the setting for nearly all his film; but from 1961 he began shooting on the island of Faro with Through A Glass Darkly.

English film critic Philip French referred to Bergman as “one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition”.

INGMAR BERGMAN RETROSPECTIVE | JAN-FEB 2018 | BFI | NATIONWIDE

Jonaki (2018) * * * * | Rotterdam International Film Festival

Dir.: Aditya Vikram Sengupta; Cast: Lolita Chatterjee, Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Jim Sarbh; India/France/Singapore 2018, 97’.

Director/writer Aditya Vikram Sengupta follows his impressive debut Labour of Love with another love story set in a decaying world after the British left India and featuring a great comeback from 81 year old actress Lolita Chatterjee in the title role. Elliptical structure JONAKI (meaning firefly in Bengali) incorporates episodes from the life of beloved grandmother whose arranged marriage at the age of sixteen ruined her life.

Lying on her deathbed in hospital, Jonaki is lost in memories recalling the love her life, a young Christian man (Sarbh) she was forbidden to see by her strict mother (Bhattacharjee) and father (Chattopadhyay). Her parents want her to marry a rich man who runs his own business, and owns a local cinema. During British rule, Kolkata was made the capital of the “Jewel in the Crown”, that lead to the Indian upper classes in the city becoming quite wealthy: The magnificent locations featured in the film now look like a mixture of Buñuel’s Viridiana and Mrs. Havisham’s mansion in Great Expectations. But the old glory is gradually falling into decay, and Jonaki feels imprisoned in her home. Sengupta acts as his own DoP, creating ethereal and otherworldly images underlined by a unusual casting choices: Jonaki’s parents seem to be the same age as she was in her teens and early adulthood – whilst she is now eighty, and is criticised and often punished by much younger protagonists. Only her lover is the same age as she is, accentuating their spiritual bond.

There is a surreal and eerie quality running through this distinctive drama: In the dormitory of a girl’s Christian boarding school, the girls’ sleeping patterns sleep are synchronised, we also come across an orange-loving scientist who dreams of England and grows a horn on his forehead, which he later burns off. The local cinema is destroyed by fire, and is then replaced by a modern version – without seating. In the boarding school, oranges roll out of the rooms into the corridor; Sengupta partitions these rooms with glass walls and coloured windows, to allow the action to unfold simultaneously. At one point, we see poor Jonaki listening to her parents discussing her difficult behaviour in a room next door.

Jonaki falls between genres; the  viewer is drawn in and memerised by the ravishing images, the continuously changing lights and shadows. The episodic narrative is stringent, working like memory itself – meandering, reminiscing, leaving threads and picking them up again later. Sengupta offers his own cinematic vision, unique in todays’s so often predictable film landscape – and is all the better for it.AS

WORLD PREMIERE AT ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL  FESTIVAL UNTIL 4 FEBRUARY 2018

 

 

Have you Seen the Listers? *** (2018) | Rotterdam International Film Festival

Dir.: Eddie Martin; Documentary with Anthony Lister, Anika Lister, Kye Lister, Lola Lister, Molly Lister | Doc | Australia 2017, 87′

Rarely have form and content been so complimentary as here in Eddie Martin’s (Lionel) documentary about the installation and graffiti artist Anthony Lister and his family. Editor Johanna Scott puts the whole project on fast-forward – very much in keeping with an artist whose lifestyle is a non-stop, emotional mayhem.

Anthony Lister (*1979) studied at the Queensland College of Art under Max Gimblett and was awarded a BA in 2002. As a teenager in Brisbane he had already starting developing graffiti into an art form. “Being as reckless as possible” was the headline under which he painted and lived. His wife Anika – the couple has three children – bore the brunt of Anthony’s hectic life, more often than not fuelled by drugs and alcohol. He dedicated his first exhibition in Brisbane (2001) to his grandmother, who encouraged him to paint after his father has left the family just before Anthony’s sixth birthday – a transgression the artist would later repeat himself. Soon he earned good money, and bought a house for his family in Brisbane – only to leave for New York, because “Brisbane was too small for me”. In his Brooklyn studio he engaged his family in his work (“We were a team”), we can watch Kye and Lola painting on the pavement in front of the house. Soon Anthony was exhausted, and the family returned to Brisbane where his murals were much admired until the council painted over them – and would later fine him for the graffiti work they had ask him to create.

Lister then set off to New York and Miami again, missing his family, but living the life of a free artist – while Anika was left to look after the children alone. London, Italy and Paris followed, before yet another return to the family in Brisbane. His work is often centred very much around his children, his super-heroes and villains delighted him as much as his off-spring. But he craved the life with mates in the art set, and Anika was written slowly out of his life. Feeling this estrangement, Anthony took his family on a long camping holiday beside the ocean, followed by a moved to Sydney, where they lived in a four-storey house which was more like a squatters hideout, than a family home but suited Lister down to the ground. At this point, Anika cleared on and left him with the children. leaving Anthony’s life out of control: he was arrested in New York and appeared to be“blind to the needs of his children and wife”. Work provided compensation. But in reality his selfish concerns would have an impact on the family he neglected but very much needed.

Most of the family story is told by the Super-8 and video films Anthony and Anika shot during their relationship. These portray a recalcitrant artist crying whilst painting his family on canvas. Lister is his own harshest critic – although he continually falls back on his promises, sharing aJekyll and Hyde personality with countless men who have not grown up emotionally – allowed their to suffer for the art the public adores. A deeply disturbing portrait of a self-destructive creator. AS

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 24 JANUARY – 4 FEBRUARY 2018 | International Premiere

Sundance Film Festival | 2018 | Award WINNERS

In Park City Utah, the SUNDANCE INSTITUTE founder ROBERT REDFORD and his programmer John Cooper set the indie film agenda for 2018 with a slew of provocative new titles for this year’s festival which ran from 18-28 January.

Among the newcomers were Paul Dano (with Wildlife) and Rupert Everett (with The Happy Prince) presenting their directorial debuts and new films from Desiree Akhavan: The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Gus van Sant: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot starring Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara.

WINNERS – THESE ARE THE FILMS WHICH WILL BE CROPPING UP OVER THE NEXT YEAR IN LOCAL ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

The Kindergarten Teacher | DIRECTING AWARD | US DRAMATIC

U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sara Colangelo, Producers: Celine Rattray, Trudie Styler, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Osnat Handelsman-Keren, Talia Kleinhendler) — Lisa Spinelli is a Staten Island teacher who is unusually devoted to her students. When she discovers one of her five-year-olds is a prodigy, she becomes fascinated with the boy, ultimately risking her family and freedom to nurture his talent. Based on the acclaimed Israeli film. Cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Parker Sevak, Rosa Salazar, Anna Barynishikov, Michael Chernus, Gael Garcia Bernal. World Premiere

The Guilty / Denmark | AUDIENCE AWARD | WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC

(Director: Gustav Möller, Screenwriters: Gustav Möller, Emil Nygaard Albertsen, Producer: Lina Flint) Alarm dispatcher Asger Holm answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman; after a sudden disconnection, the search for the woman and her kidnapper begins. With the phone as his only tool, Asger enters a race against time to solve a crime that is far bigger than he first thought. Cast: Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Johan Olsen, Omar Shargawi. World Premiere

Of Fathers and Sons / Germany, Syria, Lebanon | WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE | DOCUMENTARY

(Director: Talal Derki, Producers: Ansgar Frerich, Eva Kemme, Tobias N. Siebert, Hans Robert Eisenhauer) — Talal Derki returns to his homeland where he gains the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses on Osama and his younger brother Ayman, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up in an Islamic Caliphate. North American Premiere

On Her Shoulders / U.S.A | US DIRECTING AWARD – DOCUMENTARY

(Director: Alexandria Bombach, Producers: Marie Therese Guirgis, Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams, Bryn Mooser, Adam Bardach) — A Yazidi genocide and ISIS sexual slavery survivor, 23-year-old Nadia Murad is determined to tell the world her story. As her journey leads down paths of advocacy and fame, she becomes the voice of her people and their best hope to spur the world to action. International Premiere

The Miseducation of Cameron Post / U.S.A. | US GRAND JURY AWARD 

(Director: Desiree Akhavan, Screenwriters: Desiree Akhavan, Cecilia Frugiuele, Producers: Cecilia Frugiuele, Jonathan Montepare, Michael B. Clark, Alex Turtletaub) — 1993: after being caught having sex with the prom queen, a girl is forced into a gay conversion therapy center. Based on Emily Danforth’s acclaimed and controversial coming-of-age novel. Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher Jr., Jennifer Ehle. World Premiere

Butterflies / WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE | DOCUMENTARY

Turkey (Director and screenwriter: Tolga Karaçelik, Producers: Tolga Karaçelik, Diloy Gülün, Metin  Anter) — In the Turkish village of Hasanlar, three siblings who neither know each other nor anything about their late father, wait to bury his body. As they start to find out more about their father and about each other, they also start to know more about themselves. Cast: Tolga Tekin, Bartu Küçükçağlayan, Tuğçe Altuğ, Serkan Keskin, Hakan Karsak. World Premiere

THIS IS HOME | AUDIENCE AWARD: US Dramatic / U.S.A., Jordan (Director: Alexandra Shiva, Producer: Lindsey Megrue) This is an intimate portrait of four Syrian families arriving in Baltimore, Maryland and struggling to find their footing. With eight months to become self-sufficient, they must forge ahead to rebuild their lives. When the travel ban adds further complications, their strength and resilience are put to the test. World Premiere

The Sentence / U.S.A | AUDIENCE AWARD | US Documentary

(Director: Rudy Valdez, Producers: Sam Bisbee, Jackie Kelman Bisbee) — Cindy Shank, mother of three, is serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison for her tangential involvement with a Michigan drug ring years earlier. This intimate portrait of mandatory minimum drug sentencing’s devastating consequences, captured by Cindy’s brother, follows her and her family over the course of ten years. World Premiere

BURDEN/AUDIENCE AWARD 2018 | US Dramatic

U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Heckler, Producers: Robbie Brenner, Jincheng, Bill Kenwright) — After opening a KKK shop, Klansman Michael Burden falls in love with a single mom who forces him to confront his senseless hatred. After leaving the Klan and with nowhere to turn, Burden is taken in by an African-American reverend, and learns tolerance through their combined love and faith. Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker, Andrea Riseborough, Tom Wilkinson, Usher Raymond. World Premiere

NANCY / U.S.A.| WALDO SALT SCREENWRITING AWARD

(Director and screenwriter: Christina Choe, Producers: Amy Lo, Michelle Cameron, Andrea Riseborough) — Blurring lines between fact and fiction, Nancy becomes increasingly convinced she was kidnapped as a child. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief – and the power of emotion threatens to overcome all rationality. Cast: Andrea Riseborough, J. Smith-Cameron, Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo. World Premiere

KAILASH | US GRAND JURY PRIZE  / U.S.A | DOCUMENTARY

(Director: Derek Doneen, Producers: Davis Guggenheim, Sarah Anthony) — As a young man, Kailash Satyarthi promised himself that he would end child slavery in his lifetime. In the decades since, he has rescued more than eighty thousand children and built a global movement. This intimate and suspenseful film follows one man’s journey to do what many believed was impossible. World Premiere. 

SEARCH / U.S.A. | THE AUDIENCE AWARD | NEXT

(Director: Aneesh Chaganty, Screenwriters: Aneesh Chaganty, Sev Ohanian, Producers: Timur Bekmambetov, Sev Ohanian, Adam Sidman, Natalie Qasabian) — After his 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her. A thriller that unfolds entirely on computer screens. Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing. World Premiere. WINNER: 2018 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

Crime + Punishment / U.S.A. | SPECIAL AWARD FOR SOCIAL IMPACT

(Director: Stephen Maing) — Over four years of unprecedented access, the story of a brave group of black and Latino whistleblower cops and one unrelenting private investigator who, amidst a landmark lawsuit, risk everything to expose illegal quota practices and their impact on young minorities. World Premiere

Shirkers / U.S.A. | DIRECTING AWARD | World Cinema Documentary

(Director and screenwriter: Sandi Tan, Producers: Sandi Tan, Jessica Levin, Maya Rudolph) — In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan shot Singapore’s first indie road movie with her enigmatic American mentor Georges – who then vanished with all the footage. Twenty years later, the 16mm film is recovered, sending Tan, now a novelist in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges’ vanishing footprints. World Premiere

And Breathe Normally / Iceland, Sweden, Belgium | DIRECTING AWARD | World cinema Dramatic

(Director and screenwriter: Ísold Uggadóttir, Producers: Skúli Malmquist, Diana Elbaum, Annika Hellström, Lilja Ósk Snorradóttir, Inga Lind Karlsdóttir) — At the edge of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, two women’s lives will intersect – for a brief moment – while trapped in circumstances unforeseen. Between a struggling Icelandic mother and an asylum seeker from Guinea-Bissau, a delicate bond will form as both strategize to get their lives back on track. Cast: Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir, Babetida Sadjo, Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson. World Premiere

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Fruitvale Station, Patti Cake$, Swiss Army Man and The Diary of a Teenage Girl.

American Animals / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Bart Layton, Producers: Derrin Schlesinger, Katherine Butler, Dimitri Doganis, Mary Jane Skalski) — The unbelievable but mostly true story of four young men who mistake their lives for a movie and attempt one of the most audacious art heists in U.S. history. Cast: Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Ann Dowd, Udo Kier. World Premiere

BLAZE / U.S.A. (Director: Ethan Hawke, Screenwriters: Ethan Hawke, Sybil Rosen, Producers: Jake Seal, John Sloss, Ryan Hawke, Ethan Hawke) — A reimagining of the life and times of Blaze Foley, the unsung songwriting legend of the Texas Outlaw Music movement; he gave up paradise for the sake of a song. Cast: Benjamin Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Josh Hamilton, Charlie Sexton. World Premiere

Blindspotting / U.S.A. (Director: Carlos Lopez Estrada, Screenwriters: Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs, Producers: Keith Calder, Jess Calder, Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs) — A buddy comedy in a world that won’t let it be one. Cast: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones. World Premiere. 

Eighth Grade / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Bo Burnham, Producers: Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Christopher Storer, Lila Yacoub) — Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school. Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton. World Premiere.

I THINK WE'RE ALONEI Think We’re Alone Now / U.S.A. (Director: Reed Morano, Screenwriter: Mike Makowsky, Producers: Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Fernando Loureiro, Roberto Vasconcellos, Peter Dinklage, Mike Makowsky) — The apocalypse proves a blessing in disguise for one lucky recluse – until a second survivor arrives with the threat of companionship. Cast: Peter Dinklage, Elle Fanning. World Premiere

Lizzie / U.S.A. (Director: Craig William Macneill, Screenwriter: Bryce Kass, Producers: Naomi Despres, Liz Destro) — Based on the 1892 murder of Lizzie Borden’s family in Fall River, MA, this tense psychological thriller lays bare the legend of Lizzie Borden to reveal the much more complex, poignant and truly terrifying woman within — and her intimate bond with the family’s young Irish housemaid, Bridget Sullivan. Cast: Chloë Sevigny, Kristen Stewart, Jamey Sheridan, Fiona Shaw, Kim Dickens, Denis O’Hare. World Premiere

Monster / U.S.A. (Director: Anthony Mandler, Screenwriters: Radha Blank, Cole Wiley, Janece Shaffer, Producers: Tonya Lewis Lee, Nikki Silver, Aaron L. Gilbert, Mike Jackson, Edward Tyler Nahem) — “Monster” is what the prosecutor calls 17 year old honors student and aspiring filmmaker Steve Harmon. Charged with felony murder for a crime he says he did not commit, the film follows his dramatic journey through a complex legal battle that could leave him spending the rest of his life in prison. Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Hudson, Rakim Mayers, Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson. World Premiere

Monsters and Men / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Reinaldo Marcus Green, Producers: Elizabeth Lodge Stepp, Josh Penn, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Luca Borghese) — This interwoven narrative explores the aftermath of a police killing of a black man. The film is told through the eyes of the bystander who filmed the act, an African-American police officer and a high-school baseball phenom inspired to take a stand. Cast: John David Washington, Anthony Ramos, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chanté Adams, Nicole Beharie, Rob Morgan. World Premiere

Sorry to Bother You / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Boots Riley, Producers: Nina Yang Bongiovi, Forest Whitaker, Charles King, George Rush, Jonathan Duffy, Kelly Williams) — In a speculative and dystopian not-too-distant future, black telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success – which propels him into a macabre universe. Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Jermaine Fowler, Armie Hammer, Omari Hardwicke. World Premiere

The Tale / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jennifer Fox, Producers: Oren Moverman, Lawrence Inglee, Laura Rister, Mynette Louie, Sol Bondy, Simone Pero) — An investigation into one woman’s memory as she’s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive; based on the filmmaker’s own story. Cast: Laura Dern, Isabel Nelisse, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Ellen Burstyn, Common. World Premiere

TYREL / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sebastian Silva, Producers: Jacob Wasserman, Max Born) — Tyler spirals out of control when he realizes he’s the only black person attending a weekend birthday party in a secluded cabin. Cast: Jason Mitchell, Christopher Abbott, Michael Cera, Caleb Landry Jones, Ann Dowd. World Premiere

WildlifeWildlife / U.S.A. (Director: Paul Dano, Screenwriters: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Producers: Andrew Duncan, Alex Saks, Oren Moverman, Ann Ruark, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riva Marker) — Montana, 1960: A portrait of a family in crisis. Based on the novel by Richard Ford. Cast: Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp, Jake Gyllenhaal. World Premiere

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people and events that shape the present day. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Chasing Coral, Life, Animated, Cartel Land and City of Gold.

Bisbee ’17 / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Robert Greene, Producers: Douglas Tirola, Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott) — An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past. Cast: Fernando Serrano, Laurie McKenna, Ray Family, Mike Anderson, Graeme Family, Richard Hodges. World Premier

Dark Money / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kimberly Reed, Producer: Katy Chevigny) — “Dark money” contributions, made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, flood modern American elections – but Montana is showing Washington D.C. how to solve the problem of unlimited anonymous money in politics. World Premiere

The Devil yo KnowThe Devil We Know / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig, Producers: Kristin Lazure, Stephanie Soechtig, Joshua Kunau, Carly Palmour) — Unraveling one of the biggest environmental scandals of our time, a group of citizens in West Virginia take on a powerful corporation after they discover it has knowingly been dumping a toxic chemical — now found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans — into the local drinking water supply. World Premiere.

 

HalHal / U.S.A. (Director: Amy Scott, Producers: Christine Beebe, Jonathan Lynch, Brian Morrow) — Hal Ashby’s obsessive genius led to an unprecedented string of Oscar®-winning classics, including Harold and Maude, Shampoo and Being There. But as contemporaries Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg rose to blockbuster stardom in the 1980s, Ashby’s uncompromising nature played out as a cautionary tale of art versus commerce. World Premiere

Hale County This Morning, This Evening / U.S.A. (Director: RaMell Ross, Screenwriter: Maya Krinsky, Producers: Joslyn Barnes, RaMell Ross, Su Kim) — An exploration of coming-of-age in the Black Belt of the American South, using stereotypical imagery to fill in the landscape between iconic representations of black men and encouraging a new way of looking, while resistance to narrative suspends conclusive imagining – allowing the viewer to complete the film. World Premiere

Inventing Tomorrow / U.S.A. (Director: Laura Nix, Producers: Diane Becker, Melanie Miller, Laura Nix) — Take a journey with young minds from around the globe as they prepare their projects for the largest convening of high school scientists in the world, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Watch these passionate innovators find the courage to face the planet’s environmental threats while navigating adolescence. World Premiere. THE NEW CLIMATE

Kusama – Infinity / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Heather Lenz, Producers: Karen Johnson, Heather Lenz, Dan Braun, David Koh) — Now one of the world’s most celebrated artists, Yayoi Kusama broke free of the rigid society in which she was raised, and overcame sexism, racism, and mental illness to bring her artistic vision to the world stage. At 88 she lives in a mental hospital and continues to create art. World Premiere

The Last Race / U.S.A. (Director: Michael Dweck, Producers: Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw) — A cinematic portrait of a small town stock car track and the tribe of drivers that call it home as they struggle to hold onto an American racing tradition. The avant-garde narrative explores the community and its conflicts through an intimate story that reveals the beauty, mystery and emotion of grassroots auto racing. World Premiere

Minding the Gap / U.S.A. (Director: Bing Liu, Producer: Diane Quon) — Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship. World Premiere

The Price of Everything / U.S.A. (Director: Nathaniel Kahn, Producers: Jennifer Blei Stockman, Debi Wisch, Carla Solomon) — With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, this film dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a funhouse mirror up to our values and our times – where everything can be bought and sold.World Premiere

Seeing AllredSeeing Allred / U.S.A. (Directors: Sophie Sartain, Roberta Grossman, Producers: Roberta Grossman, Sophie Sartain, Marta Kauffman, Robbie Rowe Tollin, Hannah KS Canter) — Gloria Allred overcame trauma and personal setbacks to become one of the nation’s most famous women’s rights attorneys. Now the feminist firebrand takes on two of the biggest adversaries of her career, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump, as sexual violence allegations grip the nation and keep her in the spotlight. World Premiere

THREE IDENTICALThree Identical Strangers / U.S.A. (Director: Tim Wardle, Producer: Becky Read) — New York,1980: three complete strangers accidentally discover that they’re identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds’ joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives – and could transform our understanding of human nature forever. World Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Nile Hilton Incident, Second Mother, Berlin Syndrome and The Lure.

 

Dead Pigs / China (Director and screenwriter: Cathy Yan, Producers: Clarissa Zhang, Jane Zheng, Zhangke Jia, Mick Aniceto, Amy Aniceto) — A bumbling pig farmer, a feisty salon owner, a sensitive busboy, an expat architect and a disenchanted rich girl converge and collide as thousands of dead pigs float down the river towards a rapidly-modernizing Shanghai, China. Based on true events. Cast: Vivian Wu, Haoyu Yang, Mason Lee, Meng Li, David Rysdahl. World Premiere

HolidayHoliday / Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden (Director: Isabella Eklöf, Screenwriters: Isabella Eklöf, Johanne Algren, Producer: David B. Sørensen) — A love triangle featuring the trophy girlfriend of a petty drug lord, caught up in a web of luxury and violence in a modern dark gangster tale set in the beautiful port city of Bodrum on the Turkish Riviera. Cast: Victoria Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde, Thijs Römer. World Premiere

Loveling / Brazil, Uruguay (Director: Gustavo Pizzi, Screenwriters: Gustavo Pizzi, Karine Teles, Producers: Tatiana Leite, Rodrigo Letier, Agustina Chiarino, Fernando Epstein) — On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Irene has only a few days to overcome her anxiety and renew her strength before sending her eldest son out into the world. Cast: Karine Teles, Otavio Muller, Adriana Esteves, Konstantinos Sarris, Cesar Troncoso. World Premiere. 

Pity / Greece, Poland (Director: Babis Makridis, Screenwriters: Efthimis Filippou, Babis Makridis, Producers: Amanda Livanou, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Klaudia Śmieja, Beata Rzeźniczek) — The story of a man who feels happy only when he is unhappy: addicted to sadness, with such need for pity, that he’s willing to do everything to evoke it from others. This is the life of a man in a world not cruel enough for him. Cast: Yannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou, Nota Tserniafski, Makis Papadimitriou, Georgina Chryskioti, Evdoxia Androulidaki. World Premiere

The Queen of Fear / Argentina, Denmark (Directors: Valeria Bertuccelli, Fabiana Tiscornia, Screenwriter: Valeria Bertuccelli, Producers: Benjamin Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Matias Roveda, Juan Vera, Juan Pablo Galli, Christian Faillace) — Only one month left until the premiere of The Golden Time, the long-awaited solo show by acclaimed actress Robertina. Far from focused on the preparations for this new production, Robertina lives in a state of continuous anxiety that turns her privileged life into an absurd and tumultuous landscape. Cast: Valeria Bertuccelli, Diego Velázquez, Gabriel Eduardo “Puma” Goity, Darío Grandinetti. World Premiere

RustRust / Brazil (Director: Aly Muritiba, Screenwriters: Aly Muritiba, Jessica Candal, Producer: Antônio Junior) — Tati and Renet were already trading pics, videos and music by their cellphones and on the last school trip they started making eye contact. However, what could be the beginning of a love story becomes an end. Cast: Giovanni De Lorenzi, Tifanny Dopke, Enrique Diaz, Clarissa Kiste, Duda Azevedo, Pedro Inoue. World Premiere

TIME SHARETime Share (Tiempo Compartido) / Mexico, Netherlands (Director: Sebastián Hofmann, Screenwriters: Julio Chavezmontes, Sebastián Hofmann, Producer: Julio Chavezmontes) — Two haunted family men join forces in a destructive crusade to rescue their families from a tropical paradise, after becoming convinced that an American timeshare conglomerate has a sinister plan to take their loved ones away. Cast: Luis Gerardo Mendez, Miguel Rodarte, Andrés Almeida, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Monserrat Marañon, R.J. Mitte. World Premiere

Un Traductor / Canada, Cuba (Directors: Rodrigo Barriuso, Sebastián Barriuso, Screenwriter: Lindsay Gossling, Producers: Sebastián Barriuso, Lindsay Gossling) — A Russian Literature professor at the University of Havana is ordered to work as a translator for child victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when they are sent to Cuba for medical treatment. Based on a true story. Cast: Rodrigo Santoro, Maricel Álvarez, Yoandra Suárez. World Premiere

Yardie / United Kingdom (Director: Idris Elba, Screenwriters: Brock Norman Brock, Martin Stellman, Producers: Gina Carter, Robin Gutch) — Jamaica, 1973. When a young boy witnesses his brother’s assassination, a powerful Don gives him a home. Ten years later he is sent on a mission to London. He reunites with his girlfriend and their daughter, but then the past catches up with them. Based on Victor Headley’s novel. Cast: Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, Fraser James, Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Cleary. World Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Motherland, Last Men in Aleppo, Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower and Hooligan Sparrow.

A Polar Year / France (Director: Samuel Collardey, Screenwriters: Samuel Collardey, Catherine Paillé, Producer: Grégoire Debailly) — Anders leaves his native Denmark for a teaching position in rural Greenland. As soon as he arrives, he finds himself at odds with tightly-knit locals. Only through a clumsy and playful trial of errors can Anders shake his Euro-centric assumptions and embrace their snow-covered way of life. Cast: Anders Hvidegaard, Asser Boassen, Julius B. Nielsen, Tobias Ignatiussen, Thomasine Jonathansen, Gert Jonathansen. World Premiere

Anote’s Ark / Canada (Director: Matthieu Rytz, Producers: Bob Moore, Mila Aung-Thwin, Daniel Cross, Shari Plummer, Shannon Joy) — How does a nation survive being swallowed by the sea? Kiribati, on a low-lying Pacific atoll, will disappear within decades due to rising sea levels, population growth, and climate change. This exploration of how to migrate an entire nation with dignity interweaves personal stories of survival and resilience. World Premiere. THE NEW CLIMATE

The Cleaners / Germany, Brazil (Directors: Moritz Riesewieck, Hans Block, Screenwriters: Moritz Riesewieck, Hans Block, Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Producers: Christian Beetz, Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Fernando Dias, Mauricio Dias) — When you post something on the web, can you be sure it stays there? Enter a hidden shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn’t like: violence, pornography and political content. Who is controlling what we see…and what we think? World Premiere

GenesisGenesis 2.0 / Switzerland (Directors: Christian Frei, Maxim Arbugaev, Producer: Christian Frei) — On the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, hunters search for tusks of extinct mammoths. When they discover a surprisingly well-preserved mammoth carcass, its resurrection will be the first manifestation of the next great technological revolution: genetics. It may well turn our world upside down. World Premiere

MatangiMATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. / Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, U.S.A. (Director: Stephen Loveridge, Producers: Lori Cheatle, Andrew Goldman, Paul Mezey) — Drawn from a never before seen cache of personal footage spanning decades, this is an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist and musician who continues to shatter conventions. World Premiere

The Oslo Diaries / Israel, Canada (Directors and screenwriters: Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan, Producers: Hilla Medalia, Ina Fichman) — In 1992, Israeli-Palestinian relations reached an all time low. In an attempt to stop the bloodshed, a group of Israelis and Palestinians met illegally in Oslo. These meetings were never officially sanctioned and held in complete secrecy. They changed the Middle East forever. World Premiere

Our New President / Russia, U.S.A. (Director: Maxim Pozdorovkin, Producers: Maxim Pozdorovkin, Joe Bender) — The story of Donald Trump’s election told entirely through Russian propaganda. By turns horrifying and hilarious, the film is a satirical portrait of Russian media that reveals an empire of fake news and the tactics of modern-day information warfare. World Premiere. 

 

Westwood / United Kingdom (Director: Lorna Tucker, Producers: Eleanor Emptage, Shirine Best, Nicole Stott, John Battsek) — Dame Vivienne Westwood: punk, icon, provocateur and one of the most influential originators in recent history. This is the first film to encompass the remarkable story of one of the true icons of our time, as she fights to maintain her brand’s integrity, her principles – and her legacy. World Premiere

A Woman Captured / Hungary (Director and screenwriter: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, Producers: Julianna Ugrin, Viki Réka Kiss, Erik Winker, Martin Roelly) — A European woman has been kept by a family as a domestic slave for 10 years – one of over 45 million victims of modern-day slavery. Drawing courage from the filmmaker’s presence, she decides to escape the unbearable oppression and become a free person. North American Premiere

NEXT
Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this program. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include A Ghost Story, Tangerine and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Presented by Adobe.

306 Hollywood / U.S.A., Hungary (Directors: Elan Bogarín, Jonathan Bogarín, Screenwriters: Jonathan Bogarín, Elan Bogarín, Nyneve Laura Minnear, Producers: Elan Bogarín, Jonathan Bogarín, Judit Stalter) — When two siblings undertake an archaeological excavation of their late grandmother’s house, they embark on a magical-realist journey from her home in New Jersey to ancient Rome, from fashion to physics, in search of what life remains in the objects we leave behind. World Premiere. DAY ONE

A Boy, A Girl, A DreamA Boy, A Girl, A Dream. / U.S.A. (Director: Qasim Basir, Screenwriters: Qasim Basir, Samantha Tanner, Producer: Datari Turner) — On the night of the 2016 Presidential election, Cass, an L.A. club promoter, takes a thrilling and emotional journey with Frida, a Midwestern visitor. She challenges him to revisit his broken dreams – while he pushes her to discover hers. Cast: Omari Hardwick, Meagan Good, Jay Ellis, Kenya Barris, Dijon Talton, Wesley Jonathan. World Premiere

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn / United Kingdom, U.S.A. (Director: Jim Hosking, Screenwriters: Jim Hosking, David Wike, Producers: Sam Bisbee, Theodora Dunlap, Oliver Roskill, Emily Leo, Lucan Toh, Andy Starke) — Lulu Danger’s unsatisfying marriage takes a fortunate turn for the worse when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform an event called ‘An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn For One Magical Night Only.’ Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Jemaine Clement, Matt Berry, Craig Robinson. World Premiere

Clara's GhostClara’s Ghost / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Bridey Elliott, Producer: Sarah Winshall) — Set over the course of a single evening at the Reynolds’ family home in Connecticut, Clara, fed up with the constant ribbing from her self-absorbed showbiz family, finds solace in and guidance from the supernatural force she believes is haunting her. Cast: Paula Niedert Elliott, Chris Elliott, Abby Elliott, Bridey Elliott, Haley Joel Osment, Isidora Goreshter. World Premiere

Madeline’s Madeline / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Josephine Decker, Producers: Krista Parris, Elizabeth Rao) — Madeline got the part! She’s going to play the lead in a theater piece! Except the lead wears sweatpants like Madeline’s. And has a cat like Madeline’s. And is holding a steaming hot iron next to her mother’s face – like Madeline is. Cast: Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July, Okwui Okpokwasili, Felipe Bonilla, Lisa Tharps. World Premiere

Night Comes On / U.S.A. (Director: Jordana Spiro, Screenwriters: Jordana Spiro, Angelica Nwandu, Producers: Jonathan Montepare, Alvaro R. Valente, Danielle Renfrew Behrens) — Angel LaMere is released from juvenile detention on the eve of her 18th birthday. Haunted by her past, she embarks on a journey with her 10 year-old sister that could destroy their future. Cast: Dominique Fishback, Tatum Hall, John Earl Jelks, Max Casella, James McDaniel. World Premiere

Skate KitchenSkate Kitchen / U.S.A. (Director: Crystal Moselle, Screenwriters: Crystal Moselle, Ashlihan Unaldi, Producers: Lizzie Nastro, Izabella Tzenkova, Julia Nottingham, Matthew Perniciaro, Michael Sherman, Rodrigo Teixeira) — Camille’s life as a lonely suburban teenager changes dramatically when she befriends a group of girl skateboarders. As she journeys deeper into this raw New York City subculture, she begins to understand the true meaning of friendship as well as her inner self. Cast: Rachelle Vinberg, Dede Lovelace, Jaden Smith, Nina Moran, Ajani Russell, Kabrina Adams. World Premiere

We The AnimalsWe The Animals / U.S.A. (Director: Jeremiah Zagar, Screenwriters: Daniel Kitrosser, Jeremiah Zagar, Producers: Jeremy Yaches, Christina D. King, Andrew Goldman, Paul Mezey) — Us three, us brothers, us kings. Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own. Cast: Raul Castillo, Sheila Vand, Evan Rosado, Isaiah Kristian, Josiah Santiago. World Premiere

White RabbitWhite Rabbit / U.S.A. (Director: Daryl Wein, Screenwriters: Daryl Wein, Vivian Bang, Producers: Daryl Wein, Vivian Bang) —A dramatic comedy following a Korean American performance artist who struggles to be authentically heard and seen through her multiple identities in modern Los Angeles. Cast: Vivian Bang, Nana Ghana, Nico Evers-Swindel, Tracy Hazas, Elizabeth Sung, Michelle Sui. World Premiere

PREMIERES
A showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, Boyhood and Mudbound.

The Long Dumb Road / U.S.A. (Director: Hannah Fidell, Screenwriters: Hannah Fidell, Carson Mell, Producers: Hannah Fidell, Jacqueline “JJ” Ingram, Jonathan Duffy, Kelly Williams) — Two very different men, at personal crossroads, meet serendipitously and take an unpredictable journey through the American Southwest. Cast: Tony Revolori, Jason Mantzoukas, Taissa Farmiga, Grace Gummer, Ron Livingston, Casey Wilson, Ciara Bravo. World Premiere

Private Life / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Tamara Jenkins, Producers: Anthony Bregman, Stefanie Azpiazu) — A couple in the throes of infertility try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper into the weird world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption. When their doctor suggests third-party reproduction, they bristle. But when Sadie, a recent college dropout, re-enters their life, they reconsider. Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Molly Shannon, John Carroll Lynch, Kayli Carter. World Premiere

A Kid Like Jake / U.S.A. (Director: Silas Howard, Screenwriter: Daniel Pearle, Producers: Jim Parsons, Todd Spiewak, Eric Norsoph, Paul Bernon, Rachel Song) — As married couple Alex and Greg navigate their roles as parents to a young son who prefers Cinderella to G.I. Joe, a rift grows between them, one that forces them to confront their own concerns about what’s best for their child, and each other. Cast: Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Octavia Spencer, Priyanka  Chopra, Ann Dowd, Amy Landecker. World Premiere

Beirut / U.S.A. (Director: Brad Anderson, Screenwriter: Tony Gilroy) — A U.S. diplomat flees Lebanon in 1972 after a tragic incident at his home. Ten years later, he is called back to war-torn Beirut by CIA operatives to negotiate for the life of a friend he left behind. Cast: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike, Shea Whigham, Dean Norris. World Premiere

The Catcher Was a Spy / U.S.A. (Director: Ben Lewin, Screenwriter: Robert Rodat, Producers: Kevin Frakes, Tatiana Kelly, Buddy Patrick, Jim Young) — The true story of Moe Berg – professional baseball player, Ivy League graduate, attorney who spoke nine languages – and a top-secret spy for the OSS who helped the U.S. win the race against Germany to build the atomic bomb. Cast: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti. World Premiere

Colette / United Kingdom (Director: Wash Westmoreland, Screenwriters: Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer, Producers: Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley) — A young country woman marries a famous literary entrepreneur in turn-of-the-century Paris: At her husband’s request, Colette pens a series of bestselling novels published under his name. But as her confidence grows, she transforms not only herself and her marriage, but the world around her. Cast: Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Fiona Shaw, Denise Gough, Elinor Tomlinson, Aiysha Hart. World Premiere

Come Sunday / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Marston, Screenwriter: Marcus Hinchey, Producers: Ira Glass, Alissa Shipp, Julie Goldstein, James Stern, Lucas Smith, Cindy Kirven) — Internationally-renowned pastor Carlton Pearson — experiencing a crisis of faith — risks his church, family and future when he questions church doctrine and finds himself branded a modern-day heretic. Based on actual events. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Condola Rashad, Jason Segel, Lakeith Stanfield, Martin Sheen. World Premiere

DAMSELDamsel / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Producers: Nathan Zellner, Chris Ohlson, David Zellner) — Samuel Alabaster, an affluent pioneer, ventures across the American Frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope. As Samuel, a drunkard named Parson Henry and a miniature horse called Butterscotch traverse the Wild West, their once-simple journey grows treacherous, blurring the lines between hero, villain and damsel. Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Robert Forster, Nathan Zellner, Joe Billingiere. World Premiere

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot / U.S.A. (Director: Gus Van Sant, Screenwriters: Gus Van Sant (screenplay), John Callahan (biography), Producers: Charles-Marie Anthonioz, Mourad Belkeddar, Steve Golin, Nicolas Lhermitte) — John Callahan has a talent for off-color jokes…and a drinking problem. When a bender ends in a car accident, Callahan wakes permanently confined to a wheelchair. In his journey back from rock bottom, Callahan finds beauty and comedy in the absurdity of human experience. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black. World Premiere

Futile and Stupid Gesture / U.S.A. (Director: David Wain, Screenwriters: John Aboud, Michael Colton, Producers: Peter Principato, Jonathan Stern) — The story of comedy wunderkind Doug Kenney, who co-created the National Lampoon, Caddyshack, and Animal House. Kenney was at the center of the 70’s comedy counter-culture which gave birth to Saturday Night Live and a whole generation’s way of looking at the world. Cast: Will Forte, Martin Mull, Domhnall Gleeson, Matt Walsh, Joel McHale, Emmy Rossum. World Premiere

The Happy PrinceThe Happy Prince / Germany, Belgium, Italy (Director and screenwriter: Rupert Everett) — The last days of Oscar Wilde—and the ghosts haunting them—are brought to vivid life. His body ailing, Wilde lives in exile, surviving on the flamboyant irony and brilliant wit that defined him as the transience of lust is laid bare and the true riches of love are revealed. Cast: Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Colin Morgan, Edwin Thomas, Rupert Everett. World Premiere

Hearts Beat Loud / U.S.A. (Director: Brett Haley, Screenwriters: Brett Haley, Marc Basch, Producers: Houston King, Sam Bisbee, Sam Slater) — In Red Hook, Brooklyn, a father and daughter become an unlikely songwriting duo in the last summer before she leaves for college. Cast: Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons, Ted Danson, Sasha Lane, Blythe Danner, Toni Collette. World Premiere

Juliet, Naked / United Kingdom (Director: Jesse Peretz, Screenwriters: Tamara Jenkins, Jim Taylor, Phil Alden Robinson, Evgenia Peretz, Producers: Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa) — Annie is the long-suffering girlfriend of Duncan, an obsessive fan of obscure rocker Tucker Crowe. When the acoustic demo of Tucker’s celebrated record from 25 years ago surfaces, its release leads to an encounter with the elusive rocker himself. Based on the novel by Nick Hornby. Cast: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd. World Premiere

OPHELIAOphelia / United Kingdom (Director: Claire McCarthy, Screenwriter: Semi Chellas, Producers: Daniel Bobker, Sarah Curtis, Ehren Kruger, Paul Hanson) — A mythic spin on Hamlet through a lens of female empowerment: Ophelia comes of age as lady-in-waiting for Queen Gertrude, and her singular spirit captures Hamlet’s affections. As lust and betrayal threaten the kingdom, Ophelia finds herself trapped between true love and controlling her own destiny. Cast: Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, George MacKay, Tom Felton, Devon Terrell. World Premiere

Puzzle / U.S.A. (Director: Marc Turtletaub, Screenwriter: Oren Moverman, Producers: Peter Saraf, Wren Arthur, Guy Stodel) — Agnes, taken for granted as a suburban mother, discovers a passion for solving jigsaw puzzles which unexpectedly draws her into a new world – where her life unfolds in ways she could never have imagined. Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Irrfan Khan, David Denman, Bubba Weiler, Austin Abrams, Liv Hewson. World Premiere

Untitled Debra Granik Project / U.S.A. (Director: Debra Granik, Screenwriters: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini, Producers: Anne Harrison, Linda Reisman, Anne Rosellini) — A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. A small mistake tips them off to authorities sending them on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own. Cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Jeff Korber, Dale Dickey. World Premiere

What They Had / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Elizabeth Chomko) — Bridget returns home to Chicago at her brother’s urging to deal with her mother’s Alzheimer’s and her father’s reluctance to let go of their life together. Cast: Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner, Robert Forster. World Premiere

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES
Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include An Inconvenient Sequel, The Hunting Ground, Going Clear and What Happened, Miss Simone?

Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock / U.S.A. (Director: Cody Lucich, Producers: Heather Rae, Gingger Shankar, Ben-Alex Dupris) — Standing Rock, 2016: the largest Native American occupation since Wounded Knee. Thousands of activists, environmentalists and militarized police descend on the Dakota Access Pipeline in a standoff between oil corporations and a new generation of Native Warriors. This chronicle captures the sweeping struggle, spirit and havoc of a People’s uprising. World Premiere. THE NEW CLIMATE

Bad Reputation / U.S.A. (Director: Kevin Kerslake, Screenwriter: Joel Marcus, Producers: Peter Afterman, Carianne Brinkman) — A look at the life of Joan Jett, from her early years as the founder of The Runaways and first meeting collaborator Kenny Laguna in 1980 to her enduring presence in pop culture as a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer . World Premiere

Believer / U.S.A. (Director: Don Argott, Producers: Heather Parry, Sheena M. Joyce, Robert Reynolds) — Imagine Dragons’ Mormon frontman Dan Reynolds is taking on a new mission to explore how the church treats its LGBTQ members. With the rising suicide rate amongst teens in the state of Utah, his concern with the church’s policies sends him on an unexpected path for acceptance and change. World Premiere

Chef FlynnChef Flynn / U.S.A. (Director: Cameron Yates, Producer: Laura Coxson) — Ten-year-old Flynn transforms his living room into a supper club, using his classmates as line cooks and serving a tasting menu foraged from his neighbors’ backyards. With sudden fame, Flynn outgrows his bedroom kitchen and mother’s camera, and sets out to challenge the hierarchy of the culinary world. World Premiere

The Game Changers / U.S.A. (Director: Louie Psihoyos, Screenwriters: Mark Monroe, Joseph Pace, Producers: Joseph Pace, James Wilks) — James Wilks, an elite special forces trainer and winner of The Ultimate Fighter, embarks on a quest for the truth in nutrition and uncovers the world’s most dangerous myth. World Premiere

Generation Wealth / U.S.A. (Director: Lauren Greenfield, Producers: Lauren Greenfield, Frank Evers) — Lauren Greenfield’s postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, image-obsessed culture. Simultaneously personal journey and historical essay, the film bears witness to the global boom–bust economy, the corrupted American Dream and the human costs of late stage capitalism, narcissism and greed. World Premiere. DAY ONE

Half The Picture / U.S.A. (Director: Amy Adrion, Producers: Amy Adrion, David Harris) — At a pivotal moment for gender equality in Hollywood, successful women directors tell the stories of their art, lives and careers. Having endured a long history of systemic discrimination, women filmmakers may be getting the first glimpse of a future that values their voices equally. World Premiere

Jane Fonda in Five Acts / U.S.A. (Director: Susan Lacy, Producers: Susan Lacy, Jessica Levin, Emma Pildes) — Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she’s done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman’s singular journey. World Premiere

King In The Wilderness / U.S.A. (Director: Peter Kunhardt, Producers: George Kunhardt, Teddy Kunhardt) From the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. remained a man with an unshakeable commitment to nonviolence in the face of an increasingly unstable country. A portrait of the last years of his life. World Premiere

Quiet HeroesQuiet Heroes / U.S.A. (Director: Jenny Mackenzie, Co-Directors: Jared Ruga, Amanda Stoddard, Producers: Jenny Mackenzie, Jared Ruga, Amanda Stoddard) — In Salt Lake City, Utah, the socially conservative religious monoculture complicated the AIDS crisis, where patients in the entire state and intermountain region relied on only one doctor. This is the story of her fight to save a maligned population everyone else seemed willing to just let die. World Premiere

RBG / U.S.A. (Directors and producers: Betsy West, Julie Cohen) — An intimate portrait of an unlikely rock star: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With unprecedented access, the filmmakers show how her early legal battles changed the world for women. Now this 84-year-old does push-ups as easily as she writes blistering dissents that have earned her the title “Notorious RBG.” World Premiere

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind / U.S.A. (Director: Marina Zenovich, Producers: Alex Gibney, Shirel Kozak) — This intimate portrait examines one of the world’s most beloved and inventive comedians. Told largely through Robin’s own voice and using a wealth of never-before-seen archive, the film takes us through his extraordinary life and career and reveals the spark of madness that drove him. World Premiere

STUDIO 54STUDIO 54 / U.S.A. (Director: Matt Tyrnauer, Producers: Matt Tyrnauer, John Battsek, Corey Reeser) — Studio 54 was the pulsating epicenter of 1970s hedonism: a disco hothouse of beautiful people, drugs, and sex. The journeys of Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell — two best friends from Brooklyn who conquered New York City — frame this history of the “greatest club of all time.” World Premiere

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? / U.S.A. (Director: Morgan Neville, Producers: Caryn Capotosto, Nicholas Ma) — Fred Rogers used puppets and play to explore complex social issues: race, disability, equality and tragedy, helping form the American concept of childhood. He spoke directly to children and they responded enthusiastically. Yet today, his impact is unclear. Have we lived up to Fred’s ideal of good neighbors? World Premiere. SALT LAKE CITY OPENING NIGHT FILM

MIDNIGHT
From horror and comedy to works that defy genre classification, these films will keep you wide awake, even at the most arduous hour. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Little Hours, The Babadook and Get Out.

Arizona / U.S.A. (Director: Jonathan Watson, Screenwriter: Luke Del Tredici, Producers: Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Ryan Friedkin, Danny McBride, Brandon James) — Set in the midst of the 2009 housing crisis, this darkly comedic story follows Cassie Fowler, a single mom and struggling realtor whose life goes off the rails when she witnesses a murder. Cast: Danny McBride, Rosemarie DeWitt, Luke Wilson, Lolli Sorenson, Elizabeth Gillies, Kaitlin Olson. World Premiere

Assassination Nation / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sam Levinson, Producers: David Goyer, Anita Gou, Kevin Turen, Aaron L. Gilbert, Matthew J. Malek) — This is a one-thousand-percent true story about how the quiet, all-American town of Salem, Massachusetts, absolutely lost its mind. Cast: Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra, Bill Skarsgard, Bella Thorne. World Premiere

MANDYMandy / Belgium, U.S.A. (Director: Panos Cosmatos, Screenwriters: Panos Cosmatos, Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Producers: Daniel Noah, Josh Waller, Elijah Wood, Nate Bolotin, Adrian Politowski) — Pacific Northwest. 1983 AD. Outsiders Red Miller and Mandy Bloom lead a loving and peaceful existence. When their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed by a cult led by the sadistic Jeremiah Sand, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake, Bill Duke. World Premiere

Never Goin’ Back / U.S.A.  (Director and screenwriter: Augustine Frizzell, Producers: Toby Halbrooks, Liz Cardenas , James Johnston, David Lowery) — Jessie and Angela, high school dropout BFFs, are taking a week off to chill at the beach. Too bad their house got robbed, rent’s due, they’re about to get fired and they’re broke. Now they’ve gotta avoid eviction, stay out of jail and get to the beach, no matter what!!! Cast: Maia Mitchell, Cami Morrone, Kyle Mooney, Joel Allen, Kendal Smith, Matthew Holcomb. World Premiere

Piercing / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Nicolas Pesce, Producers: Josh Mond, Antonio Campos, Schuyler Weiss, Jake Wasserman) — In this twisted love story, a man seeks out an unsuspecting stranger to help him purge the dark torments of his past. His plan goes awry when he encounters a woman with plans of her own. A playful psycho-thriller game of cat-and-mouse based on Ryu Murakami’s novel. Cast: Christopher Abbott, Mia Wasikowska, Laia Costa, Marin Ireland, Maria Dizzia, Wendell Pierce. World Premiere

Revenge / France (Director and screenwriter: Coralie Fargeat, Producers: Marc-Etienne Schwartz, Jean-Yves Robin, Marc Stanimirovic) — Three wealthy married men get together for their annual hunting game in a desert canyon. This time, one of them has brought along his young mistress, who quickly arouses the interest of the other two. Things get dramatically out of hand as a hunting game turns into a ruthless manhunt. Cast: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchede, Jean-Louis Tribes. Utah Premiere

Summer of '84Summer of ’84 / Canada, U.S.A. (Directors: Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann Whissell, Screenwriters: Matt Leslie, Stephen J. Smith, Producers: Shawn Williamson, Jameson Parker, Matt Leslie, Van Toffler, Cody Zwieg) — Summer, 1984: a perfect time to be a carefree 15-year-old. But when neighborhood conspiracy theorist Davey Armstrong begins to suspect his police officer neighbor might be the serial killer all over the local news, he and his three best friends begin an investigation that soon turns dangerous. Cast: Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, Caleb Emery, Cory Grüter-Andrew, Tiera Skovbye, Rich Sommer. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | PARK CITY, UTAH | JANUARY 2018 | 

7 Restorations | Berlinale Classics 2018

BERLINALE CLASSICS 2018: SEVEN RESTORATIONS WILL CELEBRATE THEIR WORLD PREMIERES. The Berlinale Classics section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival will present the world premieres of a total of seven films in digitally restored versions.

WINGS OF DESIRE | Der Himmel über Berlin by Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders’ prize-winning classic Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, Federal Republic of Germany / France 1987) returns to the screen in a new, digitally restored 4K DCP version. Two guardian angels keep watch over Berlin, until one of them falls in love with a mortal woman. He chooses to become human, giving up his immortality, and an entirely new world is revealed to him. The film was shot on both black-and-white and colour stock. At the time, that required several additional steps in the lab in order to produce a final colour negative, which was several generations removed from the camera negatives. This version, restored by the Wim Wenders Foundation, is based on the original negatives;

MY 20th CENTURY | Az én XX. századom by Ildikó Enyedi

Az én XX. századom (My 20th Century, Hungary / Federal Republic of Germany 1989), the feature debut of the winner of the 2017 Golden Bear, Ildikó Enyedi, is a complex, poetic fairy tale, and an homage to silent movies. Shot in black-and-white, the film follows the very different live of identical twins in Old Europe at the dawn of the 20th century. Using the original camera negative and the magnetic sound track, the film was digitally restored in 4K by the Hungarian National Film Fund – Hungarian National Film Archive, working with Hungarian Filmlab. Cinematographer Tibor Máthé (HSC – Hungarian Society of Cinematographers) supervised the digital grading.

Fail Safe by Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet’s thriller Fail Safe (USA 1964) is an impressive critique of the Cold War military doctrine. When an errant U.S. bomber threatens to destroy Moscow, the president calls the Soviet premier on the red phone to try to prevent a retaliatory nuclear strike. The film was restored in 4K under the aegis of Sony Pictures Entertainment and its head of restoration, Grover Crisp. The incomplete camera negative was supplemented with the use of a duplicate negative. Conforming the various different source materials presented a special challenge to the restoration team.

THE CRANES ARE FLYING | Letjat schurawli by Michail KalatosoV

Letyat Zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying, USSR 1957) by Mikhail Kalatozov was Soviet cinema’s first international hit after World War II. Made during the period of liberalisation that followed Joseph Stalin’s death, this unusual black-and-white film’s expressionist images tell the tragic story of two lovers after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The film brought international fame to Mikhail Kalatozov and his lead actress, Tatiana Samoilova. Letyat Zhuravli was restored by Mosfilm under the leadership of general director Karen Shakhnazarov. The ditigal 2K restoration, on the basis of the original negative, was supervised by the head of restoration Igor Bogdasarov.

LIFE ACCORDING TO AGFA | HaChayim Al-Pi Agfa by Assi Dayan

Director Assi Dayan was lauded by the International Jury of the Berlinale in 1993 for the courage and honesty of his HaChayim Al-Pi Agfa (Life According to Agfa, Israel 1992). The film revolves around a Tel Aviv bar, where a world of bohemians, business people, junkies, tourists, pimps, and soldiers all meet. The events of a single night, captured in black-and-white photos, are a microcosm of a society that considers itself liberal and tolerant, but in which seemingly trivial actions can become explosive. The 4K restoration was produced by the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israel Film Archive, where the negative was scanned. It was supervised by cinematographer Yoav Kosh and supported by the Israel Film Fund.

TOKYO TWILIGHT | Tokyo Boshoku by Yasujiro Ozu

With Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight, Japan 1957), Berlinale Classics will provide a rare opportunity to see a largely unknown and seldom shown work by Yasujiro Ozu. The theme of the end of a family living together is one that Japanese directing maestro Yasujiro Ozu often reworks, and here he has given it a dramatic twist. In wintery Tokyo, a family’s silence leads to its breakdown. Tokyo Boshoku, considered Ozu’s most sombre post-war film, was digitally restored in 4K on the basis of the 35mm duplicate negative provided by the Japanese production company Shochiku, managed by Shochiku MediaWorX Inc. Colour correction was led by Ozu’s former assistant cameraman Takashi Kawamata and cinematographer Masashi Chikamori.

THE ANCIENT LAW | Das alte Gesetz by E.A. Dupont

The Berlinale Classics section will open on February 16, 2018, at 5 pm in the Friedrichstadt-Palast with the premiere of the Deutsche Kinemathek’s digital restoration of the 1923 silent film classic Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law) directed by E.A. Dupont. ZDF/ARTE commissioned French composer Philippe Schoeller to create new music for this version, which will be presented by the Orchester Jakobsplatz München with Daniel Grossmann at the podium.

The full programme of the Berlinale Classics section:

Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law)
Dir: Ewald André Dupont, Germany, 1923
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 2K DCP

Az én XX. századom (My 20th Century)
Dir: Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary / Federal Republic of Germany, 1989
Presented by Ildikó Enyedi and Tibor Máthé
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP

Fail Safe
Dir: Sidney Lumet, USA, 1964
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP

HaChayim Al-Pi Agfa (Life According To Agfa)
Dir: Assi Dayan, Israel, 1992
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)
Dir: Wim Wenders, Germany / France, 1987
Presented by Wim Wenders
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP

Letyat Zhuravli (The Cranes are Flying)
Dir: Mikhail Kalatozov, USSR, 1957
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 2K DCP

Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight)
Dir: Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1957
Presented by Wim Wenders
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL WILL RUN FROM 14 FEBRUARY – 24 FEBRUARY 2018 

Women on Top | 2017

Hollywood may still be struggling with female representation as 2018 gets underway, but Europe has seen tremendous successes in the world of indie film where talented women of all ages are winning accolades in every sphere of the film industry, bringing their unique vision and intuition to a party that has continued to rock throughout the past year. Admittedly, there have been some really fabulous female roles recently – probably more so than for male actors. But on the other side of the camera, women have also created some thumping dramas; robust documentaries and bracingly refreshing genre outings: Lucrecia Martel’s mesmerising Argentinian historical fantasy ZAMA (LFF/left) and Julia Ducournau’s Belgo-French horror drama RAW (below/right) have been amongst the most outstanding features in recent memory. All these films provide great insight into the challenges women continue to face, both personally and in society as a whole, and do so without resorting to worthiness or sentimentality. So as we go forward into another year, here’s a flavour of what’s been happening in 2017.

It all started at SUNDANCE in January where documentarian Pascale Lamche’s engrossing film about Winnie Mandela, WINNIE, won Best World Doc and Maggie Betts was awarded a directing prize for her debut feature NOVITIATE, about a nun struggling to take and keep her vows in 1960s Rome. Eliza Hitman also bagged the coveted directing award for her gay-themed indie drama BEACH RATS, that looks at addiction from a young boy’s perspective.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, BERLIN‘s Golden Bear went to Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi (right) for her thoughtful and inventive exploration of adult loneliness and alienation BODY AND SOUL. Agnieska Holland won a Silver Bear for her green eco feature SPOOR, and Catalan newcomer Carla Simón went home with a prize for her feature debut SUMMER 1993 tackling the more surprising aspects of life for an orphaned child who goes to live with her cousins. CANNES 2017, the festival’s 70th celebration, also proved to be another strong year for female talent. Claire Simon’s first comedy – looking at love in later life – LET THE SUNSHINE IN was well-received and provided a playful role for Juliette Binoche, which she performed with gusto. Agnès Varda’s entertaining travel piece FACES PLACES took us all round France and finally showed Jean-Luc Godard’s true colours, winning awards at TIFF and Cannes. Newcomers were awarded in the shape of Léa Mysius whose AVA won the SACD prize for its tender exploration of oncoming blindness, and Léonor Séraille whose touching drama about the after-effects of romantic abandonment MONTPARNASSE RENDEZVOUS won the Caméra D’Or.

On the blockbuster front, it’s worth mentioning that Patty Jenkins’ critically acclaimed WONDERWOMAN has so far enjoyed an international box office of around $821.74 million, giving Gal Godot’s Amazon warrior-princess the crown as the highest-grossing superheroine origin film of all time.

The Doyenne of French contemporary cinema Isabelle Huppert won Best Actress in LOCARNO 2017 for her performance as a woman who morphs from a meek soul to a force to be reckoned with when she is struck by lightening, in Serge Bozon’s dark comedy MADAME HYDE. Huppert has been winning accolades since the 1970s but she still has to challenge Hollywood’s Ann Doran (1911-2000) on film credits (374) – but there is plenty of time!). Meanwhile, Nastassja Kinski was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Honour for her extensive and eclectic contribution to World cinema (Paris,Texas, Inland Empire, Cat People and Tess to name a few).

With a Jury headed by Annette Bening, VENICE again showed women in a strong light. Away from the Hollywood-fraught main competition, this year’s Orizzonti Award was awarded to Susanna Nicchiarelli’s NICO, 1988, a stunning biopic of the final years of the renowned model and musician Christa Pfaffen, played by a feisty Trine Dyrholm. And Sara Forestier’s Venice Days winning debut M showed how a stuttering girl and her illiterate boyfriend help each other overcome adversity. Charlotte Rampling won the prize for Best Actress for her portrait of strength in the face of her husbands’ imprisonment in Andrea Pallaoro’s HANNAH. 

At last but not least, Hong Kong director Vivianne Qu (left/LFF) was awarded the Fei Mei prize at PINGYAO’s inaugural CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON film festival and the Film Festival of India’s Silver Peacock  for her delicately charming feature ANGELS WEAR WHITE that deftly raises the harrowing plight of women facing sexual abuse in the mainland. It seems that this is a hot potato the superpowers of China and US still have in common. But on a positive note, LADYBIRD Greta Gerwig’s first film as a writer and director, has been sweeping the boards critically all over the US and is the buzzworthy comedy drama of 2018 (coming in February). So that’s something else to look forward to. MT

CATE BLANCHETT WILL HEAD THE JURY AT 71st CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 8-19 MAY 2018

 

 

 

 

Berlinale: Generation 2018

Generation 2018: On true fairy tales and magical realities

Last year’s Generation strand featured some really hot titles, proving that youth cinema is capable of surprising and entertaining the older generation – not just its key audience. In its 41st edition, Generation reinforces its reputation for presenting ambitious new discoveries in the international contemporary film scene to young people told at eye level.

16 feature-length films have already been selected for the competition programmes Kplus and 14plus. In the diverse cinematic formats characteristic of the section, narratives follow their young protagonists through magical worlds of imagery, creating their very own realities that make the contradictions of the fragile adult world visible in subtle ways. The complete 2018 Generation programme will be publicised in mid-January.

Generation 14plus

303 |  Dir: Hans Weingartner | Germany | World premiere

303 tells the story of two university students, Jule (Mala Emde) and Jan (Anton Spieker) who leave Berlin together in an old camper on a road trip south, but for different reasons. As they philosophise on the world and themselves in passionate discussions, director Hans Weingartner maintains a natural closeness to the two young people against breathtaking backgrounds. After his contribution for the episodic film Germany 09, 13 Short Films About The State Of The Nation (Competition 2009), Weingartner, who was also a GWFF Best First Feature Award jury member in 2006, presents his second film at the Berlinale.

Cobain | Dir: Nanouk Leopold | Netherlands / Belgium / Germany | World premiere

After Wolfsbergen (Forum 2007), Brownian Movement (Forum 2011) and Boven is Het Still (Panorama 2013), Dutch director Nanouk Leopold will be represented at the 2018 festival in the Generation 14plus competition. In her characteristic style of quiet radicalism, her newest film follows 15-year-old Cobain as he wanders through the city in search of his self-destructive mother. On his way he runs into her old friends, social workers and the methadone clinic. In his feature film debut, Bas Keizer gently and stirringly embodies the young man who must grow up far before his time.

Danmark | Dir:  Kasper Rune Larsen | International premiere

When 16-year-old Josephine finds out she’s pregnant, she sleeps with laconic Norge and tells him he’s the father. What follows is a wary approach in which questions on responsibility and commitment become increasingly important for the two young people. In his feature film debut, in attentively registered gestures and looks, and keenly observed bodies, faces and things the two protagonists say or don’t say, Kasper Rune Larsen paints a perceptive portrait of young people with deep respect for their wishes and fears, their mistakes and desires.

Güvercin (The Pigeon) | Dir: Banu Sıvacı | Turkey | World premiere

Only on the roof of his parents’ house, above the alleys of a slum in Adana, with his beloved pigeons, can Yusuf find peace, and himself. Finding a foothold in the dystopian world outside is more difficult. Banu Sıvacı’s feature film debut – which she also wrote and produced – follows Yusuf in sharply composed imagery through difficult times. His expressions and the twists and turns of his body open up his very own inner world that has lots to tell about the outside one.

Les faux tatouages (Tattoos) Dir: Pascal Plante | Canada  | International premiere

In Les faux tatouages (Tattoos), Pascal Plante tells the story of young love – tenderly, but without drifting into pathos. Misfit Theo, played by Anthony Therrien (lead in Corbo, Generation 14plus 2015), meets Mag on his 18th birthday, and she invites him to spend the night with her. Music is the language they have in common: Framed by wild punk rhythms and filled with youthful passion, a relationship unfolds whose intensity is only increased by its unavoidably approaching end. With great candour and precision, Plante captures the hopes and dreams of young people on their path into an uncertain future.

Para Aduma (Red Cow) | Dir: Tsivia Barkai | Israel |  World premiere

Director, Berlinale Talents alumna and Jerusalem native Tsivia Barkai was already a guest of Generation in the 2006 14plus competition with her first short film Vika. In her feature film debut, she tells the story of patriarchic order, and youthful desire and rebellion. Benny, a young woman, lives in East Jerusalem and sees her father’s religious, utopian nationalism with increasing scepticism – unlike the secret embraces of her girlfriend Yael. A story told in pictures as powerful as the stormy yearnings of its heroine.

Unicórnio (Unicorn) | Dir: Eduardo Nunes | Brazil  | International premiere

The mysterious drama by Brazilian director Eduardo Nunes develops the story of 13-year-old Maria, who lives alone with her mother in rural isolation. When a young man moves into the neighborhood with his herd of goats, their lives are thrown off balance. Using intoxicatingly immersive images, Nunes transmits the radical language and magical realism of author Hilda Hilst into a mystical, fairy-tale world in an imposing widescreen format.

Virus Tropical | Columbia / France | Dir: Santiago Caicedo | European premiere

Paola is growing up in Quito, Ecuador, as the youngest of three sisters. Dreams burst, companies fail, love grows and withers. In his feature film debut, director Santiago Caicedos translates the autobiographical story of the Ecuadorian comic illustrator Powerpaola into fast-paced, graphically daring, animated images. Emancipatory protest and a declaration of love combine to form an ironic perspective on contemporary Latin America.

Generation Kplus

Allons enfants (Cléo & Paul | DIR: Stéphane Demoustier | France | World premiere

Three-and-a-half-year-old Cléo is the reigning hide-and-seek champion. But then one day she forgets which path she took in the park. Suddenly the world is full of strangers staring at their smartphones. Cléo sets out on her own in the hustle-bustle of Paris in search of her brother Paul, who is only slightly older – and lost as well. In tender proximity to its tiny protagonists, this laconic cinematic fairy tale by Stéphane Demoustier turns the daily urban doldrums into a marvelous cosmos of wonderful things, places and encounters.

The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear | Dir:  Philip Einstein Lipski, Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam | International premiere

Mitcho and Sebastian are quite surprised when they fish a message in a bottle out of the water one day. Inside is a letter from the mayor J.B., who vanished without a trace, and a seed that grows into a giant pear overnight. The pear turns into a sailboat and suddenly the anxious Sebastian and the hydrophobic Mitcho find themselves in the middle of the ocean with a mad professor. Based on the picture book by Jakob Martin Strid, this fast-paced, magical animation by a trio of directors tells the story of an adventurous journey to the mysterious island where Mayor J.B. is now believed to be located.

My Giraffe | Dir: Barbara Bredero  | Netherlands / Belgium / Germany | International premiere

Patterson’s best friend has a long neck and soft, brightly-spotted fur. His name is Raf, he was born the same day as Patterson, and he is: a talking giraffe. Now the two of them are turning four, and soon it’ll be their first day of school. Only animals aren’t allowed at school. Inspired by the classic Dutch children’s song and poem by Annie M.G. Schmidt, and told with a wink, this film is an imaginative story on value and flux in an unusual friendship.

El día que resistía | Dir: Alessia Chiesa | Arg/France | World premiere

They play hide-and-seek, read to each other, roughhouse and tumble with their dog Coco: At first glance, the siblings Fan (8), Tino (6) and Claa (4) lead an unburdened childhood life. But they are completely alone, and the forest is just outside, and wasn’t there something about a big bad wolf? With ample sensuality, Berlinale Talents alumna and Argentina native Alessia Chiesa’s feature-length debut unfolds into a dreamy but increasingly gloomy world.

Gordon och Paddy (Gordon and Paddy) | Dir”: Linda Hambäck | Sweden | International premiere

Told in wildly popular Scandinavian whodunit style, frog police chief Gordon, voiced by Stellan Skarsgård, and his assistant Paddy (Melinda Kinnaman) uphold the law of the forest, track down nut thieves and protect forest residents from the fox. Courteousness is legal and dirty tricks are illegal. But that’s always a question of perspective, as this absorbing animation shows using oodles of charm and attention to detail, by filmmaker Linda Hambäck, born in South Korea.

Les rois mongols (Cross My Heart) | Dir: Luc Picard | Canada  | European premiere

Montreal, October 1970. Twelve-year-old Manon’s poverty-stricken family breaks apart: His father has cancer and his mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When Manon and her little brother are to be taken to a foster family, she makes a daredevil plan. Featuring stirring actors and skillfully linked to the real-life upheavals, this film manages to create a moving portrayal of those times, simultaneously exposing the lies and lack of understanding in the grown-up world in tragic and humorous ways.

Sekala Niskala (The Seen and Unseen) | Dir: Kamila Andini | Neth / Austral / Qatar | Euro prem

In Sekala Niskala (The Seen and Unseen), Indonesian director Kamila Andini, who presented her debut film The Mirror Never Lies at the Berlinale (Generation 2012) searches for answers to the question of how to say goodbye to a beloved person. Shaped by the Balinese understanding of Sekala – the seen, and Niskala – the unseen, Andini gives the world experience of a ten-year-old girl and her very ill twin brother an imagery of remarkable expressive power.

Supa Modo Germany | Dir: Likarion Wainaina |  Kenya | World premiere

This drama by Kenyan director Likarion Wainaina, co-produced by Tom Tykwer, tells the inspiring story of nine-year-old Jo. In her acting debut, Stycie Waweru embodies with touching earnestness the terminally ill girl who dreams of being a superhero. Against all odds and battling the time left her, a whole village takes it upon themselves to make Jo’s last wish a reality: to make a film and star in it. Wainaina succeeds in creating a deeply moving observation of the comforting value of imagination in the face of the finiteness of a still young life.

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | GENERATION PLUS | 15-25 FEBRUARY 2018

What Will People Say (2017) | Dubai Film Festival 2017

Dir|Writer: Iram Haq | Cast: Adil Hussain, Maria Mozhdah, Ekavali Khanna, Rohit Saraf  | Norwegian/Urdu | 106′ | Drama

 Actor/director Iram Haq’s impressive sophomore title WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY plays out as a grippingly atmospheric thriller in which a beautiful young Pakistani girl plays the enigmatic and wilful heroine. Screening as a world premiere at this year’s Toronto, it offers refreshing and intriguing take on what could otherwise have been just another story about cross cultural conflict and tragedy or even wander down a fashionable politically correct route.

 Nisha (Maria Mozhdah) is leading a double life — at home she is obedient to her traditional Pakistani father – played masterfully here by Adil Hussain (Lunchbox) – but to her friends she is a typical Norwegian teenager, hanging out in bars, dating and spending her time on her phone. But her father catches her flirting with a boyfriend upstairs in the family home one day and brings her world crashing down in a fit of anger, brutally disassociating himself from her behaviour, and taking her off to his family in Pakistan (the locations are actually India).

 Haq makes great use of an atmospheric soundtrack to telegraph doom and despair in this often sinister story which makes great use of its snowbound and exotic locations. India looks stunning in Nadim Carlsen’s beautifully composed shots captured both on the widescreen and in intimate jewel-like settings. Apart from the strong central cast, Haq uses periphery characters to warn of danger, tempt and tease a girl who rapidly has to adapt from her Western lifestyle to the world of a closeted and protected unmarried woman in a highly restrictive Muslim-dominated society.

 Sadly, Nisha is rather underwritten as a character – whether by intent in respect of cultural traditions or by omission – it’s never quite sure, but strangely this works to the film’s advantage and Haq makes her character come alive a way that feels both authentic and beguiling. Yer we feel for Hussain’s father figure who internally struggles with his duty as a traditional father requiring him to impose draconian measures on his daughter while he still clearly loves her – it’s a tough role but Hussain pulls it off with dignity, strangely evoking our respect and sympathy in this shocking and convincing arthouse parable that lifts the lid on a society that still adheres blindly to its traditions. MT

DUBAI FILM FESTIVAL | 6-13 DECEMBER 2017
https://youtu.be/b8_dBOzufWQ

Faithfull (2017)

Dir.: Sandrine Bonnaire | Documentary with Marianne Faithful | France 2017 | 62′.

With 63 films under her belt, Sandrine Bonnaire is a talented actress but needs to hone her documentary making skills. This portrait of British singer/songwriter/actor/performance artist Marianne Faithful, who celebrates forty years on the stage, is slim not only in running time, but also in technique. She fails to bring out the essence of the English singer, songwriter and actress in a strangely invasive film, reducing Marianne Faithfull nearly to tears on one occasion during filming.

FAITHFULL relies heavily on early Sixties footage and TV clips for its watchability. We learn that Faithfull first met Jagger at a party in early on in her career when she was attacked by the main-stream media for not committing herself to being the motherly female “when there are so many ways for her to spend her days; cleaning the home for hours or rearranging the flowers”. On the London stage, she was Ophelia, confessing unashamedly that she could sometimes not perform, because of drugs. Then there are wonderful clips from “The Girl on the Motorcycle, in which she starred as Rebecca.

But it was a miscarriage at 19, at the end of her five year long relationship with Jagger which really damaged her. “Mick wanted children” – and yes he did indeed, having now fathered eight. What followed was a descent into drugs, influenced by her reading William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. But Faithfull always got up and persevered, as her more recent concerts show, getting even better.

Bonnaire will be remembered for a rather embarrassing scene in the car when Faithfull asked her more than once, to turn off the camera and leave her be. But Bonnaire, instead of listening, put the camera even closer to her wounded face. Subconsciously, the director repeats exactly the treatment the teenage singer got from the establishment press. The only way to enjoy this documentary, is to concentrate on Marianne Faithfull’s music, and there is luckily a great deal to enjoy here. AS

REVIEWED  DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Hidden Reserves | Stille Reserven (2017)

Dir: Valentin wolrd Hitz; Cast: Clemens Schick; Lena Lanzemis, Marion Mitterhammer, Daniel Olbrychski; Austria/Germany/Switzerland 2016, 96′

HIDDEN RESERVES sees Vienna 2033 as a frightening dystopian landscape where even dying is not for free. Inspired by Fahrenheit 451, Valentin Hitz’ brilliantly abrasive scenario is stunning to look at and only diminished by his choice of femme-fatale.

This is a world where the capitalist state is greedy beyond the dreams of avarice: we watch as wagon-loads of humans on life-support are ferried into giant warehouses, where they are stored Amazon style. And that is just what these cocoons are: debt-ridden bodies waiting waiting to be harvested for organ donation, surrogacy, or even data storage. Little wonder then that death insurance is literally ‘to die for’, it’s the only surefire way of guaranteeing the ‘right to die’.  

Vincent Baumann (Schick) sells death insurance salesmen, and he will go to any lengths to get that signature on the dotted line. Emotionally he is nearly catatonic, sexually he is casual and promiscuous:indulging with his boss Diana Dorm (Mitterhammer) in the company bathroom.
Naturally, this sort of environment needs a counterforce, and it comes in the form of a guerrilla unit, led by the enigmatic nightclub singer Lisa Sokulowa (Lanzemis). The group try to cut off the warehouse power supply to put an end to those suffering on death’s door. Dorm instructs Schick to infiltrate the ‘terrorists’, but once exposed to new blood from outside the sterile insurance system, he falls for Lisa and things get complicated when her father Wladimir (Olbrychski), who invented the depot technology, enters the fray.

DoP Martin Gschlacht (Teheran Taboo) creates an intelligent and visually impressive Sci-fi world where the guerrillas live in a noirish ’60s , and the technocrats’ in hues of chilly blue, the identification installations look like blocks of ice. Schick is superb in his alien mien, even when he turns human – and the scenes in Prater Park, having fallen into disrepair, are magical. This remarkable feature is marred by the choice of Lanzemis as the chanteuse. Singing “Teach me Tiger, or I’ll teach you” – composed by Nino Tempo in 1959, and sang by his sister April Stevens – as a diva Lanzemis’ Lisa channels a cabaret singer of the Weimar Republic, her sole expression throughout is monotonous, tight-jawed annoyance. Have a look at the lyrics of “Teach me Tiger” and you decide: they are extremely daring for the late 1950s, and Lanzemis brings absolutely nothing to the party with her reckless lack of emotional range, seriously putting the whole endeavour in a bad light light. A perfect exercise in miscasting. AS

WINNER | BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY | AUSTRIAN FILM AWARDS 2017

Golden Dawn Girls II (2017)

Dir.: Harvard Bustnes; Documentary; Norway/Finland 2017, 91′

Harvard Bustnes’ portrait of three women whose men are leading politicians in the neo-fascist Greek Golden Dawn Party, is illuminating, but also very frightening. The trio exemplifes good PR in motion as they work tirelessly, using all the tricks in the book to convince and cajole – not only the filmmaker, but also the Greek electorate – into believing that their party is the victim of corrupt democracy, while hiding the fact that they want to replace democracy with a Fascist state, built on the Nazi model.

Eugenia (Jenny), Dafni and Ourania represent three generations of woman: Jenny is the wife of Greek MP Giorgos Germenis, a former metal bassist and baker, who was rewarded for 18 years of service to the party with a seat in Parliament in the 2012 elections. Jenny is a platinum blonde, whose no-nonsense approach could give her a successful career as an estate agent. Dafni is the white-haired mother of fellow MP Panagiotis Iliopoulos. She plays the role of the family carer, rallying her grandchildren in on the act, as they run around with toy weapons. Even a priest and friend of the family, joins in the game of throwing grenades.

Dafni accuses the government of perpetrating a national genocide: “The government wants us to disappear, like the Incas. One day, there will be no more Greeks. But we have the blood of the old Greek heroes in our DNA”. Nevertheless, even on TV, she is able to formulate what will happen next with their political enemies: “We will drink their blood with a straw after the elections”. When the left-wing rapper Pavlos Fyssas is murdered by a crowd of Golden Dawn supporters, neither Jenny, Dafni or Ourania want to discuss the incident. Ourania is a postgraduate psychology student, animal lover and Disney fan, the Little Prince is one of her favourite book. She is the daughter of founder and party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, who finds himself in jail with the majority of the Golden Dawn MPs, after weapons are found in their HQ. But she finds nothing wrong with party member Ilkias Kasidiaris, who still supports the Colonel’s Fascist dictatorship (1968-1974), and hits a woman member of the Communist Front three times in the face during a life TV debate, having assaulted another woman from the Radical Left. The Golden Dawn women get very active during the election campaign of 2014, since most the men are in jail. But after their release, the trio step back from the front line, retreating into the shadows of their husbands, fathers and sons.

Only once do the women show their true colours– after watching marching party members singing “Communists, you will be turned into soup” and “Fuck the Jews”. Asked by the director, who they hold responsible for the Greek crisis, the old chestnuts come out: “The Protocol of Zion. It is a universal conspiracy. The Jews change the government, even in America.” After being reminded, that Obama is not Jewish, the conspiracy theories go on “The Jews choose people, give them money and trap them with blackmail, and use them as puppets”.

DoPs Lars Skree and Viggo Knudsen follow the rapidly changing locations, and often get a little glance in, after the door is shut, because some Party meetings are off limits. Bustnes tries to the very end, to get a disclaimer from the women, but they will never admit that they or their men are Nazis, even though video and photographical proof is there. To the end they play the game of denial, seeing themselves as victims. It goes without saying – Golden Dawn Girls is a disturbing look at modern politics. AS

SCREENING DURING IDFA 2017 |

The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017) | IDFA 2017

Dir: Simon Lereng Wilmont | Denmark| Doc | 90′

The Distant Barking of Dogs is set in Eastern Ukraine on the frontline of the war where in the spring of 2014, an armed conflict erupted between the government and pro-Russian separatists. After almost a year of widespread fighting in the eastern region of Donbass, a young boy survives with his grandma in the village of . Poignant and poetic, the film follows 10-year-old Oleg day to day life as he gradually loses his innocence beneath the pressures of war, rather like the character in Ivan’s Childhood. 

As locals gradually leave the village for safety, Oleg and his cousin Yarik play in the ravishing rural pastureland, often strewn with the detritus of conflict. Hnutove is fast-becoming a ghost town and we are made acutely aware of the importance of human relationships, and how vital the constant reassurance of people and animals is for emotional wellbeing, as Oleg and his grandma Alexandra – who have nowhere else to go – are thrown together. Oleg (who mother is dead) must grow up quickly in a world threatened by the challenges of hostility and privation. And although the boy rises to the occasion, his generation of young Ukrainian children will clearly bear the scars of war for many years to come.

Behind the rough and tumble of play, there is always a unsettling feeling of doom and Lereng Wilmont delicately dramatises how the kids are actually living in a war zone, where death lies in wait at every turn in a conflict that shows no sign of abating, despite the often calm and bucolic surroundings, As the film wears on the tone becomes more bleak as the kids inspect a handgun by belonging to a local teen called Kostya. A disturbing scene shows them shooting at frogs in a well, and later Oleg is scuffed by a passing bullet.

There is a close intimacy to Lereng Wilmont’s camerawork illustrating just how babyish these children still are, their little faces and staring eyes hardening as they confront scenes that would mortify most adults. We feel for these tiny souls alone in the face of evil. A fitting folkloric score sounds gently in the background, punctuated by occasional bomb blasts. This is a resonant and evocative documentary that sheds light on the deeply human experience in contemporary war zones. MT

THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS | IDFA 2017

 

 

 

The Rebel Surgeon (2017) | IDFA 2017

 Dir/Writer: Eric Gandini | Doc | Sweden | 52′

Director, writer and producer Eric Gandini is known for exploring aspects of our highly evolved Western society, first through his documentary debut The Swedish Theory of Love (2015) that delves into the existential black holes in the Swedish lifestyle, and now with his latest documentary The Rebel Surgeon where he takes the debate further by comparing the Swedish medical system with that of a still developing country of Ethiopia, through this slim but heart-warming story of a maverick orthopaedic surgeon, Erik Erichsen.

We hear how Dr Erichsen became so disillusioned by Swedish bureaucracy that he dropped out and moved to the East African country to work as a general surgeon, with his Ethiopian-born wife and partner Sainnat. Amongst the tropical lushness of this magnificent part of the World, he finds professional fulfilment (some might say “playing God”)  as never before, rescuing lives in a small field hospital in the small community of Aira and with very limited resources – there is neither money for, nor access to, decent equipment, so he must be enterprising and creative in his methods. He works with a small domestic drill, plastic strips, jubilee clips, bicycle spokes and fishing lines: he even uses a woman’s hair slide during prostate surgery, and performs life-changing operations on the sick and wounded patients from all over the region. Ethiopians have a tough and uncompromising life but they never die alone, unlike most people in so-called ‘civilised’ societies. Here Erichsen exchanges bureaucracy for a heavy patient list – each person gets a few minutes – but they are grateful as only three doctors are available for every 100’000 inhabitants. Dr. Erichsen and his wife work full on to clear their load, but their work is 100% treatment and diagnostic-based, rather than computer or admin-orientated.

Made on a low budget, and none the worse for it, Gandini’s  film makes for compelling viewing, enriched by images of the magnificent verdancy of the region’s tropical landscapes which contrast starkly with horrific nature of the medical cases presented and the gruesome surgical procedures that follow. Erichsen clearly loves his work and the adulation that comes from his patients, but his dry sense of humour and pragmatism also provide laugh out loud moments, along with some wincing. There is space to reflect on how extreme material hardship is in no way linked to emotional poverty; clearly these rural Ethiopians are a stoic bunch who accept their prognoses without flinching, and who look after each other and are eternally grateful for the Swedish doctor’s help, often returning to visit once they are cured. It’s not all good, but death is part of life for these people, and they appear to accept their fates philosophically, if nothing can be done.

It is easy to see why Erichsen finds the work in Ethiopian so satisfying. Here his opinion is unchallenged (except occasionally by his wife) and he is bound by few rules, hailed as a hero, and gets to make all the decisions. In Sweden  he is challenged not only by the system, but also by the patients themselves who are exacting and whose expectations of life and medical treatment available are extremely exacting, Erichsen insisting that the mindset of the Swedes is far worse than the material poverty of Ethiopia.

After his decade long tenure in Ethiopia, Erichsen must return to life in Sweden, which he does with a heavy heart. And we are left contemplating the future of his Ethiopian surgical team who will battle on without him. Meanwhile, life will never be the same for Erichsen and his wife back in the Northern Europe, but every cloud has a silver lining, as we discover in the finale.

REVIEWED AT IDFA | NOW PREVIEWING ON FESTIVALSCOPE | PENDING DISTRIBUTION

The White World according to Daliborek (2017) | IDFA 2017

Dir: Vit Klusak | Writer: Vit Klusak, Marianna Stranska | Doc | Czech Rep | 90′

Czech documentarian Vit Klusak turns his camera on white racist supremacy for his latest documentary which is shot through with the same dark humour as his debut Czech Dream, although this shocking expose leaves a bitter taste in the mouth despite its hilarious moments.

In the Czech Republic lives Daliborek, a pasty-faced larded lump of a man who, at 37, still lives with his mother, abusing her verbally and occasionally even physically, asking her to “stand to attention” in front of his friends.

Although Daliborek raises some laughs with his outlandish behaviour throughout, we titter in sheer disbelief rather than out of genuine pleasure, a feeling of sickness replacing any genuine mirth, in the aftermath to this alarming film. Klusak is entirely dispassionate about his subject, who is clearly more of a super-sized bully than an outright threat. But when Daliborek joins his like-minded friends, it’s easy to see how any form of extremism can quickly get out of hand and threaten democracy, or lead to mass violence –  genocide even – as we have learnt from the past.

Giving full rein to this nutter on the big screen serves to make us in no doubt whatsoever about these characters who exist in society and are to be pitied and demeaned rather than feared, as long as they live securely in within their families; although the startling epilogue to the doc poses more concern.

Daliborek regularly rants on youtube with tuneless misogynist and sexually explicit songs that garner hundreds of views per clip. Meanwhile, his vampish mother Vera is in denial as she desperately dates online and posts fluffy photoshopped pictures of herself on Facebook. As the film gets underway, she has formed a relationship with another racist man. Daliborek’s bedroom is a sight for sore eyes: Neo-Nazi flags deck the walls along with supremacist crosses. But when he meets (an equally overweight) girl, he totally respects her prudishness and refusal to have sex, even after the couple have dated for several months. Clearly he’s no psychopath.

You have to pinch yourself at times while watching this bracingly rampant stuff; it could easily be a well-scripted spoof. And liberals and minorities will be calm in the knowledge that Daliborek’s life is actually rather sad and monotonous. He doesn’t even get to have sex with his girlfriend.

Eventually Vera’s boyfriend and Daliborek start to bond during their karate afternoons in the nearby park, both men demonstrating their tough-guy moves chopping bricks – or not. This is certainly thought-provoking stuff and absolutely compelling to watch, although Klusak never really gets to the bottom of why Daliborek has become so outrageous, given his humdrum life in a bland provincial village with hardly any crime, or immigrant population. He does not even bother to vote in the local elections. So clearly, he must have reached his point of view out of sheer boredom and lack of direction.

The final ‘epilogue’ is tragic and really raises far more questions than it attempts to answer. During a family visit to Auschwitz, Daliborek tries to go out on a limb and deny the holocaust in front of a survivor, who has just given frank and open talk about her experiences. MT

SCREENING DURING IDFA | 15-26 NOVEMBER 2017

Matilda | Matylda (2017) | UK Russian Film Week 2017

Dir.: Aleksey Uchitel; Cast: Michalina Olszanska, Lars Eidinger, Luise Wolfram, Danila Kozlousky, Sergey Garmash, Ingeborg Dapkunaite, Thomas Ostermeier; Russian Federation 2017, 109’

Aleksey Uchitel, whose work so far has oscillated between mundane crime dramas like Break Loose, and the pretentious and misogynist His Wife’s Diary, a biopic about the Russian writer Ivan Bunin, directs the script of Michael Katims and Aleksandr Terekhov very much in the spirit of the latter. The affair between the future Tsar Nicholas II and the ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya (Matylda Krzesinska) is a pompous melodrama, a cross between the ‘kitsch’ of West German post WWII Sissy films and a second-rate James Bond extravaganza.

Set at the beginning of 1890, when 17-year old Matilda (Olszanska) was one of the stars of the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Uchitel shows the teenager as a heart-breaking tease, leaning on high-ranking officer Vorontsov (Kozlousky) to participate in a daring riding competition – just for a kiss. But the future Tsar (Eidinger) is first in line, and soon the two are so madly in love, that Nicholas thinks about abdicating. Whilst Nicholas father Aleksandr III (Garmash) is very much in favour of his son marrying Matilda, his wife Maria Feodorovna (Dapkunaite) favours a marriage to the German princess Alexandra (Wolfram) who has brought her confidant Dr. Fisher (Ostermeier) to Russia. He captures Vorontsov and tries, in an early version of waterboarding, to find out some secrets which might compromise Matilda. But Vorontsov overpowers the doctor, and leaves him in the tank – to be discovered by Alexandra, who dumps Matilda’s bloody ballet shoe into the water. Vorontsov, jealous and obsessed by Matilda, kidnaps her, and wants to die with her a boat full of TNT.

Uchitel is one of many directors portraying teenagers in love with men twice their age, showing them as predators. The reality, that these older men in power positions are coercing the young women, never seems to occur. Even Matilda’s few ballet scenes are shown in the context of rivalry with another ballerina. Apart from this, we see her in numerous forms of semi-undressed, being the object of male gaze of the director and DoP Yuriy Klimenko, who worked with Uchital on Break Loose. He wallows in slow-motion and sickly pink images, always objectifying Matilda. Apart from the ridiculous plotting, violence is as gratuitous as fare-fetched in its execution. Acting is straight from the 1950s, with the lines articulated with the earnestness of school children.

The real Matylda Krzesinska emigrated after the Revolution to Paris, where she founded her own ballet school in the 1920s, her students include Margot Fonteyn, Alicia Markova and Maurice Bejart among others. She went on dancing until aged 64, when she was on stage of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden at a Charity event. She certainly deserves better than this caricature of a film. AS

SCREENING DURING UK RUSSIAN FILM Week  | 19-26 NOVEMBER 2017

Shalom Bollywood (2017) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Danny Ben-Moshe | Doc | US | 85′

In his feisty all singing all dancing doc Danny Ben-Moshe shows how religious taboos led to the first superstars of Indian cinema being Jewish. India has always been extremely tolerant towards its Jewish population, it was deeply frowned on for Hindu and Muslim women to appear in film back in the early years of the 20th century, so their roles were generally played by men, until female Jewish stars filled the vacuum.

Light-hearted and full of cheeky chutzpah Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema explores the rise to fame of four such prima donnas — Sulochana, Pramila, Miss Rose and Nadira — and a token male David Abraham, whose charisma was such that marriage was unable to contain him to one female, but he always remained the toast of the town and the most-invited man in Mumbai’s soigné cinema soirées. Abraham was also known as “Uncle David,” and he charmed the birds from the trees until a stroke robbed him of his speech.

You get the impression that Ben-Moshe is really desperate to push his point showcasing these Jewish divas as his restless camera darts from pillar to post chockfull of original footage and talking heads that prattle away volubly about the triumphs of their proud community. And although the films they discuss are not necessarily the most well known to mainstream audiences, Shalom provides solid entertainment as a taster of Jewish-led Bollywood films of the last century.

This is a far cry from the director’s previous work Code of Silence, which raised the lid on child sex abuse in Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community. Here we learn how a few thousand Jews lived peaceably amongst the Muslim and Hindu majorities. They were the long-established sect of Bene Israelis, and also Jews from Iraq. Sulochana was actually called Ruby Myers. She captured the imagination of her male co-stars with her dusky beauty seen mostly in animated stills, as footage of her silent films is hard to come by but includes the remarkable 1927 Wild Cat of Bombay, where she does a ‘Kate Blanchett’, playing multiple female and male roles in this cult extravaganza. Esther Abraham, hailed from Calcutta and was known by her stage name of Pramila. Her marriage to a Muslim produced the actor-playwright Haider Ali, who provides a lively account of how the different religious communities got on like a house on fire, back in the day.

The film’s final glamorous star was Nadira (Florence Ezekiel), who played opposite Dilip Kumar as ‘the vamp’ – simply a female who fluttered her eyelids and wore high heels – during the 1950s and ’60s with films like Aan. These stars were quick to learn from their Hollywood peers and provided a new kind of emancipated female in contrast to the submissive characters of the era.

Shalom Bollywood skims over a great deal of detail surrounding Hindu language issues the stars encountered but as a fun and lightly informative flick through the era’s silent cinema and the ‘Golden Age’ of film it’s certainly provides insight. MT

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | 9 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017 | NATIONWIDE

 

Russian Film Week | 19 November – 26 November 2017

Russian Film Week (RFW) returns this year for the second time and is twice as big, marking it as the biggest cross-cultural Russian event to have taken place outside of Russia.

The nationwide programme includes shorts, animation, documentary films and features intended to bridge the gap between Russia and the West through culture. And whilst the ‘greats’ – such as Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, or Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Loveless) – are well known to cineastes, the RFW mission is to bring us the full scope of Russian cinema to an international market and celebrate its artistic merit with global audiences.

18505238_303There will be a chance to see new films such as MATHILDE (Alexey Uchitel/left) and ARRYTHMIA (Boris Khlebnikov/below), and the latest in Russian cinema all with a Russian theme, whether from Russia or other countries — based on Russian literature, people or events, enlivened by Q&A sessions, exhibitions and masterclasses including a documentary strand as part its FemFest, Revolution Centenary, and Ecology Days. Waterstones Piccadilly will host throughout the week free VR demonstrations provided by Russian VR Seasons and PlanetPics (Natural Treasures of Russia programme).

arrhythmia_still_1_-_publicity_-_h_2017RFW opens with a screening of ATTRACTION, and climaxes with the BFI closing screening of MATHILDE on the 26th November, and Golden Unicorn Awards Charity Gala Dinner on the 25th. This is when the winners in 12 awards categories, including Best Foreign film About Russia, will be announced – as decided by a renowned international jury.

In attendance of the festival, will be over 75 of Russia’s most talented directors, producers and actors including: Fedor Bondarchuk, Alexander Yatsenko, Valery Todorovsky, Alyona Babenko, Anna Mikhalkova and Aleksey Uchitel. 

RFW takes place in venues including the BFI, Science Museum, PictureHouses, Curzon Cinemas, Ciné Lumière, Regent Street Cinema and more London, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

As 2017 is the Year of Ecology in Russia, RFW have teamed up with WWF UK to raise funds for the WWF Amur Tiger Conservation Project in Russia over the duration of the festival. RFW and Synergy University have also launched a special Student Ecology Short Film competition with a special Golden Unicorn–Synergy Award. So RFW looks set to be a highlight of this Winter’s festival circuit. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 19 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017 | LONDON | NATIONWIDE

Freedom for the Wolf (2017) | IDFA 2017

000e7cce-4e74-4bbb-8f41-64a5dcf00047Dir.: Rupert Russell; Documentary; Germany/USA/Hong Kong/India/Japan/ Kuwait/Tunisia, 89 min.

First time director/writer Rupert, son of the great Ken Russell, shows a rather frightening political reality emerging worldwide: the demolition of democracy as we know it, as a system which allows alternatives and protects minorities. It is replaced by nationalism and religious tyranny, always serving the titular Wolf: the elite, only a percentage of the population, which varies from country to country.

The “Occupy Movement” in Hong Kong, which started in 2014, was protesting against the Chinese government’s subversion of democracy, nominating 12 candidates from which the citizens of Hong Kong could choose their nominal leader – nominal, because who ever was chosen, would put China’s interests first. The movement was mainly supported by students, and was quite successful in blocking the streets of the centre city with mass sit-downs, the occupants living in tents. The movement faltered when taxi drivers and shoppers begun to organise against their restricted ‘freedom’ to drive and shop. This is the result, of the majority of the middle-class Hong-Kong population having a rising living standard, so they abandoned the movement, they had supported at the beginning.

In Tunisia, the government of Moncef Marzouki, ruling between 2011 and 2014, has been replaced by a more authoritarian regime. The reason was mainly that the Marzouki government, which was born from the ‘Arab Spring’, did not provide economic progress; on the contrary, prices for foodstuffs – such as canned tomatoes – went up drastically. Now, under the leadership of President Beji Caid Essebsi, prices have still not come down, but there is a new intolerance rising: cartoons of the Prophet, or dancing sparsely dressed in public, are punished with jail, and the Education Minister, who had tolerated these basic expressions of freedom, was censored for “sleeping on the job”. One of the interviewed is sure that “the less economical growth, the more people want to strengthen the religious ideology”. And the laws of the current Muslim government of Tunisia are the proof.

In India, President Narenda Modi, won his election in 2014 on the back of a religious campaign. “2000 years ago, there were no Christians, 1400 years ago there were no Muslims. There were only Hindus in Rome and Mecca”. And even when in office, his party inflamed the political war between the religions – 80% of the Indian population is Hindu – with scare stories: Muslim families train their men to seduce Hindu girls, giving the youngsters new motor-cycles and nice clothes. And when the Hindu girls have born them eight Muslim children, they are sold into slavery. Six month before the election in 2014, Hindu’s provoked riots, in which over 600 Muslim and 240 Hindus were killed. But again, the middle-classes are profiting here, with more spending power, whilst the rural population is suffering, because the government is forcing them to sell their land for minimal prices to corporations.

In Japan, the police had resurrected a law from 1940, which forbade dancing. Secret policemen infiltrated clubs, and charged the young clients with the offence, which would carry a punishment of one million Yen and six months imprisonment. Only a vigilant judge prevented the cases going to court. And finally, in the USA, after Trump’s win in last year’s election, illiberal trends continued. The police now has a huge arsenal of weapons at their disposal, creating a windfall for the weapon industry: among them grenades, chemical weapons, armoured vehicles, missile launchers and even nuclear weapons. And the whole election process has been undermined after the Supreme Court delivered in 2010 a landmark ruling regarding Campaign finances (Citizens United vs FEC), allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting the campaign of their chosen candidates. Before this ruling, there were two parts of the election process: the primaries, followed by the election itself. But now, about 0.2 % of the population, the super-rich, decide which candidates they will support, making it impossible for outsiders to outspend them. It is one of the ironies of Trump’s victory that the majority of the small business donors who supported his campaign, will be the losers, since the interest of the big corporations will be certainly served by the Trump administration.

Freedom for the Wolf paints a dark picture: worldwide democracy, promising diversity, is replaced by a global wave of ill-liberal policies. Interests of the few are converging against freedom. Nationalism and religious bigotry are on the front foot, and tolerance has been replaced by consumerism as a leading goal. Russell has created a fine film that would make his father proud. Cleverly he ensure that younger viewers will be not to be put off by too many “Talking Heads’ – he has used imaginative cartoons to liven up the viewing. AS

FREEDOM FOR THE WOLF HAS ITS EUROPEAN PREMIERE AT INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM FROM 15 – 25 NOVEMBER 2017

Bye Bye Germany | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir: Sam Garbarski | Cast: Moritz Bleibtrau, Antje Traue, Tim Seyfi, Anatole Taubman | Ger/Lux/Belgium 2017 | Drama | 101′

Sam Garbarski’s rousing but tonally uneven drama takes place in the immediate aftermath to the Second World War where in Frankfurt, 1946, Moritz Bleibtrau’s glibly charismatic Jewish businessman has lived to tell the tale and is back to the drawing board of his previous existence, running a linen business owned by his family – who were not so lucky and mostly perished during the Holocaust. He and his other self-appointed salesmen try inventive ways to inveigle themselves into the homes and hearts of the local German housewives in order to peddle their wares, and get the business up and running again.

Based on Michel Bergmann’s ‘Teilacher’ trilogy the narrative is true to the page but somehow the book’s intended dark humour misfires on the screen, although the themes raised are certainly worthwhile in exploring the subtle nature of immigration and repatriation. Meanwhile, David shares a palpable onscreen chemistry with special agent Sarah Simon who is investigating questionable links to his past concerning a possible Nazi collaboration.

BYE BYE GERMANY is a lively and fast-moving drama if you buy into its humour, so let’s not bounce it out of court. If nothing else it is a tribute to the European Jews who chose to remain in their homeland of Germany with its painful reminders and past hostilities. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 9 NOVEMBER – 26 NOVEMBER 2017

Ben Gurion – Epilogue (2016) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Yariv Mozer; Documentary with David Ben-Gurion; Israel/France/Germany 2016, 70 min.

The majority of Yariv Mozer biopic’s focuses on his six hour b/w interview with the Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion in 1968, intended as the basis of a feature film about the ex-premier’s life. This film was released in 1970, but faded without impact. The British film crew who shot the interview in the spartan Side Boker kibbutz, had to build a new set with an extensive library, to create a background fitting the profile of the man who founded modern Israel as its first Prime Minister for 13 years, before rather abruptly resigning from government in 1963, when he was Minister of Defence.

1968 marked the 20th year since the founding of Israel, and Ben-Gurion, who came to what was then Palestine (a British Protectorate) from Poland, at the turn of the 20th century, lived there during the era when Zionism was not a combative ideology, let alone an imperialistic one. As far as 1948 goes, Ben-Gurion states unequivocally: “I believed we had the right to this country. Not taking it away from others, but recreating it.” But one year after the 1967 war, the same man wanted “to give most of the territories gained in that war back in exchange for peace”. That this never happened, he somehow foresaw, talking about the government he had left: “You are not considering the future, you are only considering the present.”

Documentary evidence about life during Ben-Gurion’s time show the changes in society from early settlements to state-building. But Ben-Gurion is alwys modest: “I did not guide Israel, I guided myself”. He was always a voracious reader, and as an eight year old boy, he was enthusiastic about Mark Twain’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The documentary is enriched with excerpts from some of his great Knesset speeches, and meetings with Ray Charles and Albert Einstein.

The six-hour original was found in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive without an audio, which was later discovered in the Ben-Gurion Archive in Negev. The only criticism here is that the film seems rather short on material. It would provide an ideal companion piece for the Israeli documentary The Settlers, directed by Shimon Dotan, which tells the story of Rabbi Moshe Levenger and his followers, who started building settlements in Israeli occupied territories, making it now nearly impossible for a Palestinian state to exist. Neither consecutive Israeli governments, nor their USA counterparts have stopped this movement, which is in direct contradiction of the Geneva Convention. Ben-Gurion was certainly a little biased when talking of “not taking away from others”, yet in 1968, there was still a chance of “recreation”. But since, the dream of Theodor Herzl has ended up in a cul-de-sac of a Sparta in the desert, because Israel “did not consider the future”. AS

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 9 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017

Ewa (2017) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Haim Tabakman; Cast: Avir Kushner, Efrat Ben Zur, Gil Frank; Israel/France/Germany/Poland 2016, 85 min.

Sophomore director Haim Tabakman (Eyes Wide Open), made his name as documentary filmmaker. His second feature is a slow-burning chamber piece whose characters wrestle with the legacy of the Shoah.

Set in a rural outpost in Israel in 1972, newly retired Yoel (Kushner) looks after his wife Ewa (Ben Zur), who suffers from a non-specified blood disorder, requiring daily injections. But Ewa still goes out to work everyday, whilst Yoel is bored with his newfound free time. Whilst looking for some papers in a ramshackle outhouse, he finds a letter from the bank, reminding his wife to pay a mortgage instalment for a flat in the nearby village. Yoel investigates, and finds that his wife has installed a lover in the flat. Yoel talks to the man, and asks him to repair his old motor-cycle, which he stole from the British in 1946. From neighbours Yoel discovers that the man’s name is Emil and has been in a German concentration camp – just like his wife Ewa. In an interesting conversation with the policeman Kobi, whose father also spent time in a Camp, Yoel is reminded that surviving the KZ is not the end of the matter: “My father still lives in the Camp” says Kobi resigned. Confronting Ewa, Yoel is shocked to find that Emil is her husband, whom she married before WWII in Poland, before they were both deported to the Camps. “He died in the camp, but then he was alive”, says Ewa rather enigmatically.

It soon transpires that Ewa has spent an unspecified, but certainly decade-long time living with two men. After Yoel tells his wife that he intends to evict Emil, she has a relapse and spends some time in hospital, whilst Yoel moves Emil’s furniture into the outhouse, where both men go on repairing the motorcycle. After Ewa returns, Yoel swears “that he has enough of this madhouse” and wants to move out. But deep down, he knows, that there is only one solution.

The trio seems to live in a bubble more or less cut off from the outside world. True, Yoel and Ewa’s daughter Judith visits with the parents with her boyfriend Eyal, Judith confining in her father, that she is pregnant, “but don’t tell Mum”. After that we never see Judith again and we are left watching this painful ménage-a-trois develop. And painful it is: Ewa with her divided localities, Yoel, who thinks that he has a right to “own’ Ewa, because they have a child, and Emil, lost in a strange land, clinging on to Ewa, because she is the only link to his past. Ewa and Emil: both doubly fragmented by having to make a choice, they don’t want to make. And in the background the monstrous holocaust: trying to destroy lives many decades after the survivors were “liberated”.

DoP Axel Schneppat, who worked with Tabakman on Eyes wide open, lets everything unfolds slowly, showing the desert like countryside as an depressive background to the unfolding of the past reconquering the present. Brown and grey dominate, even the hospital is filled with ghostly colours. The three act out their grief with emotions always underplayed. EWA makes a passionate point about the post-traumatic hell of holocaust survivors, but is still tender in showing the unbearable loss. AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 9 -26 NOVEMBER 2017

Remember Baghdad (2017) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Fiona Murphy; Documentary; UK/Iraq/Israel, 69 min.

Director/DoP Fiona Murphy (Neither Fish or Fowl) has chartered the history of Jews living in Babylon, then Mesopotamia and now Iraq for over 2600 years. The Babylonian Talmud was written here, and Baghdad was the centre of the Jewish community of the region – in 1917 140, 000 Jews made up a third of the capital’s population but today, only a handful Jews (and one unused synagogue) remain. Murphy has followed Edwin Shuker from North London to Iraq, to buy a house in the city his family called home for centuries.

In 1947, Renee Dangoor was crowned the first Miss Baghdad. Murphy interviews her family, one of the many Iraqi Jews living in London, who share photographs of their middle-class Jewish life in Baghdad after WWII. Since its foundation in 1921, Iraq has had a turbulent history. King Faisal was the official head of the country, but British influence only ended completely after 1932, when the British mandate ran out. Fascist influence in the country grew when the Great Mufti emigrated to Iraq and was instrumental in having Hitler’s Mein Kampf translated. Five years later pro-Nazi forces took over the region for a few months, before Allied Forces arrived. But they stopped short of occupying Baghdad and the Jewish population were targeted in attacks organised by the Grand Mufti, who wanted to unite the Arab world behind Hitler. In the May riots of 1941, 180 Jews were killed, and over a thousand injured.

After Faisal returned later that year, the British entered Baghdad, and the Grand Mufti fled to Berlin. Whilst many middle-class Jews felt safe in Iraq, working class Jews organised illegal emigration to what was then called Palestine. When Israel was founded in 1948, after the partition, the climate for Jews in Iraq changed again for the worse. In 1950 Jews were fired from jobs, their shops were boycotted, and some were hanged. 70 000 emigrated, leaving their homeland with only a few shekels. In 1951 over 120 000 of them had emigrated to Israel, where there were not very welcome: newsreel images show the bewilderment of the Jewish citizens: for them the Iraqi Jews were poorly dressed and “looked like Arabs, people without a culture and even speaking the language of the enemy”. Just 7000, mostly middle class Jews remained in Iraq, but they thrived; one of the interviewed talked in great length about the chocolate factory owned by his father.

There were even Jewish MPs in parliament. After 1956, when Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, and British forces left, some of the Jewish women wanted to leave, fearing new unrest. In 1958 the Royal family was killed, the military coup brought Brigadier Quasim to power. A Jewish witness stated, that their family, who run an import business for American cars, were afraid that “would have to live like communists”. But instead, the embassies of Warsaw Pact countries and their allies, all bought big American vehicles, making 1951 “the best year for business”. Again, the remaining Jews felt safe. In 1963, with the help of the CIA, Quasim was killed, and his regime was replaced by the Ba’ath Party – a certain Saddam Hussein becoming deputy leader in 1969. Before that, in 1967, the Three-Day War, in which Iraq fought alongside four other Arab countries against Israel, finally signalled the end of Jewish life in Baghdad. Survivors of the exodus to Britain and Israel tell about phones being cut off, one member of the family hanged, and a flight across the northern mountains to the Kurdish part of Iraq. In 1971 just a few hundred Jews remained.

Edwin Shuker had to give up the idea of buying back his family home in Baghdad – it would have been too dangerous. But he did the next big thing, buying a house in the north of the country. “I hope, that in sixty years o so, there will be a Jewish community in Baghdad. Or it will end with me” he say shoulder shrugging. “But I can’t leave the country behind for good”. There is simply too much to leave behind. Taut and informative, Remember Baghdad is a history lesson about little known facts and events, making sad reading. AS

SCREENING at UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 6-26 NOVEMBER 2017

 

 

Lasciati Andare | Let Yourself Go (2017) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Francesco Amato | Cat: Toni Servillo, Veronica Echegui, Valentina Carnelutti | Comedy | Italy |

A mildly amusing comedy that looks encouraging then rapidly goes downhill with Toni Servillo playing a sophisticated psychoanalyst who runs into problems due to his unavoidable sedentary lifestyle on the couch. Set in the upmarket surroundings of some plush Italian neighbourhood, Let Yourself Go starts brilliantly with a strong line-up and a convincing storyline: divorced but successful shrink, still involved with his attractive and intelligent ex-wife but foisted by his own ego – there’s no fool like an old fool –  throws it all away for a feckless and unsuitable younger woman and a lifestyle that doesn’t really ring true. The Great Beauty‘s Tony Servillo is far the best thing about this good-looking Jewish-themed comedy drama. He certainly raises a chuckle in the early scenes with his knowing glances and light-hearted disdain for most of his patients, and his wife who is agreeable and amusing. (Carnelutti in fine form). But after he meets the feisty fitness trainer Claudia (Echegui), the narrative becomes more ludicrous and far-fetched with some slapstick situational comedy that grows irritating because the initial laughs are based on a convincing scenario, whereas the later scenes are not. Amato has lost his own plot. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UKJFF | NATIONWIDE | 7 NOVEMBER UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2017

Angels Wear White (2017) Chinese Film Series 2021

Dir: Vivian Qu | Drama | China | 101′

Writer and director Vivian Qu was the producer of Black Coal, Thin Ice and rose to fame with her debut Trap Street. Her second feature is a low-key female-centred affair that deals with the complex web of corruption that emerges after two young girls are assaulted in a seaside town. This is a subtle and luminously delicate drama that leaves the details of the crime offscreen to deal with the psychological effects on the teenagers who are both underage, one of them only 12. Covering similar ground to Black Coal, ANGELS WEAR WHITE offers a bleak but affecting insight into the plight of women generally in modern China, not only from middle-class backgrounds but those who have escaped rural poverty and found themselves at odds with the criminal elements  in more prosperous areas.

Teenager Mia (Wen Qi) is a chambermaid in a resort town on the island province of Hainan. During her night shift on reception she checks in a man and two little girls, Wen (a tiny and delicately vulnerable Zhou Meijun) and Xin (Jiang Xinyue), who are staying in the room next to him. One of the girls has a blonde wig and orders drinks, but what happens next during the night is never revealed on camera, although it turns out later the girls have been abused, and undergo a hospital examination.

Clearly both teens are suffering from the strict ‘Tiger’ parenting and harsh discipline at school but they keep the trauma under wraps until Wen runs away from mother’s home and turns up at her estranged father’s in the middle of the night, sleeping on the beach when she can’t get in. Mia is scared of losing her job, so fails to give any evidence about why her older more sophisticated colleague Lily was bunking off with her boyfriend.

Police Inspector Wang (Li Mengnan) leads a cursory investigation where the girls gloss over the facts frightened to reveal the truth due to the shame they feel and how the consequences of their revelation might be viewed – not only by the authorities but also their own community and society as a whole. Mia is more streetwise, but the other two are really very naive compared to Western teens. A canny female lawyer (Shi Ke) probes further and gets a better grasp of Mia’s impossible plight.

Qu views her characters dispassionately, we cannot help feeling for them and the deplorable lives they lead, especially little Wen, who only looks about 9, but clearly understands more than she reveals in this dainty, pastel-hued portrait captured by Belgian cinematographer Benoit Dervaux. A subtle occasional score adds a haunting atmosphere to this impressive modern noir. MT

NOW SHOWING DURING THE CHINESE CINEMA SERIES AT SELECTED ONLINE SCREENS IN LONDON 2021  INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 

Love and Bullets (2017) | Pingyao Film Festival | Year Zero 2017

Dirs: The Manetti Bros | Cast: Claudia Gerini, Carlo Buccirosso, Serena Rossi, Giampaolo Morelli, Luciana De Falco, Mario Rivelli | Musical Romance | 133′ | Italy

Naples meets Brooklyn in this Versace-themed Mafia-musical melodrama. LOVE AND BULLETS is as subtle as a oyster poisoning but considerably more fun. What you get is high octane entertainment that never takes itself too seriously in delivering a raucous laugh out loud tale of deception that frequently breaks into warbling vibrato including a few bum notes – and not just on the music front. The jamboree outstays its welcome with camerawork that is often questionable, but there is much to enjoy — despite a few detours and dialectical complexities – that are not easy to follow, even for Italian audiences. Due to the raucous sound effects, this is one film where you can munch popcorn to your heart’s content and not disturb a fly.

We kick of in a Baroque cathedral where Donna Maria (Claudia Gerini) is mourning the death of her fish-farm magnate husband and crime boss, Don Vincenzo (Carlo Buccirosso), who suddenly comes alive in the privacy of his ornate coffin, giving forth in fruity bass tones and casting doubt over his identity to one and all.

Flipping back a few days it emerges that Maria and Vincenzo have faked his death. His two sidekicks, Rosario (actor-singer Raiz) and the more charismatic Ciro (Giampaolo Morelli), are advised to take over the reins by Donna Maria and ensure that no one finds out that Vincenzo didn’t die in a mussel tank shot by his rivals – cue the first joke: “Americans don’t know mussels from missiles”. This the tenor of the comedy.

But hospital nurse Fatima (Ciro’s first love) sees Vincenzo in hospital on the operating table, and matters are complicated when Ciro’s finds he still holds a candle for her – and she for him – making bumping her off a big problem, especially when they smooch to ‘their song’ Flashdance – (remastered by Giorgio Moroder who contributed to the foot-stamping score along with Pivio and De Scalzi); so feelings flood back but give Ciro a difficult choice: should he go for money or love?

Some of the jokes have a distinctly racist undertone, and swearing is the order of the day in the less light-hearted second half making us less forgiving of the bouts of narrative torpor. That said, this is a gutsy and well-performed musical with Gerini pulling all the stops out in a terrific turn. Morelli is the star turn on the male front and let’s hope we get to see more of his stylish chops in future. Buccirosso makes a good job of the difficult role of Vincenzo who has to be vulnerable and macho at the same time, and the film looks gorgeously lurid in its retro aesthetic thanks to DoP Francesca Amitrano, production designer Noemi Marchica and costume designer Daniela Salernitano.MT

PINGYAO FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER 2017

A Fish out of Water (2017) | Pingyao Film Festival | Year Zero 2017

Dir: Lai Kuo-An | Cast: Runyin Bfi, Jen Shuo Cheng, Peggy, Tseng, | China | 90′

A young family on a beach in the midst of a crisis discover a beached fish. The young son Yi-An (Run-yin Bai) is morbidly fascinated but dad Haoteng (Jen Shuo Cheng) picks it up and jokingly threatens his wife Yaji (Peggy Tseng) with it. This moment of uncanny surrendering to warmth and humour is typical of Lai Kuo-An’s superbly enigmatic and engaging debut. The cheeky literalism of the scene is also deceptively simple. Nothing else that follows will be quite so straightforward. The main problem is the boy. Yi-an keeps telling everyone that he wants to go and visit his former mother and father who lived by the sea. He acts up at kindergarten and even tries to get his ailing grandfather (Akio Chen) to help him. His parents are understandably concerned but are also distracted by their own problems. They both work hard: Haoteng has a stall where he bakes and sells rolls; and Yaji works for a real estate agency that deals in the kind of high end apartments that contrast painfully with their own pokey home. As Haoteng’s father becomes increasingly debilitated after a stroke, Yaji decides she has had enough and moves out to her sister’s, taking Yi-an with her.

The domestic drama is permeated by the central mystery of Yi-an’s former life. Lai Kuo-an offers very little in the way of explanation and the little boy with his glare and pudding basin cut seems at times like Damian from The Omen. The acting by the two adult leads is brilliant. Jen Shuo Cheng is particularly good as the slightly loutish man wholly unequipped to deal with the blows life is dealing him. His birthday party attended only by his catatonic father and his possessed son is a tragi-comic masterpiece. Hsu Chih-chun’s unfussily rich cinematography grounds the magic in the confined homes and breathes a little easier on an excursion to find Yi-An’s former family. Ultimately, we are treated to a celebration of the family which – despite the difficulties involved – proves so resilient it can even move between lives. John Bleasdale.

SCREENING DURING PINGYAO FILM FESTIVAL | YEAR ZERO | UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER 2017

Mr Emmanuel (1944) | UKJFF 2017

Dir.: Harold French | Cast: Felix Aylmer, Greta Gynt, Walter Rilla, Peter Mullins; UK 1944 | 97′

Director Harold French, mostly remembered for his atmospheric Simenon adaption The Man who watched the Trains Go By, has directed Louis Golding’s script with a subtle passion dominated by Otto Heller’s grainy the black and white images.

Set in 1936, Mr. Isaac Emmanuel (Aylmer) a widower, has worked all his life for the Jewish Welfare Board and is now all set to emigrate to Palestine. But in the seaside village where he visits German Jewish evacuees, he meets young Bruno (Mullins), who has not heard from his mother for a long time. The boy is so distraught, that he tries to commit suicide. To reassure him, Mr. Emmanuel travels to Germany Bruno’s mother.

What started as a tender story of a man with a mission, soon escalates into a harrowing morality play. In Berlin, Emmanuel lives in a guesthouse where everybody is Jewish. From the window of his room he sees a neon sign on a theatre advertising a singer he once looked after as a child, back in England, Elsie Silver (Gynt). Emmanuel goes to see her after a concert but her German boyfriend, a high-ranking Nazi Willi Brockenburg (Rilla), is unwilling to let her meet him. Later at a party in the presence of Himmler and Goering, a Nazi functionary is shot dead. Somehow the Gestapo links Emmanuel with the assassination, and confines him. The surprise ending is rather stunning. But like Mr. Immanuel, who does not want to break his promise to Bruno, other Jews in Germany are also put into a moral quandary. Elsie uses Brockenburg, who is besotted with her, to help Emmanuel, whilst Bruno’s mother lives with a Nazi, who offers her a cruel choice.

Aylmer is very convincing, whilst Gynt, a Norwegian actress, plays Elsie Silver with a panache and verve, reminding us of Carole Lombard’s Maria Tura in Lubitsch To Be or not to Be. DoP Heller shows that Berlin is a just a prison, particularly compared with England’s peaceful small town life. Mr. Emmanuel is a gem: it is not only about the evils of fascism, but how the victims of the Nazis cope when their lives are under threat. AS

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | NATIONWIDE | 7-26  NOVEMBER 2017

Ash (2017) | Pingyao International Film Festival | Year Zero

Director: Li Xiaofeng | Cast: Luo Jin, Xin Peng, Nie Yuan, Jiang Peiyao, Huang Jue, Yang Yiwei, Sun Hao,

Director and co-writer Li Xiaofeng improves on his thoughtful but flawed debut Nezha with this sinuous and sumptuously cinematic modern morality thriller the explores through a fractured narrative the simple premise: a choice of redemption or recidivism for two young killers.

Elegant and intriguing, ASH has echoes of Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin in its reflection on good and evil in contemporary China where a young detective Chen Weikun (Nie Yuan), is tasked with investigating the brutal murder of an ordinary  man Ma Xudong (Yang Yiwei), in a local cinema. He draws a blank with the victim’s family but pursues a shady suspect who is seen loitering in the shadows. Flipping toward a decade, we then meet surgeon Wang Dong (Luo Jin),who is celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife, Xuan Hui (Jiang Peiyao) and it soon emerges that the two men are strangely linked. The tension mounts as the mist gradually clears on the fulll story involving a long-standing pact forged between Xu and Wang after their crimes which continue to haunt them, as Chen doggedly probes the past.

With its universal theme, cast of subtly instinctual newcomers whose personalities contrast to great effect, and pristine technical craftmanship from Dutch DoP Joewi Verhoeven, ASH makes for an absorbing and provocative watch. Simon John Fisher Turner’s atmospheric score creates just the right mood for this first class, if overlong Chinese thriller. MT

PINGYAO INTERNARIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | YEAR ZERO | 28 Ocotber – 4 November 2017

 

 

The First Lap (2017) | London Korean Film Festival 2017

Dir: Kim Dae-wan

Kim Dae-hwan follows End of Winter with a slim and slowing-moving domestic character-driven piece that had its international premiere in the Filmmaker of the Present competition in Locarno 2017.

Ji-young and Su-hyeon have been dating for several years in a relationship characterised by its visceral closeness rather than sexual passion. When accidentally falls pregnant the couple visit their respective parents who urge them to do the respectable thing and provide a stable home for their baby.

THE FIRST LAP feels contemplative and freewheeling as it explores the fluid dynamic between its protagonists, observations them dispassionately with scant dialogue against a background of political turmoil – such as last winter’s candlelight protests that led to the impeachment of Park Geun-hye.

Performances and strong and subtle with Kim Sae-byeok (The Day After) convincingly natural as Ji-young, surpassing her feelings of panic at her sudden change of circumstances. For his part, Cho Hyun-chul, makes for a more playful character as Su-hyeon in a coupling that feels more like a friendship than a romantic union. Well-crafted but unremarkable, THE FIRST LAP is a realistic look at a millennial love. MT

THE FIRST LAP | FESTIVAL CLOSING GALA | LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | LOCARNO 2017 REVIEW

Pingyao Impressions Theatre | Pingyao Film Festival 2017

IMG_6398 Imagine London’s Tate Modern museum. Then imagine it three times larger and you have Pingyao’s brand new theatre building designed by an architect schoolfriend of the Chinese independent filmmaker Jia Zhangke.

IMG_6399The two grew up in the walled Ming village and were determined to make a name for their world heritage birthplace – and they have certainly done it in style. This brand new theatre combines stylish design with state of the art technical wizardry to tell the tale of the ancient UNESCO walled city built over a thousand years ago in the province of Shanxi, four hours by bullet train south of Beijing.

IMG_6427 Zhang Yimou’s Impressions series is already well known for its world-class quality and inventive staging. While  other shows are happening outdoors in other parts of China, the indoor Pingyao version comes across as being a far more intimate and involving experience where we actively become a part of each scene with the actors appearing to speak directly with you, especially in the ‘street market’ set.

IMG_6420

This makes Impressions Pingyao unique and exciting as attendees are free to walk around the set and follow the action as it unfolds in various stagings in the vast space, as different spotlights track the sumptuously dressed characters in their delicately rendered vignettes that each have a individual stage setting.

IMG_6424It emerges that Pingyao history is rooted in its legendary banking system – banks have existed here for a millennium. The bittersweet human story unfurls against the backdrop of these traditions. Unique and utterly beguiling PINGYAO IMPRESSIONS is one of the exciting new creative aspects of contempo China uniting the past with the present day. MT

SCREENING IN PINGYAO DURING THE YEAR ZERO PINGYAO FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER 2017

Petit Paysan | Bloody Milk (2017) | Pingyao Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Hubert Charuel

When one of his cows falls ill, the farmer does his best to save the rest of his herd in the heartfelt agrarian drama Bloody Milk (Petit Paysan), the genre-bending feature debut of writer director Hubert Charuel.

Social realism wanders in the muddly territory of thriller in this taut but flawed French farming drama, offering up a promising premise that never quite brings home the bacon despite a good script and a stunning central turn from A Woman’s Life star Swann Arlaud) as a dedicated devotee of dairy farming and country living despite its meagre financial rewards.

Pierre (Arlaud), is a gentleman farmer in every sense of the word. He runs a small milk farm concern that comes under threat when one of his herd comes down with a strain of Mad Cows disease a debilitating and highly contagious wasting disease. As we all remember from the sad episode in Britain recently, this is a tragedy that forces the slaughter of the entire herd, under Government guidelines, so Pierre tries to mitigate the damage by killing the cow and burying in his own fields. Problem is, his sister (Sara Giraudeau) is a vet who turns a blind eye at first but once his mother (Candelier) finds out things go from bad to worse, especially when the health inspectors turn up and snoop around.

Written by Charuel and Claude le Pape, this is a heart-rending and doomladen story about a really decent man who tries to do his best by everyone – including his cows – one gives birth in a touching scene – and we all feel for his pain and that of the livestock he so tenderly cares for, but it lacks the dramatic moments to really lift it into the same territory as the Icelandic UCR winner Rams despite some similar humour. Furthermore Petit Paysan has a pejorative ring to it as a title, as many audiences will consider it rather recherché as well a a labour of love to run a small dairy concern in a world where hand made produce is all the rage, and certainly raw milk quite sought after for its health-giving properties. The English gentry during the 18th century often turned their hands to dairy farming – one such example is at Kenwood House in Hampstead, England.

SCREENING DURING PINGYAO FILM FESTIVAL 2017

One Night on the Wharf (2017) Pingyao International Film Festival | Year Zero

Dir: Han Dong | Writers: Han Dong, Jia Zhangke | Cast: Chai Chenggang, Liang Jingdong, Han Sanming, Gao Bo, Chen Ji, Si Haozhao

Poet turned director Han Dong collaborates with festival head Jia Zhangke in this darkly satirical literary curio that mulls over themes of crime and bureacracy during one night in a rural Chinese hostelry.

One Night on the Wharf’ serves as poetry in motion when q group of intellectuals hole up in a waterside bar to spend a long night debating and shooting the breeze. They are poet Dingzi (Chai Chenggang) Wang Shu (Liang Jingdong) and Ouyang (Han Sanming). Dingzi is the first to get his coat, and leave for the ferry which he promptly misses having flirted with a young woman in a kiosk, but it’s not clear how he ends up at odds with local thug Baipi (Gao Bo), over something in his luggage, who calls in security in the shape of Xiao Li (Chen Ji), a sort of back-up officer for the local police. Things go from bad to worse as the jobsworth Xiao Li gets involved and the piece breaks out of its chamber mold and into the following morning’s ferry where Dingzi and his mates come face to face with bumbling Baipo for a showcase showdown.

The film offers up a sometimes flawed but always entertaining and poetic slice of Chinese life involving the dynamic at play between the powers that be, the intelligentsia and the wayfarers. Its mixed cast of professionals and newscomers give the piece a naturalistic kick and Zhou Yunpeng’s perky score punctuates proceedings to great effect amd the whole ensemble looks slick amd professsional. MT

PINGYAO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | YEAR ZERO | 28 October – 4 November 2017

 

The Taste for Rice Flower | Mi Hua Zhi Wei (2017) | Pingyao Year Zero 2017

Director: Pengfei | writers: Pengfei, Ying Ze | Cast: Ying Ze, Ye Bule, Ye Men | China | Drama | 89′

Chinese filmmaker Pengfei’s Underground Fragrance was a delicately rendered story of love amongst the ruins of Beijing’s property boom, and won him the Fedeora award at Venice Film Festival 2015. His second feature explores love of a different kind: that of a Dai woman for her only daughter and her strongly felt ethnic heritage, in the Yunnan province of China, where the drama unfurls in magnificent pastoral landscapes and vibrant interiors of her small village.

Taste of Rice Flower brims with positive energy unlike its visually alluring but oppressed predecessor and takes a more pragmatic approach to its marginalised characters who are also caught in the cultural maelstrom of 21st century change. Pengfei gently ruminates on the lives of these ethnic minorities, and the result is enchanting. Many Eastern cultures have travelled to the West and the large cities in search of work, and although it’s normal for their young to be left at home with older members of the family, the naturally presents a challenge for both children and parents, and this is the focus of the narrative. Ying Ze – who co-wrote with Penfei – plays the mother (Ye Nan) whose city experience has left its sophisticated mark on her appearance and tastes, but she is now glad to be home. But village life is far from idyllic as the local women complain about dressing in costume for an cultural event and the children have all the latest gadgets and modern labels, not to mention a newfound sense of entitlement, as they try to bargain for favours with their elders.

Sadly Ye Nan’s daughter (Ye Bule) has gone the same way, although insecurity and latest resentment could be the reason for her bad behaviour and lack of parental guidance. When he school friend Xianglu (Ye Men), falls ill the elders try to cure the girl with their shamanistic rituals — eventually leads to tragedy.

Taste of Rice Flower is a simple parable but never drifts into melodrama or cliche. If offers Pengfei a chance to raise the profile of changing values emerging out of a clash in tradition and modern life. The humour is often subtle but effective, and Liao Pen-jung’s ravishing visuals find beauty in everyday life in a thoughtful and subtle insight into contemporary China. MT

SCREENING DURING PINGYAO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 28 October – 4 November 2017 

Le Samourai (1967) | Pingyao Film Festival – Year Zero | Jean-Pierre Melville Retrospective

Dir.: Jean-Pierre Melville; Cast: Alain Delon, Francois Perrier, Natalie Delon, Cathy Rosier; France/Italy 1967, 101’.

Le Samourai is a crime thriller all about loneliness. Dialogue is minimal, and even Francois de Robaix’s melancholic score is seldom used. Cinematographer Henri Decae – who had helped Truffaut (Les Quatre Cents Coups) and Chabrol (Les Cousins) on their way – photographs Alain Delon’s hapless contract killer Jeff Costello in his little claustrophobic flat, and he is only free  in his criminal underground where he is chased by the cops through the Paris metro.

When Costello assassinates a night-club owner, he makes a fatal mistake in not also killing the only witness who clearly saw him: La pianiste (Cathy Rosier). This ‘error’ will be his Achilles heel. Costello then sets up a game of chess, in which he is sure to lose, in spite of his brilliant moves. Le commisaire (Perrier) knows Costello’s guilt, but cannot break his well-constructed alibi: Janet Legrange (N. Delon), an upper class call girl is in love with Costello, but he is too sad to feel anything. She lies to the police, in spite rough-handling. The hunt in the metro is the centre peace of Le Samurai: Costello’s footwork and his knowledge of the smallest details, outwits the technology and manpower of the police. The endgame – in the nightclub of the original kill – is a cat and mouse game, which Costello has set up to save the innocent.

Based on the un-credited novel by Joan McLeod and co-written by Melville, Costello’s only friend is a canary, like his master in a cage. His counterpart, Le commisaire, is only marginally more full of joy de vivre: he has spent too many hours behind his desk, sending his men off on goose chases like a load of toys soldiers. He is a saner version of Ahab, but instead of madness there is too much resignation to make him a proper bloodhound. His bluster is a front, he looks forward to retirement, as much as Jeff looks forward to death. Janet is not much better off: she wants Costello for herself, but even sharing him doesn’t bring her happiness. Rosier’s pianist is a walking enigma: she is perhaps engaged in the sordid killing of her boss, tries to stay neutral, but her big eyes only reflect the hurt and self-hurt, she also sees in Costello. A rather gloomy Paris of the sixties is the proper background to this noirish tale, where all is lost before it begins, and all participants are like caged animals prowling around to end it.

Melville would never again reach this silent intensity: Le Samourai could be subtitled La course du Lievre a Travers les Champs, a late Rene Clement feature, dealing with the same morbidity and forlorn self-loathing.

SCREENING AS PART OF A JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE RETROSPECTIVE | PINGYAO FILM FESTIVAL | GROUND ZERO 28 OCTOBER – 4 NOVEMBER 2017

London Korean Film Festival 2017 | 26 October – 19 November 2017

OKJAKorea has been in the news more than ever this year with a South Korean presidential impeachment and a change in government, not to mention the current North Korean crisis. Thankfully Korean Cinema has maintained a positive news profile with Bong Joon-ho’s creature feature OKJA becoming the most widely seen Korean film ever made. On this note, the 12th London Korean Film festival returns to London and across the UK offering another expansive selection of films from 26 October – 19 November.

KOREAN NOIR INDEPENDENT cinema with BANSEOUM SEOUL (Pirates Inferno) screening at the LFF  | WOMEN’S VOICES CINEMA NOWCLASSIC REVISITED BAE CHANG-HO RETROSPECTIVE

This year’s opening film will be Hong Sangsoo’s Cannes acclaimed, THE DAY AFTER (2017) will kick-off the festival at an Opening Gala with Cinematographer and frequent Hong Sangsoo and Bong Joon-ho collaborator, Kim Hyung-ku  in conversation on the 26 October. The festival closes on 8 November (in London)  with the UK Premiere of emerging director Kim Dae-hwan‘s Indie relationship hit from Locarno, THE FIRST LAP  (2017) (followed by Director Q&A), which sees a directionless unmarried couple wade through family encounters and a potential pregnancy, in a fresh verité style that is both funny and heartwarming.

1261477_the-mercilessTwo out of the five Korean hits to grace Cannes Film Festival this year were crime and action thrillers typical of the booming Korean Noir genre, illuminating the dark side of society: THE VILLAINESS follows a female assassin trained from a young age, and THE MERCILESS (2017, Studiocanal, premiering at LKFF 2017) from Byun Sung-hyun, is a Tarantino-esque moody neo-noir thriller following double-crossing gangsters.

The FILM NOIR strand begins with an example of Lee Man-hui’s renowned anti-communist filmmaking, with one of his very early films in the genre, BLACK HAIR  (1964), which follows the loyal mistress of a gang boss, whose life takes a horrific turn for the worse after a violent rape is exposed. The newly restored THE LAST WITNESS (1980) that recently screened in Berlin and Busan film festivals, with director Lee Doo-yong, is based on a crime novel by Kim Seong-jung and follows lone wolf Detective Oh Byeong-ho as he goes in search of the murderer of a small time brewer. Film Noir was thriving in the 1990s, and we’ll celebrate a strong selection from that decade: the darkly humorous DEAD END (1993), THE RULES OF THE GAME (1994) following small town thugs trying to make it big and GREEN FISH (1997), the directorial debut by Lee Chang-dong who is now widely regarded as South Korea’s greatest living director.

CLASSICS screening this year will include NOWHERE TO HIDE from Lee Myung-Se (Korea’s anger to John Woo, is a highly stylised violent action noir and an influence on The Matrix.

KILIMANJARO (2000) is the rarely screened, but highly accomplished feature from Oh Seung-uk, starring veteran actor Ahn Sung-ki and Park Shin-yang; an engrossing noir following a detective mistaken for his identical twin brother, a gangster.

DIE BAD  (2000) is action maestro Ryoo Seung-wan‘s sensational debut made in 4 parts over 3 years, following two young men (played by Ryoo and Park Sung-bin) whose lives change forever after a deadly student brawl.

A BITTERSWEET LIFE  (2005) is Kim Jee-woon‘s follow up to A Tale of Two Sisters(2003) a thrilling noir that shows the ultra violent consequences of falling for the wrong girl.

A DIRTY CARNIVAL  (2006) follows a low-level debt collector as he murders his way to the top, played by one of Korea’s leading actors Zo In-sung.

NEW WORLD (2013, UK Home Ent. release by Eureka) is the second directorial feature from Park Hoon-jung, the writer behind The Unjust (Ryoo Seung-wan) and I Saw The Devil (Kim Jee-woon), in which undercover cops and shady policemen plot to gain control of Korea’s biggest crime syndicate.

COIN LOCKER GIRL (2015) is a female crime melodrama from first time director Han Jun-Hee starring veteran actress Kim Hye-soo as the psychotic crime boss known as ‘mom’ whose unsavoury trade includes organ trafficking and loan-sharking.  

IN BETWEEN SEASONS (Lee Dong-eun)
CINEMA NOW strand COME, TOGETHER (2017) is Director Shin Dong-il‘s new drama about a family of three whose ranks are collapsing – a rare insight into Korean society’s highly competitive nature. WARRIORS OF THE DAWN (2017) is the popular Joseon Era drama filmed almost entirely outdoors, as a guerilla style road movie, following a group of mercenaries tasked with protecting the newly crowned prince.

THE MIMIC  (UK release in 2018 date tbc, Arrow Films) directed by Huh Jung is a chilling K-horror that follows a woman, haunted by the disappearance of her son, who is drawn to a local legend of a monstrous tiger that lures people into its cave.

CRIME CITY (2017) is an indie crime caper based on a true story, from director Kang Yoon-sung, that follows a detective (Ma Dong-seok), as he hunts down a Korean-Chinese gang headed by Yoon Kye-sang.

WOMEN’S VOICES celebrates four drama and one documentary, CANDLE WAVE FEMINISTS (2017), deconstructs the misogyny and discrimination that was rife within the revolution that led to Park’s impeachment and her spiritual mentor Choi Soon-Sil’s arrest.

JAMSIL  (2016) the feature debut of writer-director Lee Wanmin, is a rare look at two women’s transformative friendship, following a harrowing long-term breakup.

MY TURN (2017) focuses on pregnancy within the workplace, after a nurse becomes pregnant and tensions and backlash surface.

MILD FEVER (2017) captures the subtle rift between husband and wife, following a secret that surfaces from the past.

NIGHT WORKING (2017) follows a friendship between two factory workers, a Korean woman and a Cambodian immigrant.

Younger audiences will delight in the two Animations this year: LOST IN THE MOONLIGHT (2016) following 13 year old Hyun Joo-ri as a dreamy, shy girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world and Franky and Friends:

TREE OF LIFE (2016) is an exciting adventure in the Fairytale Kingdom, as two friends Kwon and Pong create havoc by asking for more food than they can eat, learning a useful lesson about the perils of wastefulness.

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL London venues include: Picturehouse Central, Regent Street Cinema, ICA, Phoenix, Close-up, LUX, Birkbeck’s Institute of Moving Image, SOAS, Kingston University, National Film & Television School, British Museum and KCCUK The festival tours to: Glasgow Film Theatre, Manchester HOME, Sheffield Showroom, Nottingham Broadway Cinema, Belfast Queen’s Film Theatre until 19 November 2017.

LKFF | 26 OCTOBER – 19 NOVEMBER | NATIONWIDE 

 

UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

The UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL has become one of the most-anticipated film events across the UK and the 21st edition will again showcase world, European and UK premieres of the best new Israeli and Jewish cinema on offer with 75 films from more than 20 countries at 115 screenings across London, Belfast, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham.

An-Act-of-Defiance-Bram-Fischer-movieThis year’s UKIJFF Opening Night Gala,  on 9th November at the BFI Southbank, is An Act of Defiance, directed by Jean van de Velde. Set in South Africa, 1963, it is based on the true story of ten black and Jewish men who are arrested for conspiring against the Apartheid system. Led by fellow defendant Nelson Mandela, the group plead not guilty, which in turn highlights the corrupt political system in power. This riveting drama captures a pivotal moment in the fight against racism, exploring the role of South African Jews in making Apartheid history.

1945Further galas and premieres will include Ferenc Török’s 1945, a powerful and innovative study of a post-war, village community, which competed at Berlinale 2017 and is a likely contender for the Festival’s Best Film Award. The ramifications of WWII are felt in Sam Garbarski’s Bye Bye Germany – a slightly overwrought but entertaining comedy set in Frankfurt, 1946 – and in a more contemporary setting for Menno Meyjes’s The Hero, a dark thriller by the co-writer of The Empire of the Sun.

paradiseParadise – (left) the spectacular Venice Silver Lion winner from Russian master filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky – will also screen nationwide at the festival, along with Avi Nesher’s latest drama Past Life. and Yaniv Berman’s unsettling thriller Land of the Little People. On a lighter note, there is Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon’s The Women’s Balcony – the most commercially successful film to date in Israel – and Francesco Amato’s gentle comedy Let Yourself Go!, worth seeing just for Toni Servillo in the lead role. New the party will be Erez Tadmor’s social drama Home Port and Haim Tabaman’s (Eyes Wide Open) eagerly-awaited Ewa.

A Documentary strand examines the life of the founder of the State of Israel with Ben Gurion, Epilogue, made from rediscovered footage of an exclusive interview. Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown is a timely portrait of the remarkable entertainer, while the surprising story of another Hollywood legend is revealed in Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story directed by Alexandra Dean and produced by Susan Sarandon. Archive features, old and less so, will include a tribute to Oliver Sachs with Penny Marshall’s moving classic Awakenings; while the secret identity of a young Jewish woman in the mid-19th century is scrutinized in The Governess by Sandra Goldbacher. Mr Emmanuel is the only feature digitised by the BFI for a new project of Jewish archive films; filmed in 1944 it provides an insightful, historical document of British cinema when a Jewish man travels to Berlin.

Bye Bye GermanyIn addition to the exciting showcase of Jewish focused films and TV in this year’s Festival, there will be a night of awards for Best Film, Best Debut, Audience Choice and now Best Screenplay. The Pears Short Film Fund returns for the 11th year and there will be screening of the 2017 winners The Master of York, by Kieron Quirke, and The Outer Circle by Adam Baroukh.

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | NATIONWIDE | 9 -26 NOVEMBER 2017 

The Lovers (2017) | Bfi London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Azazel Jacobs; Cast: Debra Winger Tracy Letts, Aidan Gillen, Melora Walters, Jessica Sula, Tyler Ross; USA 2017, 97′.

Writer/director Azazel Jacobs (Terri) seems unable to make his mind up whether THE LOVERS should be a farce; a comedy character study, or simply a rom-com. In the end it falls between all stools, the capable cast is left with a banal script and even worse dialogue: the story of a married couple who fall in and out of love simply degenerates into an endless loop of boredom. Mary (Winger) and Michael (Letts) seem to have passed the sell-by-date in their marriage and have both taken lovers to relieve the daily tedium of their jobs. They can hardly stand each other at home, and their long-term lovers, Robert (Gillen), a so-so successful writer, and Lucy (Walters) a dancer and ballet teacher, are distraught with cajoling each one to commit to relationships that have no convincing backstory but seem to provide light relief. The prospect of a visit from Mary’s and Michael’s son Joel (Ross) and his girlfriend Erin (Sula) offers an ideal opportunity for a final showdown, and both promise their respective paramours that after the kids have left, they will throw in the towel.  But alas, a chance encounter in bed rekindles old flames, and even though the split seems final, it’s far from the end. Shot mostly in domestic and office locations, this has the feeling of a TV series of the 1970s, when bed-hopping was something new. But Mary and Michael, are so dull and suburban as characters: apart from sex they seem to have no other interests in their work, or the creative pursuits of their lovers. Finally it emerges that Michael was “once into music”, and to prove it, Michael shows he can still tinkle the ivories of their piano that became a sideboard. But soon, even this narrative string is discarded for more of the same old nonsense – involved Lucy actually hissing like a cat at Mary, who sits baffled behind the steering wheel of her car. Jacobs has realised the eternal truth: that longterm menage à trois, can only function as such and marrying a lover, creates another vacancy. Some relationships are clearly never meant to end, but you really can’t wait for this tedious merry go round to stop and let you off.  AS

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Dir-Scr Sinéad O’Shea | Doc | Ireland | 2017 | 86′

When longterm religious conflict infects a population it almost becomes genetic inbred between one faction and the other. This seems to be the case in the Middle East and also in Northern Island where the Troubles first started in the early 1970s and are still going on according to this courageous documentary, five year’s in the making, that exposes modern day paramilitary activity committed by groups opposed to the peace process that hoped to put an end to hostilities with the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 2008.

The film’s title is no joke. Derry mother Majella O’Donnell actually took her drug-addicted teenager Philly to be punished by dissident Republican paramilitaries, who refused to come to her home for fear of ambush, making her  visit their hideout for his anti-social behaviour. In this non-judgemental even-handed film, award-winning journalist Sinéad O’Shea strikes up a friendly relationship with a former IRA member-turned-community mediator, now suffering from lung cancer, and also manages to home-interview Majella, her husband Philly Senior (who was later knee-capped) Philly junior (18 when filming began) and Kevin Barry, a mere stripling, who shows us his arsenal of weapons including an axe; bolt-cutters; a saw and a mallet – in the open scenes of this hair-raising documentary.

MOTHER_BRINGS_HER_SON_TO_BE_SHOT_A_laneO’Shea’s investigations are unsettling and compelling. It emerges that the locals would rather be killed than give information to the Police, so they continue to tolerate the insurgencies which have become a dyed in the wool symptom of this toxic rift between the two sides. One man claims the intolerance is as entrenched in the locals “as asking a Black man to accept the KluKluxKlan”. O’Shea discovers that far from happy with ‘peace’, young Kevin Barry even wish the Troubles were still raging,  None of the O’Donnell family are in employment as each day they feel they are living out the nightmarish scenario of drug-addiction and aggression from the outside, although in the final scenes before her husband’s shooting, Majella claims to be having ‘a good year’ with Philly junior expecting his first child and Kevin Barry on a more even keel emotionally at 15. Driving around the grim and rain-soaked streets, it is shocking to witness so much anti-British sentiment with menacing slogans painted on the walls of buildings. We are even privy to a twilight raid by masked gunmen that brings back those horrific TV images for those who remember the era. The final scene feels almost as if the Dark Ages have returned to modern day Britain.MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 13 October 2017

 

Araby (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dirs: Joao Dumans, Affonso Uchoa | Cast: Aristides de Sousa, Murilo Caliari, Renata Cabral, Glaucia Vandeveld | Brazil | Drama | 96′

An ordinary life takes on evergreen themes and universal implications in writer-directors Affonso Uchoa and Joao Dumans’ delicate rendering of turmoil in the industrial town in Brazil, when thoughtful teenager, Andre (Murilo Caliari) discovers a notebook that chronicles the eventful life journey of his injured neighbour Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), a factory worker in the aluminium mines.

Tempered with an atmospheric folkloric soundtrack, this is a cold-eyed but fitting tale for our turbulent times, and an endlessly fascinating politically-infused road movie that gradually broadens out and shifts in tone from the narrow social realist focus of an ordinary young boy, into the multi-faceted decade-long peripatetic experiences of a working man who has travelled from shore to shore, and recorded his fascinating lifestory.

Forty-something Cristiano’s hand-written wanderings come to light when Andre (Murilo Caliari) discovers and becomes engrossed in his notebook, after the factory-worker is injured in an accident at work. And once Andre starts reading the film sets off on its wondrous and finely detailed chronicle of Cristiano’s remarkable wanderings, footloose and fancy-free, through all life’s eventualities, from petty crime and retribution, to love and rigorous labour in order to earn his living, while experiencing the massive country that is his native Brazil.

This is a gently magnificent and free-spirited film exploring an ordinary life  that slowly opens up to extraordinary proportions. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 4 – 15 OCTOBER 2017

Funny Cow (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Adrian Shergold |  Cast: Maxine Peake, Paddy Considine, Tony Pitts, Kevin Eldon, Christine Bottomley | UK | 103′

After his evocative biopic Pierrepoint: The last Hangman, Adrian Shergold turned his talents to TV work but returns to the big screen with another English story. Maxine Peake stars in the central role of FUNNY COW, a Northern stand-up comedian fighting men and audiences during the 70s and 80s. There is a great deal of talk about Yorkshire, but Shergold’s film explores the negative and exploitative side of Bradford and Leeds, where women were traditionally seen but told to put a sock in it. The poignantly tragic-comic ‘Funny Cow’ attempts to see the humorous  side of this  world where men ruled violently and women were forced to be back-seat drivers, but the cliché-ridden realism leaves little to the imagination. Our heroine grows up on the backstreets and marries chauvinist Bob (Pitts), who neglects and beats her, like her mother (Bottomley), who has become an alcoholic. Finally, the stand-up has enough and leaves her husband, moving in with shy bookseller Angus (Considine), who introduces her to highbrow “culture”, which she rejects; at the same time finding Angus a bit too detached – love and attention are forever connected with the violence she and generations of working class women have suffered. But Funny Cow reconnects with another stand-up performer Danny (Eldon), who is alcohol-dependent and clinically depressed. When he can’t perform one day, the promoter grudgingly accepts Funny Cow as his replacement, warning her that the sexist audience, not used to female comedians, will “murder” her as she fights for career. Maxine Peake gives an engaging performance, gamely carrying the film through long, rather dreary passages, her drive and commitment making Funny Cow convincing, whilst she copes with Shergold’s  TV-film-like structure. They say the old jokes, are the best ones. Here the jokes also bear witness to an unamusing era in female history. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Devil’s Freedom | La Libertad del Diablo (2017) | Lff 2017

Dir/Writer: Everardo Gonzalez. Mexico, 2017, 74′

Mexico has become synonomous with terror when it comes to the drug trade. In dramas such as Heli and Sicario the horror and casual violence of modern life emerges through stories of ordinary people caught up in a criminal underworld, as here in Devil’s Freedom (La Libertad del diablo), a rather dry but important documentary that gives testament to the endemic corruption caused largely though drug wars, but also in criminality of all kinds, where life is cheapened by man’s desire to fight for control of land and filthy lucre.

The characters interviewed in El Paso Director Everardo Gonzalez’ often harrowing film are often fully masked as he calmly interviews them off camera, allowimg them full amd frank expression of their grief and suffering. Some of them break down as they tell of  the torture, loss of life and trauma they have endured in the war against drugs which has claimed over 100,000 lives in the past five years. This is a number that beggars belief, but the authorities are often as corrupt as the public involved.

The gruelling constant mask to camera confessions are often punctuated with sorties into indiscrimate landscapes picturing the grim light of dawn or masked gunman travelling in trucks on the desert roads, or abandoned and dilapidated sights where sinister events have seemingly taken place. Either way, this makes for gruelling viewing.

Gonzalez never resorts to sensationalism, maintaining his distance with the occasional question that begs for description rather than sympathy. Neither does he attempt to contextualise events or seek explanation for Mexico’s malaise. Sufferers and perpetrators alike express fear, regret and shame. There seems little hope for redemption or hope in film’s incediary finale. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

 

Mademoiselle Paradis (2017)

Dir: Barbara Albert | Cast: Maria Dragus, Devid Striesow, Lukas Miko, Katja Kolm, Maresi Riegner, Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg, Stefanie Reinsperger, Susanne Wuest, Christoph Luser | Austria | Biopic Drama | 97′

Rococo Vienna is the setting for this formal but painterly portrait of the legendary Dr Anton Mesmer seen through the experiences of a young bind pianist Maria Theresa Paradis, who sought his help to restore her sight in 1777.  Adapted by Kathrin Resetarits from Alissa Walser’s novel ‘Mesmerized’, Barbara Albert offers a rather detached but finely-tuned arthouse drama offering a flimsy but fascinating exposé of Austrian Habsburg society during the time of Mozart when metaphysics, science alternative medicine were all on an equal footing, with unregulated doctors literally practising on unsuspecting patients.

The film opens as the 18 year-old Mademoiselle is seen playing the harpsichord, her cataract-ridden eyes rolling as she jerks her head from side to side. It is not a pretty sight but the music is delightful. Her wealthy family encourages her talent, but a good marriage is imperative in high-society. So parents Joseph (Lukas Miko) and Maria (Katja Kolm) consult Dr Mesmer (David Striesow/The Counterfeiters) whose methods are based on animal magnetism and positive fields of energy, otherwise known as ‘healing hands’.

Initial results are positive and Mesmer and his wife are keen to gain credibility in court circles to further their cause. But bizarrely, once Mademoiselle’s sight improves her keyboard skills start to deteriorate. A difficult film to warm to: not only are the characters unattractive physically, they’re also unappealing personality-wise, so we have no emotional investment whatsoever in whether the patient is cured, or not. But Mesmer’s methods make this compelling and he by no means comes across as a saviour or a quack, thanks to a skilful performance from David Striesow. Infact Mesmer seems to be the only character here with any chink of humanity, despite  remaining rather a cipher. Mademoiselle comes across as a spoilt brat but an intelligent one, and her character and foibles are subtly and convincingly portrayed the Romanian born Maria Dragus ( White Ribbon ) and form the mainstay of what would otherwise would be a rather airless affair compared with Jessica Hausner’s more satisfying Amour Fou, from the same era. Award-winning documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter is one of the producers. MT

ON PRIME VIDEO

The Summit | La Cordillera (2017)

Dir.: Santiago Mitre; Cast: Ricardo Darin, Paulina Garcia, Elena Anaya, Christian Slater, Dolores Fonzi; Agentina/France/Spain 017, 114.

Another corruscating critique of politics comes from Director/co-writer Santiago Mitre (Paulina) whose cynical eye captures the way politicians deal with each other and their citizens. In spite of structural fault lines, Mitre captures an uneasiness which also affects the personal sphere of the participants.

Argentine president Hernan (Darin) travels to Chile where the presidents of eleven South American States meet to form an Oil producing conglomerate on the same lines as OPEC. But Hernan has trouble at home: his estranged daughter Marina is mentally unstable, and her ex-husband threatens to unmask the president with a corruption scandal which happened when Hernan was a mayor. Hernan is welcomed by the Chilean president (Garcia), who has chosen a mountain retreat in the Andes, reminiscent of the Swiss Alps, for the titular summit. Behind the scenes meetings are obviously more important than public, plenary sessions, as it becomes soon clear that Hernan’s vote will be decisive. The Brazilian president is totally opposed to any participation of the USA, whilst Hernan plays a waiting game. Suddenly, all hell breaks lose with his daughter and son in law making his official duties fraught with difficulty, and the American envoi (Slater), makes him an offer that’s almost impossible to refuse. The only honourable person seems to be a journalist (Anaya), who grills the presidents mercilessly. But Hernan is not the only one well-schooled in avoiding concrete answers. The mountain resort is not only geographically removed from the population, it is a symbol of the political structure of the sub-continent. Hernan is sleeping with a mistress, and the luxury of the surroundings lacks for nothing: it might as well be Washington DC. The score by Alberto Iglesias reflects the uneasiness of the setting, and Javier Julia’s (Wild Tales) images, particularly the panoramic shots from high above, show the splendid isolation of the rulers. AS

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

Pop Aye (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Kirsten Tan | Drama | Singapore/Thailand | Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Penpak Sirikul, Bong | 104′

Kirsten Tan’s enchanting film debut follows a disillusioned romantic and his elephant across Thailand on a mission to connect with the past. This deceptively simple tale has so much to say, most of it non-verbally, about the ennui of urban life and nostalgia for love, and does so with an understated gracefulness of touch, a distinct visual style and an astringent humour that shows considerable maturity and insight. Clearly she has thought a great deal about her script and subtle characterisations, and it shows.

World-weary Thana (Warakulnukroh) lives a banal existence in plastic Bangkok. Once a well-known architect, his marriage to a shopaholic (Sirikul) is soul-destroying, and his clients now prefer technology to his personal approach. One day he leaves home and just keeps on going, reuniting on the way with his childhood pet Popeye (Bong), a fairground elephant destined for the scrapheap. The two become soulmates in their eventful journey back to Thana’s hometown of Loei, where faded flashbacks reveal how Popeye joined their village life after his mother was shot dead.

Thana opens his diatribe on the perils of city living, in the first of several encounters with helpful strangers the unlikely couple meet along the way. Another more spiritual interlude involves a Buddhist pauper Dee (Khumdee) who senses his end is nigh and whose final wish is to see his estranged girlfriend, who redeems herself in the final scenes, along with Thana’s long-lost uncle (Pongpab) who has a few surprises up his sleeve. Meanwhile, the police take constant potshots at Popeye: roving elephants are regarded as a ‘threat to the public tidiness’, as they continue their illuminating journey. Chananun Chotrungroj’s clever camerawork draws similarities between the misty landscape and Popeye’s vast hindquarters, uniting beast and countryside in a metaphor for Thailand’s lost rural traditions, in poignant contrast to the brash and alienating march of progress unfurling in Bangkok’s glitzy skyline.

Tan’s characters are as subtle and complex as every one of us, and each brings out a new dimension in her story, revealing bittersweet ironies and universal truths, but always with spry humour. And all the while, Popeye is the sad reminder of the country’s past, seen through his knowing gaze and gentle demeanour. MT

NOW SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4 0CT0BER – 15 OCTOBER 2017

Filmworker (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Tony Zierra | Documentary with Leon Vitali; USA | 94′.

Stanley Kubrick is without doubt one of the greats of 20th Century cinema. His perfectionism and dedication is also legendary as Tony Zierra (My big Break) illustrates in his haunting documentary of how an actor fell under Kubrick’s spell, becoming his right-hand man in an act of near-religious submission. Even now, 18 years after his master’s death, he works tirelessly transposing the film archive onto 4K material.

In 1975, actor Leon Vitali was a young man with a great film and stage future ahead of him and offers from the National Theatre. Securing one of the main parts as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Vitali went on to admire Kubrick so much, that he soon gave up his acting career to learn the craft, finally talking Kubrick into getting him a job on the The Shining (1980). Once Kubrick had gained his trust, Vitali was tasked with casting the child roles for the Cult horror feature. In Full Metal Jacket (1987), Vitali’s main contribution was helping the actors live up to the exacting demands of the director. Whilst returning to his acting career in Kubrick’s final feature Eyes wide Shut (1999), Vitali also helped with various technical tasks.

Being around Kubrick meant often working a 16 hour day and Vitali became a trusted adjutant of the control freak, even worked around the clock during large projects. His three children, who are interviewed, leave no doubt that they came second in the pecking order for Dad’s attention. Other interviewees, like Ryan O’Neal and Matthew Modine, talk about Vitali’s obsessive relationship with the often cantankerous Kubrick. If Vitali detected others’ shortcomings, he brought them to Kubrick’s attention. The obsessive job has taken its toll on Vitali. Physically as well as psychologically, he has aged beyond his years. Now haggard, he’s still driven by fulfilling a self-imposed workload as Kubrick’s personal assistant beyond the grave. FILMMAKER is an absorbing and haunting portrait of obsession. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

Cargo (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Gilles Coullier | Sam Louwyck, Wim Willlaert, Sebastian Dewaele | 91′ | Drama | France/Bel/Ned

There have been a number of really good marine-themed films of late including Mario Herce’s Dead Slow Ahead (2015); Delphine Coulin’s Stopover/Voir du Pays; Axel Koenzen’s Deadweight; and Felix Dufour-Laperriere’s Transatlantique.  Sadly this is not one of them, but is worth a watch.

What starts as an intriguing ‘man overboard’ thriller rapidly plunges into the maudlin territory of people trafficking in the grim Dutch debut that tries to be all things to all people with a male-centric narrative exploring the aftermath of tragedy for a struggling North Sea fishing company after the patriarch suffers a life-changing fall. Written, directed and produced by Gilles Coullier, the ace up CARGO’s sleeve is a brooding turn from Flemish actor Sam Louwyck as Jean, the eldest son responsible for the ailing fleet. Battling to bring up his 8 year old son, the single father is also tasked with managing his youngest brother Francis, who is a loser hiding his homosexuality, and the black sheep of the family William, who truculently wants to carrying on the family business, against all odds. Three signatures are required to put the business to bed. The other good thing about CARGO is David Williamson’s widescreen camerawork that makes the dismal North Sea coastline sing powerfully with muted blues and forboding greys, echoing the sentiments of this turbulent family saga with its universal themes of migration, financial crisis and the ties that bind. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 13,14,15 OCTOBER 2017

The Cakemaker (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Ofir Raul Grazier | Cast: Sarah Adler, Zohar Shtrauss, Tim Kalkhof, Roy Miller | 104′ | LGBT Drama |

Narrative torpor is not the only thing on the menu in this genteel gay-themed film debut from Israeli director Ophir Raul Grazier. Two stories of grief and bereavement interweave in a thoughtful but flaccid study of long-distance love that unfolds between Berlin and Jerusalem. Lust has nothing to do with it when young German baker Tomas (Kalkhof) meets married Israeli business man Oren (Miller) who calls by his cafe looking for directions, but also swings both ways. We are led to believe that the two then fall for each other, in the absence of any kind of convincing chemistry or even rapport. Oren then goes back to his wife Anat (Sarah Adler) and son in Jerusalem and after a brief silence, Tomas finds out he has been killed in an accident back home. The grief-stricken baker then goes to Jerusalem to scope out Anat and her family and ends up inadvertently working for her, although the two are totally unaware of their connecting backstory. As they cope with sadness of loss, cafe life in Jerusalem poses all kinds of Kosher problems for Thomas’ who cooking skills are hampered by not being Jewish, although we are persuaded that the cakes he makes are popular amongst the un-Orthoodox customers. THE CAKEMAKER is an LGBT title that wouldn’t say boo to a goose, let alone a nice fat challah during Passover; but there’s a quiet respectability here and it’s decent and well-performed. MT

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 4 OCTOBER – 15 OCTOBER

 

Untitled (2017) MUBI

Dir:  Michael Glawogger, Monika Willi | Austria / Germany 2017 | English, German | Doc | 107 min · Colour

In Untitled seasoned documentarian Michael Glawogger fulfilled his final dream of freewheeling round the World for a year just photographing everything he saw, with his cameraman Attila and sound engineer Manuel Siebert. There was to be no narrative or theme, no formal structure, just pure freedom to see what happened, and this is the result – after Glawogger’s tragic death from malaria less than half way though the project – a final unfinished reverie of random footage was put together by his longterm collaborator Monika Willi, and accompanied by notes from his diary narrated by Fiona Shaw.

Untitled has a looser more poetic feel that his previous outings Workingman’s Death, Megacities and Whore’s Glory, spooling out with shades of Kirsten Johnson’s recent roundup Cameraperson. The crew travelled south from Austria through the Balkans and on to West Africa where their ramblings are captured in silent musings and dynamic sequences that unfold in a nonlinear format gliding peripatetically north and south, east and west, and not in chronological order. Animals, people and buildings get equal treatment as Boa’s camera often trails behind farmer’s trucks bearing sheep and cattle.

In Dakar, coal black muscle bound bodies of Senegalese wrestlers gleam in the hazy sunshine of a dust-up; a vigorous massage on the hard stone floor of a Moroccan Hammam; a fur-coated woman roams through the dilapidated houses of Apice Vecchio in Campania, abandoned since 1962 on the verge of a threatened earthquake when the villagers moved across the valley. Kids and goats rifle through the fly-tipped waste in Erfoud in the Sahara desert and the war amputees’ sports club of Freetown play football on the beach in Liberia. In Kosovo a son and father climb through the structure of a unfinished housing block amid howling wind.

Wolfgang Mitterer’s score is more a patchwork of ambient sounds than formal composition as Monika Willi captures the essence of Glawogger’s previous strands and preoccupations: the injured, oppressed and desolate, particularly animals and children. His desire was for personal freedom and his envy of those who have no agenda but to stare from a window all day is palpable: “the death of freedom is to foresee every possible disaster and plan accordingly. Fear is a terrible companion.” His poignant ending in Harper, Liberia seems to echo through all of these images. MT

WHORE’S GLORY IS NOW ON MUBI

1st Pingyao International Film Festival 2017 | Oct 28 – Nov 4 2017

PYIFF-FestivalAmbassador-actressFanBingBingThe First Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival (PYIFF) will take place in the Ancient World Heritage city from 28 October until 4 November 2017.

The project is the brainchild of award-winning filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Mountains May Depart), Marco Müller is artistic director and award-winning actress Fan BingBing (I Am Not Madame Bovary) its Ambassador. PYIFF will be held amid the magnificent Ming Dynasty site of Pingyao from October 28 – November 4, with a brand new festival Complex, incorporating a 1500-seat open-air arena, showcasing this arthouse extravaganza.

Fan Bingbing is one of China’s best loved actresses and took part in the the jury at the 70th Cannes International Film Festival this May. Jia Zhangke’s hope is to create an industry meeting place in Pingyao ‘dynamising the Landscape of Cinema’ with the creative input of new and established Chinese filmmakers; international auteurs; programmers; producers and investors. The main Jury will consist of: Feng Xiaogang, Johnnie To, Walter Salles, Aleksandr Sokurov, Olivier Père, Anurag Kashyap, James Schamus, Roger Garcia, Alexander Rodnyansky and Tony Cao.

RETROSPECTIVE

This year’s retrospective will tribute the Centennial of Jean-Pierre Melville, the “Father of the French New Wave” with 10 recently restored Melville classics, including: The Red Circle, Le Samourai, A Cop and Army of Shadows. Melville’s films have been an enriching influence on Chinese cinema over the years, particularly for John Woo, Johnnie To and Ann Hui. Besides screening the restored version of most Jean-Pierre Melville’s films, the festival will also include two Chinese language films deeply influenced by his work. The symposium will provide a forum for well-known directors, researchers and filmmakers to discuss and examine their own cinema in relations to Melville’s output. Rémy Grumbach, nephew of Jean-Pierre Melville and co-founder of the Melville Foundation will be there to take part. PYIFF will also hold an exhibition of Melville trailers, posters and film stills in the festival’s main site Pingyao Festival Palace.

The festival’s comprises 6 strands: “Crouching Tiger” (section for new directors), “Hidden Dragon” (special focus on genre film), “Galas”, “New Generation China”, “Best of Fest” and “Retrospective/Tributes”. The “Retrospective & Tributes” section will screen classics to pay tribute to filmmakers who have contributed to the international film industry.

PINGYAO CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL http://www.pyiffestival.com

 

Stronger (2017) | Bfi London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: David Gordon Green; Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson; USA 2017, 116 min.

Features based on true-life stories, particularly when terrorism is concerned, usually turn out to be questionable. But director David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche) has plumbed new depths with the story of Jeff Baumann, who lost his legs in the terrorist attack during the Boston marathon in 2013.

Baumann (played by the film’s producer Gyllenhaal,) is a charmer, but a bum. He has split up with his girlfriend Erin (Maslany) for the third time, and after leaving work early to watch a Red Sox game, he knows that he has to it make up to her. So he promises to support her marathon run with a placard. Erin suspects that this will be the usual botched effort, but for once Jeff is on time – but in the wrong place. His efforts turn into a fight between Erin and his mother (Richardson), the alcoholic matriarch of a family of lazy underachievers. Only after Erin gets pregnant (we have to endure sex with violins playing), does mother give in: she delivers Jeff to Erin, complete with his artificial legs. But her middle class family refuse to tolerate sloppy underachievement.

On the positive side Jeff is shown around at sporting events just like a hero, and Green shows that this is an affront to Jeff’s sensibilities. But that’s about the only thing John Pollono gets right in his script based on Baumanm’s co-written memoir. Richardson is a caricature of a slovenly, over-protective mother, and the rest of the family are as one-dimensional in their drunken passivity, using the attention Jeff gets for endless selfie opportunities. Erin’s family are also stereotypical in their straightlaced lifestyle. Only once does STRONGER get behind the facade, when Jeff asks Erin: “why do you want me”. Sadly her martyrdom takes over again, and Jeff is literally delivered like a schoolboy from a bad home to the sanctity of proper discipline and achievement.

Green directs with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, DoP Sean Bobbitt keeps it simple with one to one realism and Michael Brook’s score is suited to the whole exercise with its sentimental meowing. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

So Help Me God (2017) Netflix

Dirs: Jean Libon, Yves Hinant | Doc | Belgium/France | 100′

This shocking trawl through the daily casebooks of a plucky Belgian judge reveals a catalogue of sexual depravity, murder and domestic violence on the part of her male – mostly Muslim – suspects, proves compelling viewing. But what makes it so entertaining, apart from the usual stories of men disciplining their wives; dominatrixes pleasuring their clients and murderers pleading to be let off so they don’t lose their council properties – is Judge Gruwez’ laconic and no-nonsense approach, taking everything in her stride, but not always taking prisoners, from her bureau in the heart of Brussels.

There is humour here too in a film that is often downright ludicrous. Many of the characters freely admit to their crimes but angrily accuse the judge herself of ‘ruining their lives’ with her legal sentencing enforced to keep them from reoffending. There are macabre moments too: Attending a DNA exhumation in the blazing heat under a pink umbrella, she claims: “it smelt bad, but there was a nice little breeze!” We also witness a woman’s account of how she killed her son, whom she suspected him of being possessed by The Devil.

Driving around in her 2CV, Maitresse Gruwez listens to opera, keeps a snow white pet rat and types her owns correspondence, despite her reduced manual dexterity.  The directors maintain a strictly detached observational approach to the bizarre subject matter, often filming at close quarters. This remarkable and uncensored film certainly lives up to its name, and proves that truth is invariably stranger than fiction. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

Hunting Season (2017) | San Sebastian Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Natalia Garagiola. Argentina/USA/France/Germany/Qatar | 105′ | Drama 

Natalia Garagiol’s feature debut is an evocative and nuanced take of alienation that makes good use of its stunning locations in windswept Patagonia to tell a well-drawn and convincingly performed story of family discord in Argentina.

In the opening scenes teenager Nahuel (Lautaro Bettoni) is expelled from his Buenos Aires boarding School after a tiff on the games field and is shipped off by his affable stepfather Bautista (Boy Olmi) to spend some time with his distant father Ernesto in a wintery Patagonia. Here father and son keep continue to keep their distance in the new family set-up consisting of wife Clara (Rita Pauls) and three young step-sisters.

Game ranger Ernesto takes Nahuel hunting with him and teaches him how to use a gun in the hope of bonding after their difficulties and gradually the two become less frosty towards one another to despite a distinct verbal froideur in this story telegraphed by its often menacing atmosphere – mostly over the dinner table – in body language rather than meaningful dialogue. In flashbacks it emerges that the rift between the men seems to have developed after the loss of Nahuel’s mother but all this plays out in the final scenes via a video on his mobile and a roadside contretemps with his dad.

Fernando Lockett’s blue-tinged images often picture Nahuel as a distant and disengaged character who is ruminative, morose and miserable in common with the icy landscapes surrounding him. The only solace appears to be from Bautista, although it’s unclear why Nahuel can’t stay with him, rather with his hostile father, who seems to hold some grudge against him as the pair eventually thrash it out with some success. With appeal for young audiences as well as the arthouse crowd, TEMPORADA DE CAZA is a sure-footed first feature for Garagiola and a deserving winner of the SIC Award at this year’s Mostra. MT

NOW SCREENING AT SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL
CRITICS’ WEEK WINNER VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPT 2017
https://youtu.be/25DljJromt0

Beauty and the Dogs | Aala Kaf Ifrit (2017)

1eefebec3515b791dbe30a1852af3172Dir.: Kaouther Ben Hania; Cast: Mariam Al Ferjani, Ghanem Zrelli; Tunisia/France/Sweden 2017, 100 min.

Writer/director Kaouther Ben Hania’s mockumentary The Blade of Tunis raised eyebrows in her home-country of Tunisia. For her first feature she has chosen another provocative theme: police brutality. Based on the novel Coupable d’Avoir eté Violé (2013) by Meriem Ben Mohamed and Ava Djamhidi, her film makes for a harrowing watch, shot in nine single sequences by Johan Holmquist.

Mariam (Al Ferjani) is a student, who goes to a party with her friends, where she is attracted to Yousef (Zrelli)  But the evening is far from romantic. After the pair go to a nearby beach, Mariam is captured and raped by two policeman, whilst a third forces Yousef to go to an ATM and take money out, for not arresting him. But Mariam’s ordeal has only just began and although Yousef supports her, the hostility she meets from hospital staff, both the private and public, is shocking. Doctors refuse to certify Mariam’s injuries, and send her to the police station, fearing conflict with the authorities. There, Mariam is questioned aggressively, called more or less a slut for not wearing a burka, and unfortunately, one of the police officers recognises Yousef as one of the demonstrators during the recent unrest. But worse is to come when Mariam and Yousef turn up at the station of the accused officers’ police station where the young woman is reminded, to “think about the honour of her country” and asked to withdraw her accusations. Yousef, shouting “this entire country is a prison’” is arrested, and Mariam left alone with the officers.

BEAUTY AND THE DOGS is a tour de force of resistance by Mariam, who somehow finds the strength to persevere with her case. The only criticism here is Ben Hania’s failure to reveal what really happens until the final scenes: when Mariam lays on the floor of the police station, watching it all on her mobile. This way, unnecessary tension keeps the audience in suspense and away from the unfolding drama. That said, Ben Hania offers a fearless and spirited story from her native Tunisia. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Our Time Will Come (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir. Ann Hui. HK | Historial Drama |  130′

Best known for her noble drama A Simple Life, Ann Hui rose to fame with her Japanese occupation-themed dramas, Love in a Fallen City (1984) and Song of the Exile (199. She returns to the era with her latest: OUR TIME WILL COME a languorously-paced and lushly-crafted snapshot of WWII occupation which explores the bitterly poignant experiences of a young woman who becomes a resistance fighter. Hong-Kong’s struggle for freedom is resurfacing again today, over seventy years later.

In 1942, serious-minded school teacher, Fang Lan (Zhou Xun) is living with her mother (Deannie Ip) when her boyfriend Wing (Wallace Huo) leaves to work for the Japanese. Fang is inspired by seeing how a local intellectual goes underground with the help of Dongjiang resistance guerrillas and decides to join their forces under the auspices of their suave leader (Eddie Peng Yuyan), eventually rising up through the ranks.

The undercover operations are stunningly captured in vibrantly elaborate images on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, often echoing French classic Army of Shadows (currently at the BFI Melville retrospective). The unobtrusive classic score adds a certain gravitas and Zhou Xun is the standout in an absolutely brilliant performance of elegant dignity as Fang, slowly gaining stature into her resistance role.

The film also stars the wonderful Tony Leung who plays a war veteran, now taxi driver, in a recurring black and white vignette set in comtemporary Hong Kong. In the black and white opening scene, and again half way through, he recalls the fond memories of the bravery of resistance leaders he once knew including Fang Lan.

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

Zoology (2016) Zoologiya

Dir.: Ivan I. Tverdovsky; Cast: Natalia Pavlenkova, Dimitri Groshev, Irina Chipizhenko; Russia/France/Germany 2016, 87 min.

After his stunning debut Correction Class, Russian auteur Ivan Tverdovsky’s second feature is a metaphor for modern life imagined through a wonderful mix of social realism and absurdist parody set in a provincial coast town in the Crimea, where middle-aged Natasha (Pavlenkova) works at a procurement manager at the Zoo. Life is miserable at home with her religious maniac mother (Chipizhernko) who spends the day watching television. At work, she prefers the animals to her conniving co-workers who are always playing tricks so she has more or less resigned herself to the fact that nothing will happen in her life, suffering silently but with dignity until, out of the blue, she grows a tail. This event seems even more sensational when her mother tells her stories of other women in the neighbourhood having grown tails after being possessed by the Devil. Natasha consults her doctor  but tests are inconclusive. The hospital radiologist Petya (Groshev) is supportive and the two get to know each, falling in love against all odds. Even after she is fired at work (as a sacrifice for her incompetent boss), she sees life with Petya as a huge advancement on her past – until  she discovers the magical properties of her new appendage.

DoP Alexander Mikeladze can claim much of the credit for the film’s success. The images are dispondently grim, as in Natasha’s home, her work place or the hospital. The only colour, a radiant blue, emerges when the lovers walk by the sea.  ZOOLOGY conveys the angst of a society in limbo: the older citizens have returned to the blind faith of religion – but they use their belief mainly to ostracize others. The younger generation resorts to self-help in self-healing evenings, modelled on US television. But the main theme is isolation and a failing infrastructure: 26 years after the fall of Stalinism, most parts of the nation still look for a new identity, turning against each other, or living in total indifference. Pavlenkova’s performance in this fairy tale is stunning, Tverdovsky just keeps the narrative anchored in a desolate society, where a huge vacuum of soullessness and misanthropy makes everything seem possible. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 28 SEPTEMBER 2017

Gray House (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Writer/Dir: Austin Lynch | With Denis Lavant, Aurore Clement, Dianna Molzan | US | Doc | 76′

David Lynch’s son Austin follows in his father’s footsteps with this unsettling semi-fictional documentary mood piece that explores disenchantment and day to day survival in various parts of America through the lives of its five blue collar protagonists. Wordless cameos from Denis Lavant and Aurore Clement help add a note of familiarity but it’s never made clear why they feature in  GRAY HOUSE, which Lynch’s is first feature made with the collaboration of cinematographer Matthew Booth.

Suggestion is perhaps a better word that storytelling to describe the way Lynch hints at dissatisfaction through starkly beautifully minimalist landscapes inhabited by his protagonists, it is nevertheless an affecting work but not for the mainstream who may find its style alienating and difficult to engage with. Intriguing yes, but it’s certainly no barrel of laughs: we first meet Lavant peddling his lonely craft in the dimly lit shades of a Texas dawn. He is then pictured stirring a large vat in a monochrome workshop. Next up, we hear the grim testimonials of work to survive oil men in the fracking town of Williston. A women’s prison in Oregon and a rural cabin in Virginia are other settings that receive Lynch’s mournful gaze in describing the working-class malaise of its sorrowful citizens.

Booth’s camera seems to haunt its characters, prowling around and swooping in on them but also offering straightforwardly framed interview sequences Scored by lilting ambient sounds this is a thoughtful and disquieting piece of filmmaking. MT

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 4 -15 OCTOBER 2017

 

Person to Person (2017) | London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Dustin Guy Defa | Cast: Michael Cera | 89′ | US Comedy
Dustin Guy Defa’s slim dramady has that underwritten feel, starting off amusingly with diminishing returns and feeling very much like an expanded series of shorts, despite a perky cast and punchy soundtrack to boost it along. Exploring the trials and tribulations of its New York characters, we meet experienced journo Phil (Michael Cera) and his nervous sidekick Claire  investigating a suspected murder while running into Philip Baker Hall’s dodgy watchmaker. Meanwhile, shy teen Wendy is heading for a double date and music-loving Bene (Bene Coppersmith) tracks across town for a much-wanted purchase. His friend Ray (George Sample III) is in deep water over a video he posted of his girlfriend on the internet. Watchable but forgettable. MT
LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 4 -15 OCTOBER 2017 | SUNDANCE REVIEW

Wajib (2017) ****

Dir: Annemarie Jacir. Palestine-France-Germany-Colombia-Norway-Qatar-United Arab Emirates. 2017. 96’

Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir conjures up a well-paced and watchable family drama fraught with difficulties for the patriarch and his prodigal architect son, who has returned from Rome for the wedding of his sister. Based on her own family, Jacir is familiar with the territory here in Nazareth where customs requires wedding invitations to be hand delivered, so WAJIB essentially plays out like a road movie where the two spend a great deal of the running time driving around while thrashing out their issues. The pain of Abu Shadi’s divorce still haunts him and infects the respectful relationship between the grown men that gradually grows more and more tense, especially when it emerges that Abu has been less than truthful about Shadi’s situation, failing to mention his son’s relationship while trying to matchmake at each encounter. Their journey also serves as a forum for Jacir to broaden the discussion on local politics, viewed from inside and outside the region, in this well-judged and wry drama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 14 SEPTEMBER 2018

YOUTH JURY AWARD LOCARNO 2017 | BEST FILM | DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 6-13 DECEMBER 2017

 

 

Disappearance (2017) Verdwijnen | Toronto International Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Boudewijn Koole; Cast: Rifka Lodeizen, Elsie De Brauw, Marcus Hanssen, Jacob Oftebro; Netherlands/Norway 2017, 92 min.

Set in the frozen Norwegian countryside, this chilling portrait of a dysfunctional family is a death dance, performed without mercy, leaving the audience devasted by the waste of human lives. But director Boudewijn Koole (Kauwboy) never allows any sentimentality to develop: he observes his characters with clinical detachment, withholding  judgement at all times.

Roos (Lodeizen) is an internationally renowned photographer who regularly visits her mother Louise (De Brauw) and half brother Bengt (Hanssen) in the Norwegian remote wilderness. We soon learn from Bengt that the last visit ended in a fight between mother and daughter, with Roos leaving, without saying good-bye to Bengt. The mother-daughter relationship seems beyond repair: When she was a little girl Roos chose to live with her father, after he left Louise for another woman. But Louise, a former ‘Wunderkind’ and now a piano teacher, is more concerned that Roos has given up the piano and chosen another profession. For Louise, this is a double betrayal – but one she can’t admit to. Struggling to gain her mothers acceptance, and feeling unloved, won’t confess to a serious illness. After a brief dalliance with her ex (Oftebro) in the back of his car, she nearly reveals her unspecified illness (we suspect cancer, because she is examines her breasts at length), but she finally opens up to her mother after another fight which ends badly. Strangely enough, Roos’ refusal to have further treatment, brings mother and daughter together, leading to an overwhelmingly moving finale.

There are some lyrical moments between Roos and Johnny on the ice, where they dance to the pop music of their youth, trying to recreate a past they have both left behind. Nature and animals seem, overall, to promise much more peaceful relationships than humans. Bengt uses Roos’ present of a very sophisticated microphone to bring the ice to “sing”. And Roos is very fond of her mother’s dogs – much more than of their owner. Neither Roos nor her mother are able to give each other unconditional love: they can only love their “mini-self’ in a non-adult way. But they deny their love to the grown-up versions of others. Mother and daughter are both familiar with the idea of loving, but are not able to accept that they are both very different people – and thus, each denies the other’s right to live a different way of life.

Koole has already collaborated with the writer Jolein Laarman on Kauwboy, and uses his script successfully to show, without spare dialogue, the inability of two adults to find a modus vivendi. DoP Melle van Essen’s landscapes are much more powerful than the struggling people who inhabit them, Disappearance is a study of denial, played out against the majestic backdrop of nature. AS

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 7-17 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

Soldiers: A Story of Ferentari | Toronto Film Festival 2017

SOLDIERS, A STORY OF FERENTARI (SOLDATI, POVESTE DIN FERENTARI)

Dir.: Ivana Mladenovic; Cast: Adrian Schiop, Vasile Pavel, Nicolae Marin, Cezar Grumarescu; Romania/Serbia/Belgium 2017, 120 min.

Ivana Mladenovic daring screen debut has an emotional directness which stuns and captivates throughout its two hour running time. Based on Adrian Schiop’s novel about a gay amour fou in one of the roughest suburbs of Bucharest, it combines gay and gypsy issues in a country not known for its tolerance towards minorities.

Schiop also stars as Adi, a shy introvert in his early forties, who is writing a PHD thesis on manele, the popular gypsy music. Adi has no idea that the Ferentari musicians are often exploited by the local mafia, who treat them like slaves. When Adi meets Borcan (Marin), one of the small time Mafiosi, he is introduced to his ‘servant’ Alberto ‘Berti’ (Pavel), a gypsy, who is about Adi’s age, and has spent more than half of his life in jail. Berti soon moves in with Adi, who shares a flat with his translator friend Vasi (Grumarescu) and his girl friend. Being rather naïve, Adi doesn’t appreciate that the couple find the rather rough ex-con difficult to deal and they soon move out, leaving Adi “to his hobos homos”.

Adi has to pay all the rent, and his financial pressure is compounded by Berti’s rampant slot machine habit. Whilst Adi tries to work for non-profit organisations to make up for Berti’s losses, his lover becomes increasingly need y and demanding, wanting permanent attention, and developing psychosomatic issues for Adi to deal with. But Adi enjoys the constant emotional neediness – it makes him feel important and after being dumped by his previous relationship. Before long though the two come to blows. Adi throwing Berti out of the flat, but then welcoming him back. Clearly he has become obsessed by him and needs to decide whether to end the relationship or continue with the toxic terror.

DoP Luchian Ciobanu has filmed the Soldiers on intimate close-up with a handheld camera creating a claustrophobia that feels convincing and real, capturing the confines of the small apartment. But even when the pair go out and about the camera follows them slavishly, showing how co-dependent their partnership really is. The poverty is grim, the streets lined with hovels which are sometimes ruthlessly removed by bulldozers. There is no political message here, Mladenovic’s fly on the wall treatment of this lost souls affair is shown relentlessly and passionately with no holds barred. Soldiers is an emotional rollercoaster, authentically performed and confidently directed. Mladenovic shows great promise for the future. AS

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL | 7-17 SEPTEMBER 2017

Motherland or Death (2017) | Open City Documentary Festival 5-10 September

Dir/Writer: Vitaly Manskiy | Doc | Russia | 99′

A fascinating snapshot of modern Cuba Motherland or Death (which, for more than 50 years, has been Cuba’s motto), chronicles the daily misery of the pre-revolution generation who realise they can now hope for better things as the country moves towards a sea change in its existence. Manskiy acts as his own DoP with Leonid Konovalov in this intriguing snapshot of modern, capturing the zeitgeist of a vivacious country, often down on its knees. Manskiy takes a non-judgemental approach, avoiding the usual human rights agenda or sensationalist victim angles that usually dog the country from the outsiders’ point of view. Nonetheless, Havana is captured as a broken-down backwater haunted by stray dogs and empty streets. MT

 

 

Valley of Shadows | Skyggenes Dal (2017) | Toronto Film Festival 2017

Dir:  Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen | Cast: Adam Ekeli, Kathrine Fagerland | Fantasy Horror | Norway 91′

A young boy ventures into the forest in search of mysterious creatures that eat sheep, in this eerie Scandinavian Gothic fable that uses an unsettling score and an atmospheric sense of place to explore how most of our deepest fears and insecurities often stem from quite banal and explicable childhood experiences.

Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen fantasy drama unfurls poetically in the remote forests of Norway. Aslak, struggling to connect with his mother, with no father or siblings around, spends most of his time alone alone as his mother has suffered some recent tragedy. Unable to understand or connect with the present, Aslak escapes into a world of fantasy in order to make some sense of his unstable family life and strange events going on in his neighbourhood. Livestock is being slaughtered, and while the local farmers suspect a wolf, Aslak’s fertile imagination goes into overdrive imagining werewolves and other folkloric happenings in the remote woodland surrounding his home in Norway.

Beautifully captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up by the director’s brother Marius, Valley of Shadows links into Norwegian and European literary and artistic sources to show how kids often endow the explicable and even banal world of adults with a sense of fantasy or even horror, when seen from their own febrile, almost feral perspective. This exotic and rich emotional breeding ground of childhood imagination has given rise to a fabulous creative force resulting in fairytales based on folklore and nature and to deal and explain everyday feelings of loss, fear and bewilderment. And Gulbrandsen has used this fascinating childhood world as the idea for a fantasy drama.

Adam Ekeli is brilliant as the hyper intelligent and wildly suggestible young Aslak whose bewilderment and fertile imagination transform a simple wander through a misty Norwegian wood into a waking nightmare of  Gothic horror proportions. The film is exquisitely captured from his gently sensationalist point of view. Working as his own DoP Gulbrandsen collaborates with editor and scripter Clement Tuffreau to create a work of ethereal beauty with an extremely modest budget, and a very simple narrative enlivened by a score from Polish film composer Zbigniew Preisner, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen was born in Bjørkelangen, Norway, and he studied directing at the Polish National Film School in Lodz. He is the director of the shorts Darek (09) and Everything Will Be OK (11). Valley of the Shadows (17) is his debut feature film.

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 7-17 SEPTEMBER 2017

Strange Colours (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir: Alena Lodkina | Cast: Kate Chile, Justin Cortin, Daniel P Jones | Australia | Drama | 85′

Another film from Australia had its debut in the Biennale College sidebar selection where budding filmmakers have a chance to shine away from the main competition. STRANGE COLOURS is beautifully captured mood piece directed by Alena Lodkina who co-scripts with Isaac Wall in this unsettling tale of a young woman returning to see her hospitalised father Max in the remote opal-mining outback of Lighting Ridge, near Alice Springs.

Milena (Kate Cheel) arrives in the hostile terrain after a day-long journey to get short shrift from her cantankerous dad (Daniel P Jones) who merely comments: “you’re not bouncing around like a tennis ball, are ya?”. This is macho man territory and the terse locals see her for her feminine charms rather than personal attributes, a dishevelled older man invites her to a party to meet other drifters: “Even if you’re broke, you can live here”. But she declines and gets an early night in her father’s ramshackle pad. The following morning reveals this as a backwater for single male bottomfeeders, who drink and chat to pass the days. But one of them, in the shape of mine-worker Frank (Justin Courtin), seems more intriguing, leading to the enigmatic second act of this well-paced feature debut.

There’s a cinéma vérite quality to STRANGE COLOURS which indicates Lodkina’s documentary background in a style that associates well with the local flora and fauna of the region adding textural richness to this rather mournful, elusive narrative. There’s gorgeous sequence that shows the glowing irridescent quality of the opals and brings an otherworldliness to the feature that is heightened by Mikey Young’s  eerie occasional score.

Suddenly the pace seems to quicken as Milena pursues Frank across the bleached out landscape and the two end up sharing a night together, but Milena promptly decides to leave the following day, a decision that feels prescient considering the facts that slowly emerge. This is a seductive and weirdly beguiling feature that tells the tale of lost souls and those waiting to be found in a distant country forsaken by time. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

Tueurs | Killers (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir: FRANÇOIS TROUKENS, JEAN-FRANÇOIS HENSGENS  | Belgium, France / 86’ |cast: Olivier Gourmet, Lubna Azabal, Kevin Janssens, Bouli Lanners

The first feature by a notorious 1990s ex-gangster turned director ABOVE THE LAW (Tueurs) is a high-octane, on the boil Belgian crime thriller that follows a hard-edged armed gangster who, in predictable style, has just completed his final heist. As the ideal suspects, Valken and his gang find themselves caught up in a criminal case dating from thirty years earlier. It looks as if the outlaws are back.

The chilling opening scenes remind us of the notorious ‘Brabant Killers’ who remained at large evading the authorities; archive footage showing how they gunned down 28 innocent bystanders in a series of town centre raids in the early 1980s. This glossy noir then takes shape 30 years later with another crime involving an explosion in the underground carpark in contemporary Brussels, where all witnesses are subsequently eliminated including the investigating inspector Veronique Perotte (Natacha Régnier). The narrative then flips back to the weeks preceding the murders where Olivier Gourmet’s Frank Valken and his gang prepare for the heist.

But the police and security forces have finally got their act together, headed by Bouli Lanners’ Dany Bouvy and astute detective Lucie Tesla (Lubna Azbal). As crime thrillers go, this is run of mill stuff but terrifically well-crafted and expertly performed in its slick Belgian settings that showcase the city’s underbelly and aerial views rather than it’s more refined venues. Clément Dumoulin’s throbbing occasional score keeps the action turning over in the breathless action sequences. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 AUGUST – 9 SETPEMBER 2017 .

Oblivion Verses | Los Versos del Olvido (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir: Alireza Khatami | Doc | Iran | 89′

Alireza Khatami’s intriguingly elusive debut feature draws you into its kafkaesque scenario where poetic realism coalesces with cinema verite elements and docu-drama to tell a tale set in a rural mortuary in the distant aftermath of murderous regimes, although the South American country of its setting isn’t named.

Juan Margallo plays the establishment’s wizened 24-hour caretaker and he seems to know a great deal more about his defunct and unclaimed residents than we initially imagine. He looks on laconically as one man arrives and weeps pitifully over a recent corpse in the morgue’s vast basement. We also meet a gravedigger (Tomas del Estal) and hearse driver (Maunel Moron)  who perform their tasks with quiet resignation when some putative assassins turn up with bodies from a recent debacle in the local town.

The narrative remains evasive in this mood piece, but there is a great deal to admire in DoP Antoine Heberle’s fizzingly vibrant images that capture the daily doings in the morgue and the fascinating characters that inhabit it and flesh out the backstories of their lives and how they met their grim fates. Haunting and arcane, this is a film that seduces you with its macabre charm and leaves you speculating and scheming for hours after the credits have rolled. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

Nico, 1988 (2017) | Venice Film Festival

Writer/Dir: Susanna Nicchiarelli | Cast: Trine Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair | Biopic drama | 93′ | Italia, Belgium

Danish singer and actress Trine Dyrholm holds centre stage as the maverick ’70s icon Nico in this stylishly cinematic third feature from Roman director Susanna Nicchiarelli.

NICO, 1988 focuses on the final years of the Berlin-born Christa Pfaffen who died in 1988, aged 49, having enjoyed a full life as mother to Alain Delon’s son, lover to Jim Morrison and muse to Andy Warhol – while also writing vocals for legendary band Velvet Underground.

Resenting the ’80s, Nico emerges a single-minded sullen misanthrope who takes no hostages amongst her associates or band-members while exuding a vulnerable charisma: “I’ve been at the top and the bottom – both places are empty”. Her final lasting love is for her son, a playfully convincing Sandor Funtek (Blue is the Warmest Colour). John Gordon Sinclair gives a dour turn as her manager but Dyrholm dominates in an astonishingly powerful performance.

Even if you’re not a fan, this enterprising part-imagined drama has pleasurably Noirish undertones sashaying through live sessions based on Nico’s last European tour: Paris, Prague, Nuremberg and even Manchester look tantalising through Crystel Fournier’s vibrant lensing as each perfectly composed frame resonates with Nico’s born-again soul. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 August – 9 September 2017 | ORIZZONTI AWARD

 

Victoria & Abdul (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir: Stephen Frears | Cast: Judi Dench, Adeel Akhtar, Michael Gambon, Olivia Williams, Simon Callow, Eddie Izzard | UK | Drama | 112′

Queen Victoria had an eye for a good-looking man and clearly missed love and sex after her beloved husband Albert died. In his latest racially-themed, glossily-mounted costume drama Stephen Frears makes hay of the final years of Victoria’s reign (from 1887-1901) with this elegantly saucy snapshot of her last dalliance, purely purely based on friendship and companionship, between the Queen and an Indian clerk, Abdul Karim, sent from Agra to deliver a gold medal in recognition of her Golden Jubilee.

Judy Dench plays Victoria and we really feel for her when she tearfully expresses her feelings of abject loneliness, isolation and responsibility as longest-standing British Monarch and Empress of India: “everyone I loved has died, and I just go on”. Ali Fazal steps fills the void as a convincing Karim who goes on to become her teacher, spiritual adviser and devoted friend. Lee Hall’s witty and engaging script trips lightly over the casual racism of the era contrasting the bitter rivalry and infighting of her courtiers and fey son Bertie with the fair and liberal-minded attitude of Queen Victoria herself in this enjoyable and sumptuously-crafted royal romp. MT

Stephen Frears was born in Leicester, England, and studied law at Cambridge University. His films Sammy and Rosie Get Laid(87), Tamara Drewe (10), and The Program (15) all screened at the Festival, as did his Academy Award–nominated features My Beautiful Laundrette (85), The Grifters (90), Dirty Pretty Things(02), Mrs. Henderson Presents (05), and Philomena (13). His other films include Dangerous Liaisons (88), The Hi-Lo Country(98), High Fidelity (00), and The Queen (06). Victoria & Abdul(17) is his latest film.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | OUT OF COMPETITION

 

La Vita in Comune (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir: Edoardo Winspeare | Italy / 110’ |cast: Gustavo Caputo, Antonio Carluccio, Claudio Giangreco, Celeste Casciaro

A cultured mayor, a semi-retired gangland boss and a troubled teen are three of the convincing characters in Edoardo Winspeare’s tender-hearted but rambling comedy drama that doesn’t know how to end. LA VITA IN COMUNE is set in the picturesque Puglian seaside town of Disperata that, contrary to its name, is a place that hasn’t been completely abandoned by God’s salvation, as we discover in this lyrical look at life after crisis.

Thoughtfully played by its cast of mainly newcomers LA VITA IN COMUNE is a  humorous tale whose tender-hearted warmth comed from the lasting hope that literature, nature and animals can provide the power of healing for the human soul. Mayor Filippo Pisanelli (Gustavo Caputo) feels inadequate in his job of leading his depressed village towards the light, compensating with voluntary work while instilling an appreciation of poetry in the lost and lonely souls of recently released criminal Pati and his teenage son Biagetto, and ex-gangster brother Angiolino. Gradually these disenchanted men find their way back through his perseverance, and their belief in God.

The film opens as Pati Runza (Claudio Giangreco) is robbing a local petrol station killing a dog that attacked him and his brother in the process. He is taken to prison, while his brother Angiolino (Antonio Carluccio) gives Biagetto some toughening up lessons, including how to use a gun. There is also another man, who is central in all the action: the mayor Filippo Pisanelli (Gustavo Caputo). After being released, Pati is deeply affected by killing the dog and starts to dream that the animal has been sanctified in Heaven. Convinced that he has been touched by the hand of God through the dog’s death, he tries to become a better man, but Angiolino is not keen on the whole idea as he needs Pati’s help with another planned robbery. So Pati appeals to Pope Francis for support, and, low and behold, The Pope gives Angiolino a call, or so we are led to believe. Meanwhile, Pati’s estranged wife, Eufemia (Celeste Casciaro), enters the fray in a desperate attempt to knock some sense and normality into the menfollk.

Delicately captured in the rolling seascapes of Southern Italy’s stiletto, Winspeare shows the soft underside of a region normally protrayed with brutality and violence. Although the narrative drifts rather in the final stages there is much to be enjoyed in this often tougue in cheek ant-mafiosi drama.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

West of Sunshine (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir: Jason Raftopoulos | Australia / 78’ | cast: Damian Hill, Ty Perham, Kat Stewart, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Arthur Angel

Jason Raftopoulos’ well-meaning but flawed father-son portrait has plenty of twists, but still panders too much to the notorious Australian male ego . It follows a dad with less than a day left to repay a debt while also bonding with his offspring. Low on the tension needed to fuel the countdown narrative West of Sunshine is a metaphor for a life where hope and the future reside under sunnier skies.

Set in a the back end of Melbourne the action takes place between morning and evening, and Raftopoulos loses no time in introducing the two main characters: father Jimmy (Hill) who is running late collecting his teenage son Alex (Perham) from his estranged wife’s house in a middle class suburb. Jimmy is a compulsive gambler working as a courier, and even his best friend Steve (Angel) is running out of patience with him. The clocks ticks by as he first upsets his on-and-off girlfriend, then starts peddling drugs for Mel (Stewart), another ex. In between, he makes a big win on the horses, but schematically gambles it all away. Everything happens more or less in front of Alex, who is told that Dad is “selling vitamins” – before he finds out the truth, tasting some of the coke. Down on his uppers, Jimmy then leaves his vintage car with his debtor, having been beaten up by two heavies. No surprises in store here.

Raftopoulos pulls off the action scenes with a certain aplomb, but when he turns his camera to the emotional father and son scenes the drama turns soggy and kitsch with the use of slow-motion and sunsets. When asked by his mother how his day with Dad went, Alex answers “the best day ever”. Really? AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018| 19 April 2018

Endangered Species |ESPÈCES MENACÉES (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

 Dir: Gilles Bourdos | France, Belgium / 105’ | cast: Alice Isaaz, Vincent Rottiers, Grégory Gadebois, Suzanne Clément

Gilles Bourdos’ interlocking trio of stories from American writer Richard Bausch is strangely unengaging despite the colourful antics of its central character Josephine, gamely played here by Alice Isaaz.

After his sumptuous but flaccid biopic drama Renoir French director Gilles Bourdos travels to the Riviera for his latest offering, the vividly shot but narratively over-ambitious and uneven Endangered (Doomed) Species where Josephine is variously beset by difficult characters in her life: a macho tree-surgeon husband; a difficult new neighbour and his pregnant daughter; her future husband and his PhD student whose mother is finally institutionalised.

The first two stories unfurl prodigiously showcasing Josephine’s fraught wedding night with tattooed groom Tomas (Vincent Rottiers from Renoir) ending in tears for the bride, not auguring well for their future and echoing the doomed relationship of her parents (Gregory Gadebois, Suzanne Clement). The second sequence features an incendiary phone call between the pregnant Melanie (Alice de Lenquesaing) and her father, Vincent (Eric Elmosnino) telling him of her putative marriage to a man (Carlo Brandt) nearly forty years her senior, while his news of divorce pales into insignificance in the process. The third and weakest story features Damien Chappelle’s Anthony (who is also a student of Melanie’s father’s baby) and his deranged mother Nicole (Brigitte Catillon).

Bourdos aims to explore the dynamics, pressures and loyalties of family and how ‘sins of the father’ infect future generations, but in doing so some of his characters are not as fully fleshed out as the others, particularly those of Melanie and her partner and Anthony and his difficult love life. The overbearing score often threatens to dominate a film gorgeously captured and vivaviously realised in its ravishing Riviera locations making this an occasionally enjoyable watch despite its drawbacks. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 August – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

M (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Sara Forestier, Cast: Sara Forestier, Redouanne Harjene, Jean-Pierre Leaud, |France 2017, 100 min.

Actor and director Sara Forestier creates a simple but moving love story of two outsiders who, against all odds, give each other a new start in life. Wonderfully acted by Forestier and Harjene in the leads, M is passionate, but never soppy.

Lila (Forestier) is living with her grumpy, lazy father (Leaud) and her capricious little sister in a rundown flat. Days ares spent with household chores and looking after her sister and working towards BAC examinations. Lila stutters, and is made fun of in the classroom, even though she is by far the brightest student in the class. Then she meets Mo, an Arab guy who makes a living doing daredevil stunts with his car, and the two seem to be heading for a doomed romance with not much of a future. But Mo is able to loosen her up giving her confidence inspite of her speech impediment. Whilst Lila is progressing her life, the secretly illiterate Mo, loses his job in Lila’s father’s restaurant: he cannot function without reading the orders. Lila’s growing success turns the tables on her romance as she has a one last crack at breaking Mo’s defences down. M enjoys some amusing moments and those between the sisters, are often hilarious. Jean-Pierre Leaud is superb as Lila’s strict but tight-lipped father, hardly ever saying a word, feeling trapped by his paternal role yet never offering any emotional support. Harjane is vulnerability and macho aggression rolled into one. Overall M is a brave debut showing that detail not big ideas often make for an engaging intimate domestic drama. This is a heart-warming tale set in a world of conflicts on all levels. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 30 August – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

The Insult (2017) | Venice Film Festival 2017

the-shape-of-waterA TALE OF TWO FILMS

This morning’s Venice competition films could have not have been more different. There was Guillermo Del Toro’s blockbuster THE SHAPE OF WATER, mainstream Hollywood, beautifully framed – but empty and second-hand. Then we watched THE INSULT, by Lebanese director/co-writer Ziad Doueiri (West Beirut), produced by five companies as far apart as Lebanon and the USA and shot on a shoestring, THE INSULT  is set in contemporary Beirut, still suffering from the wounds of the civil war. Del Toro’s tale is set in 1962 Baltimore, at the height of the Cold War. Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a cleaner, isolated, because she is mute. The Defence Ministry Institute she works for, is run by the security villain Strickland (Michael Shannon), who is in charge of an amphibian creature (very much the replica of the creature from the Blue Lagoon), who is also wanted by Russian spies. Elisa and the creature connect and fall in love, and in spite of being shot dead by Strickland, will have a happy under-water future. SHAPE OF WATER is not even secondhand, it is just a wishful retelling of the sort of movies produced by Hollywood in the 50s and early 60s: colourful entertainment for teenagers, before they graduate to adult entertainment. Every shot is artificially framed for the maximum effect, recreating an idyllic world of mild suspense. But the characters are all cartoon figures, making the dialogue superfluous. Production Department and DoP got the Lion’s share of the budget, but the creativity did not stretch to the script department, as is often the case. The result is Jack Arnold meets Douglas Sirk, with Del Toro as the apprentice who loses any originality in the transposition. **

the-insultZiad Doueiri tries hard to make the most out of his scarce resources and succeeds in keeping the audience engaged during the tale of a seemingly mundane conflict which could have led to an outbreak of civil war in Beirut. Toni is a garage owner in the capital, and not too fond of his Palestinian neighbours. When one of them, Yasser, who works as a para-legal for a building company, repairs the leaking drainpipe of his flat. Toni wants an apology, after having destroyed the new pipe. Toni insults Yasser, shouting that wished General Ariel Sharon had killed all Palestinians. Yasser retaliates, breaking his opponent’s two ribs. In court, Yasser is found not guilty, but Toni does not give up, engaging a new, very political lawyer for the retrial. Yasser is represented by the daughter of Toni’s lawyer, who hates her father. All sides are set for a trial by media, whilst the political atmosphere in the city reaches breaking point, as fighting breaks out in the city starts. Doueiri makes it clear that this is a story of male male egos loving nothing a verbal and physical confrontation. The men hold their other side responsible for their or their family’s suffering, overlooking the 1990s civil war where Christian Falange and Palestinian PLO fighters both committed atrocities against the civilian population. But Toni and Yasser seem to use the past as a competitive replay of whose side suffered the most. Before the opening credits, the Lebanese government insisted on a disclaimer, distancing themselves from the film. We wonder why….. ****

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017

Rosita (1923) | Venice Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch, Cast: Mary Pickford, Holbrook Blinn, Irene Rich, George Walsh, USA 1923, 97 min.

Countless rumors surround the making of Lubitsch’ first US film – never mind the aftermath, when Mary Pickford, whose company produced the film, had all but the last reel destroyed. She claimed that she and Lubitsch disliked each other, even though the Berlin-born director came to Hollywood invited by her “to shoot an adult picture” and get the star away from the image of a little girl. One can say  Lubitsch succeeded – surely he did not need the rumoured help of Raoul Walsh.

The story line is slim, as in the many “thousands” of films Lubitsch had directed, causing Kracauer to condemn most of them as mindless entertainment. Rosita (Pickford) is a street singer in Seville and is fancied by the philandering King (Blinn). He has her arrested, but a nobleman, Don Diego (Walsh), rescued her, killing an officer of the guard in the process. The King condemns him to death, seeing in him a rival for the love of Rosita. But all ends well, thanks to the intervention of the wily Queen (Rich).

With a new score from Gillian Anderson and updated intertitles from MOMA this feels an even more grandiose occasion. The mass scenes are brilliantly directed and Lubitsch changes colours three times: most scenes are shot in sepia-brown, the scenes in the prison are shot in dark black and white, whilst some other scenes are have a grainy, more modern feeling. Add on some spectacular orange firework and you get the idea: this would be Lubitsch’ calling card for Hollywood after he went there for good. We have the St. Petersburg film archive to thank for the negative, which allowed the restauration of this small but glittering gem. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 30 August to 9 September 2017

Loving Vincent (2017) | BfI London Film Festival 2017

The 61st BFI London Film Festival has announced the UK premiere of LOVING VINCENT. Broadcast live from the National Gallery on Monday 9 October, audiences in cinemas across the country are invited to experience the film premiere and the following Q&A with special guests. Tickets go on-sale for the UK-wide screenings from Wednesday 23 August at LovingVincent.Film. Tickets for the National Gallery premiere go on sale on Friday 25 August (BFI Patrons and Champions from 11:30am, Members from 12:30pm) and to the public from 31 August, and will be available from the BFI.

LOVING VINCENT is a stunning, fully painted animated feature, starring Douglas Booth and Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman. Loving Vincent explores the life and controversial death of Vincent van Gogh, told by his paintings and by the characters that inhabit them. The intrigue unfolds through interviews with the characters closest to Vincent and through dramatic reconstructions of the events leading up to his death. BFI REVIEW

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5 -15 OCTOBER 2017

Distant Constellation (2017) ****

Dir: Shevaun Mizrahi | USA/Turk/Ned | Doc | 80′

An Istanbul retirement home is playfully haunted by the rich and colourful memories of its battle-scarred occupants in this impressive and gracefully composed debut from Shevaun Mizrahi.

Outside, high-rise construction takes Turkey into an acquisitive new chapter of its history. But in the faded splendour of their palazzo building, the old guard reminisce with humour, perseverance and poignancy, remembering a time when life was fraught with war and poverty but also held together by a sense of community and the simple pleasures of sex, family, music and the visual arts. Dressed up for another day alone with their memories, the cultured occupants of this care home – who range from late seventies to much older – are left to their own devices, keeping their minds sharp with crosswords in the privacy of their rooms. Others sits together in companionable silence, gazing wistfully into the camera or staring vacantly to the world outside. Mizrahi’s one-to-one encounters are mostly observational and her static camera patiently contemplates each individual without rushing on, even when clearly some are suffering from senility, or even early stage dementia, while others are bent over and crippled by age.

Selma, an Armenian woman in her late nineties. even nods off while chatting (Mizrahi stays off camera, and we don’t hear her voice). She tells how her mill-owning family were chased from their village during the Armenian genocide; the men killed with knives and the animals burnt. “1915 was a terrible time…we were forced to convert to Islam”. Having lost the opportunity to marry, she looked after a Turkish baby for two years, and cried when she left her, never having kids herself. She advises Mizrahi to get married and raise a family when she can but is clearly philosophical about the past: “life has been good to me”.

In another room a soulful photographer attempts to load his camera, repeating over and over again: “I can’t see”. We feel for him, as French music plays softly in the background. Shaved and dressed in a suit and tie, he won’t be going anywhere today but looks forward to his birthday, checking the date on his mobile phone, with a magnifying glass. “in 9 days time, they will bring a cake”.  A photo on the wall shows him proudly posing with his camera, his glossy black hair slicked back, he looks like a 1950s matinée idol .

A couple of old boys chat in a stationary lift – which they can’t operate, or pretend they can’t. One says to the other, a heavy smoker: “I’m sick of your breath, take an eucalyptus sweet, or even two” The lift door eventually opens to let two women in. Another – rather dapper pianist – treats us to a classical flurry on the keyboards before gushing forth with some particularly florid memories with his girlfriend in the back of a car: Sexual desire – and the longing for physical touch doesn’t change with age and he is clearly concerned about his emotional future. Hoping there will another relationship in his life (he’s only 77), he swiftly proposes marriage to Mizrahi: “you’re 29, I don’t expect you to stop going out dancing with your friends”. In return, he offers his generous pension, as a dowry.

As dawn breaks, a woodpecker and some spirited birdsong ushers in another day, as residents wash and dress in hopeful preparation. But the swirling murmuration of the starlings also signals the change of season as another winter approaches, suitably recalling the words of Dylan Thomas: ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day’. It certainly describes these spirited people, captured so charmingly here by Shevaun Mizrahi. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

Venice Film Festival 2017 |

The 74th Venice Film Festival unveils a dazzling array of Hollywood talent enriched by strong arthouse titles in this year’s line-up. Programming supremo Alberto Barbera claimed he was 97% pleased with his selection of films for the longest running (1932) and most classy of the global festivals, that takes place on the Lido from 30 August to 9 September 2017. The festival has recently been upping its game with a newly launched Film Market providing the launchpad for some promising award-season titles and Oscar potentials. All the films are world premiers and seasoned directors compete with debut filmmakers for the coveted Golden Lion, judged by Annette Benning’s jury including Rebecca Hall.

The festival often with a Alexanders Payne’s fantasy comedy, DOWNSIZING that follows Matt Damon’s shrinking man, Damon also also appears in George Clooney’s ’50s set urban thriller SUBURBICON starring Julianne Moore and Josh Brolin. Darren Aronofsky’s psycho horror MOTHER! with the World’s highest earning actress Jennifer Lawrence is the third Hollywood heavyweight in the programme.

jpegThe Competition line-up features more eclectic fare with three documentaries: refugee crisis-themed HUMAN FLOW -left – from Chinese maverick Ai Wei Wei’s and Frederick Wiseman’s EX LIBRIS an in-depth exploration of the New York Public Library and William Friedkin THE DEVIL AND THE FATHER AMORTH that explores the real story of an exorcism. Indie-wise MAKTOUB, MY LOVE is Abdellatif Kechiche’s follow up to Palme D’Or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour and Berlinale Golden Bear winner Andrew Haigh (45 Years) presents Steve Buscemi starrer LEAN ON PETE  adapted from Willy Vlautin’s book about a boy and an also ran race horse. In the Asian corner is also Hirokazu Koreeda’s mystery drama THE THIRD MURDER, Vivian Qu’s ANGELS WEAR WHITE  main pic – and festival closer OUTRAGE CODA a drama about the Japanese Yakuza from director Takeshi Kitano.

images-w1400Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro brings his Coldwar horror pic THE SHAPE OF WATER, which stars English actress Sally Hawkins and Argentinian auteuse Lucrecia Mantel will be there with ZAMA (left – out of comp) her much-antipated biopic drama based on Don Diego de Zama, a legendary Spanish officer who settles in the Argentine during the 17th century; while LOVING PABLO is a biopic of Pablo Escobar starring Javier Bardem as the drug gangster.

Italian films features largely in the selection but often with a sterling British cast: from Paolo Virzi’s THE LEISURE SEEKER, with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland whose character is suffering Alzheimers. Andrea Pallaora’s HANNAH with Charlotte Rampling and Sebastiano Riso’s UNA FAMIGLIAWestern-Wise there is Australian director Warwick Thornton’s SWEET COUNTRY, starring Sam Neill and a ‘very bizarre’ musical thriller about love and the Camorra entitle AMMORE E MALAVITA from the Manetti Brothers.

1255370_The-Whale

Martin McDonagh’s THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI promises the same dark humour as his breakout hit and best film In Bruges,Other British titles include Stephen Frears’ VICTORIA AND ABDUL with Judi Dench; Deborah Haywood’s Derbyshire-set indie debut PINCUSHION that opens the ORIZZONTI section and MY GENERATION David Batty’s documentary about the Swinging Sixties scripted by Porridge writer Dick Clement and narrated by Michael Caine.

1264467_Lean-On-PeteVenice will become the first major festival to introduce a competition strand dedicated to virtual reality with over 20 films judged by a separate jury which this year is headed by John Landis who presents a 3D version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and a documentary about its making.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 74

AI WEIWEI – HUMAN FLOW

Germany, Usa, 140’

DARREN ARONOFSKY – MOTHER!
Usa, 120’
Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Harris

GEORGE CLOONEY – SUBURBICON
Usa, 104’
Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Noah Jupe, Oscar Isaac 

GUILLERMO DEL TORO – THE SHAPE OF WATER
Usa, 119’
Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer

ZIAD DOUEIRI – THE INSULT
France/Lebanon, 110’
Adel Karam, Kamel El Basha, Camille Salameh, Rita Hayek

ROBERT GUÉDIGUIAN – LA VILLA
France, 107’
Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan, Jacques Boudet, Anaïs Demoustier, Robinson Stévenin

ANDREW HAIGH – LEAN ON PETE
UK, 121’
Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny

ABDELLATIF KECHICHE – MEKTOUB, MY LOVE: CANTO UNO
France Italy, 180’
Shain Boumedine, Ophélie Baufle, Salim Kechiouche, Lou Luttiau, Alexia Chardard, Hafsia Herzi 

KOREEDA HIROKAZU – THE THIRD MURDER
Japan, 124’
Fukuyama Masaharu, Yakusho Koji, Hirose Suzu 

XAVIER LEGRAND – JUSQU’À LA GARDE

France, 90’
Denis Ménochet, Léa Drucker, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveux, Saadia Bentaïeb

MANETTI BROS. – AMMORE E MALAVITA
Italy, 133’
Giampaolo Morelli, Serena Rossi, Claudia Gerini, Carlo Buccirosso 

SAMUEL MAOZ – FOXTROT
Israel, Germany Fr/Swiss 113’
Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, Yonatan Shiray 

MARTIN MCDONAGH – THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
UK, 110’
Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage 

ANDREA PALLAORO – HANNAH
Italy/Belgium/France, 95’
Charlotte Rampling, André Wilms 

ALEXANDER PAYNE – DOWNSIZING
Usa, 140’
Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig 

VIVIAN QU – JIA NIAN HUA (ANGELS WEAR WHITE)
China, France, 107’
Wen Qi, Zhou Meijun, Shi Ke, Geng Le, Liu Weiwei, Peng Jing

SEBASTIANO RISO – UNA FAMIGLIA
Italy 105’
Micaela Ramazzotti, Patrick Bruel

 PAUL SCHRADER – FIRST REFORMED
Usa, 108’
Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles

WARWICK THORNTON – SWEET COUNTRY
Australia, 112’
Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Hamilton Morris, Thomas M. Wright

PAOLO VIRZÌ – THE LEISURE SEEKER
Italy, 112’
Helen Mirren, Donald Sutherland

FREDERICK WISEMAN – EX LIBRIS, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 30 AUGUST – 9 SEPTEMBER 2017 


						

Locarno Film Festival Awards 2017

962022INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Golden Leopard

MRS. FANG by WANG Bing, France, China, Germany

 

969151Special Jury Prize

AS BOAS MANEIRAS by Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra, Brazil, France

 

 

961847Best Direction

F. J. OSSANG for 9 DOIGTS, France, Portugal

 

 

973045Best Actress

ISABELLE HUPPERT for MADAME HYDE by Serge Bozon, France, Belgium

 

 

962055Best Actor

ELLIOTT CROSSET HOVE for VINTERBRØDRE by Hlynur Pálmason, Denmark, Iceland

 

 

LOCARNO 2018 WILL TAKE PLACE FROM 1-11 AUGUST 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Nation | Tara Moarta (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Radu Jude | Doc | 83′ | Romania

Radu Jude’s astonishing documentary follow-up to Aferim! is a chronicle of Romania’s anti-semitism during the late 1930s-1940s told entirely from the perspective of a Jewish doctor, Emil Dorian.

The Romanian director’s fifth full-length film takes the form of a series of stunning professionally taken monochrome photographs (often fading at the edges), featuring groups of ordinary people from the Southern village of Slobozia affected by the horrific ethnic cleansing that raged during the country’s outbreak of fervent Second World War Nationalism. The photographs picture well-dressed family groups, along with farmers posing with their animals and officials proudly sporting their uniforms.

The grisly episode in history contrasts with the benign, often smiling faces of the characters portrayed, striking a poignant note of complicity with viewers who are well aware of their fate, even before they are. Jude narrates against a soundtrack of patriotic anthems and radio broadcasts from the era charting Octavian Goga’s rise to power in September 1937. At the time we hear that a patient in the local hospital is the only Jew suffering from TB and a petition goes round that he should be thrown out. This is the seed of hate that rapidly grew and flourished throughout the country as Romania steadily falls under the grip of Fascism and a Legionnaire’s regime.

Dr Dorian’s florid account of atrocities that occurred during the genocide flows on while the figures in the pristine photographs keep beaming out, beautifully-dressed and posed, almost in defiance of the horrors awaiting them. King Carol II announces there will be no progrom, “but it would be easier for Jews if they left Romania”. Eventually in 1938 synagogues begin to be burnt down as antisemitism rages across the nation and Jewish people become scapegoats. As the country descends into chaos mass deportations take place and the horrors of genocide gradually become apparent. The only hint at personal suffering comes from Dorian himself as he describes “an endless season whose days are grey, cold and bloodstained.”

This episode in history may be not be common knowledge to many viewers (including me, for that matter) but Jude brings it to our attention in a way that makes us want to discover more, and without beating us over the head with a sensationalist portrait, which could have so easily been the case. The film is striking and poetic, the photographs collated with flair and skill. DEATH NATION is a work of art and a documentary that begs to be seen by all. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017 

Qing Ting zhi yan | Dragonfly Eyes | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Xu bing | China US | 81′ | Fantasy Drama

A young woman leaves a Buddhist temple where she has trained as a Nun, in this evocative Chinese drama created entirely from surveillance footage from with celebrated conceptual artist Xu Bing. DRAGONFLY EYES is an unsettling watch but a poetic one that melds conceptual art with cinema: Just the kind of fare that makes Locarno Film Festival tick with the edgy inventiveness that makes it different and daring.

Relying on prestige editing and clever sound design DRAGONFLY EYES rocks with a rakish rhythm while offering audiences essential time out to contemplate its artful originality. This bracing feature recalls the work of Polish artists Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal Fresh and Thai maestro Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Other artists in the shape of Matthieu Laclau and composer Yoshihiro Hano collaborate on the film scripted by the poet Zhai Yongming whose writing responded to the found footage, rather than the conventional way round. Dragonfly Eyes also features computerised voice techniques that alternate between calm chanting and more rasping vocal sounds.

After Qing Ting (‘Dragonfly’, in Chinese) has left her holy home, she finds herself working in a milking factory where she confesses to her colleague Ke Fan that she’d like to set one of the cows free. The cow in question is then seen wandering off down a road in the dark, and footage of various road accidents follows suggesting a doon-laden outcome. The next minute Qing Ting is in a dry cleaning shop and Ke Fan appears to be stalking her as they embark of a tense on/off affair. What emerges feels like the classic misogynist scenario of modern times but the experimental form it takes feels bizarre and often alarming, punctuated by an atmospheric electronic soundtrack. Different but definitely daring and fresh. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017 

 

Mrs Fang (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Bing Wang | China/Ger/France | Doc | 86′ |

Bing Wang’s low-key portrait of a woman’s final days offers an engaging snapshot of modern rural China. Highlighting our growing concern for issues such as Alzheimer’s and the breakdown of the family unit, this witty and filmic documentary never takes itself too seriously while maintaining the dignity of its central focus.

Mrs Fang (Fang Xiuying) has come home from hospital to die. In the ramshackle riverside farming village of Huzhou, she is now in her late sixties and surrounded by her extended family who gather around her bed. The chatter is irreverent and off-the-cuff – this is just another ritual in their lives together as they share every subtle nuance of her dying days. Daughter and son have given up their jobs to tend to her needs, which appear modest, as she now lies staring vacantly from her bed, a set of prominent yellow teeth bared grotesquely from a hollowed out face. Her son stands in ceremony taking a pulse, and someone says: “he acts like a doctor”. No offence taken, and none intended – this is just an example of the candidness of this community that leavens a film that could otherwise be gruelling. A brief opening scene from the year before has shown Mrs Fang walking peacefully along the river. A year later, the deterioration in her condition is remarkable.

Bing still finds beauty in this seedy backwater. As the men embark on a nocturnal fishing trip, their little boat flashes like an emerald against the cocoa-coloured night sky. The men talk continuously: “It’s a snakehead”, “the battery’s leaking”, “try for a turtle, they’re in the rushes”. Their torch buzzes loudly only drowned out by the endless roar of traffic on the highway. Later they go home, leaving a woman to gut the fish and do the dirty work. Nothing changes, even in China. But the director’s message is loud and clear: How calm, secure and dignified death can be when your family is there to look after you. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Travis Wilkerson | Doc | US | 89′

Travis Wilkerson investigates his great-grandfather’s killing of a black man back in 1946 and regales us with a haunting pictorial history of Black and White Alabama seething with atmospheric social unrest, and a film with one of the best soundtracks of 2017.

Calling his documentary a “white nightmare” Wilkerson certainly instills plenty of White guilt into this stylishly cinematic detective story whose important social/political theme breathes life into an incident that happened over 70 years ago, and whose implications still hold sway in today’s Trump era. The Southern states of America are still a breading ground for racial hatred and a powder keg of Black versus White conflict.

Narrated by Wilkerson in an often vehement style that sets the tone for this Southern – at times almost Gothic – tale that opens by contrasting his personal family story with that told in To Kill a Mockingbird. Tinted scarlet and orange images and remixed film clips of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch are played as a preface to footage of an angry mob, with the words: “My great-grandfather would’ve been one of the members of that lynch mob,” It emerges that a character called S.E. Branch apparently shot and killed a black man named Bill Spann in a general store in the small town of Dothan, Alabama. Spann was reported to be robbing his shop and although Branch was charged with murder, the inquiry eventually came to nothing.

The murder investigation is somehow less engaging that the political and social story Wilkerson has to tell. We discover that Branch was not only a racist but also a bad husband who abused his wife making her sleep in a small bed next to his larger one and even trying to strangle her one night. But after talking to three sisters, who are his aunts, Wilkerson eventually discovery of Spann’s unmarked grave feels underwhelming in contrast with the more important theme of racial hatred and segregation highlighted in the film. Furthermore, one of Wilkerson’s aunts, who now works as a white supremacist activist, actually contradicts the earlier claim that Branch killed Spann for robbing his shop, claiming Spann had actually threatened a fellow black woman with a knife, and Branch shot then him in her defence. A theory that Wilkerson never seems to contradict.

However, his overlying message – that the world is threatened by White Supremacy and “the White will incinerate the World” – seems wildly overreactive. Obviously Black lives matter but Wilkerson needs gain ome perspective and to travel further afield to discover that in some countries, namely South Africa, Black people legally have the upper hand in a Black Empowerment regime. His final incendiary comment: “You fired the gun!” seems to point the finger at viewers, in a rather menacing finale.

That all said, this is an astonishing documentary enlivened by a stunning soundtrack featuring the music of Phil Ochs and punctuating by Janelle Monae’s percussive protest song “Hell You Talmbout” “Say his name, say his name!,” And despite Wilkerson’s failure to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the story of his forefather,  DO YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN provides a memorable and engrossing watch. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

 

Goliath (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Dominik Locher | Switzerland | Drama | 85′

Dominik Locher (Tempo Girl) explores the nature of masculinity and fatherhood in his rather bland Swiss-set screen debut GOLIATH which tries to find a new angle on unwanted pregnancy and thwarted masculinity.

Designed to appeal to new audiences, its young lead Sven Schelker plays David a timid office worker who goes all petulant when his girlfriend Jessy (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) announces her surprise pregnancy. Clearly he can’t face the thought of growing up but the couple are clearly quite keen on one another and baulk at abortion after their first appointment. Later on, David fails to man up when the couple are attacked on the train forcing him to re-examine their relationship dynamic where Jessy appears to wear the trousers. So David starts to beef up in the gym, and inject himself with anabolic steroids, slowly becoming the stereotype of dumb machismo. The effort to improve his pecs and charisma only succeeds in the former endeavour. Instead of confidence and masculine allure, the young guy develops a nasty aggressive streak with negative implications for Jessy and the baby.

Locher’s script attempts to break down the stereotypical image of Switzerland as being a pacifist and conservative country in crafting a drama that feels unconvincing and formulaic and a storyline that is predictable throughout, despite trying to go to the ‘dark side’. Obviously there a shady characters and situations everywhere but unlike the impressive thriller Chrieg which succeeded with an authentic dystopian tale, GOLIATH merely tries to overlay an everyday urban story with sinister undertones that just doesn’t convince. The characters are underwritten and bland, and despite the best efforts of its leads and Daniel Lobos’ creative attempts to ‘sex up’ Switzerland by giving the film an artistic feel, the end result is amateurish.  Switzerland is a fantastic country which should be proud of its moral and ethic excellence and fabulous lifestyle. Locher just needs to find a real story and tell it well. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL – 2-12 AUGUST 2-17

 

9 Doigts | 9 Fingers (2017) | Locarno International Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: F J Ossang | France/Port | Drama | 99′

Cult French auteur F J Ossang has made a handful of features: L’affaire des Divisions Morituri (1985); Doctor Chance (Locarno/1998; Dharma Guns (2010) and casts a niche selection of French stars for his latest Locarno Golden Leopard hopeful, a Noirish mystery drama with Paul Hamy, Damien Bonnard, Gaspard Ulliel and Pascal Greggory.

9 FINGERS is very much an exercise in style over substance; and if you like Ossang’s style then you will enjoy this enigmatic affair that could easily serve as a metaphor for the crisis-ridden state of the world. Shot in black and white with occasional sorties into the Academy ratio, accentuating the clandestine rather claustrophobic nature of the loose plotline, it follows a character named Magliore (Hamy) who, in the opening scenes, inherits a fortune from a dying man. Kidnapped by a gang after his loot, he then becomes their willing accomplice as they flee an unknown enemy across land and sea aboard a large steamer, beset by a mystery fever which could be typhoid. Utterly pretentious and arcane, this is nonetheless a sumptuously photographed wartime pastiche that feels hollow and bewildering despite the best efforts of its talented cast to breathe life into an episodic, threadbare narrative. Sadly, most of the audience walked out before the end credits rolled. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

Charleston (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Andrei Cretulescu | Romania/France | Drama | 119′

Romanian cinema seems to have peaked after its recent New Wave heyday led largely by Radu Jude, Cristi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu. who have all been lauded and rewarded on the international festival circuit. The watchwords here have always been ‘lengthy and slow-burning’ often demanding our attention for over two hours, but on the whole this has been worthwhile. Sadly Andrei Cretulescu’s Charleston overstays its welcome at just short of two hours in a drama that feels distinctly self-indulgent – amateurish even.

But although CHARLESTON is not in the major league, there are elements that recommend it. Barbu Bălăşoiu’s artful cinematography showcases modern Bucharest with style and flair enlivening this tragi-comedy with its contemporary take on relationships, music, cultural and outdoor pursuits, all set to jazzy Massimiliano Nardulli’s jazzy score.

The title CHARLESTON could refer to the dance-off between the film’s central duo – although the tone here is more fraught and sorrowful than spirited, in tune with its 1920s-namesake. It may also allude to the awkward impromptu interlude that occurs midday through the action. The problems throughout is that we feel nothing for our central characters. We are also left unmoved by an opening scene where a young woman (Iona/Ana Ularu) is pictured staring at her phone before rushing headlong into a speeding vehicle. Graveside, we then meet her thuggish other half having a fag as he contemplates the future, and possibly the past. Alexandru (Serban Pavluvu is later seen celebrating his 42nd birthday with a select group of friends – a pale imitation of the one in Sieranevada. After dinner Alexandru answers the door to a strangers who then emerges as his dead wife’s former lover. Clearly our brutish hero was totally unaware of the situation – and gives the mushc younger squirt of a man (Sebastian/Radu Iacoban) a good hiding. The wounded lover still stays around, as if to serve a self-indulgent penance in his cuckhold’s former matrimonial home. This grim aftermath then develops into a mutual outpouring of anger, grief, retaliation, claim and counter claim which culminates in a bizarre road trip to the place where the couple spent their honeymoon.

This all sounds plausible and rather intriguing and there are some elements that really work, But less is always better than more in this lacklustre affair which is over-talkie dialogue-wise and underpowered dramatically. One thing is for sure, time out from the endless bickering between Alexandru and his rival Sebastian could have allowed the audience time out to contemplate the scenario from their own perspective and possibly given them more slack . MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

 

 

 

Severina (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Felipe Hirsch | Cast: Carla Quevedo, Alfredo Castro, Daniel Hendler | Drama | Brazil | 100′

This conventional but stylish drama from Brazilian auteur Felipe Hirsch is a love letter to literature and reading in general. The story unfolds an old part of Buenos Aires or maybe Montevideo, where a man (Daniel Hendler) runs a vintage bookshop with many rare first editions. It also provides a meeting point for literary lovers to engage in the occasional relaxed soirée. The business runs smoothly and each day he opens shop but only appears to have one tentative customer in the shape of Ana (the coltish Carla Quevedo) who browses the dusty shelves teasingly but never buys. As the man develops a fascination for this young bohemian beauty who lives with her father in a nearby pensione – or so she says – and it soon emerges that her loose mannish clothing enables her penchant for cleptomania, as gradually his books disappear, as his obsession for her increases and an affair eventually develops.

SEVERINA is a delicately sensual affair which wafts enigmatically between reality and mystery until the two interweave and gradually become indistiguishable. A paean to romantic love as much as a celebration of wine-fuelled literary conversation and intellectual debate, SEVERINA recalls the languor of long afternoons and late nights spent reading in companionable silence.

The Brazilian filmmaker bases his drowsy drama on Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s book of the same name and is dedicated to the sheer pleasure of reading. But he keeps his narrative loose and enigmatic. Quevado gives a stunning performance as the seductive but manipulative minx who have the bookseller in her thrall as she comes and goes elusively claiming to live with her father – who could also be her lover – or even both, played by a louche Alfredo Castro in seedy ‘foreign correspondent’ mode. The tone turns more unsettling when he is taken seriously ill throwing the lovers together in the dusty rooms of the bookshop, as the bookseller is drawn inexorably under Ana’s spell in the sinister finale of this persuasive and intriguing Noirish drama. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST

 

Madame Hyde (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Serge Bozon | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, José Garcia, Romain Duris | France | Drama | 95′

Isabelle Huppert joins Serge Bozon for their second quirky arthouse collaboration in this French female take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s legendary novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In a gesture to French literature, the film is set in Lyon’s ‘Arthur Rimbaud’ Secondary School where Huppert plays Marie Géguil an unpopular physics teacher unable to inspire or control her rowdy bunch of mixed race pupils.

Serge Bozon has his admirers but his films are an acquired taste outside France and MADAME HYDE is no exception. It shares the same offbeat brand of humour as TIP TOP (2013) which won a special mention at Cannes that year. He also works as a writer and had a small part in Mathieu’s Amalric’s stylish thriller The Blue Room. MADAME HYDE works on two levels: as a surreal fantasy thriller, and an inspirational drama about encouraging kids to rise above their difficulties and find their vocational “beacon” in life, as Huppert Géquil does here. As such this is a worthwhile but often awkward piece of filmmaking that eventually makes it through largely due to Huppert’s game portrayal as the soon to be transformed Mrs Hyde (Géquil/Jekyll) and Romain Duris’ tourette-like comedy turn as the Head Master. There is also support from Jose Garcia as Madame’s rather dense but endearing ‘house husband’ and Malik, a tricky pupil.

And while Madame G starts off as a cowed and fearful figure she herself eventually finds her own mojo’when she becomes a ‘flaming beacon’ after lightening strikes her portacabin laboratory and transforms her into a conduit for change, for everyone concerned. She develops the power of electrical ignition simply through her touch, as the charge sparks visibly through her veins. Although these powers are not all good: the next door neighbours pair of alsatians sadly perish as does a disruptive truant. But for the most part this eerie change of life is for the better – and is not due to the menopause, as her obsequious husband suggests.

Apart from this rather sensational visual trick, Madame’s confidence soars enabling her to engage with her pupils in a special project of building a Faraday cage. She also bonds with a difficult disable pupil Malik (Adda Senani) helping him to develop his interest in physics.

On paper Madame Hyde has some really inventive and worthwhile ideas but the actual film never flows smoothly and there are too many longueurs where the action feel laboured and awkward although Huppert is particularly convincing in her role. Malik also creates an authentic portrait of a young guy struggling to find his feet in life, in more ways than one. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

 

 

A Skin So Soft | Ta peau si Lisse | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Denis Côté | Doc | Canada | 93′

Montreal is the setting for this persuasive arthouse documentary having us believe that extreme body-building is a living art form to be admired, and revered even. It explores the muscle-flexing, grunt-ridden moments dedicated to the practice of corpulent honing for six masculine machos: a personal trainer, a wrestler and four bodybuilders. They are the gladiators of our contemporary civilisation.

Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté is well known for his rhythmic, eclectic documentaries: the first Carcasses explored a ‘car cemetery’; his meditation on animals Bestiaire followed and Joy of Man’s Desiring examined  the comforting cycle of work routine. Here at Locarno Denis Côté has won awards for his dramas Curling (2010) and All That She Wants (2008). A SKIN SO SOFT is his hopeful for this year’s Golden Leopard and shows his genuine almost respectful fascination for a subject that many could regard with disdain or even abhorrence. The film moves with Jaguar-like stealth over the bulbous bodies almost luxuriating in the rippling muscles and satin-like skin of the men who work tirelessly to service their physiques.

First up is the largest of the bunch of gentle brutes who has not only developed his physique but also grown his facial hair to Samsonesque proportions. The camera caresses its ebony rich lustre moving down slowly over his pumped up body that requires a special diet and strict beauty routine. The next man is younger and less developed but again devotes a quasi religious dedication to his physical development. All give little quarter to improving their conversational skills, a fact that must depress and bore their womenfolk who treat them with patience and tolerance.

These are clearly self-regarding types who take their exercise regimen seriously but there is also strangely something rather vulnerable about the way this long-suffering and stoical attention to their bodies makes them seem less powerful emotionally. If there is an opposite of anthropomorphism, this is it. One trainer has a more humorous take on proceedings, bemoaning the less than perfect symmetry of his body. And there is a wonderful scene where these scantily clad beefed-up bodies romp riotously, desporting themselves ‘en plein air’ across a field of cows. With its Kraftwerk style soundtrack A SKIN SO SOFT is magnificent stuff and another truly unique creation from the maverick Canadian director. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

Let the Corpses Tan | Laissez Bronzer les Cadavres |Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani | Cast: Elina Lowensohn, Marc Barbe, Stephane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Michelangelo Marchese, Herve Sogne | Thriller | 92′ | French/Belgian

Stylishly retro in the same way as their imaginatively entitled first feature The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, Let the Corpses Tan (Laissez bronzer les cadavres), is the latest edgy thriller from Belgium auteurs Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, adapted from Jean-Pierre Bastid’s noted novel melding thriller with social and political critique. While Strange Colour was are intricately Art Nouveau, Corpses pays hommage to Sergio Leone’s florid close-up/long shot style of filmmaking.

Corpses’s storyline also brings to mind a racier, more vibrant (thanks to Manu Dacosse’s vivid visuals), frenzied version of Cul de Sac with a stash of gold and shoot-outs all thrown in. Well that’s the way it starts off, at least. In craggy Corsica a raddled writer (Bernier) is lazing away his days in secluded sun-drenched splendour with his loopy lover Luce (the superb Elina Lowensohn). But their idyll is interrupted when some vague acquaintances arrive hoping to conceal their stolen booty in this remote spot. But the local cops (Herve Sogne, Dominique Troyes) are on their tail and promptly arrive on the scene before crims Rhino (Stephane Ferrara) and his gang have a chance to smooth things over. And soon Bernier’s wife (Dorylia Calmel) and son (Bamba Forzani Ndiaye) also join the impromptu party, on spec.

And once the action starts all thoughts of Cul de Sac’s intricate psychodrama and Bastid’s social commentary are literally blown away by an all out stylistic gun battle which blazes non-stop unremittingly – or so it seems – for the rest of thriller. And whilst there’s a welcome Sergio Leone style twang to the proceedings – which whips you back to the ’60s with slices of Ennio Morricone and the popular Italian singer Nico Fidenco (Su nel cielo) thrown in, the hollowness echoes after the twanging shots die out.

LET THE CORPSES TAN is fabulous fun while it lasts but sadly fades from the memory (not the eardrums) once it’s over. That said, it’s just the thing for a sizzling summer night in Locarno – or anywhere else, for that matter!. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-12 AUGUST 2017

 

Gemini (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Aaron Katz | Cast: Lola Kirke, Zoe Kravitz, John Cho, Ricki Lake | US | Drama | 93′

This low-budget neo-Noir is a US indie version of Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria exploring the links between female friendship and co-dependence, and the nature of celebrity through the complex relationship of a Hollywood starlet and her PA, who are actually closer that they would like to admit.

Katz is best known for his ‘mumblecore’ period but GEMINI, made on a shoestring budget in down LA, sees a move mystery drama in this female-centric affair which may appeal to arthouse audiences with its enigmatic  storytelling and washed out ’80s B-movie’ visual style, similar to that of Kelly Reichardt.

Jill LeBeau (Lola Kirke) is the personal assistant in question who becomes a suspect and investigator in the ‘murder’ of her stressed out boss Heather (Zoe Kravitz), who has split from her lightweight boyfriend Devin (Reeve Carney) who was covertly two-timing her with model Tracy (Greta Lee). Heather has recently been a petulant figure for all concerned and there’s consequently a string of a characters from her côterie who could have perpetrated the crime.

Jill emerges the more intelligent and convincing of the professional partnership, further highlighting  the dubious nature of celebrity status, but loyal as she is to her boss, she also has her own integrity to safeguard and cannot risk being consumed by Heather’s neediness and narcissistic tendencies.

The film moves at a snail’s pace but the hook is Katz’ dryly witty script that provides some amusing moments. GEMINI is a drama that promises much more than it eventually delivers but will absorb you for its meagre running time with strong performances from Kirke and John Cho’s appealing LA detective. MT

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2-10 AUGUST 2017

Winter Brothers (2017) | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Hlynur Pálmason | Cast: Simon Sears, Elliott Crosset Hove, Drama | Iceland/Den | 89′

There’s a great deal to admire in Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s stunning debut Winter Brothers (Vinterbrodre). Visually and thematically this is a intense portrait of fraught and uneasy brotherhood, but the narrative is too slim and meandering to really underpin this dour psychodrama.

Most of the action takes place in the dimly lit caverns of a remote limestone mine in Denmark where the brothers in question Emil (Elliott Crosset Hove) and Johan (Simon Sears) work together, their gruff conversations are often drowned out by the thudding industrial turmoil around them. Emil is the less appealing of the two and given to pinching anything he can lay his hands on, he also peddles his home brew to his fellow-workers. Johan is the more placid and older brother of the pair but clearly there is an uneasy competitive streak that threatens to erupt at any moment, and it does during one striking scene in this tough character driven piece with its occasional flinty sparks of humour.

It soon transpires that Emil’s liquor is a lethal concoction and potentially fatal for one of his workmates, turning the community against him. And as he emerges a victim, we ironically start to feel more sympathy for his mournful predicament as the lonely outsider, largely due to Crosset Ove’s skilful performance. As Emil, he also shines in the sequences where his boss (Lars Mikkelsen) brings him to heel and in his fascination for armed combat and training videos that leads him to obtaining an automatic rifle.

DoP Maria Von Hausswolff’s evokes the vastness of the wild snowbound Northern scenery to great effect, the only brightness coming from the miners’ helmets as they punctuate the bleak hell-hole of the mine. WINTER BROTHERS is a decent first feature showing a director mastering his craft and hopefully developing a stronger narrative in his next title. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 2-12 AUGUST 2017

 

Canyon Passage (1946) | Jacques Tourneur Retro | Locarno Film Festival 2017

Dir: Jacques Tourneur | 92′ | Western Drama | Susan Haywood, Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Patricia Roc | US

CANYON PASSAGE (1946) is another underrated Tourneur masterpiece that fell from favour for not falling in with the standards of the genre: it is not a Western with a central revenge story nor a roadie or outlaw narrative, and the hero (or cavalry) does not save the town from attacking marauders. CANYON PASSAGE is a story about the community, the nuts and bolts that make the town work. It is a document of values, conflicts, defects and — in the end – a re-affirmation of the way people lived in the newly conquered West.

Tourneur was only confirmed as the director in July of 1945, a month before shooting began in and around Diamond Lake and Medford, Oregon. Before his appointment, Robert Siodmak, Stuart Heisler and George Marshall were all attached to the project. Set in 1856, the central character Logan (Tourneur regular, Dana Andrews ), runs a mule freight line and a general store in the small mining town of Jacksonville. Ernest Pascal’s script (based on the novel by Ernest Haycox), describes his relationship with his friends: George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), a banker, who steals gold from his customers to cover his gambling debts. George’s fiancée Lucy Overmite (Susan Hayward), is secretly in love with Logan; while Caroline Marsh (Patricia Roc) gets engaged to him during a cabin rising. Finally, there is the violent Honey Bragg (Ward Bond), a loner whom Logan suspects of various unsolved crimes. To cover his embezzlements, Camrose kills a miner. He is caught and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court. Logan helps him to escape when an Indian uprising causes confusion. George and Bragg are killed, while Caroline gives up Logan, whom she calls ‘restless’. Logan rides off with Caroline to San Francisco.

The way the film resolves conflicts seems rather modern, anticipating certain films by Sam Peckinpah (who would be Tourneur’s assistant on Wichita) and Robert Altman. The denouements are not without regret: Logan speaking George’s epitaph: “There is a fine margin between what could have been and what is…In some other kind of country he might have made the grade.” The peaceful Hi Linnet (Hoagy Carmichael) is a very modern bard who could easily make an appearance in a 1960s retro Western.

DoP Edward Cronjager excels is the poetic night scene where Linnet’s role in the developing patterns of the film are shown in all their complexity. Tourneur uses texture, movement, and his signature light and shadow in same way as in his black-and-white films. The exteriors call to mind Days of Glory, Out of the Past and Berlin Express; their towering heights dwarfing the characters. For example, the shoot-out between Logan and Bragg in the forest, uses the height of the trees to show nature’s indifference to human conflict. Finally, Logan is a true Tourneur hero: his journey has no destination: it is purely motion. And in this way, Logan resembles the later Tourneur heroes, particularly Jeff Bailey in the director’s next film, Out of the Past.

JACQUES TOURNEUR RETRO | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 2-12 AUGUST 2017

Jacques Tourneur: Fantasy filmmaker | Locarno Film Festival 2017

IMG_3877LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL is celebrating its 70th Anniversary with a feline, canine and fantasy theme leading up to the the real mystery – who will win the coveted GOLDEN LEOPARD? There’s a surreal feel to this special edition with Isabelle Huppert struck by lightening in MADAME HYDE, a man who turns into a dog in Vanessa Paradis’ latest film CHIEN and of course the fabulous JACQUES TOURNEUR retrospective with a chance to see CAT PEOPLE (1942); THE LEOPARD MAN and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) in the Grand Piazza which seats 8,000 cinema-goers – Europe’s largest screening venue.

974750While Jacques Tourneur clearly had a feel for the surreal and a penchant for the macabre, he was not very fond of his four French features, shot between 1931 and 1934: “All those films are mixed up with each other in my mind. They resemble each other so much! It was always the same formula: musical, happy, young.”  This is certainly true for Tout Ça Ne Vaut pas l’Amour; Pour Être Aimé and Toto but Les Filles de la Concierge (1934) is a brilliant character milieu study of a concierge. Madame Leclercq is the titular heroine who wants the best for her three daughters, whatever the circumstances. She even ‘rents’ one, Ginettte, to a wealthy suitor, but the ‘happy end’ justifies her method. Les Filles must have had some impact on Tourneur because, thirty years later, he expressed the desire to remake the film: “One could make a marvellous film out of it. People don’t make enough films about concierges, they’re an amazing group.” Indeed, where would be without Carlton, Your Doorman, the legendary concierge in TV hit Rhoda?.

IMG_3929In 1934 Jacques Tourneur returned to Hollywood to work as a Second Unit director at MGM, where he also directed twenty short films. The most interesting of the shorts are Romance of Radium (1937), where the director takes us on a forty-year journey through the discovery process of what would become nuclear power, in just ten minutes! Part historical drama, impersonal chronicle and staged ‘docu-drama’, Romance is very dense; the treatment of the source as something “outside” of our world – it is clearly an early version of Experiment Perilous. What do You Think (1937) is a haunted house mystery, with the plot, structured like a Chinese mystery box, stretching out into the past, and the studios of Hollywood. It is certainly as obsessive as many of Tourneur’s features.

THEY ALL COME OUT (1939), Tourneur’s first feature in Hollywood, was first planned as a two-reel segment for a “Crime does not Pay” series of short films. It follows rather conventional lines (Bank heist and prison rehab), and, is visually satisfying, thanks to a very mobile camera, but its structure suffers from the late embellishment of the narrative.

Tourneur’s next projects for MGM were two Nick Carter features, MASTER DETECTIVE (1939) and PHANTOM RIDERS (1940). As Chris Fujiwara (who will present the retro) puts it: “Master Detective” is quicker and more immediately striking, but Phantom Riders has more in common visually with Tourneur’s later films. If MASTER DETECTIVE looks back to Tourneur’s past with its skilful interweaving of documentary and fiction, PHANTOM RIDERS anticipates the future with its sustaining of mood through rich décor and careful lighting; its low-budget exoticism; and its hint of thwarted sexuality”. But Tourneur really hated DOCTORS DON’T TELL (1941): “I detest this film, it is my worst”. All one can add, is that Doctors is really the most ‘un-Tourneresque’ feature of his career: it is bad, even for a routine film, its banality stupefying.

film-poster-for-i-walked-005So after dabbling in the art of filmmaking in the 1930s, Jacques Tourneur’s most important features were to follow during the 1940s. In 1942, Val Lewton, who worked with Tourneur on the Second Unit for A Tale of Two Cities (1935), joined RKO as the new head for B-Horror films. His first project was CAT PEOPLE (1942) directed by Tourneur; the duo would go on to create I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE LEOPARD MAN in 1943 for RKO, before the studio made them go their separate ways with Tourneur commenting: “We were making so much money together that the studio said, we’ll make twice as much money, if we separate them”.

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) went into production just two months after CAT PEOPLE, before the surprisingly successful release of Tourneur’s first RKO feature. Trying to decribe Zombie is not an easy task because Tourneur blurred the border between reality and phantasy in his narrative. Betsy Connell (France968402s Dee), a Canadian nurse, takes care of Jessica (Christine Gordon) on the West Indian island of St. Sebastian. Jessica is married to the sugar planter Paul Holland (Tom Conway). She falls in love with Paul’s half-brother Wesley (James Ellison). After a scene with her husband, she falls into a trauma, and after several attempts of ‘curing’ her, Mrs. Rand (Edith Barnett), Paul and Wesley’s mother confesses that she has cast a voodoo spell on Jessica for bringing the family into disrepute. Wesley finally kills Jessica, to set her free. Tourneur preferred Zombie to Cat People, and often cited it as his favourite film. Zombie is Tourneur’s purest film when it comes to cinematic poetry, combining sounds and images into a “power of suggestion”, enhanced by the film’s narrative, which is full of enigma and contradiction, eluding any attempt to interpret it in a linear way. Zombie “is a sustained exercise in uncompromising ambiguity. Perfecting the formula that Lewton and Tourneur had developed in Cat People, the film carries its predecessor’s elliptical, oblique narrative procedures to astonishing extremes. The dialogue is almost nothing but a commentary on past events, obsessively revisiting itself, finally giving up the struggle and surrendering to a mute acceptance of the inexplicable. We watch the slow, atmospheric, lovingly detailed scenes with delight and fascination, realising at the end, that we have seen nothing but the traces of a conflict decided in advance.” (Chris Fujiwara).

974754THE LEOPARD MAN (1943) is seen, perhaps wrongly, as the weakest of the Lewton/Tourneur collaborations. Based on the novel by Cornel Woolrich (Rear Window), The Leopard Man is set in the nightclub milieu of New Mexico, where club owner Dennis O’Keefe (Jerry Manning) finds a leopard for his girl friend Kiki (Jean Brooks) to perform on the stage of his club. Kiki’s jealous competitor, Clo-clo (Margo), sets the leopard free and becomes one of his – presumed – three victims. Nevertheless, O’Keefe and Kiki suspect, that the leopard is only used by the real murderer to cover his tracks. The title is misleading, The Leopard Man is not about a man who becomes a leopard, but a man who just pretends to be one. Furthermore, the narrative reveals that the three murders are not committed by one person – against the un-written law of the genre. And on top of it all, the killer’s identity is revealed at the very beginning. But in spite of this, The Leopard Man appears to be ahead of its time: the stalking of women and their violent death is not only associated with Hitchcock and his epigone Brian de Palma, but also with the Italian cult directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento. And to go a step further, “it also anticipates Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, in making the sight of a victim’s fear the factor that fascinates the killer and compels him to kill”. Tourneur “attributed the commercial success of his films with Lewton to war psychosis. In war time people want to be frightened.” Leopard Man has the clearest connection to war of the trio, Edmund Bansak comments that “the film is a courageous essay in the random nature of death. War time audience may not have liked The Leopard Man’s downbeat message – that the young and innocent also die, but it was an important one for them to grasp”. Fujiwara calls The Leopard Man ”a pivotal work in the careers of both Tourneur and Lewton. Pushing to extremes the experiment with narrative ambiguity undertaken in Cat People and Zombie, this radical unusual film has its own precise, inexhaustible poetry.”

974742FROM OUT OF THE PAST (1947) reunites Tourneur with producer Warren Duff, (Experiment Perilous) and DoP Nicholas Musuraka (Cat People). Based on the novel Build My Gallows High by Daniel Mainwaring, Tourneur claimed, “that he participated very closely in the writing of the script. I made big changes, with the agreement of the
writer, of course”. The complex and elliptic narrative is centred around Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), who runs a gas station in a small town in California. In flashbacks we learn that Jeff was a New York based detective, who was asked by the professional gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to find his mistress Kathie (Jane Greer), who had embezzled a huge sum from him. Bailey finds Kathie in Mexico, and falls in love with her. The couple hides, but Bailey’s partner Jack Fisher (Steve Brodie) finds the couple, but is shot by Kathie, who disappears afterwards. Bailey, now owner of the gas station, is visited by a member of Sterling’s gang: Sterling has a new job for him, retrieving incriminating taxation forms from his accountant in San Francisco. Kathie is living again with Sterling, and Bailey finds soon out that he is used as the sacrificial lamb. After the murder of the accountant, Kathie shoots Sterling and escapes with Bailey – not knowing that he has phoned the police to tell them their escape route. Of the major features of Noir visual style, as identified by J.A. Place and L.S. Peterson in “Some Visual motifs of Film Noir”, Out of the Past exhibits several: low-key lighting; compositions that alternate light and dark areas; the use of objects as framing devices within the frame. All these elements are however, consistent features of Tourneur’s work outside the Noir genre. They are present to some degrees in Tourneur’s shorts and in all ten American features that Tourneur directed before Out of the Past, including the Technicolor Western Canyon Passage. Fujiwara talks about “the endlessly renewable source of cinematic fascination of Out of the Past”, even though Tourneur himself only belatedly – after the release of the film in France, when he had returned in the late 1960s to his country of birth – acknowledged it as one of his major works, calling it “along with I walked with A Zombie and Night of the Demon, his poetic manifesto.”

974669BERLIN EXPRESS (1948) was – regarding the topic – a one-off in Tourneur’s work, since the film is set mainly in contemporary post-war Berlin, the divided capital of Germany. Shooting in post-war Germany was like an adventure, the footage had to be sent back to Hollywood for processing. Billy Wilder had to wait for Berlin Express to finish, before starting shooting A Foreign Affair, because film equipment was a scarce commodity. The plot is, as often with Tourneur, secondary: Dr. Heinrich Bernhardt (Paul Lucas) a famous resistance fighter, is travelling from Paris to Frankfurt under an alias. During the journey, an agent, posing as Bernhardt, is killed by an explosion. In Frankfurt, Bernhardt is kidnapped by members of a Neo-Nazi movement. Four members on the train, each representing the four powers who rule Berlin, try to locate Bernhardt, after his secretary Lucienne Mirbeau (Merle Oberon) explains the situation to them. But, as it turns out the Frenchman Perrot is actually Holtzman, the leader of the Nazi underground. He is killed after another unsuccessful attempt on Bernhardt’s life. Lucien Ballard, the DoP was married to Merle Oberon, but his stylish photography does not favour his wife more than the Hollywood star. Berlin Express is actually three films in one: the first is a melodrama, where the Nazis try to kill Bernhardt. The second part is a documentary on Germany’s destruction. The third part is a typical Tourneur study of doubt, terror and impossibility.

IMG_3929Since displacement is a central part of all Tourneur films, post-war Germany was an ideal setting. Michael Henry comments that Berlin Express “was a characteristic Tourneurian work, distilling the feeling of insecurity in which his creatures find themselves plunged as soon as they have been uprooted, placed out of their element, literally side-tracked”. But in spite of the political undertone and the ideological certainty of the protagonists, Tourneur finds ambivalence. This points towards his two 1950s films, Appointment in Honduras and The Fearmakers, both have ideological topics, but are treated with the same ambiguity and doubt as all of Tourneur’s work.

Way-of-a-GauchoProducer/writer Philip Dunne was assigned to write the script and produce WAY OF A GAUCHO for 20th Century Fox, so that the company could recoup some of the money the Peron government had frozen in Argentina. In March 1951 Dunne informed Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck that the proposed director, Henry King would not be available, due to his wife’s illness. Dunne goes on: “The man I want to suggest for director is Jacques Tourneur. I am absolutely delighted with the job he is doing with Anne of the Indies. In my opinion, he is a much better director than many who have made big reputations for themselves and draw down huge salaries. He is quick, sure and economical and he is getting flawless performances from his cast.”

Zanuck agreed, and in May 1951 Tourneur arrived in Argentina. Dunne reported a month later to Zanuck: “that the Argentine government’s interest tends to become a little overwhelming. They want to have a hand in every phase of our production. Government officials were very insistent on having big stars in the picture. No reasonable government would behave in this way, but we must remember that we are dealing with incredibly stupid, provincial people”. Whilst Tourneur and Dunne were touring the country for locations, they where invariably followed by spies. Shooting under these circumstances proved difficult. There are rumours that Tourneur drank too much, but in the absence of testimony from Dunne or Tourneur, this cannot be proven. But what is true, is that Dunne and Zanuck did not employ Tourneur to add some scenes to make the central character, Martin Penalosa, more heroic. The film is set at the end of 19th century in Argentina, where Martin Penalosa is jailed for killing a man in a duel. Instead of prison he chooses the army, but does not like the harsh treatment at the hands of Major Salinas (Richard Boone). He saves Teresa Chavez (Gene Tierney), a noblewoman, from the Indians. Martin again disappears under pressure from Salinas, and leads a band of gauchos in resistance against Salinas soldiers. Martin and Teresa fall in love, and the former gives himself up to Salinas, for the sake of his wife and unborn child. It’s easy to see why this straightforward Hollywood adventure would not play to Tourneur’s strength. There is no ambivalence, white is white, and black is black. WAY OF A GAUCHO is beautifully shot, if nothing else. But it marked the decline of Tourneur in Hollywood and he would never been employed by Fox again.

UnknownTHE FEARMAKERS (1958) is perhaps Tourneur’s last respectable feature before his final decline. Darwin Taylor’s novel The Fearmakers was published in 1945. Allen Eaton (Dana Andrews) returns from a Chinese POW camp after the Korean War. Eaton returns to his Washington PT office to learn that his partner Clark Baker has died under mysterious circumstances, after having sold the business to Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran). Meeting with his friend Senator Walder (Roy Gordon), Eaton is informed, that McGinnis is a suspected foreign agent (meaning he is a Communist). Eaton decides to get a job with McGinnis, and soon finds out he has forged some poll numbers for lobbyist Fred Fletcher. Eaton gains access to the poll material, and with the help of McGinnis’ secretary Lorraine (Marile Earle), proves McGinnis’ guilt. But McGinnid, with the help of his associates, attempts to kidnap and kill Eaton and Lorraine, who overpowers them and despatch McGinnis to the police. Whilst Tourneur thought, “that the film was a failure”, he certainly brings out the contradictions in the plot, featuring a McCarthy-esque Senate Committee for the defence of democracy. Eaton is a typical Tourneur hero, his vulnerability recalls the main protagonists in Nightfall and Easy Living. His recurrent headaches are the psychosomatic manifestations of his doubts. There are moments when we wonder if Eaton is fantasising part of the action. When McGinnis calls him a “brainwashed psycho”, we are again reminded of the thin ice Eaton is walking on, but the film never really challenges his worldview. Eaton is like all true Tourneur heroes – unable to leave reality, which follows him into his dreams: When the camera pans from a window across a dark room and hovers over Eaton’s bed, lit dimly with mottled shadows, we see his anguish in his haunted features. Tourneur suffused his characters with his own anxieties. AS

JACQUES TOURNEUR RETRO | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2-10 AUGUST ’17

Jacques Tourneur Retrospective | Locarno Film Festival 2017

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL honours the legendary French director JACQUES TOURNEUR (1904-1977) in celebration of its 70th Anniversary this year, taking place in the town’s splendid GranRex Cinema.

Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977) is best known today for a handful of films, all shot between 1942 and 1948: CAT PEOPLE; I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN; OUT OF THE PAST and BERLIN EXPRESS. Tourneur was comfortable working in various genres, from Western to Fantasy-horror, and his feature film oeuvre of thirty-three titles (and notable TV work, including a famous Twilight episode) – are all included in this astonishing retrospective. Martin Scorsese is a champion of his much neglected and lesser know features.

At the time of his birth in Paris 1904, Jacques Tourneur’s father – and soon to be filmmaker Maurice (1876-1961) – was working as an artist in a studio near the Luxemburg Gardens. It was a place of horror for the four-year-old Jacques whose early memories include searching desperately for his Christmas presents in “a very long corridor, completely black, and I could make out in the distance, the white spots, that were my presents. I walked forward all alone, torn between the desire for the toys and a fear that almost made me faint, especially as the toys in their packages started to take on a phantom-like appearance”. When Jacques was naughty his unaffectionate parents would put him in a cupboard where the family’s maid was ordered to shake a bowler hat with the words: “It’s the Thunderman!. Jacques later claimed: “this is the source for my obsession to suddenly introduce inexplicable things into s shot, like the hand on the banisters in NIGHT OF THE DEMON, which disappears in the reverse shot”.

Jacques went to the Lycées Montaigne and Lakanal in Paris, before joining his father in New York in 1914. His father still continued to make life difficult for him: “I was the only child to wear suspenders. So the other children spent their time pulling on my suspenders very hard, in order to let them snap into my back. I didn’t dare wear them any more, and walked around holding up my trousers. I think, that was what led me to put in my films comic touches in a dramatic moment, to better highlight the dramatic side: the magician disguised as a clown in NIGHT OF THE DEMON. It’s fascinating to mix fear and the ridiculous, as in the death of the clown in BERLIN EXPRESS”.

Whilst in High School, Jacques started to work as an extra in films and in 1924 joined his  father on Never the Twain Shall Meet (1925) and as a script clerk on Tahiti (1925). Jacques was twenty-one when Maurice returned to Europe after the disaster of The Mysterious Island (1929). The farewell was, not surprisingly, frosty: “ He gave me a hundred Dollar bill, saying: “Now get by’”. Jacques worked as a stock player, but his career went into the doldrums. After being arrested for drunkenness (heralding his lifelong struggle with alcoholism), Jacques re-joined his father in Berlin, where in 1929 Maurice was directing Marlene Dietrich in Grischa the Cook. It was in the German capital that Jacques met his wife Marguerite Christiane Virideau; the couple stayed together until Jacques’ death in 1977. Between 1930 and 1934 Jacques was editor and assistant director for all his father’s films, it what was mostly a difficult relationship. And whilst Maurice was working on his second French film as director, he turned to Jacques, and the ensemble cast including Charles Vanel with the words: “I saw the cut of my current film, and it’s the first time a film of mine has been well-edited”. AS

JACQUES TOURNEUR RETROSPECTIVE | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Locarno Film Festival 2017

IMG_3877Known for its edgy and eclectic selection of international independent titles, LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL this year celebrates its 70th Anniversary in the town’s Piazza Grande in temperatures that often sizzle in the late 30s promising a scorching experience and adding a surreal touch to Carlo Chatrain’s inventive programming.

With Olivier Assayas heading the jury proceedings will be more exciting than ever at the lakeside extravaganza, which this year has a distinct fantasy flavour, mingling Hollywood classics with more

The 70th celebration kicks off with Noemie Lvovsky’s drama TOMORROW AND THEREAFTER, starring Mathieu Amalric. And Kevin Merz’ musical biopic tribute GOTTHARD – One Life, One Soul will close the jamboree on 12 August.

2_lola-paterOther Piazza Grande titles include ATOMIC BLOND with Charlize Theron and James McAvoy; and WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY? starring Glenn Close, Noomi Rapace and Willem Dafoe.

The main competition includes Denis Cote’s TA PEAU SI LISSE; Bing Wang’s MRS FANG; Raul Ruiz’ LA TELENOVELA ERRANTE; Ben Russell’s mining film GOOD LUCK and Serge Bozon’s MADAME HYDE starring Isabelle Huppert and Romain Duris. Other buzzy titles include LUCKY starring Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch; GOLIATH by Dominik Locher; and WAJIB by When I Saw You scripter Annemarie Jacir.

scorpions_2-resStars from the independent film firmament attending this year include Mathieu Kassovitz, who has been awarded the 2017 Excellence Award; Adrien Brody, who will receive a Pardo d’Honore and Nastassja Kinski receiving a Lifetime Award. One of India’s most celebrated film stars Irrfan Khan will join Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani for their love story revenge drama THE SONG OF SCORPIONS, and veteran Fanny Ardant will attend with her new transgender-themed film LOLA PATER. Vanessa Paradis will also be on the Piazza Grande in Samuel Benchetrit’s comedy drama CHIEN about a man who becomes a submissive pet.

In a programme that features the latest European titles from Germany, Austria, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia and Belgium – not to mention Britain and the host country Switzerland –  the side-bars are also promising some hidden gems, as was the case in this year’s Cannes 70th celebration. Of particular interest will be Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s follow-up to The Strange Colour of your Body’s Tears (2013): LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES! a thriller which stars Elina Lowensohn.

In the SIGNS OF LIFE strand Radu Jude (Aferim!) will be showing his latest, a black&white historical documentary that explores Romania’s past through recently discovered photographs THE DEAD NATION. Bosnia Herzogovina’s Boris Mitic offers IN PRAISE OF NOTHING, a ‘feelgood’ documentary filmed worldwide by 100+ DoPs and narrated by Iggy Pop. Nelson Carlo del Los Santos Arias feature debut COCOTE is a drama from the Domenican Republic that examines religious cults that challenge the central character’s Christian beliefs. Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, Columbia, Ukraine, Korea, India, the US and Canada will also be represented. In the CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE section, standouts include 3/4 from Sofia’s Last Ambulance director Ilian Metev; Pedro Cabeleira’s psychedelic drama VERAO DANADO set in a Lisbon steeped in summer torpor; DISTANT CONSTELLATION,  Shevaun Mizrahi’s documentary that follows the eccentric inhabitants of a Turkish retirement home and SEVERINO, an obsessional love story from Brazilian director Felipe Hirsch and starring Alfredo Castro (No, The Club).

But probably most inviting of all is the extraordinary JACQUES TOURNEUR retrospective featuring over 20 of his films including some rare and lesser known titles. There are also retrospectives for this year’s awarded stars:  Nastassja Kinski; Fanny Ardant, Matthieu Kossovitz and Adrien Brody/

COMPETITION LINE-UP

969151 As Boas Maneiras | Good Manners | Brazil | Marco Dutra | 132′

Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of São Paulo, is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana as the nanny for her unborn child. The two women develop a strong bond, but a fateful night changes their plans. 

965473Charleston | Romania | Andrei Cretulescu | 119′

A couple of weeks after the fatal car crash of his wife, Ioana, Alexandru is drunk and alone as he celebrates his 42th birthday. He receives an unexpected visit from Sebastian, a shy and younger man, who had been Ioana’s lover for the past five months. Sebastian wants Alexandru to help him overcome the despair caused by the woman’s death.

971753On The Seventh Day | Jim McKay | USA  Spanish, English | 97′ 

A group of undocumented immigrants from Puebla live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They work long hours six days a week as bicycle-delivery guys, construction workers, dishwashers, deli workers, and cotton-candy vendors. On Sundays, they savor their day of rest on the soccer fields of Sunset Park. José, a bicycle delivery man, who is young and talented, hardworking and responsible, is the soccer team’s captain. When his team makes it to the finals, he and his teammates are thrilled, but his boss throws a wrench into the celebration when he tells him he must work exactly on the day of the final. José tries to reason with him and replace himself but all his efforts fail. If he doesn’t work on Sunday, his job and his future will be on the line.

971501Gemini | US | Aaron Katz | 93′

A heinous crime tests the complex relationship between a tenacious personal assistant and her boss, a Hollywood starlet. As the assistant travels across Los Angeles to unravel the mystery, she must deal with a determined policeman. At the same time, her understanding of friendship, truth and celebrity is deeply questioned.

971960The Asteroids | Italy | Germano Maccioni

An industrial, endless, alienating province. Once a florid one, now deeply marked by the economy crisis. A province made up of broad fields and abandoned warehouses. This is the universe in which Pietro and his friend Ivan, nineteen year olds in conflict with their family and with school, gravitate. In the background are a series of thefts in churches, carried out by the elusive “candelabra gang”, and a large asteroid looming above, monitored by the astronomy station in the area since it is about to pass very close to Earth. So close that a rather weird friend, obsessed with astronomy and philosophical issues, is certain it will plummet into the planet, wiping out mankind. And while the “end of the world” approaches, Ivan convinces Pietro to take part in one final theft.

972206Good Luck | Ben Russell | France/Germany | 143′ | B&W

Shot on Super16mm, Good Luck is a portrait of two mining communities operating on opposite sides of a hostile world: the state employees of a 400m-deep underground Serbian copper mine and the Maroon laborers of an illegal gold mining operation in the jungle tropics of Suriname.

973010Travelling Soap Opera | La Telenovela Errante | Chile | Raul Ruiz /Valeria Sarmiento | 80′

“The film revolves around the concept of soap opera. Its structure is based on the assumption that Chilean reality does not exist, but rather is an ensemble of soap operas. There are four audiovisual provinces, and the threat of war is felt among the factions. The political and economic problems are immersed in a fictional jelly divided into evening episodes. The entire Chilean reality is viewed from the point of view of the soap opera, which acts as a revealing filter of this same reality”. (Raúl Ruiz)

962175Laissez Bronzer les Cadavres | France/Italy/Belgium | Cattet / Forzino

The Mediterranean, summer: azure sea, sun beating down… and 250 kilos of gold stolen by Rhino and his gang who’ve found the ideal hideout in a deserted village, cordoned off from its surroundings by an artist suffering creative block. But when two cops turn up unexpectedly, this little paradise, formerly the site of orgies and wild happenings, will turn into a hallucinatory, brutal battlefield.

mv5bnzkymdy0ndityzy0nc00yjq1ltkzotytmje1nwewm2nmzgu1xkeyxkfqcgdeqxvyntezndk3ndc_v1_sy1000_cr006771000_al__jpg_191x283_crop_q85Lucky | US | John Carroll Lynch | 88′

Having outlived and outsmoked all his contemporaries who inhabited his off-the-map desert town, the fiercely independent Lucky, a 90-year-old atheist, finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration, leading towards the so-often unattainable enlightenment.

973045Madame Hyde | France/Belgium | Serge Bozon | 95′

Mrs. Géquil is an eccentric teacher despised by her colleagues and students. On a stormy night, she is struck by lightning and faints. When she wakes up, she feels different. Will she now be able to keep the powerful and dangerous Mrs. Hyde contained?

962022Mrs Fang | Doc | Bing Wang | China | 86′

Fang Xiuying was a farmer born in Huzhou, Fujian in 1948. She suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last eight years of her life. By 2015, her symptoms were already very advanced and her treatment in a convalescent home was ineffective, so it was discontinued in June 2016 and she returned home. The film follows her ordeal first in 2015, and then in 2016 during the last ten days of her life.

969503Quin Ting Zhi yan | Xu Bing | China/US | 81′

Each of us is captured on surveillance cameras, on average, 300 times a day. These all-seeing “eyes” observe Qing Ting too, a young woman, as she leaves the Buddhist temple where she has been training to become a nun. She returns to the secular world, where she takes a job in a highly mechanized dairy farm. There, Ke Fan, a technician, falls in love with her, breaks the law in an attempt to please her and is sent to jail. On his release, he can’t find Qing Ting and looks for her desperately until he figures out that she has reinvented herself as the online celebrity Xiao Xiao. Ke Fan decides to revamp himself.

962038Ta Peau si Lisse | Denis Cote | Canada | 94′

Jean-François, Ronald, Alexis, Cédric, Benoit and Maxim are gladiators of modern times. From the strongman to the top-class bodybuilder, to the veteran who has become a trainer, they all share the same definition and obsession with overcoming their limitations. They are waiting for the next competition, working hard in the gym and following extreme diets.

962055Winter Brothers |Denmark, Iceland |Danish English | 94′ 

 Winter Brothers follows two brothers working during a cold winter, their routines, habits, rituals and a violent feud that erupts between them and another family.

Wajib | Annenarie Jacir | Arabic | 96′

Living in Nazareth, Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-sixties. His daughter is getting married and he has to live alone until his son – an architect that lives in Rome for many years now – arrives to help him with the wedding preparation. As the local Palestinian tradition requires, they have to hand-deliver the invitation to each guest personally. As the estranged pair spends days together, their fragile relationship is being challenged.

9618479 Fingers | F J Ossang | French | 99′ | B&W

In the middle of the night, Magloire smokes a cigarette in an abandoned train station when the police show up for an identity check. He starts running with no luggage and no future until he meets a dying man from whom he inherits a fortune. Subsequently, Magloire is chased by a gang and – having nothing to lose – he becomes not only their hostage, but also their accomplice.

IMG_3903GOLIATH | Dominik Locher | Switzerland | 85′

A modest young couple’s relationship is put to the test when Jessy’s unplanned pregnancy causes David to question his feelings of masculinity and identity in contemporary Switzerland.

 

IMG_3905DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN? | Travis Wilkerson | US | 90′ 

When Wilkerson sets out to explores the mystery surrounding the murder of a black man by his great-grandfather in 1940s Alabama, he discovers something he hadn’t bargained for.

 

IMG_3906FREIHEIT | Jan Speckenbach | Slovakia/German/English | 100′

A mother goes away, leaving her husband and their two children in limbo. She is driven by a force she cannot ignore: freedom. In Vienna, Nora wanders through a museum, succumbs to a flirtation and then thumbs a lift to Bratislava. Nora conceals her origin behind small lies, changes her appearance, finds work as a chambermaid and makes friends with the young Slovak woman Etela, a stripper, and her husband Tamás, a cook. Meanwhile in Berlin, Philip tries to keep his family and job as well as his affair with Monika going. Against his own convictions, he, a lawyer, defends a xenophobic youngster, struggles with the role of single parent. Philip finds an – albeit unconscious – ear for his worries in the figure of a coma patient… The freedom Nora is longing for becomes Philip’s chains.

PIAZZA GRANDE – all World Premieres unless stated

Amori Che Non Sanno Stare Al Mondo | Francesca Comencini (Italy)

Atomic Blonde | David Leitch (US) (Euro Premiere)

Chien | Samuel Benchetrit (France/Belgium)

Demain Et Tous Les Autres JoursNoémie Lvovsky (France)

Drei Zinnen | Jan Zabeil

Good Time | Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie  (US) (Cannes Premiere)

Gotthard – One Life, One Soul | Kevin Merz (US)

I Walked With A Zombie | Jacques Tourneur (Classic)

Iceman | Felix Randau (Germany

Laissez Bronzer Les Cadavres | Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani

Lola Pater | Nadir Moknèche

Sicilia! | Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

Sparring | Samuel Jouy

The Big Sick | Michael Showalter (Sundance Premiere)

The Song Of Scorpions | Anup Singh

What Happened To Monday? | Tommy Wirkola

CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE | COMPETITION | World Premieres

3/4 By Ilian Metev (Bulgaria)

Abschied Von Den Eltern | Astrid Johanna Ofner (Germany)

Beach Rats | Eliza Hittman (US) (International Premiere) 

Cho-Haeng (The First Lap) | Kim Dae-Hwan (Korea) (International Premiere)

Dene Wos Guet Geit | Cyril Schäublin (Swiss German)

Distant Constellation | Shevaun Mizrahi (USA)

Easy | Andrea Magnani (Italy)

Edaha No Koto (Sweating The Small Stuff) | Ninomiya Ryutaro (Japan)

Il Monte Delle Formiche By Riccardo Palladino (Italy)

Le Fort Des Fous By Narimane Mari (France/Greece/Qatar)

Meteorlar By Gürcan Keltek (Turkey)

Milla |  Valerie Massadian (France/Portugal)

Person To Person | Dustin Guy Defa (US) (International Premiere)

Sashishi Ded (Scary Mother) Georgia/Estonia)| Ana Urushadze

Severina | Felipe Hirsch (BraziL)

Verão Danado | Pedro Cabeleira (Portugal

2017 LOCARNO FESTIVAL LINEUP | AUGUST 2 -12 2017 

 

 

 

Venice Film Festival | Sidebar Selection | Orizzonti | Specials

ORIZZONTI

COSIMO GOMEZ – BRUTTI E CATTIVI Italy/Japan , 87′ Claudio Santamaria, Marco D’Amore, Sara Serraiocco 

TZAHI GRAD – HA BEN DOD (THE COUSIN)
Israel, 92′
Ala Dakka, Tzahi Grad, Osnat Fishman AMICHAI GREENBERG –

HA EDUT (THE TESTAMENT)
Israel, Austria, 91′
Ori Pfeffer, Rivka Gur, Hagit Dasberg Shamul, Ori Yaniv 

VAHID JALILVAND – BEDOUNE TARIKH, BEDOUNE EMZA (NO DATE, NO SIGNATURE)
Iran, 104′
Amir Agha’ee, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Hediyeh Tehrani, Sa’eed Dakh 

ALIREZA KHATAMI – LOS VERSOS DEL OLVIDO
France/Germany/Chile/Ned 92′
Juan Margallo, Tomas Del Estal, Manuel Moron, Itziar Aizpuru

DAMIEN MANIVEL, IGARASHI KOHEI – LA NUIT OÙ J’AI NAGÉ 
France/Japan , 79′
Kogawa Takara, Kogawa Keiki, Kogawa Takashi, Kogawa Chisato

ALI ASGARI – DISAPPEARANCE Iran, Qatar, 89′
Sadaf Asgari, Amir Reza Ranjbaran, Nafiseh Zare, Sahar Sotoodeh

GILLES BOURDOS – ESPÈCES MENACÉES
Francia, Belgio, 105’
Alice Isaaz, Vincent Rottiers, Grégory Gadebois, Suzanne Clément

NANCY BUIRSKI – THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR
Usa, 91′

ANNE FONTAINE – MARVIN
France, 115′
con Finnegan Oldfield, Isabelle Huppert, Grégory Gadebois, Vincent Macaigne

PABLO GIORGELLI – INVISIBLE
Argentina, Brasil, Uruguay, Germany, France, 87′
con Mora Arenillas, Mara Bestelli, Diego Cremonesi

COSIMO GOMEZ – BRUTTI E CATTIVI
Italy/ France , 87′
Claudio Santamaria, Marco D’Amore, Sara Serraiocco

SUSANNA NICCHIARELLI – NICO, 1988
Italy, Belgium, 93′
Tryne Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair, Anamaria Marinca, Sandor Funter

RICK OSTERMANN – KRIEG
Germany, 93′
Ulrich Matthes, Barbara Auer

JASON RAFTOPOULOS – WEST OF SUNSHINE
Australia, 78’
Damian Hill, Ty Perham, Kat Stewart, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Arthur Angel

ALESSANDRO RAK, IVAN CAPPIELLO, MARINO GUARNIERI, DARIO SANSONE – GATTA CENERENTOLA (ANIMATION)
Italia, 86′

 
HAFSTEINN GUNNAR SIGURÐSSON – UNDIR TRÉNU (UNDER THE TREE)
Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, 89′
Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson, Edda Björgvinsdóttir, Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir

OUT OF COMPETITION 74

FERNANDO LEON DE ANANOA – LOVING PABLO  | Spain/Bulgaria, 123′

LUCRECIA MARTEL – ZAMA | Argentina, Brazil 115′

JON ALPERT – CUBA AND THE CAMERAMAN | DOC | Usa, 113’

RITESH BATRA – OUR SOULS AT NIGHT | Usa, 101’ | Jane Fonda, Robert Redford

DANIEL MCCABE – THIS IS CONGO (DOC) | Congo, 91

STEPHEN NOMURA SCHIBLE – CODA | USA, Japan, 100′

FRANCESCO PATIERNO – DIVA!  | Italy 75′

MICHAEL R ROSKAM – LE FIDELE | Belgium, France, Ned 130′

DAVID BATTY – MY GENERATION [ DOC | UK, 85’ | Michael Caine 

ABEL FERRARA – PIAZZA VITTORIO | DOC | Italy, 82’ 

STEPHEN FREARS – VICTORIA & ABDUL | UK, 149’ | Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN – THE DEVIL AND FATHER AMORTH | DOC | Usa, 68’ 

RACHID HAMI – LA MÉLODIE | France 102’ |Kad Merad, Samir Guesmi, Renély Alfred, Youssouf Gueye

TAKESHI KITANO – OUTRAGE CODA | Japan 104’ | Beat Takeshi, Nishida Toshiyuki

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 30 AUGUST – 10 SEPTEMBER 2017  

 

Ventotene Film Festival 2017

THE VENTOTENE FILM FESTIVAL this year celebrates its 23 years anniversary bringing international film screenings, stars and filmmakers to the breathtaking Pontine island in the Tyrrhenian Sea (between Rome and Naples) where the idea of a united Europe first sprang to light with the Ventotene Manifesto.

Opening on 24 July, the 10 day programme is curated by Loredana Commonara and focuses on the spirit of a united Europe with its themes of democracy and racial integration that underpin its WIND OF EUROPE award.

This year’s award goes to actress Margherita Buy, actor/director Sergio Castellitto, and Romanian screenwriter, producer and director Cristian Mungiu, who will present their respective films ME, MYSELF AND HER; this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard nominated LUCKY, and last year’s Cannes Best Director winner GRADUATION tied with Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper.   

Other highlights of the festival include  Pedro Almodovar’s JULIETA, Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia’s SICILIAN GHOST STORY and Jasmine Trinca, who won Best Actress for her role in LUCKY will receive the Julia Major Award, which is awarded to women who stand out in art and literature. MT

VENTOTENE FILM FESTIVAL | 24 JULY – 2 AUGUST 2017 

 

Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2017 |

Fans of Eastern European films should head to Karlovy Vary this summer where the 52nd film festival has the best and latest in Eastern European cinema in its East of the West strand. This year’s main competition line-up includes an international premiere of Polish director Krzysztof Krauze’s swanson Birds are Singing in Kigali which was recently completed by his wife and explores the aftermath of the mass genocide in Rwanda.

Other features competing for the CRYSTAL GLOBE include Boris Khlebnikov’s new drama Arrhythmia, Václav Kadrnka’s Little Crusader, Peter Bebjak’s criminal thriller The Line and Giorgi Ovashvili’s Georgian historical drama Khibula. Ovashvili returns after winning the main prize in 2014 for his touching drama Corn Island nominated for an Oscar the following year. 

KVIFF 2017 OFFICIAL COMPETITION LINE-UP

arrhythmiaArrhythmia

Director: Boris Khlebnikov Russia, Finland, Germany, 2017, 90 min, International premiere

Oleg is heading for his thirties. He works as a paramedic and, after a hard shift, he likes to take a few swigs. His wife Katya is also a doctor, working in the hospital’s emergency department. But her patience with Oleg is running thin, so she announces one day that she wants a divorce… One of the most intriguing filmmakers on the Russian scene today, Boris Khlebnikov returns to the big screen with a meticulous piece of direction. Along with precise performances from the cast, the film examines a relationship experiencing an arrhythmia similar to that affecting the hearts of the patients Oleg treats in his job as a paramedic.
breaking-news

Breaking News

Director: Iulia Rugină
Romania, 2017, 81 min, International premiere

A difficult assignment awaits TV reporter Alex. He must film a memorial portrait for a coworker who died in a tragic accident they both experienced but that only he survived. His colleague’s daughter becomes his guide, although her relationship to her father was more than complicated. Alex becomes an involuntary witness to the girl’s handling of her father’s death, and he also comes to believe that chronicling a person’s life involves more than just a short news report…

the-cakemakerThe Cakemaker (Cukrář)
Director: Ofir Raul Graizer
Israel, Germany, 2017, 104 min, World premiere

After the death of his lover, Thomas heads to Israel – the birthplace of the man he adored. Despite prejudice at his German origins he becomes the pastry chef at a local café owned by the widow of the deceased Oran. Yet she hardly suspects that the unnamed sorrow that connects her to the stranger is for one and the same man.

the-lineThe Line (Čiara)
Director: Peter Bebjak
Slovak Republic, Ukraine, 2017, 108 min, World premiere

Adam Krajňák is head of the family and also boss of a gang of criminals smuggling cigarettes across the Slovak-Ukrainian border. The failure of one of the transports triggers an avalanche of consequences that compels him to question his own boundaries, none of which he had planned on crossing until now.

corporateCorporate (Korporace)
Director: Nicolas Silhol
France, 2016, 95 min, International premiere

The life of an uncompromising HR manager named Emilie changes the instant she witnesses the suicide of one of the staff. The investigation of the case becomes a moral test for a woman whose actions, although motivated by her unlimited devotion to work, have caused grief for many an employee.

moreMore (Daha)
Director: Onur Saylak
Turkey, 2017, 115 min, World premiere

Fourteen-year-old Gaza lives with his father Ahad on the shores of the Aegean Sea. The intelligent kid would like to continue his studies, but Ahad sees his son’s future differently. He gets Gaza to help with his side business – smuggling refugees from the Mideast. A directing tour de force, this disturbing psychological study of an adolescent boy’s transformation under the influence of those around him bears dark tidings about the contemporary world.

keep-thechangeKeep The Change (Drobné si nechte)
Director: Rachel Israel
USA, 2017, 94 min, International premiere

Stylish but apathetic, David meets bundle of energy Sarah at a support group. While he’s just fulfilling a court-ordered obligation, she is thrilled to be there. But as they move past their initial conflicts, they become participants in an uncommon romance that won’t yield to convention. Keep the Change is a different kind of romantic comedy about people who are not the same – like most of us.

khibulaKhibula (Chibula)
Director: George Ovashvili
Georgia, Germany, France, 2017, 98 min, World premiere

Shortly after the first democratically elected president of Georgia came to power he was ousted in a military coup. He sets out for the mountains with a group of loyalists to regroup with his supporters. Set against an imposing Caucasus backdrop, we witness a man fighting for power while waging an internal struggle as he heads to meet his fate. The winner of KVIFF 2014 returns with an archetypal story told with light melancholy and an unmistakable visual poetic.

little-crusaderLittle Crusader (Křižáček)
Director: Václav Kadrnka
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Italy, 2017, 90 min, World premiere

Little Jan, the only descendant of the knight Bořek (Karel Roden), has run away from home. His anxious father sets out to find him but his despair at the fruitless search gradually starts to overpower him. Václav Kadrnka has turned out a stylistically well-contoured adaptation of the poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický, where he employs a taciturn film form in order to encourage our imagination to engage in a poetic, cinematic pilgrimage.

men-dont-cryMen Don’t Cry (Muškarci ne plaču)
Director: Alen Drljević
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, 2017, 98 min, World premiere

When a diverse group of veterans gathers at a remote mountain hotel to undergo days of therapy less than two decades since the war ended in Yugoslavia, it’s hard to expect absolute harmony. This brilliantly directed drama, about the ability to forgive others only after we have forgiven ourselves, presents the pinnacle of the Balkan male acting scene.

birds-are-singing-inkigaliBirds Are Singing in Kigali (Ptaki śpiewają w Kigali)
Director: Joanna Kos-Krauze, Krzysztof Krauze
Poland, 2017, 120 min, World premiere

We meet ornithologist Anne in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anne manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2004), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

ralang-roadRalang Road (Cesta do Ralangu)
Director: Karma Takapa
India, 2017, 112 min, World premiere

The stories of four individuals intertwine in a maze of Himalayan countryside, village buildings, and the local social microcosm. With a captivating internal rhythm and the stylistic elements taken firmly in hand, the film presents a narratively courageous look at the region’s social web and the influence of cultural immigration on local life.

EAST OF THE WEST – COMPETITION  | HIGHLIGHTS 

The East of the West strand will open with Ilgar Najaf’s Azerbaijani drama Pomegranate Orchard.  Marina Stepanska’s Ukraine-set love story Falling and Mariam Khatchvani’s Dede are amongst the the outings from female film directors. Juraj Lehotský returns to the festival after his debut Miracle with Slovak-Czech drama Nina.

absence-ofclosenessAbsence of Closeness (Absence blízkosti)
Director: Josef Tuka
Czech Republic, 2017, 65 min, World premiere

After another failed relationship Hedvika takes her three-month-old daughter Adélka and her dog to stay with her mother and her mum’s boyfriend. Hedvika doesn’t get on all that well with her mother, nor are her feelings towards Adélka as maternal as they could be. One day she finds some diaries that her late father left behind… This small-scale psychological drama by debutant Josef Tuka is shored up by its realistic characters, an understated performance from Jana Plodková, and perceptive, discreet lensing.

blue-silenceBlue Silence (Modré ticho)
Director: Bülent Öztürk
Turkey, Belgium, 2017, 93 min, International premiere

After his release from the military hospital where he was receiving treatment for a past trauma, Hakan tries to resume a normal life and form a proper relationship with his daughter. Excelling for its mature performances and its stylisation of image and sound, the film foregrounds Hakan’s wounded soul and underlines his vehement efforts to break free from his own private prison.

Dede
Director: Mariam Khatchvani
Georgia, United Kingdom, 2017, 97 min, World premiere

It’s 1992. Young Dina lives in a remote mountain village where life is strictly governed by centuries of tradition. Is it possible to defy the firmly established order? And, if it is, what price must a person pay for doing so? Debut director Mariam Khatchvani set her first film in Svaneti, the stark mountainous region in northwestern Georgia where she herself was born, and she presents us with an authentic portrayal of a number of customs and traditions associated with this province.

how-viktor-thegarlic-took-alexey-thestud-tothenursing-homeHow Viktor “the Garlic” took Alexey “the Stud” to the Nursing Home 
Director: Alexander Hant
Russia, 2017, 90 min, World premiere

This inventive road movie about a son and father finding their way to one another has none of the sentiment normally associated with this kind of subject matter. The film introduces an ensemble of wild characters from the lowest social strata, viewed through a lens that finds a balance between the work’s profoundly human dimension and its stylishly ironic commentary on contemporary society.

the-end-ofthechainThe End of The Chain (Keti lõpp)
Director: Priit Pääsuke
Estonia, 2017, 81 min, World premiere

Have you ever had a bad day? Well, it would be difficult to top the catastrophe facing a waitress at a fast-food outlet, where people come not for a quick meal but simply to have a good cry. This high-spirited comedy, about the worst that can happen when you’re slaving from dawn to dusk, also examines existential dilemmas, unconcealed selfishness, and the essential desire for compassion.

Mariţa
Director: Cristi Iftime
Romania, 2017, 100 min, World premiere

Thirty-year-old Costi decides to spend a few days with his family. His parents have long since divorced, but Costi thinks it would be a great idea to arrange a surprise reunion, and he persuades his father to travel with him to meet up with his mother and siblings. Taking the old family car, affectionately known as Mariţa, they head out on a journey that will ultimately help to heal past wounds and allow Costi to finally understand not only his parents, but also himself.

the-man-who-looks-likemeThe Man Who Looks Like (Me Minu näoga onu)
Director: Katrin Maimik, Andres Maimik
Estonia, 2017, 100 min, World premiere

Music critic Hugo is going through a post-divorce crisis and just wants some peace to finish writing his book. When his bohemian father suddenly appears on his doorstep, it becomes clear that the new life he has chosen for himself is about to go in quite a different direction. A tragicomic tale about parents and children and their shared mistakes and complexes.

pomegranate-orchardPomegranate Orchard (Nar baği)
Director: Ilgar Najaf
Azerbaijan, 2017, 90 min, World premiere

Gabil returns home to the humble family farmstead, surrounded by an orchard of venerable pomegranate trees; since his sudden departure twelve years ago he was never once in contact. However, the deep emotional scars he left behind cannot be erased from one day to the next. A private drama set in a picturesque landscape which tells of wrongdoings simmering below the surface of seeming innocence.

ninaNina
Director: Juraj Lehotský
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2017, 86 min, World premiere

Nina is twelve years old and her world has just been shattered to smithereens: Her parents’ marriage has broken down and they are getting a divorce. After his internationally successful debut Miracle Juraj Lehotský now brings us an intimate drama in which the viewer looks upon the world and the selfish, visionless behaviour of adults through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl. A girl who is resilient and belligerent, but also vulnerable and just as fragile as the miniature world she creates for herself in the garden shed.

fallingFalling (Strimholov)
Director: Marina Stepanska
Ukraine, 2017, 105 min, World premiere

Anton and Katia happen upon one another in night-time Kiev. Both are trying to find their bearings in life, and their encounter changes everything… This psychological drama by debuting Marina Stepanska offers up both a fragile love story and a strong statement on the current young generation as it searches for its place in post-revolutionary Ukraine.

unwantedUnwanted (T’padashtun)
Director: Edon Rizvanolli
Kosovo, Netherlands, 2017, 85 min, World premiere

Teenager Alban lives in Amsterdam with his mother Zana, who left Kosovo during the war in the Balkans. When he starts going out with the sensitive Ana, neither of them has any idea that unresolved injustices and shadows from the past will make their way to the surface. This insightful, mature debut by a Kosovan director reminds us how difficult forgiveness and reconciliation can be.

the-stoneThe Stone (Taş)
Director: Orhan Eskiköy
Turkey, 2017, 96 min, International premiere

Emete would swear that the young man seeking refuge in her home is the son she lost long ago. But in her isolated, wasteland village it’s almost impossible to differentiate real hope from self-delusion. Especially since the only way to survive is to throw in with the collective myths and seek comfort in cold stone.

DOCUMENTARY FILMS – COMPETITION

The 11-strong documentary strand features three world premieres: The White World According To Daliborekby Vít Klusák, Lots Of Kids, A Monkey And A Castle by Gustavo Salmerón and Another News Story by Orban Wallace.

another-news-storyAnother News Story (Další čerstvá zpráva)
Director: Orban Wallace
United Kingdom, 2017, 90 min, World premiere

In today’s chaotic era, what is the “who, how, and why” of news spewed forth on world conflicts and crises? A young British director turns his camera lens on the journalists sent by their employers to the Mediterranean to cover the unfolding humanitarian tragedy. When faced with immeasurable suffering, do they maintain a fundamental sensitivity or do they fall back on sensationalized treatments of human misfortune?

Atelier de conversation
Director: Bernhard Braunstein
Austria, France, Lichtenstein, 2017, 72 min, International premiere

One room, twelve red chairs, and a common language. Foreigners from all corners of the world meet each week for free lessons to hone their French. This formally minimalist documentary captures the fleeting moments in which grammatical fumblings or the painstaking search for the right word inadvertently open a window into the human soul.

before-summer-endsBefore Summer Ends (Avant la fin de l’été)
Director: Maryam Goormaghtigh
Switzerland, France, 2017, 80 min, International premiere

Even after studying in France for five years, Arash hasn’t completely gotten used to the place, so he decides to return home to Iran. But friends Hossein and Ashkan are determined not to accept the loss of their closest pal. This documentary comedy, about a goodbye road trip across France, boasts beer chugging and French girls, but it’s also about cultural differences and the natural need to find and hold onto kindred spirits when living in a foreign land.

a-campaign-oftheir-ownA Campaign of Their Own (Kampaň)
Director: Lionel Rupp
Switzerland, 2017, 74 min, International premiere

Partaking of the Direct Cinema documentary style, A Campaign of Their Own tells the story of the loyal supporters of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who lost to Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Subtly engagé and skillfully incorporated into a stylistic frame, the film lifts the lid on a newly-inflamed radical skepticism towards political representation in the United States and the general frustration at the breakdown of representative democracy itself.

land-ofthefreeLand of the Free (Země svobodných)
Director: Camilla Magid
Denmark, Finland, 2017, 95 min, International premiere

In the economically depressed neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles it’s far too easy to get on the wrong side of the law. One fateful day 42-year-old Brian, who has just been released from serving a long prison sentence, experiences it firsthand. The vicious cycle of social determination, however, also begins to effect the lives of teenager Juan and seven-year-old Gianni. The debuting director immerses herself in the depths of human vulnerability in order to draw out fragments of hope.

A Memory in Khaki (Vzpomínky v barvě khaki)
Director: Alfoz Tanjour
Qatar, 2016, 108 min, European premiere

A Syrian director dusts off memories of the past, when people were persecuted for their political beliefs. A poetic portrait of people whose homes have been turned to rubble, and a story that tells us that a free life can never be monochromatic, let alone khaki.

my-life-without-airMy Life without Air (Moj život bez zraka)
Director: Bojana Burnać
Croatia, 2017, 72 min, European premiere

The most important moments in the life of Goran, a Croatian free diving record-holder, take place exclusively underwater. This portrait of an extreme athlete features intentional dramatic minimalism in order to guide the viewer toward a shared physical experience of performances that push the boundaries of what is humanly possible. Between each inhalation and exhalation we experience an endless emotional fall into the depths of the deep blue sea.

lots-ofkids-amonkey-andacastleLots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle (Muchos hijos, un mono y un Castillo)
Director: Gustavo Salmerón
Spain, 2017, 90 min, World premiere

Julita always wanted lots of kids, a monkey, and a castle. After finally realizing these wishes, however, her family loses their property in the economic crisis. But they have not lost the disarming ease and kindheartedness that mark their domestic squabbling.  A film chronicle with elements of absurd humor that serves as a madcap allegory for the contemporary situation in Spain.

tarzans-testiclesTarzan’s Testicles (Ouăle lui Tarzan)
Director: Alexandru Solomon
Romania, France, 2017, 105 min, International premiere

A research center in Sukhumi, the capital of today’s Abkhazia. Legend has it that it was built at the end of the 1920s to create a hybrid between man and monkey. The hypothetical creature never saw the light of day, but people and primates, like sad relics of the past, live together in the derelict wings of the medical institute to this very day.

Richard Müller: Unknown (Richard Müller: Nespoznaný)
Director: Miro Remo
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2016, 90 min, International premiere

This uncompromising, sometimes painfully revealing but always deeply insightful portrait presents the life of Richard Müller from a fresh perspective. We get to know the famous Slovak singer as a still uncommonly charismatic man who has become exhausted by his struggles with addiction, mental illness, and the demands of show business.

The White World According to Daliborek (Svět podle Daliborka)
Director: Vít Klusák
Czech Republic, Poland, Slovak Republic, United Kingdom, 2017, 105 min, World premiere

A stylized portrait of an authentic Czech neo-Nazi, who hates his life but doesn’t know what to change. Corrosively absurd and starkly chilling in equal measure, this tragicomedy investigates the radical worldview of “decent, ordinary people.” And just when it seems that its message can’t get any more urgent, the film culminates in a totally uncompromising way.

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 30 JUNE-8 JULY 2017 | FESTIVAL SYNOPSES

Star Boys (2017) | Moscow International Film Festival 2017

STAR BOYS | KAIKEN SE KESTÄÄ)

Dir : Visa Koiso-Kanttila | Cast: Vili Saarela, Olavi Angervo, Antti Luusuaniemi, Pihla Viitala, Tomi Enbuska, Malla Malmivaara, Risto Tuorila |  Finland 2017 | Drama | 81 min.

Visa Koiso-Kanttlila is best known for his long career as a documentary filmmaker and his debut feature STAR BOYS is a bittersweet reworking of his teenage years where two worlds collide but love survives in his small Finnish seaside home of Oulu.

star_boysSet in the late 1970s, Vesa (Saarela) and his best friend Kaarlo (Angervo) appear to be ordinary teenage boys, growing up in a conservative town that provides the stable backdrop for their angst-ridden puberty. But when the Sixties sexual revolution arrives late to their neck of the woods, this stable existence – and that of their parents, threatens to implode. First of all, Vesa’s architect father Tapio (Luusuaniemi) and his wife Marje (Viitala) host a divisive Swingers party where the boy becomes eyewitness to some rather sordid goings on. But the gulf between Tapio and Marje is to widen further after the architect hatches a get rich quick plan to demolish Marje’s familly home and build a block of flats, much to the chagrin of Marje’s parents. Meanwhile Kaarlo is indirectly involved in the crisis, because his sculpture fanatic father Antero (Enbuska) is not willing to sign his name to a project that would most likely secure their financial future. Antero is punished for his nobleness, because his wife Ulla (Malmivara) leaves him and moves Kaarlo to Helsinki. The well-paced and drama eventually comes to a head on the local beach. Ulla has come down from Helsinki with Kaarlo, and the grown-ups stage another sex-party – which the boys fight – literally – with fire.

This is a darkly drawn coming of age story with a difference because the narrative is driven forward by the parents’ irresponsible actions rather than those of the teenagers, which would normally be the case.  Their social milieu could not be more sedate and conventional – but this lot behave like students at the height of the 1968 student liberation. Vesa and Kaarlo, like most young adults, want their parents to provide an emotional bedrock to withstand their own teenage insecurities. But the only stable element here is Vesa’s grandfather Olavi (Tuorila) who introduces his grandson to astronomy. So when he is turfed-out by his financially greedy son-in-law, Vesa is left alone, bewildered and hell-bound on revenge.

Made on a shoestring budget but none the worse for it, Koiso-Kantilla directs the ensemble with sure-footed confidence, and the boys are well cast and – not overly cute – and deserving of a special mention. Jarkko T. Laine’s camerawork provides an evocative sense of place for the glorious settings: calming images for the Hailuoto summer seascapes and the bleached out winter scenes. STAR BOYS often feels like a Finnish version of Les Enfants Terrribles but its heartfelt narrative still feels intimate and personal.

STAR BOYS | 39TH MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL 2017

 

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2017 | 21 June – 2 July 2017

Cannes was not the only film festival celebrating its 70th birthday in 2017. Edinburgh International Film Festival is the same shares the same anniversary and takes place from 21 June to 2 July, showcasing a total of 151 features from 46 countries including: 17 World Premieres, 12 International Premieres, 9 European Premieres and 69 UK Premieres.

gods-own-countyHighlights include the Opening and Closing Gala premieres of Yorkshire-set God’s Own Country and England Is Mine a biopic of Morrissey’s early life in 1970s Manchester before becoming the lead singer in seminal band The Smiths.

Kyra Sedgwick will attend the Festival with her screen debut Story of a Girl, along with the film’s star Kevin Bacon. And Stanley Tucci’s Berlinale drama Final Portrait, is also a highlight of this year’s celebration.

Whilst Cannes celebrated by inviting those having won the Palme D’Or to a lavish evening reception, Edinburth with mark the occasion with a retrospective entitled THE FUTURE IS HISTORY attracting guests including Richard E Grant, Peter Ferdinando, Steven Mackintosh, Kate Dickie, Tam Dean Burn, Bernard Hill, Matt Johnson, Gerard Johnson and Polly Maberly to support and deliver a range of exclusive events and film screenings.

18582514_10156335747454062_8855051153228850370_nThis year’s BEST OF BRITISH strand includes exclusive world premieres of Bryn Higgins’ Access All Areas, featuring Jordan Stephens – one half of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks – on a group road trip to the Isle of Wight’s Bestival music Festival; Simon Hunter’s Edie, starring Sheila Hancock as an elderly woman who aims to climb a Scottish mountain; the Donmar Warehouse’s critically acclaimed all-female adaptation of Julius Caesar; and Danny Huston’s The Last Photograph. Audiences can also look forward to London based filmmaker Alex Barrett’s modern silent film London Symphony; an UK response to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera and filmmaker Justin Edgar’s noir British thriller The Marker; Daniel Jerome Gill’s look at the perils of modern-day relationships in Modern Life Is Rubbish; Sarmad Masud’s My Pure Land, about a mother and daughter’s fight to protect their home; searing abuse drama Romans, starring Orlando Bloom; and moving family drama That Good Night, starring Charles Dance and the late, great John Hurt. Toby Jones stars in a psychological thriller Kaleidoscope; taut mother-daughter drama Let Me Go; the emotionally raw The Pugilist; Taiwanese drama The Receptionist; and This Beautiful Fantastic, starring Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Brown Findlay. Renowned Scottish author Ian Rankin who will present captivating crime drama Reichenbach Falls.

the_oath_poster(laurels)This year’s EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES strand brings the latest from the continent in the shape of WWII drama 1945, Russian sci- fi Attraction; revenge drama Darkland; Nazi-euthanasia drama Fog in August that stars the Ivo Pietzcker who made his debut in Jack; and darkly humorous corruption drama Glory. There is also visceral Irish Medieval thriller Pilgrimage; Arctic Circle drama Sami Blood; stylish Spanish drama Sister of Mine; and the long-anticipated LGBT art biopic Tom of Finland; Fatih Akin’s roadie Goodbye Berlin;  Norway’s Oscar foreign language entry: The King’s Choice;  Catherine Deneuve’s latest drama The Midwife; and taut Icelandic thriller The Oath. 

SuenoThe WORLD PERSPECTIVES strand will feature Bong Joon Ho’s latest offering Okja, hot off the Cannes red carpet and starring EIFF honorary patron Tilda Swinton, and Indian road movie Sexy Durga; and the Sundance awarded: I Dream in Another Language – a moving study of language, heritage and hidden pasts;

DOCUMENTARY wise there is the enthralling Becoming Cary Grant, The Challenge – a look at the extravagant pastimes of the fabulously wealthy during one sporting desert weekend; Leaning Into The Wind the sequel to documentary hit River and Tides; Pecking Order that explores the world of chicken breeders; Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, that studies the role of native Americans in popular music history.

1249182_afterimage_04-h_2016A special FOCUS ON POLAND will present a snapshot of one of the most vibrant cinematic landscapes in the world. An International Premiere of Katarzyna Adamik’s thriller Amok. Additional notable films will include: Andrzej Wajda’s final feature Afterimage; psychological horror Animals; coming-of-age fantasy The Erlprince; Łukasz Ronduda’s A Heart of Love; the colourful Satan Said Dance; the extraordinary The Sun, The Sun Blinded Me; You Have No Idea How Much I Love You – the film that questions what love really means; and the gut- wrenching Volhynia. The strand will also showcase Polish Shorts: Perspectives; Polish Shorts: 15 Years of Wajda School; and a free lecture by Rohan Crickmar on post-war Polish cinema – Diamonds Out of the Ashes: A Brief Survey of Polish Cinema 1946 to Present.

If the weather is kind to Edinburgh, there is also the Outdoor Cinema strand to look forward to, cashmere at the ready. MT

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 21 JUNE UNTIL 2 JULY 2017

 

 

 

 

Brexitannia (2017) | East End Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Timothy George Kelly; Documentary with Noam Chomsky, Saskia Sassen, Heidi Mirza; UK 2017, 80 min.

It takes a Canadian Timothy George Kelly (A City is An Island) to tackle the emotional division lines of the Brexit decision from June 2016 head-one. Last weeks General Election only reinforced the chasm between the ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ – and throwing up new electoral alliances hitherto unheard of: The Conservatives losing Canterbury and Kensington to Labour, but gaining Mansfield and County Durham from their opponents. It is, for the first time perhaps, not any more a question of class, but of education. But most of all, Brexitannia shows a nation split right down the middle – and no compromises in sight.

Divided in two parts the so-called traditionalists and the adventurers Brexitannia shows the former in nostalgic black-and-white, interviewed on their home ground: pubs, sports fields and bingo halls, remaining anonymous for reasons of privacy. Immediately emotions take over. “I think Remain voters are cleverer than Leave voters” contrasts with “I voted Brexit, because most Muslims value Death not Life”. Implacable. Illusions regarding past and present run through the Brexit arguments. A middle-aged man, hoping for a quick pay rise argues that “When I go for a job in two years, they will say at the job agency that they can only pay the minimum wage. I say no, and they give the job to a Pole – but hey, there are no Poles here any more. So they pay me what I want”. Another man, sitting with his friend in a pub, sees greatness for his country, because ”we deserve to be that great nation, that’s why we are called Great Britain, because we are that great nation. And we don’t want to give it up too easily”. Contrast this with a young man’s statement “Britain was, through its history, an aggressor”. The general feeling on the Brexit side is ”No empire, no jobs, we are no longer a strong nation”. But even though she supported Brexit, one young woman is to be lauded for openly defending her membership of UkiP: “I don’t believe in the mass media, like the ‘Sun’ any more”. Another woman from Newcastle confronted the friends of her father who complained about immigrants taking their jobs. She asks a candid question: “How many immigrants do you know” –to which the answer was embarrassed silence. But there were more serious experiences, like a home-grown Muslim woman, who was accosted on the streets by strangers the day after the referendum to be told “We have voted ‘out’, and you are still here”. She is saddened and her daughter traumatised, and had nightmares for weeks. Finally there is a resigned man from Northern England, whose comment is perhaps the most quietly devastating: “Brexit doesn’t really matter here, because we’ve got nothing anyway”.

The experts, like Noam Chomsky explain their well known thesis’ about neo-liberalism and corporations, but somehow, even though their comments are well informed, they seem so much less engaging than ordinary citizens – whatever their opinion on Brexit. Just one example by Saskia Sassen is worth mentioning: “Companies, like Nestle and others, who sell bottled water and soft drinks in developed countries all over the world, steal the water from the soils of the under-developed world, were inhabitants grew their fresh vegetables. And more and more have less land to grow their products, so that we can have bottled water. And these citizens, who are expelled from their countries, because they can’t feed themselves any more, come to our shores”.

Brexitannia takes no sides in this very sad document of our once great nation: it is the emotional chasm that is still growing and which leaves very little hope of reconciliation. It is far beyond rational arguments; to paraphrase Fassbinder “Fear is eating the soul”. AS

BREXITANNIA IS SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 23 June RIO CINEMA | EVERY WEEKEND UNTIL JULY

Papagajka (2017) The Parrot | East End Film Festival

Dir.: Emma Razinski; Cast: Adnan Omerovic, Susanna Capellaro, Tina Keserovic; UK/Bosnia and Herzegovina 2016, 82 min.

Australian born Filmmaker and writer Emma Razinski is the first MA student to come out of Bela Tarr’s film factory in Sarajevo. The impressive upshot of the master’s extensive mentoring is a study of apathy, in which the real Sarajevo building of the title actually has a character role.

Damir (Omerovic) is the security guard in Papagajka, spending his days in the glass cage, observing more or less nothing. In the evening he takes the lift up to his flat where he meets another (silent) inhabitant of he building for a rooftop smoke. Damir plays ‘Noughts and Crosses’ in his cage, using the dirty glass walls as a blackboard. The only contact to the outside world is his sister Kamala (Keserovic), who encourages him (in vain) to meet family and friends. Then one day, an enigmatic woman, calling herself Tasva (even though we learn later that he real name is Benedetta), appears at his door, claiming that she has been robbed and needs a place to sleep. Damir, pathologically shy, gives in, against his instinct. Soon the stranger takes over his place: changing the lock to the front door, redecorating the flat, throwing his stuff out, and finally taking over his bedroom, relegating him to the makeshift bed he had made for her in the kitchen. Their contact is minimal: they play cards, eat and drink. Only once do we see them in an – awkward – embrace. When Damir falls ill, he suspects that the mysterious lodger is to blame.

Long, stationary shots dominate Papagajka, the building provides a claustrophobic microcosm of contemporary Hungary, even the roof scenes induce paranoia. Damir communicates by way of numbers and figures: besides the ‘Noughts and Crosses’ he plays Sudoku. He is a man who has slipped through the cracks of time, writing him name on the dusty windowpane, to remind himself of his banal existence. A low level obsessive-compulsive, he channels his angst into dream sequences, while enduring everyday life and Tasvas’s presence in a silent scream.

Rozanski financed the film partly through crowd-funding but is as uncompromising as her mentor: she insists on telling the – not very elaborate – narrative in images, reducing her protagonists to the occasional sentences, letting their actions talk on their behalf. There a penumbral and eerie charm to the Papagajka  building – it could very well be a submarine on the bottom of the sea. DoP Malte Rosenfeld (graduate of the Lodz Film School) uses sparse lighting to enhance the woozy atmosphere. Papagajka might not be for everyone, Rozanski style is an unique and talented new voice.

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 17 JUNE 2017 | EVERY WEEKEND UNTIL JULY 2017 AS

Provenance (2017) | East End Film Festival

Writer|Dir: Ben Hecking | Cast: Christian McKay | Sophie Vega | 93min | Drama | UK

Ben Hecking’s feature debut is not the usual second rate UK crime thriller nor is it set on another sink estate. Delightfully, it’s a compact and suggestive love story that takes place in sun-drenched Provence, where a classical pianist in his early forties has left his career and marriage to start a new life in France.

This languorously enjoyable drama keeps its cards close to its chest and is also beautiful to look at: Hecking made his name as a cinematographer winning the Michael Powell Award in 2014 (for Hide & Seek). He directs his regular collaborators McKay who plays Jon Finch (and co-directs) and Macqueen who plays the man who threatens his peaceful existence in the village where his much younger lover Sophia (Vega) has just returned after a brief time away. We’re not told where or how they met or where’s she’s been for the past five months but that’s all part of the mystery that gradually unfolds as leisurely as a torrid summer afternoon with a nasty sting served with the sundowners. MT

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 17 JUNE | CONTINUES EVERY WEEKEND UNTIL JULY 2017

 

Journey to the South (2017) | Creature of the Estuary | East End Film Festival

Dir: Jill Daniels | Doc | UK | 51min

Documentary award winner Jill Daniel’s poetic and often banal voyage of discovery takes her south to the French Riviera where in Menton and Castellar she discovers the villa used by writer Katherine Mansfield and kicks over the traces of a mysterious unsolved murder.

Very much in tune with Agnes Varda’s Cannes outing Faces, Places (2017), Daniel’s leisurely piece randomly engages with the French inhabitants she meets along the way. The photos and diary recollections of Katherine Mansfield give this piece a rewarding historical context as she alights upon ordinary life in rural France. Journey to the South is an artist’s meditation on life and death, on creativity and carving out a more satisfying future away from the gilded trappings of the past. MT

‘Exploring themes of displacement, migration and change, Creature of the Estuary takes us on an entirely different poetic journey, through the muddy netherworld of the Thames Estuary. This new work by Eelyn Lee evokes a creature made of fragments of memory and fear: a montage, part fantasy, part travelogue and part requiem’.

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL \ 18 JUNE | RICH MIX | WEEKENDS IN JUNE AND JUNE 2017

Those Who Make Revolution Halfway only Dig their Own Graves (2016) |Transylvania Film Festival | 2-11 June 2017

Dir.: Mathieu Denis, Simon Lavoie | Cast: Charlotte Aubin, Laurent Belanger, Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez, Gabrielle Tremblay | Canada | 183 min.

Directors/writers Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie (Laurentia) have created a daring and innovative portrait of four self-appointed revolutionaries in Quebec, unable to come to terms with the outcome of the ‘Maple Spring’ of 2012, when students striked and protested for months after the government hiked up tuition fees – but returned to studies and their mostly privileged life after the climb down of the authorities. These four mistook the uprising for the first step of a popular revolution, and barricaded themselves into a dingy bungalow, covering all windows hermetically.

Whilst fictional in its approach, the unfolding narrative stays true to real events. After the end of the 1968 uprising in Europe, both Germany (Baader-Meinhof Group) and Italy (Red Brigades) witnessed what a small group of committed urban guerrillas could achieve: although neither movement reached a membership of treble figures, it created a hostile atmosphere that affected whole countries and had, like the abduction and killing of the Italian Premier Aldo Moro, political repercussions for decades to come.

The directors develop their characters slowly: what starts with long speeches and walls full of revolutionary slogans (“Revolutionaries believe in people – what a flaw!), clearly shades of Godard’s La Chinoise, escalates into confrontations with friends and families. Roxanne (Aubin), who calls herself Giustizia, knifes her father during a family dinner, after he has given her another lecture on how they all had great ideas when they were young, but that hard work and reality put pay to their illusions. It emerges that Tumolto (Belanger), the only male of the group, is also clearly intellectually at odds with his own father. Asking about his health,  Tumolto is greeting with a barrage of bleats about work, which clearly stresses him out.

Karine (Lussier Martinez) adopts the grandiose ‘nom de guerre’ Ordine Nuovo, and is saved by her mother from prison, but, petulantly goes on to mock her in court, and later, when the ‘revolutionary’ cell has run out of money, robs her of her savings with the support of the three others. Thea (Tremblay), re-named Klas batalo (Class Fight), is a transgender prostitute, from whose earnings the comrades live, and has a client who finds a Rosa Luxemburg text in the room. Thea disowns the ownership of the book, but the client is insistent, quoting from the book (“a revolutionary should also love the beauty of the clouds”), and confesses to having been in love with these ideals – after which Thea breaks down in tears, resigns from her job and  participates in the robbery of Karine’s mother.

The four of them spend their days mooching around naked – but denying themselves sex, since they are ‘at war’ – with the world, their aggression turning inward. Tumolto has been discovered watching a video from previous political demonstrations, where police brutality is evident. In reaction to watching this ‘nostalgic’ fare, Tumolto throws a Molotov cocktail into a restaurant. He will never know that his actions killed a family of four, who lived about the restaurant, since Karine is the only one who checks news on the Internet (the hide-out has no phone or TV) and withholds the news from the group. Finally Karine decides on the ultimate self-punishment at the doorstep of her mother’s house.

The atmosphere in the bungalow is claustrophobic with undertones of a fascist death cult. Despite all the revolutionary rhetoric on display, the salient fact is that the four people are really using the political background as an excuse to inflict sadistic pain: mainly on each other. Clearly their profile and approach is infantile. Desperate to ‘get back into the womb’,  they have re-created it in the penumbral gloom, where their ‘wailing’ wall is the only significant piece of substance.

DoP Nicolas Canniccioni (Gerantophilia) creates a maudlin atmosphere of negativity and self-destruction and there are some brilliant performances from the ensemble quartet.  The film takes its title from a Saint-Just quote, and is a brilliant study of a collective rush into psychosis, where the Real Self is deprived of any contact with reality, leaving only (self)destruction as a solution. A brave and singularly unique effort. AS

BEST CANADIAN FILM TIFF 2016 | SCREENING DURING BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 |

 

East End Film Festival 2017 |

The 16th EAST END FILM FESTIVAL takes place in London’s East End EVERY WEEKEND in June 2017, and there are 5 epics to look forward to celebrating a different focus and making the most of non-cinema venues premiering an exciting array of bold and challenging feature films and documentaries from new and emerging new talent. Next year the festival plans a move to Spring slot.

HIGHLIGHTS

Tom-of-Finland There will be a chance to see two recent biopics: Benny Boom’s on the multi-talented cult figure Tupac Shakur, ALL EYEZ ON ME and Dome Karukoski’s biodrama on legendary gay icon TOM OF FINLAND. Other documentaries cover topics as contraversial as Brexit BREXITANNIA and America’s Death Penalty THE PENALTY (Dir: Will Francome).

SCREENINGS UNDER THE STARS | WEEKEND ONE

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-BangThe 16th edition of East End Film Festival commences with EAST END OUTDOORS (Fri 2 & Sat 3 June). This weekend of FREE outdoor screenings at Old Spitalfields Market is themed around iconic musicals including a family-friendly matinee of the 1968 British musical classic CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, and an East End screening of WEST SIDE STORY.

COMMUNITY & HERITAGE | WEEKEND TWO

Bred-and-BornReflecting the energy and cultural mix of London’s East End, the second weekend (Thu 8 – Sun 11 June) focuses on films and events with local resonance. The World Premiere of MY NAME IS LENNY (dir: Ron Scalpello, UK) covering the life of the Britain’s famous bare-knuckle fighter Lenny McLean aka ‘the Guv’nor – interesting to compare this with Walter Hill’s Charles Bronson starrer HARD TIMES (1975) – it also has John Hurt in one of his final acting roles. A duet of female films OFTEN DURING THE DAY (directed by Joanna Davis, 16 mins, 1979) is a closely mapped investigation of a kitchen, and women’s relationship to the domestic sphere. And BRED AND BORN (directed by Joanna Davis and Mary Pat Leece, 75 mins, 1983) is an experimental documentary, produced over four years, which interweaves two parallel strands: a women’s discussion group on mother-daughter relationships, and interviews with four generations of women from an East End family. There is also the UK Premiere of A CARIBBEAN DREAM (dir: Shakirah Bourne, UK/Barbados), a Barbados-set re-imagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, starring Susannah Harker as Titania.

THE BEST NEW UNSIGNED FILMS – Looking for Distribution | WEEKEND THREE

GholamThe EAST END DISCOVERY (Thu 15 – Sun 18 June) weekend showcases features and documentaries currently looking for UK distribution: and offers the chance to see quality films looking for general release and the best new and unsigned films from emerging directors. Following his role in Oscar-winning The Salesman, Iranian actor Shahab Hosseini takes the title role in the European Premiere of GHOLAM (dir: Mitra Tabrizian, UK) as a man haunted by his past and depressed by his uncertain future. Canadian director Arran Shearing presents FORGOTTEN MAN, a black and white romantic comedy that follows a young actor with an East End theatre company for the homeless, who falls for a wealthy out-of-towner. S_T_R_A_Y_S-300x300The World Premiere of S|T|R|A|Y|S (dir: Barnaby Miller, UK) is an unflinching depiction of modern London that blurs the lines between real life and animation. Also worth a watch is the debut thriller from Bela Tarr protegee Emma Rozanski’s edgy horror sci-fi thriller PAPAGAJKA- a cautionary tale about strange characters in inner city Sarejevo and PROVENANCE that sees a mysterious stranger threaten the new start in life for a classical musician and his girlfriend when they move to Provence (17 June 18.30)

ProvenanceOscar-nominated filmmaker David France (How To Survive A Plague from EEFF2012) documents a legendary fixture of New York’s gay ghetto in the London Premiere of THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (dir: David France, USA) – structured as a whodunit, it celebrates Marsha’s lasting political legacy while seeking to solve the mystery of her unexplained death.

The London Premiere of fiction/documentary hybrid DRIB (dir: Kristoffer Borgli, Norway) re-enacts the story of a failed violent marketing campaign for a well-known energy drink. Three Hackney-based filmmakers follow a $10 bill as it criss-crosses the United States in the European Premiere of FOLLOW THE MONEY (dir: John Hardwick, Ben Unwin, Steve Boggan, UK), building a unique and surprising portrait of the American people.

CROSS-ARTS, CULTURE, MUSIC, MAYHEM | WEEKEND FOUR

The EAST END SUBMERGE (Thu 22 – Sun 25 June) weekend includes includes a massive costumed TWIN PEAKS BALL taking over Andaz Liverpool Street Hotel, and a programme of screenings in the hotel’s hidden Masonic Temple including an Alex Cox acid-western double bill of WALKER and STRAIGHT TO HELL

Another highlight of this weekend will be a live performance with Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair of experimental documentary EDITH WALKS, a programme of artists films from Bethnal Green artist collective no.w.here, a live soundtrack from East India Youth, and a female punk night raising funds for a documentary about X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene. On 23 June, the first anniversary of the Brexit vote, EEFF present the London Premiere of BREXITANNIA (dir: Timothy George Kelly, UK/Russia), a funny, sometimes terrifying and non-judgemental look at new populist politics, followed by a panel discussion with opinions from all sides of the debate. At Castle Cinema, Hackney’s new crowdfunded community cinema, is the venue for the World Premiere of MY NAME IS SWAN (dir: Adam Carr, UK), an odyssey of loss in a shifting cityscape with music by Samuel Kilcoyne and Takatsuna Mukai.

PREMIERES OF BIG NEW INDEPENDENT FILMS | WEEKEND FIVE

MenascheThe EEFF culminates with EAST END HEADLINE (Thu 29 June – Sun 2 July) a handpicked selection of titles on their way to Britain’s cinemas. Berlinale Generation Plus winner BUTTERFLY KISSES (dir: Rafael Kapelinski, UK) follows three friends battling with their own demons in a teenage world that revolves around sex and porn. Not to be missed is another standout Berlinale drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the London Premiere of MENASHE (dir: Joshua Z Weinstein, USA) explores the lonely life of a put-upon widower in Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community as he battle for custody of his son. And James Ball, formerly of WikiLeaks and now Buzzfeed, will be joining the festival for a special discussion around the subject of post-truth politics. MT

THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | JUNE 2017 | VARIOUS EAST END VENUES

 

 

Icarus | Sundance London (2017)

Dir.: Bryan Fogel; Documentary with Gregory Rodchenkov; USA 2017, 120 min.

It started out more like a prank: amateur cyclist and filmmaker Bryan Fogel (Jewtown) wanted to take performance enhancing drugs to get into the top ten of the best amateur cyclists at the Haute Route mountain tour in Switzerland, having finished 14th the year before. When he contacted the Russian Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov (*1958), head of the Russian branch of WADA (World Anti-Doing Agency), to deliver said forbidden drugs, Rodchenkov was only to happy to deliver and monitor Fogel’s performance. Ironically the Fogel actually did worse on the drugs, so the filmmaker had a stunning success on his hands.

At the winter and summer Olympics in Vancouver (2010) and Beijing (2012) Russia fared very badly, and Vladimir Putin ordered “success”, particularly for the Winter Games in Sochi (2014). And results improved magically: whilst the Russian team finished sixth in Vancouver, on home soil Russia won 33 medals, including 13 Gold – coming first in the overall result. As it turned out, Dr. Rodchenkov had a big part to play. After being caught with his sister (also an ex-athlete like himself) dealing drugs in Moscow, he was sent into one of the horrendous “psychiatric” hospitals in 2011. His “redemption” on his release was to help the FSB (formerly KGB) to overcome the controls of the worldwide WADA organisation, in charge of monitoring and controlling the athletes. It helped, that the good doctor would be director of WADA in Sochi. There, he and his team collected and froze urine samples of Russian competitors before they started their steroid regime and human growth hormone injections, which Rodchenkov and his team later substituted for the contaminated samples taken officially by WADA at the time of the competition. They used a crude system of ‘re-distribution’, including the use of backdoors and hidden portals in the walls of the WADA facility.

Rodchenkov claims: “I don’t believe the Olympic Games could be won without any kind of pharmacological support”. And Don Catlin, former director of the UCLA Olympic facility, tested Lance Armstrong 50 (!) times during the latter’s career: his findings were always negative, before Armstrong confessed in 1913. Whilst Vitaly Mutko, who served eight years as Minister for Sport under Putin, was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister, another college of Rodchenkov died of a “sudden heart attack”. Luckily for Dr. Rodchenkov he had fled to the USA, and now lives under cover in the Witness Protection Programme, after The New York Times run his full confession.

ICARUS runs like a thriller: the charming Rodchenkov is first one to help Fogel to cheat, before investigations lead to the death of his friend and college – and threatens his own into the bargain. Fogel follows his every move, putting himself in a dangerous position. Whilst Rodchenkov had to leave his family behind, he at least got away alive. But it should not be forgotten that Russia is staging the Football World Cup next year, and that, after the majority of Russian competitors were banned at the Rio Olympics, these Russian track and field athletes will compete in London in August at the World Championships in front of a paying public. AS

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017

Chasing Coral (2017) | Sundance London 2017

Dir. Jeff Orlowski. US, 2017, 91 minutes

After his resounding success with Chasing Ice (2012) that examines the dwindling state of arctic glaciers, CHASING CORAL is another resonant and vital eco-documentary that tracks the destruction of the ocean’s most vital ecosystem due to the warming effect of climate change.

Coral is a not just underwater flora undulating in beautiful gardens on the ocean bed, it is a complex organism that serves both as a food factory and a habitat for all marine life. Without coral the oceans will die: it is as important as bees and trees on dry land. Building a solid skeleton structure, coral creates its own architectural environment, attracting fish and orgnanisms to live there, much in the same way as our towns provide the infrastructure for human existence. Coral also provides the basis for many life-saving drugs – but all this could come to an end if the sea temperature keeps rising, even by one or two degrees. The ocean needs to maintain a regular temperature or, just like the human body, it will become sick and eventually die.

A team set up by former adman Richard Vevers begins an earnest attempt to chart the ailing coral reefs, eventually hiring professional cinematographers to chart the extent of the problem, monitoring the alarming rate at which the coral is affected by warmer temperatures. Brightly coloured coral reefs turn a ghostly white, known as bleaching, then rapidly decay to a dullish brown mush strewn with algae. So dramatic is this state of affairs that the Great Barrier Reef will be a thing of the past within less than two decades. Occasionally, the coral takes on a fluorescent hue of bright green, purple or blue. This is coral’s attempt to produce its own sunscreen, and signals the desperate last stages before inevitable death and decay.

Despite its tragic message – that coral could be wiped out within 30 years – this is filmic and beautifully made documentary that tracks the disappearance of coral all over the world, thanks to a team of keen volunteers. We also meet Australian biologist and photographer John “Charlie” Veron, who has been filming coral since the 1970s, when it was still flourishing all over the world. In order to save the planet Humans need to stop burning fossil fuels that provide heat that the earth and oceans reabsorb. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017 | TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO HELP VISIT 

 

 

Walking Out (2017) |Sundance 2017

Directors|writers: Alex Smith, Andrew Smith Cast: Josh Wiggins, Matt Bomer, Bill Pullman | 91min | US | Adventure Drama

walking-outDirectors Alex and Andrew Smith make a welcome return to Sundance 15 years after The Slaughter Rule, with an auteurish inter-generational hunting adventure that is spare on narrative but long on macho bonding and wild grunting from its rather one-dimentional male leads.

With the cherished memory of hunting with his traditional father (Bill Pullman) echoing in the snowbound landscapes and mountain streams of Montana, hard-bitten dad Cal (Matt Bomer) takes his own teenage son Ted (Josh Wiggins) on an adventure that serves both as an iniation into the world of big game hunting and a rites of passage endurance test that will see their roles reversed and their lives changed forever.

Ted is a rather introspective Texas teenager attached to his mobile phone and his life in the city. Although he baulks at the idea of spending time out with his spiky father Cal, who loves nothing more than to track a moose or a stag, once Ted gets a taste for hunting and shooting, he starts to enjoy the wilds of nature until an accident forces him to dig deep into his inner reserves of stamina, courage and mental resiliance. WALKING OUT is a predictable but well-crafted drama enriched by Todd McMullen’s magnificent widescreen retro-style photography that gives the piece an almost poetic and transcendent feel. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017 | PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL

 

 

Cannes Film Festival Awards 2017

COMPETITION

Palme d’Or: THE SQUARE (Ruben Östlund) – main pic

70th Anniversary Award: Nicole Kidman

Grand Prix: BPM  (Robin Campillo)

Director: Sofia Coppola, THE BEGUILED

Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

Actress: Diane Kruger, IN THE FADE

Jury Prize: LOVELESS (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Screenplay — THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou) and YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Lynne Ramsay)

SIDEBARS

Camera d’Or: JEUNE FEMME Montparnasse-Bienvenüe) (Léonor Serraille)

Golden Eye Documentary Prize: FACES, PLACES (Visages Villages) (Agnès Varda, JR)

Ecumenical Jury Prize: RADIANCE Naomi Kawase)

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Un Certain Regard Award: A MAN OF INTEGRITY/ Mohammad Rasoulof

Best Director: Taylor Sheridan, WIND RIVER

Jury Prize: Michel Franco, APRIL’S DAUGHTER

Best Performance: Jasmine Trinca, FORTUNATA

Award for Poetry of Cinema: Mathieu Amalric, BARBARA

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT | QUINZAINE

Art Cinema Award: THE RIDER  (Chloe Zhao)

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize — TIE: LOVER FOR A DAY Philippe Garrel) and LET THE SUNSHINE IN (Claire Denis)

Europa Cinemas Label: A CIAMBRA Jonas Carpignano)

CRITICS’ WEEK | SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE

Grand Prize: MAKALA Emmanuel Gras)

Visionary Prize: GABRIEL AND THE MOUNTAINS (Fellipe Barbosa)

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: AVA  (Léa Mysius)

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY | AWARD WINNERS | LIST BY VARIETY

Based on a True Story (2017)

Dir Roman Polanski | Writer: Roman Polanski, Olivier Assayas | Cast: Emmanuelle Seigner, Eva Green

Unusually, there’s a happy ending to this traditionally styled film from Roman Polanski.

Emmanuelle Seigner and Eva Green go tete a tete in a tongue in cheek psychological drama adapted by Polanski and Olivier Assayas from Delphine de Vigan’s story about an author and her envious admirer (D’Apres un Histoire Vrai).

There are shades here of the director’s award-winning 2010 thriller The Ghost Writer, not least because Green’s feisty character pens books for well-known people. That said AFTER A TRUE STORY wears its heart more playfully in a formidly-crafted thriller that inhabits a chic quarter of Paris and a Normandy farmhouse where Seigner’s divorced Delfine spends weekends with her part time lover Francois (played insipidly by Vincent Perez/La Reine Margot) and host of  book programme.

We first meet Delphine at a signing for her latest bestseller as adoring fans extoll the virtues of her literary genius. But Delphine is now struck by writers-block in a period of anxious navel-gazing, and this is where Elle comes into the story.

At first we get the impression that the two are going to be romantically involved as they kiss warmly but this is all part of Polanski’s teasing style. Delphine exuding an air of confidence that Delphine seems to be lacking in her current state of flux but Alexandre Desplat’s unsettling score signals a warning of danger.

Alarmingly Elle soon takes over the writer’s life advising Delphine’s contacts to give her space and strangely she acquiesces. Meanwhile, Francois has dropped out of the story on a name-dropping tour to the US  (Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, don’t you know!) and soon the women are living together in Delphine’s flat – apparently sharing their life together, with Elle even impersonating her at a student lecture.

Green and Seigner are convincing in their roles, as the sassy Elle and more laid-back – almost submissive – Delphine,  but there’s no mistaking a steely side to the author who looks like she’s just rolled out of bed. DP Pawel Edelman’s confident lensing and Jean Rabasse’s sophisticated set design ensure a enjoable watch in this sophisticated game of wits that, unlike Polanski’s usual fare, has a happy outcome leaving us pondering whether the Polish born filmmaker was softening in his dotage. Luckily, as we now know, this was just a blip in the 90 year old director’s landscape. MT

AN OLIVIER ASSAYAS RETRO IS NOW ON MUBI

 

The Desert Bride (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | Un Certain Regard 2017

Dir/scr Cecilia Atán & Valeria Pivato. Argentina/Chile. 2017. 78mins.

This painterly portrait of late-life love provides a subtle and gently humorous focus on contemporary Argentina. Atan and Pivato’s feature debut screened in the Cannes auteurs sidebar, Un Certain Regard, and stars Gloria’s Paulina Garcia as a woman in domestic service who gradually takes back the reigns of her single life and opens her heart to love. The desert road movie serves both as a voyage of self-realisation and female empowerment. Bearing its heart on its delicate sleeve the film interweaves the past and present and is graced by sumptuous cinematography from NO and NERUDA’s Sergio Lawrence. It’s a sweet slip of a film and utterly adorable.

Teresa is leaving her current home for a spell in San Juan in the desert region of Cuyo. Getting there involves a laborious bus journey where the vehicle breaks down leaving Teresa in the pilgrimage town of La Difunta. Here she comes across a kindly market trader in the shape of Gringo (Claudio Rossi). A storm imterupts their innocent encounter but Teresa realises her bag has been left in his trailer. After caching him up they embark on a mission to find the missing luggage as Teresa gradually warms to Gringo’s kindness and easy-going bonhomie: something she could get used to.

Garcia’s portrayal of Teresa’s understated emotional awakening is one of the pleasures of this pastel-hued slow-burner, providing a filmic focus on first love in the autumn of life. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017 | UN CERTAIN REGARD

Djam (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Tony Gatlif | Drama | French |

Tony Gatlif makes films about gypsy cultures from India to the near East and DJAM is his latest, although not his best, it offers something slightly off the beaten track: a female-centric road movie where his feisty belly-dancing heroine embarks on an adventure from Lesbos, to Greece and Turkey. There’s never a dull moment in this exotic musical odyssey that captures the contempo socio-economic zeitgeist of the near Middle East (immigration, female liberation etc) and celebrates rebetiko, an ancient blend of Greek and Turkish tradional folkmusic.

After leaving her uncle (Simon Albekian)  on the quayside Djam (Patakia) uses her cheeky charm to blaise a trail through a variety of hurdles she meets along the way, the first is securing a passport for a naive girl called Avril (Maryan Canon) who has been robbed. From then on the two become travelling companions.

Vibrant and lushly atmospheric this verite-style drama is carried along by Daphné Patakia’s earthy exhuberant chutzpah in the title role (for which she wears no undies), although her minxy coquettishness may be irritating for some, others may find the film a breath of fresh air, with its melodramatic and musical interludes.

Cannes this year has been remarkable for a blatant over-sharing of female issues: from Francois Ozon’s opening shot of a close quarter vaginal examination; to endless open discussions about menstruation; Diane Kruger examining her menstrual blood and here – Patakia’s Djam forcing her friend to shave off her pubic hair on the open road. None of this has particularly enriched the stories concerned, begging the question – what happened to feminine mystique?

Gatlif’s narrative plays as fast as loose as Djam and her copine as they sing and dance around like a couple of lascivious troubadours, seemingly high on their own brand of goofy naughtiness. Although Gatlif seems to be making it all up as he goes along, this is a fresh and impressively-crafted snapshot. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017

A Gentle Creature (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | In Competition

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa | Cast: Vasilina Makovtseva |143min | Russian | Drama

A GENTLE CREATURE is based on a short story by Dostoevsky, narrated by a middle-aged pawnbroker whose wife kills herself. The story was first adapted by Robert Bresson in 1969 as his first film in colour but its subject matter differs from its title, drawing comparisons with several other recent fraught psychodramas such as A Happy End and The Square

Sergei Loznitsa imagines a dark descent into Hell in his follow up to My Joy and In the Fog.  A GENTLE CREATURE is a film about the frustration of its central character: an earnest young woman whose husband has disappeared into the intractable Russian prison system. This parable about contemporary bureaucracy and human rights it is also a cynical takedown of our fellow man. The woman, played thoughtfully by Vasilina Makovtseva, has decent intentions that lead her into a never-ending nightmare, in a story that works on two levels: as a Kafkaesque psychological thriller and a brazen indictment of Russian society.

From her ramshakle cottage in the middle of nowhere, she sets off to personally deliver a parcel of food and clothing that has been returned to her by the prison authorities. The claustrophobic bus journey is a microcosm of Russia itself, beset with vile and unhelpful characters who bicker and bait each other, spouting vile opinions that provide rich insight into the country’s social politics.

When the woman arrives at her destination, a mesmerising dream sequence then ensues, glistening with shades of Kubrick s Eyes Wide Shut where a powerful elite of assembled guests at a dinner have the opportunity to expound on the greatness of Mother Russia, but this all culminates with a brutal rape scene as the woman is driven away in a van, hopes of visiting her husband dashed by the iron fist of the authorities who she thought were taking her to her husband. Often feeling like a contemporary version of Dante’s Inferno A GENTLE CREATURE has no happy end, reflecting on the mournful misery of mankind and the unkindness of strangers in a broken and demoralised world. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

 

 

 

Promised Land (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Eugene Jarecki | Documentary | USA 2017 | 117′

Director/writer Eugene Jarecki (Reagan) has managed to cramp three different films into PROMISED LAND: whilst driving through the southern States of the USA in Elvis’ Rolls Royce Phantom V, retelling the story of the King, numerous singers (among them M. Ward and Emmylou Harris) play music on the backseats of the car, and celebrities like Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin and Ethan Hawke give their opinions. Finally, Jarecki catches the last months of the Democratic Primaries in 2016, culminating in Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 – being described as the death of the American Dream: the promised land is no more.

Or, to be precise, it has never existed: just for a few decades after WWII, preceded by the Great Depression and followed by the slow death of the lower middle classes in the last twenty odd years. Trump voters are not the only ones who are no longer upwardly mobile, and their children are poorer than their parents. Jarecki gives no reasons for the downturn: but the images shot on the road show a country whose infrastructure has been neglected for decades: apart from in the big cities, the last improvements seemed to have happened in the late 6os. Somehow, the lost dream has turned much of the country into a stagnant backwater.

The director is equally critical about Elvis: “He went into the army as James Dean in 1958 and returned as John Wayne two years later”. And there is the not so small matter of his future wife Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he met in Germany when she was just fourteen. And whilst Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) preferred to go to jail, than to fight for his country in the Vietnam War, Elvis met with Richard Nixon in 1970, spurning the possibility of bringing his popularity on the side of the Anti-War and Civil Rights movement.

Somehow, Jarecki keeps everything together and delivers an informative film: a mix of Showbiz and nostalgia. One can’t help liking this documentary which unfurls with ease and panache. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 MAY 2017

 

The Desert Bride (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | Un Certain Regard

Dir:

Paulina Garcia (Gloria) as a fiftysomething housekeeper whose life changes dramatically turn when she travels across Argentina to take up a new post.

La Familia (2017) | Semaine de la Critique | Cannes 2017

Dir: GUSTAVO RONDON CORDOVA | Cast: Giovanny Garcia Reggie Ryes | 2017 VENEZUELA-CHILE-NORWAY || 82 MINS || IN SPANISH || FEATURE

Twelve-year-old Pedro roams the streets with his friends in the violent atmosphere of working class Caracas. A serious street fight leads to him fatally wounding another another boy, so single father Andrés decides they must leave the city in an adventure that will leave them closer than they have ever been.

Gustavo Rondon Cordova’s debut as director and writer is a dark and pessimistic portrait of working class Venezuela. Father and son find themselves on the run from a vengeful mob – and even though we never see the pursuers – which strangely makes the threat feel more menacing, the title is ironic – rather like Michael Haneke’s Happy End.

The absence of women in the mens’ life is key in informing the storyline: Andres’ girl-friend, Zoreida, has been a casual affair, and we only learn about Pedro’s mother because she liked swimming with him. Having to work day and night, Andres had no time to be a proper father, and Pedro resists authority in every way. The two are like hunters, fighting for a living, always confronted with the comstant threat of violence. Their flight is a metaphor: it is not just the vengeful mob they are fleeing, it is a whole way of life. The narrative unfolds episodically, to show the transient nature of their life. The unrest created leads always to more abrupt change. Both seem self-destructive: a clear sign of the lack of female input.

LA FAMILIA is always understated, even the chase lacks any sensationalist angle. Well-paced and impressively photographed: DoP Luis Armando Artega evokes a lush and magical sense of place in contrast to the their raggedness of their rat race. A really imaginative debut. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17-28 MAY 2017 | SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE

Thr Defence of the Dragon (2017)| Cannes Film Festival | Quinzaine des Realisateurs

Dir.: Natalia Santa; Cast: Gonzalo Sagarminaga, Hernan Mendez, Manuel Navarro; France/Columbia 2017, 79 min.

Natalia Santa’s debut is a brilliantly acted tragi-comedy, full of innovative ideas and told with great aplomb. With shades of Pablo Stoll’s Whisky (2004), it follows three desperate, ageing men, who have great difficulty surviving in 21st century downtown Bogota, for different reasons.

Samuel (Sagarminaga) is a fifty-three year old professional chess player and private tutor, divorced with a young daughter – whom he neglects like all the women in his life. Joaquin (Mendez) is a watchmaker in his mid sixties, not earning enough to pay the rent, Marcos (Navarro) a 70 something homeopath completes the trio whose regular hangout is the local dilapidated Lasker Chess Club and the Normanda Café.

Samuel is gloomy and resigned, only coming alive when chess is involved. His male company is much desired, not only by his landlady’s young daughter, who tries her best to seduce him – in vain – but also by the mother of his young maths student, an illustrator adamant to set up a private meeting with Samuel. Joaquin is the most likeable of the three: He can empathise with his friends, but he is really a prisoner of times gone by – the word digital makes him feel uneasy. Marcos is really a user, exploiting his assistant not only on a professional level, but also in the bedroom. Worse of all, he is a homophobic estranged from his gay son who has been killed in a bear attack. When two of the men find themselves homeless, clearly they have to change.

Santa always keeps a certain distance from her characters: they are analysed, but never denounced. The humour is deadpan, bleak and always carries a certain undertone of mournfulness. Santa paints them as dinosaurs who have maintained a strong macho identity: silent and withdrawn. They make their way though life like little boys lost in the woods, whistling to overcome their fear and loneliness, which they naturally deny. Rarely leaving their homes, and barricading themselves in, they are characters from a bygone era in the streets of Bogota. Samuel and Joaquin live in reduced circumstances, whilst Marcos’ house is full of ornaments and paintings: he pretends to be upper-class, but is as broke as his friends and even more unwilling to change. The visuals match the narrative in their love of small details. Intricate medium shots show the inner shabbiness of these men. Santa skilfully controls her narrative keeping the tension just right in this well-paced and engrossing drama. An astonishing masterclass on a micro-budget filmaking.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17-28 MAY 2017

Rodin (2017| Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Jacques Doillon, Vincent Lindon, Izia Higelin, Severine Caneele | Biopic Drama | 119min | France

Jacques Doillon has demeaned a French national treasure with a film about Auguste Rodin that will disappoint those whose evocative takeaway of the sculptor’s work is his erotically-charged The Kiss.

Rodin’s work is the epitome of passion but this film coneys none of it. Cliched and bogged down with tedious scenes and boring exchanges, any vestige of joy instilled by the oeuvre of this great master will have left you by the end.

Vincent Lindon won best actor in Cannes 2015 for his honest portrait of a man at the end his tether. You will be at the end of yours at this second rate biopic. As Rodin he is a laborious, lumbering, grizzled, gruffalo lusting after his models as he copes with the derision of patrons and press. The public appalud him but he handles his newfound fame with glowering gloom.

His wife Rose (Séverine Caneele) is unimpressed with him; his lover Camille Claudel (Izïa Higelin) is left coping with her own flagging career. Doillon has sucked the life out of his characters and with the luminous memory of Juliette Binoche in Bruno Dumont’s Camille Claudel 1915 still hanging in the air, Higelin’s portrait struggles in a morass of mediocrity. If RODIN comes to a cinema near you, run straight in the other direction. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY | IN COMPETITION

24 Frames (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | Special Screening

Dir: Abbas Kiarostami | Experimental | Iran | 120min

A final experimental film from Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami, who died last year at 76, is a tribute made especially poignant in the Festival’s 70th Anniversary. Abbas Kiarostami started life as an artist and also worked as a photographer and this clearly informs this series of delicately rendered vignettes that depict scenes from a mostly wintery nature seen from the POV of the animals. These started as photographic stills taken by Kiarostami in Tehran by the Caspian Sea. He then imagines these pictures coming to life with the action continuing for around four minutes. The result is enchanting, uplifting and poignant this experimental film has no dialogue or narrative but occasional scored by popular music and may also be viewed as an art installation rather than a film with appeal to the arthouse crowd rather than mainstream audiences.

Apart from being a visual record of his personal experiences this meditative and meaningful film offers insight into animal behaviour when seen in isolation. A seagull mourning its mate, a cat pursuing its prey and lion seduces a lioness feature in these tableaux vivants. But film opens with Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1565 oil painting entitled The Hunters in the Snow.  Slowly the picture comes to life as a chimney starts smoking and birds flutter from the bare trees. What remains uncertain is how he has created these moving images but it’s clear that he was intrigued by animals and particularly birds. There is even humour in one frame taken against a turquoise blue sky: a tiny bird chirps away on a pile of logs while trees are gradually felled in the background.  With the final tree falling he flies away. Another depicts a herd of cows strolling along a beach while one lies on the sand, clearly breathing. When the tide threatens to cover the animal, it ups and moves away. This all sounds simplistic but somehow can move you to tears. Another endearing scene involves a young guard dog protecting a flock of goats from the prowling wolves. Tunes accompanying are as sublime as a choral Ave Maria and as cheesy and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, but somehow it works.

The final 24th frame seems to echo Kiarostami’s romantic nature. In the early hours of the morning a girl is asleep by her computer where an old film is playing on slow-mo. The woman in the picture sings the Lloyd Webber hit “love will still remain.”. Somehow at the end Kiarostami breaks with his country’s strict taboos: the film contains a unveiled woman, kissing a man and singing about it alone. What a brave goodbye. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17-28 MAY 2017 | SPECIAL SCREENINGS.

Radiance (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | In Competition

Dir: Naomi Kawase | Drama | Japan | 89min |

Despite her detractors, and there are many, Naomi Kawase is a seasoned director and her latest film here at Cannes is testament to her often unappreciated talent. RADIANCE showcases her skills in this tender and charmingly observed film about a famous visually impaired photographer (Mayasa/Masatoshi Nagase), who is gradually losing his sight. At a workshop he meets  Misako (Ayame Misaki) who writes spoken commentaries for films for the enjoyment of the visually impaired.

Upset by Mayasa’s criticism about one of her commentaries, Misako gently objects accusing him of lacking imagination, but when she discovers his own wonderful talent she reflects on her error and the two grow closer.

RADIANCE is a slim but delightful story that reflects on themes that may be oblique to the unaffected. Amongst the stark psychodramas in this year’s competition, it offers a restorative tonic to human goodness. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017 | IN COMPETITION

 

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: John Cameron Mitchell | Cast: Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Alex Sharp | 100min | US | Musical RomCom

John Cameron Mitchell’s absurdly unconvincing ‘punk-retro’ musical is based on a short story by Neil Gaiman. It imagines a late ’70s London where aliens in psychedelic costumes infiltrate a corner of Croydon and create havoc by seducing kids at a local disco, where they vomit in their mouths. Elle Fanning is one of the aliens. How she got suckered into the project God only knows, but she tries her best and falls for the other only good about the film – the male lead gamely played by Alex Sharp. Sandy Powell’s costumes are worth a mention too.

Sadly these aliens are ‘programmed to self-destruct’ so the charmingly honest love story at the heart  of this charade sadly ends in tears. Clearly the director knows nothing about punk or late ’70s London so the whole thing feels like amateur dramatics staged by teenage filmmakers wandering onto the set of  Some Mothers do ‘Ave ‘Em – with a good deal of angry swearing thrown in for good measure. One to miss. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17-28 MAY 2017 | SPECIAL SCREENING

 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | In Competition

Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos | Cast: Colin Farell, Nicole Kidman,  Barry Keoghan | Drama | Greece | 101min 

Has Greek New Wave director Yorgos Lanthimos gone too far in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. A film that would have us believe that all families are essentially dysfunctional, and all men psychopaths. His latest is set in a sleek but soulless Cincinnati, Ohio in the run up to Christmas. Colin Farrell is an Irish heart surgeon who performs, as many do, to soaring choral music, adding a Kubrickian touch to the film’s bleak opening scene where open heart surgery is being wound up before blood-stained gloves and garb are then thrown into a bin. This sets the tone for a disquieting and starkly alienating parable that examines the human drive to escape death.

Farrell plays Steven Murphy, on the surface a loving husband and family man who has developed a weird friendship with a teenage boy that grows more bizarre as the film unfolds. It soon emerges the boy’s father died on the operating table when Murphy was the surgeon. Left with his unemployed mother, Martin is a young man with a grudge. Later in a speech Murphy tells how the doctor involved in the first heart transplant, Andreas Gruentzig, died in a plane crash: “The operation was successful, but the doctor didn’t make it”.

There’s a horrible feeling throughout the film that the Sword of Damocles is going to fall on Steven, (to use an apposite anecdote from Greek mythology) and all because of Martin (Barry Keoghan) who feels resentful and envious, and puts a curse on the family. Keoghan is a particularly chilling psychopath, but so is Farrell when he puts his mind to it in the final scenes. MT

Happy End (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | In Competition

Dir: Michael Haneke | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-louis Trintignant, Toby Jones, Mathieu Kassovitz, Fantine Harduin Drama | 110min

HAPPY END is Michael Haneke’s satirical exploration of a rich family of industrialists whose dysfunctional daily lives become linked to the turbulent ongoing immigration nightmare that is Calais, thanks to the son and putative heir of the family building business.

This year’s Cannes Competition line-up is fraught with startling dramas and the intriguingly entitled HAPPY END joins the list with its impeccable production values, sophisticated interiors and top-drawer performances from a starry ensemble cast, including veteran Louis Trintignant and, of course, Isabelle Huppert.

This is a typical Haneke film: all his classics themes coalesce in a slow-burning treat, at times a tad too much so. These include family guilt, shame, revenge where social media and onscreen messaging enlightens the narrative adding to a gritty subtext behind the beautifully manicured domestic scenes. In one involving an impromptu moment musicale for the scion’s 85th birthday (Trintignant as Georges Laurent), the musician, a chelloist, is conducting a covert porn exchange with Thomas Laurent – revealed only to ourselves scrolling down on his onscreen messenger).

Isabelle Huppert plays Anne Laurent, the doyenne of the family’s Belle Epoque villa  (with Moroccan staff) who has recently taken over the construction business from her ageing father Georges, who is stumbling on the foothills of dementia. Recently engaged to Toby Jones’ English lawyer, tasked with handling a UK deal involving the business, her son son Pierre is a non-starter prone to drunken outbursts, and her brother Thomas (Kassovitz) has a new wife and baby and a smart little daughter (Harduin) from a previous marriage (and has broken into his computer and sussed his game). So far, so dysfunctional. Meanwhile, we are treated to glimpses of the migrant crisis on the streets of the city.

This is a malevolent movie that wears its unsettling undercurrent discretely hidden under its haute couture outerwear, and as in all Haneke’s fare, we know that the ending will be far from happy. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017 | IN COMPETITION

Coby (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017 | ACID

Dir.: Christian Sonderegger; Documentary; France/USA 2017, 78 min.

Christian Sondereggers’s feature length documentary debut COBY is not only an intimate portrait of a transgender man’s journey, but also a testimony to the support he gets from his family, who live in the small village of Chagrin Falls in Ohio.

When she was twenty-one, Suzanna Hunt decided that she would undergo a sex change process, since she “was not happy with what she saw in the mirror – it was not what I expected”. S/he took the name of Coby during the medical/psychological changing process, before settling for Jacob after the successful transformation. We meet Jacob, working as a paramedic in an ambulance, administering help to a stricken baby with his fellow workers. But more surprising than Jacob’s successful progress, is the role his family played in all the upheavels. His parents, Ellen and Williard, and his brother Andrew are interviewed at length, and it turns out that Jacob’s parents were anything but the average village people. They home-schooled their children, there was no TV, and they lived a life of tolerance as Christians. This tolerance was tested by Suzanne early on, the family had to adjust to the many stages Suzanne/Jacob went through, including a lesbian phase, which is recalled with smiles by all concerned.

Jacob is proud to be accepted as man not only by his family, but also his co-workers. But he is honest about the changes in his reactions: before he took testosterone, he would tear up in sympathy when his girl friend Sarah had emotional problems – but now he is much more reserved. ”When I have problems, I react like a gorilla”. But he still has the memories of 21 years as a woman, so he is still able to talk with female colleges in a different way as the other male workers. All in all “I don’t feel like a woman, but feel good in my femininity as a man.” As for the future, since Sarah does not want to bear children, Jacob is the only parent to be able to procreate, and he is taking all medical precautions to keep this possible open.

As for his father, the “memories of him as a girl fade slowly, being replaced by new ones of him as a man”, a process his brother agrees with. As Jacob says “I was born into the right family”. Coby is told in a simple, but not simplistic manner, somehow very close to the way the Hunt family lives: avoiding drama and ruptures, but caring for each other in a truly Christian way. They are in a way the real ‘Anti-Trump’ family: overcoming ‘otherness’ in their family with love, understanding and patience, just understanding without any dogma.

COBY IS PLAY IN THE ACID SIDEBAR | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017

West of the Jordan River (2017) | Cannes Film Festival | Directors’ Fortnight 2017

Dir.: Amos Gitai; Documentary; France 2017, 97 min.

It is fair to say that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has influenced the entire career of Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai: in 1973, when studying architecture, he was called up for military service during the Yom Kippur war and joined the helicopter rescue crew. He filmed some of the action with an 8mm camera, and the continuing wars (on different levels) between the two nations have been at the centre of his output, culminating in Rabin, the last Day (2015).

West of the Jordan River is, in spite of its rather poetic title, a very harsh condemnation of hard liners on both sides. More or less bookended by a 1994 interview by Gitai with the incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin – a year before his assassination by a right-wing Israeli fanatic – the documentary shows that Rabin has never found a political heir, but that the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to swamp the West Bank with Jewish settlements, making a two-state solution impossible. But one is still shocked, when Gitai interviews the current Deputy Foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely (*1978), mother of two daughters and an ardent feminist. Far from even trying to show understanding, Hotovely launches into a war-mongering attack: “We are not occupying our own land. This is not a territorial war. This is a religious battle led by Islam, We can’t ignore this basic truth. This land is ours. All of it is ours. We are not apologising for that.” On the status of the Dome of Rock, the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Islamic Museum on the Temple Mount, she is even to the right of Netanyahu: “It is my dream to see the Israeli flag flying on the Temple Mount. I think it’s the centre of Israeli sovereignty. All of Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people”.

Gasping after such an affront, Jewish journalist Avi Shavit is well aware where the politics of young hardliners like Hotovely will lead to: “The Israel I love, if it does not make a dramatic U-turn in the next ten years, will vanish. The government is going to have 750 000 settlers on the West Bank in this period. Then you cannot share the country any more. It will be the end of democracy in Israel. Give the Palestinians full citizenship and end the State of Israel in its current borders or revoke the rights of Palestinians and end our democracy. The settlers have enacted the most Anti-Zionist policy, which is completely destroying us. We have to go back to the point, when was Rabin assassinated”.

When Gitai visits the “Parent’s Circle”, a group of Israeli and Muslim mothers who have lost their children in the war, the full cruelty of the armed conflict becomes obvious. A Jewish mother, whose son was killed, had left Iraq in 1942 as a child, states ”Israelis do not understand the Arab mentality. And we Jews always know what is good for others, we can’t let go and let others be different from us”. A right-wing journalist wants to forbid groups like the “Parent’s Circle”: “They join international groups, who want to destroy Israel”. Obviously he also means such groups like in Hebron, where Muslim women are learning to use video cameras to document the atrocities of the Israeli army. The instructor makes it clear that this is not a feature film shoot: “Zoom, but don’t forget your own life”. Another journalist agrees with the director “Netanyahu is not a religious fanatic. He sees the Arabs as a managing problem. He wants to secure the territories, which are important for Israel. But he is foremost an ideologist”. Interviews in Hebron show the total breakdown between the community and the occupiers. The story of the Bedouin School facing demolition is typical of the conflict. The school is ‘illegal’ according to Israeli settlers, “who seem to be above the law”. When Gitai interviews a young Arab boy on his balcony, he asks him about his dream for Hebron. The boy answers spontaneously “To die as a martyr.” Gitai tries in vain to convince him that to live is better, but the boy maintains his position.

The last word of this depressing documentary goes to the director: “Extremists on both side help each other to fight to the death. Nothing is more solid than the coalition between the two sides [Hamas and the Israeli government] who do NOT want peace”. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017 | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2017

 

Alive in France (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Abel Ferrara | Cast: Abel Ferrara, Joe Delia, Paul Hipp, Cristina Chiriac, Dounia Sichov, PJ Delia, Laurent Bechad | 79mins | Rockumentary

Cult film director Abel Ferrara turns the camera on himself in the role of raddled rock star in this self-indulgent concert documentary premiering here at Cannes Film Festival.

Ferrara joins a long list of filmmakers who have morphed into their own musical subjects but the others have done so with considerably more flare and elan particularly David Lynch and Woody Allen. Strutting and staggering about on stage like a dishevelled hippy, Ferrara doesn’t exactly strike a pose in the way that Madonna did for her Blond Ambition Tour. Better described as a poor man’s Keith Richard. his musical ravings are at best forgettable, at worst shambolic and meandering.

The director of classics Bad Lieutenant and The King of New York embarks on a tour that plays out in Paris and Toulouse during October 2016 with his musical collaborators Joe Delia and Paul Hipp. Described as a friends and family affair, maybe it should be kept that way, while his film fans look forward to the next film SIBERIA with Willem Dafoe.  MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17-28 MAY 2017 | SPECIAL SCREENING.

 

 

Jupiter’s Moon | Cannes Film Festival 2017 | Competition

Dir|Writer; Kornel Mundruczo | Cast: Merab Ninidze, Gyorgy Cserhalmi, Monika Balsai, Zsombor Jeger | 110min | Sci-fi | Hungary

After his UCR hit White God (2013) Hungarian auteur Kornel Mundruczo makes it into the main competition line-up with this sci-fi thriller about a young immigrant who is shot down while illegally crossing the border into Hungary. Terrified and in shock Aryan finds his life has mysteriously been transformed by the gift of levitation.

Clearly the director has honed his craft since his breakout arthouse piece White God, that had so mqny pleasing elements. JUPITER is visually more ambitious and technically brilliant but narratively a complete mess. The bewildering storyline starts off with a great premise – a Syrian refugee becomes an angel in one of Jupiter’s Moon’s where a cold ocean known as Europa spawns new forms of life. The metaphor is clear and cleverly thought out yet the film tries to be too many things, a political commentary and an action thriller: less would have been far more effective than more. After a blindingly intriguing opening scene, the shaky handheld camera continues in a tonally uniform almost continuous take that eventually feels exhausting, and hardly ever gives up, detracting from the enjoyment of the stunning set pieces.

Zsombor Jéger is the central character but not a sympathetic or particularly engaging one as Aryan, the Syrian refugee who is gunned down by László (György Cserhalmi), the nasty leader of a refugee camp in Budapest. Aryan survives his injuries and then discovers an uncanny ability to float, and from on desperately tries to find his father with the help of a nefarious doctor, Stern (Merab Ninidze), who has been struck off for medical malpractice. Aryan is inveigled into a plan to defraud Stern’s rich patients into believing he has faith healing properties, but this is a tenuous ploy that again feels too gimmicky.

White God had a believable plot with engaging characters but Jupiter’s Moon, although a far more technically skilful film, feels hollow, glib and also frankly quite boring despite its arresting visual wizardry from White God cinematographer Marcell Rév. Ninidze’s Stern Gabor is a quixotic and cunning rogue and far and away the most exciting character in an ensemble of cardboard characterisations. Along with the visual mastery there is an impressive atmospheric score that helps to ramp up the tension and also adds a certain gravitas. A shame then that the whole things feels so underwhelming and unwieldy as a story. Clearly the director is trying to up his game but needs to establish whether he wants to go for arthouse audiences or the mainstream crowd. White God was starting to build him a fanbase but this seems like a step backwards. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION 2017

 

 

L’Amant d’Un Jour (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Philippe Garrel | Cast: Eric Caravaca, Esther Garrel | 77min | Drama | French

Philippe Garrel is back in Cannes with another family affair that brings to a close his trilogy this started with Jealousy. This grainy black and white Parisian story is as sweet and light as a mini croissant and just as innocuous, showing little insight into womens’ minds despite the collaboration of four writers, including the veteran Garrel. If you enjoy his work it’s watchable enough, otherwise too slim and generic to have much appeal. Daughter Jeanne (Esther Garrel) finds herself at home again with Papa (Caravaca) as her first love affair with ends abruptly. But family life is interupted by her father’s young lover Ariane who is a philandering part-time porn model. The intimate domestic trio discuss love, fidelity and friendship and Arianne frequently becomes jealous when father and daughter spend the evening together. There is a candour to the dialogue but it all feels rather trite. Esther is a natural as is Caravaca but Chevillotte’s Arianne struggles to feel authentic and her story is largely hollow and implausible. Even with a running time of 77 minutes L’AMANT fails to absorb our attention often feeling like an amateur college piece; well-crafted but threadbare in its storyline. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

 

Loveless (2017) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

IMG_3612Dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev | 127min |Drama | Russia

Zvyagintsev’s long-awaited followup to Leviathan is the story of a divorcing couple forced back together again to search for their missing son. LOVELESS is scripted by Oleg Negin who also wrote The Banishment, Leviathan and Elena but the only similarities lie in the alienation of the characters: here Zvyagintsev would have us believe that the Grim Reaper has finally visited Russia and stolen its human soul and spirit. What remains is a collection of spiteful, self-seeking, sociopathic types whose only pleasure is shopping, selfies and social media due to a culture that breeds indifference by forcing them into loveless marriages to procreate and conform.

In Moscow a young couple have already been through a bitter divorce but are still sharing a home. Their young son Alexsei sobs silently in his bedroom in one of the most moving scenes in this otherwise emotionally barren affair, while his parents, who never wanted him, bicker about how best to sell the family flat. Boris (Alexei Rozin) is a tubby, pasty-faced office worker whose new girlfriend, an aquisitive blond, is needy and close to her conniving mother. His soon-to-be-ex-wife Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is hostile towards her son and husband. A beautician, she is now dating a rich and cold-eyed man twice her age with a pristine appartment in an upmarket part of town.  There is nothing to recommend any of them: physically and spiritually they represent the worse form of life, alive and kicking – not just in Moscow – but in much of the civilised world.

When Alexsei disappears during his parents’ separate date nights, the film becomes a police procedural of utter desperation. Moscow feels like a frozen forest filled with creatures from another planet: these s0-called parents are merely psychopaths and narcissists going through their vacuous routine, their only despair is for themselves rather than the loss of their son. This is a bitterly depressing film but visually impressive and inventively framed.

If you’re looking for two hours of utter desperation and frightening emptiness. LOVELESS is the film to watch and it’s coming to a cinema near you. Be warned. MT

NOW ON GENERA RELEASE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW | IN COMPETITION 2017

 

 

Wind River (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Taylor Sheridan | Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Jeremy Renner | US | Thriller | 111min

Taylor Sheridan is the writer behind Cannes UCR 2016 breakout hit Hell or High Water and scripted the competition title Sicario in 2015. He returns to Cannes this year with his own mystery thriller set in Wyoming and starring  Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.

Shedding more troubling light on American contempo society this action thriller explores events surrounding the violent murder of a teenage girl found in a snowy corner of Wyoming and its investigation by Renner Cory Lambert, a  thoughtful and sensitive wildlife ranger who clearly has some issues relating to the recent loss of his own teenage daughter and breakdown in his marriage. Joining him in the investigation (Sicario-style in black SUV) is Olsen’s rather green FBI sidekick, Jane Banner. Clearly Cory is a hands-on type who is used to the territory, whereas she is not.

It also emerges that the dead girl has a brother whose sidekick Pete (James Jordan) seems to have some past connection with the oil company located on the Native American land, and although her father (Gil Birmingham) offers little insight into possible perpetrators, clues start to reveal that Pete is in some way connected.

Their inquiries lead them to an alarming confrontation with a group of Mexican oil-workers and this rather melodramatic second act sits uncomfortably with what has gone before. But Sheridan makes this good in the final denouement which brings us to an impressive close in this enjoyable thriller with its twists and dramatic turns. Clearly Sheridan is still learning but his directorial debut lacks the dialogue finesse of his former outings. WIND RIVER is solid entertainment showing Sheridan to be honing his skills as a consummate talent in the making. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 17-28 MAY 2017 | UN CERTAIN REGARD

 

 

 

 

Sundance London 1-4 June 2017

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SUNDANCE LONDON kicks off on 1st JUNE for a whole weekend of American independent narrative and documentary films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, U.S.A this January.

THE BIG SICK Director: Michael Showalter, Screenwriters: Emily V. Gordon, Kumail NanjianiBased on the real-life courtship: Pakistan-born comedian Kumail and grad student Emily fall in love, but they struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail must navigate the crisis with her parents and the emotional tug-of-war between his family and his heart.

Principal cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher International premiere. 

BITCH 

Director/Screenwriter: Marianna Palka– A woman snaps under crushing life pressures and assumes the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, absentee husband is forced to become reacquainted with his four children and sister-in-law as they attempt to keep the family together during this bizarre crisis.

Principal cast: Jason Ritter, Jaime King, Marianna Palka, Brighton Sharbino, Rio Mangini, Kingston Foster International premiere

BUSHWICK 

UnknownDirectors: Cary Murnion, Jonathan Millot, Screenwriters: Nick Damici, Graham Reznick – Lucy emerges from a Brooklyn subway to find that her neighborhood is under attack by black-clad military soldiers. An ex-Marine corpsman, Stupe, reluctantly helps her fight for survival through a civil war, as Texas attempts to secede from the United States of America.

Principal cast: Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Angelic Zambrana, Jeremie Harris, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Arturo Castro. UK premiere

9438-UN17_CROWNHEIGHTS_still1_KeithStanfield__byBKutchinsCROWN HEIGHTS 

Director/Screenwriter: Matt Ruskin– When Colin Warner is wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to proving Colin’s innocence. Adapted from This American Life, this is the incredible true story of their harrowing quest for justice.

Principal cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell, Amari Cheatom

Winner of Audience Award: US Dramatic

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Directors: Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini – An eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story. (Documentary) Special preview screening

Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary

A Ghost StoryA GHOST STORY

 Director/screenwriter: David Lowery– This is the story of a ghost and the house he haunts.

Principal cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky, Liz Franke

The-Incredible-Jessica-JamesTHE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES 

Director/Screenwriter: Jim Strouse

 Jessica James, an aspiring NYC playwright, is struggling to get over a recent breakup. She sees a light at the end of the tunnel when she meets the recently divorced Boone. Together, they discover how to make it through the tough times while realizing they like each other—a lot.

Principal cast: Jessica Williams, Chris O’Dowd, Lakeith Stanfield, Noël Wells

MARJORIE PRIME

Director/Screenwriter: Michael Almereyda

In the near future—a time of artificial intelligence—86-year-old Marjorie has a handsome new companion who looks like her deceased husband and is programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance?

Principal cast:  Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, Tim Robbins UK premiere | Winner of the Alfred P Sloan Feature Film Prize

Walking-OutWALKING OUT 

Directors/Screenwriters: Alex Smith, Adam Smith)

 A teenager journeys to Montana to hunt big game with his estranged father. The two struggle to connect, until a brutal encounter in the heart of the wilderness changes everything.

Principal cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins, Bill Pullman, Alex Neustaedter, Lily Gladstone

WILSON 

Director: Craig Johnson, Screenwriter: Daniel Clowes

Wilson, a lonely, neurotic, and hilariously honest middle-aged misanthrope, reunites with his estranged wife and gets a shot at happiness when he learns he has a teenage daughter he has never met. In his uniquely outrageous and slightly twisted way, he sets out to connect with her.

Principal cast: Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Cheryl Hines UK premiere

Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize

D O C U M E N T A R I E S

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Director: Bryan Fogel – When Bryan Fogel sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller involving dirty urine, unexplained death, and Olympic Gold—exposing the biggest scandal in sports history.

Winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award

svii_in_coral_triangle_-_photo_by_xl_caitlin_seaview_survey-copyCHASING CORAL 

Director: Jeff Orlowski

Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers, and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. This is Orlowski’s follow up to his standout eco-doc CHASING CORAL (2012) (Documentary) Special preview screening

Winner of the Audience Award: U.S. Documentary

SURPRISE FILM!For the first time this year the Sundance Film Festival: London will feature a surprise film. We can’t say too much, but it was a favourite among audiences in Utah, and with just one screening this will be among the hottest of the hot tickets. The title will be revealed only when the opening credits roll. By our reckoning it will either be I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE or JOSHUA.

SUNDANCE LONDON | 1-4 JUNE 2017 | PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL

 

The Levelling (2016) Bfi player

Dir: Hope Dixon Leach | Ellie Kendrick, David Troughton, Jack Holden, Joe Blakemore | 83min | UK | Drama

English filmmaker Hope Dixon Leach explores some thorny contemporary themes in her assured directorial debut. The Levelling deals with intergenerational conflicts, suicide and the plight of UK dairy farming in a moving family drama that sees a girl forced to return home from college to face her troubled past and the unexpected death of her younger brother

Creating just the right mood of sadness and brooding tension, Ellie Kendrick plays Clover, a recently qualified vet who is now back home on the dairy farm in Somerset after leaving her family in a mood of unresolved tension after the sudden death of her mother. Her father Aubrey (David Troughton) is an old school army type who believes in duty though somehow resents his daughter’s reappearance, not least because of her disappearance at a difficult time during the devastating floods of 2014. As is often the case, father and daughter are driven apart by a tragedy that should have united them in their grief.

The storyline is fraught with enigma and unanswered questions as to why Clover (Ellie Kendrick) was not invited to her mother’s funeral; why she calls her father by his Christian name, and whether her brother Charlie committed suicide or died in an accident. None of this is revealed adding to the sense of mounting introspection in this often gruelling story. But daily life must go on where the farm is concerned, and despite her professional credentials, Clover finds it difficult to kill a recently born male calf, adding to her own sense of misery and anguish.

Somerset is a sorry sight as a backdrop: waterlogged fields awash with mud; her father has been forced to leave the flooded farmhouse and retreat to a sordid caravan. The motif of a hare swimming along the riverbed is redolent of the gloomy state of affairs where even animals seem dejected as they fight for survival in the uncertain climate. Clover bickers with her father as they wallow in sadness, her dog Milo offering the only affection and respite from the unremitting sense of doom.

Kendrick’s thoughtful performance carries the film supported by an otherwise all male cast of Jack Holden as Charlie’s friend James, as David Troughton as her father Aubrey, a man unused to sharing his feelings of emotional despair yet desperately needing to do so. The Levelling is a grim but promising debut from a fresh British talent. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Un Certain Regard 2017 | Cannes Film Festival

UMA THURMAN will lead the jury to select the winning film in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes this year. 

IMG_363416 Films have been short-listed so far but this is not the defnitive list as Thierry Fremaux may well add two or three before the festival kicks off on the 17 May. Un Certain Regard betokens a certain auteurish feel to the features selected and this year’s list is no different with seasoned player Laurent Cantet presenting L’ATELIER, films from two new Bulgarian directors Stephan Komandarev and Katemir Balagov and a debut from US filmmaker Taylor Sheridan. The bare bones are here and will be fleshed out as more details emerge. The section opens with BARBARA another drama from Cannes darling Mathieu Amalric.

IMG_3631APRIL’S DAUGHTER directed by Michel Franco | Mexico

Mexican director Michel Franco won Best Script for his 2015 competition thriller Chronic. His latest is a female-centric drama that explores the relationship between a mother and her pregnant teenage daughter. Emma Suarez stars.

IMG_3577LUCKY directed by Sergio Castellitto | Italy | Jasmine Trinca and Stefano Accorsi star in this Rome set thriller that revolves around a divorced hairdresser is dreaming of opening her own salon so she can do the best for her only son.

IMG_3609WESTERN directed by Valeska Grisebach | Germany

A group of German construction workers start a tough job at a remote site in the Bulgarian countryside. The foreign land awakens the men’s sense of adventure, but they are also confronted with their own prejudice and mistrust due to the language barrier and cultural differences. The stage is quickly set for a showdown when men begin to compete for recognition and favor from the local villagers. From the director of the acclaimed SEHNSUCHT aka Désir(s).

DirectionsDIRECTIONS directed by Stephan Komandarev | Bulgaria

IMG_3630AFTER THE WAR directed by Annarita Zambrano

A convicted Italian war veteran living in France is threatened with extradition after he becomes linked to the assassination of a judge in the politically febrile city of Bologna. Fleeing France with his teenage daughter, his family in Italy face the consequences of his past misdemeanours.

IMG_3628LA CORDILLERA directed by Santiago Mitre | Argentina

Ricardo Darin, Christian Slater and Dolores Fonzi team up for this political thriller centred on events surrounding the Argentine president’s visit to a Summit in Chilean capital of Santiago.

DREGS (Lerd)  directed by Mohammad Rasoulof | Iran

IMG_3627OUT by György Kristóf | Slovakia 

A Slovakian engineer in his fifties is forced to take up an alluring offer of work in a Latvian shipyard in György Kristóf’s migration thriller debut.

THE NATURE OF TIME directed by Karim Moussaoui 

In modern day Algeria three lives come together as the past and present collide for a wealthy property developer, an ambitious neurotic, and a young woman who must make a decision between love and reason.

BEFORE WE VANISH directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi | Japan

A mystery Sc049653.jpg-c_215_290_x-f_jpg-q_x-xxyxxi-fi thriller surrounding a young couple in a crisis. The husband disappears only to come home several days later a changed man – tender and loving. Strange events seems to be linked to his absence including the brutal murder of a local family, sending the local reporter and the police out to investigate the possible presence of aliens.

65C38608-8627-4832-90C1-237EEBF42E73-622-0000009B1C16257AL’ATELIER by Laurent Cantet | France

Antoine is taking part in a summer writing school in La Ciotat, where he hopes to write a crime thriller novel with the help of Olivia, a well-known author. But the region’s working class past comes back to haunt the instability of the present providing an intoxicating mix of emotions in the writing worshop.

WALKING PAST THE FUTURE by Li Ruijun | Chinese filmmaker returns to Cannes with his latest drama.

1eefebec3515b791dbe30a1852af3172BEAUTY AND THE DOGS by Kaouther Ben Hania | Tunisia

CLOSENESS directed by Kantemir Balagov | Bulgaria

449339.jpg-r_1920_1080-f_jpg-q_x-xxyxxTHE DESERT BRIDE directed by Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato | Spain  

Stars Paulina Garcia (Gloria) as a fiftysomething  housekeeper whose life changes dramatically turn when she travels across Argentina to take up a new post.

IMG_3637WIND RIVER | Taylor Sheridan (US) Debut

Sicario scripter Sheridan struck gold with this his directorial debut at Sundance in January 2017. The plot revolves around the discovery of a body on a Native American reservation in Wyoming. Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen and Kelsey Asbille star.

JEUNE FEMME | Léonor Serraille (France) Debut

This is Serraille’s feature debut developed from her graduation film at the Femis in 2013. It revolves around jilted lover Laëtitia Dosch who is abandoned by her beau when she arrive in Paris to join him.

The CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | UN CERTAIN REGARD | May 17-28 2017

Requiem for Mrs J (2017) | Berlinale 2017

Dir: Bojan Vuletić | Drama | Serbia / Bulg/Mac/ Russ Fed/France | 94 min · Colour

Living in a state of flux is complicated, but dying is even harder, as Mrs J finds out when she tries to commit suicide, in this dark but beautifully captured comedy from Serbian New Wave filmmaker Bojan Vuletić (Practical Guide to Belgrade)

Jelena has reached her early fifties with nothing to look forward to. The loneliness of her newly widowed state is amplified by her selfish daughter’s active sex life with her fiancé Milan, who shares their comfortable suburban flat along with Jelena’s elderly mother-in-law. We first meet Mrs J nonchalantly assembling a gun and silencer at the dining room table in a scene that is not only shockingly deadpan but also mildly hilarious. The whole film is embued with ironic moments like this, where gentle humour comes from the Kafkaesque task of simply sorting out her affairs, before she pulls the trigger and ends the abject pointlessness of it all.

Many will empathise with this universal portrait of a woman who is resigned to die, simply because the rest of her life seems to stretch before her as an emotionally arid desert, where her own modest but worthwhile life experience is regarded and reflected back on her as superfluous and even downright irritating by the younger generation, compounding even further the dejection she already feels. This is an incredibly difficult role played with nuanced subtlety by Mirjana Karanovic (When Father Was Away on Business) who captures without rancour or bitterness the utter despondency of a woman’s middle-age cast adrift in a country that offers no certainty, swinging back and forth between torment and transition. The authorities are unable to cope, Jelena’s former employers are now bankrupt and the remaining staff are just killing time.

Expertly framed and filmed by Jelena Stankovic; this is a quiet gem of a film that carries a small but delightful message of hope in the final scenes proving that nothing is ever quite as bad as it seems when family and friends rally in support. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 9 -19 FEBRUARY 2017 | PANORAMA SECTION

 

Directors’ Fortnight 2017 | Cannes Film Festival 2017

IMG_3606Claire Denis, Abel Ferrara and Bruno Dumont will be included in this year’s buzzy Quinzaine Selection introducing some new names and some established auteurs to the party which runs from 18-28 May 2017. Nigerian British  filmmaker Rungano Nyoni is also amongst the chosen few in a line-up which is always eclectic and inventive in its choice of indie film.

Denis opens the festival with UN BEAU SOLEIL INTERIEUR starring Juliette Binoche, Gerard Depardieu and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. Previously known at Des Lunettes Noires, a more edgy and memorable title, this is a film about love inspired by French philisopher Roland Barthe’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. The festival will close with Sundance standout debut PATTI CAKE$ from US director Geremy Jasper.

Leonardo Di Costanzo follows up his brilliant two-hander THE INTERVAL (shot by The Great Beauty’s Luca Bigazzi) with THE INTRUDER (L’Intrusa) a Naples-set immigration thriller infiltrated by an outsider linked to the Camorra and Bruno Dumont brings his long-awaited musical JEANETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC adapted from Charles Peguy’s work and featured a techno score from Igor. Also there will be Abel Ferrara with a documentary ALIVE IN FRANCE, his follow-up to Pasolini starring Willem Defoe who is also attached to his next dram Siberia. In the autobiographical title Ferrara headlines a film retrospective and a series of concerts in France dedicated to songs and music from his films. Preparations with his family and friends will form the material of this self portrait, showing another side of the director of legendary films BAD LIEUTENANT, THE KING OF NEW YORK and THE ADDICTION. Ferrara is joined on stage by past collaborators, including composer Joe Delia, actor-singer Paul Hipp and his wife actress Cristina Chiriac for concerts at the Metronum in Toulouse and the Salo Club in Paris in October 2016.

CAST

And where would the festival be without veteran Philippe Garrel. His son Louis is in the main competition line-up but father will be there with the Jean-Claude Carriere scripted L’AMANT D’UN JOUR which stars another member of the family Esther (Jealousy).  Israeli author and filmmaker Amos Gitai’s WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER compares contempo life in occupied Palestine with his memories of making his 1982 documentary Field Diary, Yoman Sadeh. Gitai (RABIN, FREE ZONE) describes the efforts of citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation. Gitai’s film shows the human ties woven by the military, human rights activists, journalists, mourning mothers and even Jewish settlers. Faced with the failure of politics to solve the occupation issue, these men and women rise and act in the name of their civic consciousness. This human energy is a proposal for long overdue change.

The List in Full so far:

Un Beau Soleil a l’Interieur (Dark Glasses)– Claire Denis

A Ciambra  directed by Jonas Carpignano
Bushwick  directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott
Patti Cake$  directed by Geremy Jasper
Alive in France directed by Abel Ferrara
L’amant d’un Jour directed by Philippe Garrel
Cuori Puri directed by Roberto De Paolis
The Florida Project directed by Sean Baker
Frost directed by Sharunas Bartas
I Am Not a Witch  directed by Rungano Nyoni
Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc directed by Bruno Dumont (main pic)
L’intrusa directed by Leonardo Di Costanzo
La Defensa del Dragon directed by Natalia Santa
Marlina Si Pembunuh Dalam Empat Babak directed by Mouly Surya
Mobile Homes directed by Vladimir de Fontenay
Nothingwood directed by Sonia Kronlund
Ôtez-moi d’un Doute directed by Carine Tardieu
The Rider directed by Chloé Zhao
West of the Jordan River (Field Diary Revisited) directed by Amos Gitai

THE DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT | CANNES 18-28 MAY 2017 

The Journey (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir: Nick Hamm | Drama | 94min | UK | Timothy Spall | John Hurt |Colm Meaney | Toby Stevens |

A rather crass comedy that reduces the Northern Ireland peace process to a glib foray into the forest. THE JOURNEY is a missed opportunity to make a really resonant and worthwhile meeting of minds between the influential figureheads of the era known as The Troubles..

The cast is superb and well chosen: Timothy Spall plays Ian Paisley, the gritty Protestant leader and head of the Democratic Unionist Party as a toothy gruffalo – almost a parody, while Colm Meaney is perfect as Martin McGuinness – he looks and sounds just like the fearful IRA member and chief negotiator for the dreaded Sinn Féin. Colin Bateman’s script places the two in a Scottish hotel near Edinburgh during the St Andrews meeting that took place in 2006, Paisley was to return to Northern Ireland to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary and McGuinness decides to accompany him during the car journey to the airport – although in reality Paisley’s celebration fell on the final day of the talks.

John Hurt makes an utterly believable MI5 agent (Harry Paterson) who has engineered their journey to the airport, arranging to bug the taxi driven by an undercover policeman (Freddy Highmore/Finding Netherland), unbeknownst to the two passengers. Meanwhile Toby Stevens plays a snarling and facetious Tony Blair who is listening in to the conversation, back at the hotel. But the car is involved in a planned collision leaving the two plenty of time to themselves while they ebulliantly thrash out their differences in a disused church in the heart of the glen.

Sadly this is a rather contrived piece of cinema that cherrypicks and tussles with the truth, jumbling historical facts. And for what? Hollowly humorous at times, and rather poignant as Hurt and McGuinness are now no longer alive, THE JOURNEY comes across as a rather trite final word from the main characters at the coalface of decades of murdering, mayhem and strife that was The Troubles – namely Eniskillen, Bloody Sunday and the 1979 murders of Airey Neave (who escaped from the Nazi’s Colditz) and Lord Louis Mountbatten . MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

 

Tribeca Film Festival | New York | 2017

Founded by Robert De Niro in the spirit of independent cinema, The Tribeca Film Festival takes place around New York Greenwich Village every Spring and this announced its award winners on Thursday, giving top honors to three features directed by women. An additional prize went to an Iranian short film.

Best American Narrative Feature

TFF17_KEEP_THE_CHANGE_1KEEP THE CHANGE Christina Brucato (The Intern), Jessica Walter (Play Misty for Me) and Johnathan Tchaikovsky (Reservation Road) are the stars of writer-director Rachel Israel’s comedy debut which explores the unlikely romantance that develops between  a high-functioning couple who meet in a New York City support group for adults with autism.

 

TFF17_Son_Of_Sofia_3

Best International Narrative Feature

SON OF SOFIA; Greek director Elina Psykou’s darkly imaginative and claustrophobic fable revolving around a 11-year-old who leaves Russia during the 2004 Olympics to live with his mother in Athens as a new life beckons. A surprise awaits him in the shape of a new father making him retreat into the fantasy of a disturbing inner world of his own.                                                                     

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Best Documentary Feature

BOBBI JENE  Elvira Lind’s gorgeously photographed love story also won awards for cinematography and editing. It explores the nature of ambition through its central character’s fight for independence and success in the highly competitive field of dance after leaving Israel to return to her native San Francisco.

 

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 19- 30 APRIL 2017 | NEW YORK CITY 

7th London Spanish Film Festival |21-23 April 2017

The 7TH LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL SPRING WEEKEND 

London Spanish film festival is back again for a Spring weekend celebrating the latest in independent Spanish cinema.

kiki-el-amor-se-hace-slideKIKI, EL AMOR SE HACE | Kiki, Love to Love

dir. Paco León, with Natalia de Molina, Álex García, Paco León, Candela Peña, Alexandra Jiménez | Spain | 2016 | 102 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Paco León (Carmina and Carmina y Amén), returns with another comedy, a remake of Josh Lawson’s 2014 feature A Funny Kind of Love, interweaving five stories riffing on the fetishes and frustrations of his well-drawn and amusing characters. Working with an excellent cast León retains the tension throughout in this light-hearted satire that explores and the do’s and don’ts of Sex.

Friday 21 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

Saturday 22 April | 8.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster Students, £8 | Regent Street Cinema

image001JOTA DE SAURA | Beyond Flamenco

dir. Carlos Saura, with Ara Malikian, Sara Baras, Carlos Núñez, Carmen París | Spain | 2016 | 90 mins | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Visually stunning, Jota de Saura captures the vivacity and charm of the jota, a traditional Spanish dance often accompanied by the use of castanets, from Saura’s birthplace of Aragon. Music and dance has always played an important role throughout his extensive repertoire, and here he takes us from dance classes to studios where illuminated screens with his own paintings provide a magic backdrop to the dancers performances. This a wonderful trip to the world of the jota and its many variations that works towards safeguarding a very special tradition.

sat 22 apr | 4.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

image002 LA PUNTA DEL ICEBERG  | The Tip of the Iceberg

dir. David Cánovas, with Maribel Verdú, Carmelo Gómez, Álex García, Bárbara Goenaga, Fernando Cayo | Spain | 2016 | 91 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Cánovas’ debut feature is a stylish satirical thriller that examines how  surveillance cameras recording every moment of our working lives as employees runs contrary to the equally omnipresent data protection culture. Maribel Verdú plays the central character investigating a series of suicides in a large corporation.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

sat 22 apr | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LA CORONA PARTIDA | The Broken Crown

dir. Jordi Frades, with Irene Escolar, José Coronado, Michelle Jenner, Raúl Mérida, Eusebio Poncela, Rodolfo Sancheo | Spain | 2016 | 113 mins | cert. PG | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Following the death of his wife Isabella, Ferdinand of Aragon (known collectively as the Catholic Kings) goes to war with his son-in-law Philip, over the kingdom of Castille, which has fallen into the hands of Ferdinand’s daughter Joan. The Broken Crown brings in a new perspective to this episode of 16 century Spanish history by focusing on the unscrupulous lust for power of two men and the fragility of a woman who never wanted to be Queen and who was devastated when betrayed by her husband and her own father.

sun 23 apr | 5.00pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LAS FURIAS | The Furies

dir. Miguel del Arco, with Carmen Machi, Alberto San Juan, Emma Suárez, Mercedes Sampietro, José Sacristán | Spain | 2016 | 125 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK première

70-something Marga faces an unexpected backlash from her children when she announces her intention to sell the family house and travel the world. Miguel de Arco, one of Spain’s most popular theatre directors, casts a solid Spanish ensemble in his first feature film, a family tale full of big egos and surprising twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

sun 23 apr | 8.00pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

London Spanish Film Festival | 21-23 April 2017 | Regent Street Cinema | Cine Lumiere.

 

 

The Handmaiden (2016) | Agassi

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook

Writers: Chung Seo-kyung, Park Chan-wook, Novel by Sarah Waters

The Handmaiden (Agassi) is a sumptuously mounted and kinky erotic love story set in the 1930s Orient. Neatly sidestepping tawdriness the writer take the original text and flip it over into a tale of three parts, told from differing viewpoints that gradually morph into the realms of fantasy in a challenging re-telling.

Sarah Waters’ original novel Fingersmith tells the story of a girl who leaves poverty in Victorian England using her skills as an expert pickpocket to gain fame and fortune, eventually getting her comeuppance at the hands of a wealthy swindler after serving in the household of a Japanese heiress. We first get a glimpse of young Sookee (played by newcomer Kim Tae-ri) in the slums where she grew up surrounded by unwanted babies. Korea is under Japanese rule and she is sent to the mansion of Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), a black-tongued old man who specialises in book dealing. It soon becomes clear that she is to be the maid of his niece, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee – Right Now, Wrong Then). In truth, Sookee is a crafty petty thief sent by a pimp-style gangster called The Count (Ha Jung-woo) to help him marry the young heiress and gain control of her fortune. This is all revealed in a series of fast-moving scenes while we’re still reading the subtitles. Hideko seems to be a naive, virginal orphan who knows nothing of the real world outside her sheltered kingdom. But it soon emerges that her nonce of an uncle has groomed her from childhood to be his companion after driving her aunt (Moon So-ri) insane and later hanging herself from a cherry tree and haunting the mansion. But the Count suddenly appears presenting himself as a putative suitor from a noble family who is to add value to Kouzuki’s book collection with illustrations.

There is great deal of languorous heavy petting here between both men and women in scenes reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade’s “Crimes of Love” and this is all cleverly achieved by filming the sequences from different angles. The denouement is a complex affair in this lavish epic which is mostly filmed in the dark interiors of the mansion, although it occasionally breaks out in to some glorious surroundings of a nearby lake and shimmering landscapes. A real arthouse treat that needs to be seen again to fully appreciate the intricate plotting. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 14 APRIL 2017

 

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder | BFI Retrospective | Classics now on Dual Format

6a00d8341ce04153ef01b8d08dfdb6970cFASSBINDER_PACKSFassbinder’s LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH | LIEBE IST KÄLTER ALS DER TOD made a low-key feature debut at Berlinale Film Festival in 1969, heralding the prolific career of one of Germany’s greatest auteurs of the second half of the 20th century. Critics talked about the stylish black and white aesthetics of DOP Dietrich Lohmann (who would go on and shoot ten more Fassbinder films); were puzzled by the rather simplistic but enigmatic storyline and liked the performances including the director’s turn playing his own fallen hero Franz, a pimp, who does not want to cooperate with the Mafia and falls in the love with Joanna (Hanna Schygulla), who works for him. Ulli Lommel is the killer Bruno, a sort of German version of Alain Delon in Melville’s Le Samurai, complete with sunglasses. Fassbinder commented at the Festival “I want the audience to formulate their own personal take on the film. That’s all I’m interested in. That’s much more political than forcing them to believe that the police are the worst aggressors. I am not interested in that sort of cinema, I am against the idea of people marrying and producing children without thinking or having any idea why they love each other”. His statements were as enigmatic as his film, and one Berlin critic wrote “Fassbinder does not care if he makes another film, he just wanted to make statement”. How wrong he turned out to be.

katzelmacher_1969_2KATZELMACHER was shot in only nine days during August 1969, just four months after Love is colder than Death. Based on Fassbinder’s play of the same name. Fassbinder against the central protagonist, Jorgos, a Greek ‘guest-worker,’ who falls foul of the youthful German machos, living a desperate existence in the backstreets of Munich. In much the same way as Fear Eats the Soul, (which he could go on to make in 1974), the drama uses Jorgos’ romantic encounters in the city to evidence the political undercurrent of racism, particularly amongst the sub-proletariat. Love and money dominate this male world where men have to buy their women, because of their inability to love. Katzelmacher – again shot by Lohmann in stunning black and white – is just a variation of Fassbinder’s debut, but shows the role of the immigrant worker, a theme that would dominate many of his films.

UnknownBEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (WARNUNG VOR EINER HEILIGEN NUTTE) Fassbinder turns the camera on himself in this semi-autobiographical feature about filmmaking. Shot in 22 days in Sorrento, Italy, during September 1970, the film had his premiere at the Venice Film Festival a year later, where no “Lions” were awarded. For no obvious reasons the narrative is set in Spain where a film team is waiting for the director and the subsidy money from the Federal Government. When the director Jeff (Lou Castel) arrives, he immediately becomes the centre of total chaos. The ageing star of the production (Eddie Constantine as himself) seems lost in the much younger crowd and starts a relationship with the actress Hanna (Schygulla). Jeff explains a very tricky shot to the cinematographer, and the simple idea of the film to Constantine: “Patria o muerte” is about the government’s brutality, which is legitimised by the state. But crew and cast are still fighting arguing, drinking and Jeff is beaten up. bewareofaholywhore1But in spite of everything, the shoot finally gets underway. Michael Ballhaus’ widescreen images echo Raul Coutard’s work for Godard’s Le Mépris, and Fassbinder’s own lousy, little line producer Sasha could have been equally at home in Godard drama. For Fassbinder, BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE was a good-bye to collective filmmaking: “The film is about the production of a film, but it is much more about how a group works, and how the leading status of the director develops and is used by crew and cast. I am not sure, if the film was a new beginning, but it was a surely an endpoint. With this film, we have buried our idea of collective work which we started [before filming] with the Anti-Theatre group in Munich. I did not know, how we would go on in future, but I knew we could not go back. This film is about what happened in Whitty (1970), when too many people relied on me, and I had to take on more and more responsibilities. During the shooting of Whity, everything collapsed: BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE is a about what happened on the set of Whity.”

The_Merchant_of_Four_SeasonsBy 1971 Fassbinder had a prodigious oeuvre to his name and THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (HÄNDLER DER VIER JAHRESZEITEN) was his twelfth feature film, a tragic melodrama shot in eleven days in August of that year. Set in the ’50s, like many of his later films, The Merchant is a story of a loser during West Germany Economic Miracle. Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmuller) has been a soldier in Foreign Legion, and a policeman. But now he is reduced to selling fruit and vegetables in a street market  – in a country where wealth and prosperity is an easy game. His wife Irmgard (Irm Herrmann), is financially aspirational, pushing her husband to the limits with emotional coldness. He suffers a heart attack and afterwards employs an old army friend Harry, to do the physical work. But Hans does not give up on Irmgard, he wants to be loved. The triangle becomes a trap for Hans. Fassbinder was impressed by the films of his fellow German director Douglas Sirk, and admitted that he integrated some elements of Sirk’s Hollywood melodramas into The Merchant. “In the beginning, I Ioved to create cool, detached films. Then I got interested in dramatic films, now I prefer melodrama.”

BITTER_2D_BDTHE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant), a psychological drama, followed in the wake of The Merchant and was shot in ten days during January 1972. Control-freak fashion designer Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) lives with her servant and assistant Marlene (Hermann) in a symbiotic relationship: Petra uses Marlene in every way, but Marlene takes this all on board, feeling a masochistic pride in her subservient status. When Petra falls in love with the much younger Karin (Schygulla), she soon finds out that the young woman is only after her money. When Karin’s husband returns from Australia, Karin leaves Petra and returns to her husband. Petra admits she only wanted to possess Karin, as she does Marlene. She is contrite, and offers Marlene a position of equal rights in her business, but Marlene simply packs her suitcase and leaves. Suffering and subservience is her raison d’être – She did not want equality. Fassbinder later commented “Marlene leaves Petra because there is a certain power in being subservient: being in charge herself involves a degree of risk and responsibility. Many interpreted the outcome as a liberation for Marlene, but that is not the case: those who have willingly accepted the yoke of subservience for 30 years, often find total freedom and the responsibility it entails, a poisoned challice

imagesCHINESE ROULETTE (CHINESISCHES ROULETTE) By the summer of 1976, Fassbinder was taking more time to direct. 1976 also saw the making of Satansbraten and Bolwieser and he took over a month to shoot this thriller in Beyreuth and Thurnau Castle in Bavaria. CHINESE ROULETTE is the nearest Fassbinder would get to Claude Chabrol, one of his early heroes. Ariane (Carstensen) and her husband Gerhard (Alexander Allerson) pretend to leave Munich for separate destinations for the weekend, but they soon reunite in their Bavarian castle. Ariane meets her lover Kolbe (Lommel), while Gerhard is looking forward to seeing his lover Irene (Anna Karina). Their handicapped daughter Angela also turns up with with her teacher Traunitz (Macha Meril), who is seemingly unable to speak. When Angela starts to play a kind of truth game called Chinese Roulette, the adults fear and mistrust of each other suddenly becomes palpable. For Fassbinder, it was a new beginning: “This is the first film where I don’t use the actors to tell the story. The main theme is ‘better the devil you know’: the protagonists all cling to their relationships, even though these are dysfunctional. There is a certain comfort in routine and core misery, which in itself is a kind of happiness.

Fassbinder_BRD_Trilogy_2003_CCTHE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (DIE EHE DER MARIA BRAUN) Shot in just over a month during the winter of 1978, this tragic love story was rejected by Cannes Film Festival but premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 1979, where it won a Silver Bear, and Hanna Schygulla Best Actress. Maria (Schygulla) has married Hermann (Klaus Lowitsch) during WWII but he fails to return after the war. Working in an American bar, Maria discovers her husband is dead and she falls in love with the much older American GI Oswald (Ivan Disney). Out of blue, her husband turns up when she is about to go to bed with Oswald, forcing her to make a difficult decision. In the interim, she has discovered personal freedom but Herrmann simply wants to control ‘the old’  Maria. Marriage is perhaps Fassbinder’s most mature film, influenced mainly by Godard, Brecht and Wedekind, it is poetic realism on an epic scale. Fassbinder’s critique of the crass materialism in West Germany after WWII is again a strong component. Schygulla had obviously matured very well since 1969, and became an international star. Fassbinder was emphatic about his latest outing: “It is a multi-layered film, much is hidden beneath the simple storyline. The audience has the chance to enjoy a love story, or something much more complex”. AS/MT

NOW SCREENING AS A MAJOR RESPECTIVE AT THE BFI DURING APRIL- MAY 2017 AVAILABLE AS A SELECTION OF TEN CULT CLASSICS on DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD FROM 28 MARCH and 4TH APRIL 2016 

 

I am Not Your Negro (2016)

James BaldwinDirector: Raoul Peck | Writers: Raoul Peck, James Baldwin | With Samuel L Jackson | 93min | US | Doc

Black activist and writer James Baldwin once said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”: Writer and socal critic Baldwin was an highly intellectual thinker who explored the unspoken intricacies of racial tension, and here illuminates the lives of three American civil rights campaigners in Raoul Peck’s immersive and meaty biopic, narrated by by Samuel L. Jackson.

Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are the focus of I Am Not Your Negro (also the title of , an unflinching study of flagrant prejudice in 1960s America. It sometimes feels pretty close to the bone in its stark exposé of white supremacy and the apathy of ignorance.

When invited by literary agent Jay Acton to pen a book on the three, Baldwin’s turned him in the form of a slim yet pithy manuscript entitled Remember This House. And this became the basis for Raoul Peck’s film. Baldwin comes across as a calm and appealingly reflective man in television interviews and chat programmes. The film is fleshed with excerpts from classics such as In the Heat of the Night; Stagecoach; Dance, Fools, Dance and Elephant that feature Black actors portraying America’s cultural background in controversial settings or positions of inferiority.

Saliently shot in black and white and cleverly edited by Alexandra Strauss, the doc also includes topical posters. The occasional inter-titles, flagging up various ideas and headings, feel superfluous in a film that tells its own story evocatively and engagingly without a need for introduction.

Honourable and important in its subject matter, the only criticism of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is its lack of a cohesive narrative. Freewheeling between themes and ideas, the underlying thrust is one of social unease and violence, wherein the White man exploits the Black man feeling threatened by him, for reasons that never become entirely justifiable to modern audiences. Such is the nature of prejudice.

Baldwin, who was born in the Bronx and eventually died in Saint-Paul de Vence in 1987, commented that the history of America was a Black one, but he never comes across as vehemently racist or angry despite his background of poverty and deprivation, always peddling a reasonable and contemplative agenda that nevertheless maintained that racism was the source of America’s social divide. This is an enjoyable and edifying experience. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS APRIL 2017

The Last Stage | Ostatni etap (1948) Mubi

Director: Wanda Jakubowska | Scr: Wanda Jakubowska, Gerda Schneider | Cast: Tatjana Gorecka, Antonina Górecka, Barbara Drapinska, Aleksandra Śląska | Drama / Poland / 110 minutes

Wanda Jakubowska (1907-1998) and her scriptwriter Gerda Schneider were themselves both inmates of Auschwitz; and Jakubowska’s determination to remember what she was witnessing in order to make a film about it helped keep her alive. In the summer of 1947 she duly returned to Auschwitz to film the exteriors of ‘The Last Stage’, with former inmates among the supporting cast. (The fact that it was shot in summer already sets it apart from most other films set in the camps, which usually find winter more atmospheric). Much of the imagery of later reenactments like ‘Schindler’s List’ – including the famous orchestra – can be found here; while the fact that the events it reenacts were only a couple of years previously gives it an immediacy and visual authenticity no later reenactments could hope to match. (One tends to think of Auschwitz as just a collection of huts, but seeing the real thing in this film you realise how enormous it was).

‘The Last Stage’ is not strictly speaking about The Holocaust, but is more an anti-fascist document of the rape of Poland by its occupiers; and we actually see Polish women protesting at their incarceration and rough treatment on the grounds that they’re not Jewish. Jakubowksa herself was there because of her activity in the resistance, while the onscreen introduction lists the many different nationalities held in Auschwitz. We see Frenchwoman singing the Marseilleise and Russian women dancing to celebrate Stalingrad (although it is sobering to reflect that at this stage liberation will still be two very long years away); and one prominent character is a gypsy.

Jakubowska’s film is organised as an ensemble piece which flits from group to group, the most prominent character being Barbara Drapinska as Martha Weiss, a young Jewish woman whose ability to speak German result in her life being spared (for the time being) to function as an interpreter. The actress who actually heads the cast list is Tatjana Gorecka as Eugenia, a Russian doctor ultimately tortured to death for attempting to tell the truth to members of an international commission who visit the camp to observe the conditions. (The fact that outside observers were allowed into some of the camps, where they were successfully lied to about what was actually going on, remains little known).

The chimneys perpetually belching smoke are frequently remarked upon throughout the film; and although the actual mass extermination programme is not depicted there are harrowing scenes involving the murder of a baby and the withholding of medicine. The cruelty of the guards and the kapos is depicted as a routine matter and the camp administration as unimaginative jobsworths. But Jakubowska is more concerned with making an uplifting socialist tribute to comradeship in adversity than a recitation of Nazi atrocities. Everyone in ‘The Last Stage’ is an individual, even the administrators (who get a surprising amount of screen time). Despite the characters all speaking in their native languages, the cast are all Polish (some of those playing Germans obviously dubbed), and with their handsome Polish faces look far too healthy and well nourished to dispel memories of the damning newsreel footage of starved and broken human beings that shocked the world in 1945. Even Aleksandra Śląska as the camp overseer is ironically much prettier than any of the actual women guards we see in contemporary newsreels.

‘The Last Stage’ could only have been made with Russian approval (Stalin, apparently actually approved the script personally), the excellent photography is by a veteran Russian cameraman, Bentsion Monastyrsky, and the Red Army are portrayed as saviours. Although stills from ‘The Last Stage’ regularly appear in film histories, the film itself (along with the rest of postwar Polish cinema) is little seen today. That Jakubowska remained an ardant communist until the very end of her long life, as well as enthusiastically wedded to socialist realist aesthetics, led to her own work ironically being sidelined as “politically incorrect” in post-communist Poland. RICHARD CHATTEN

ON MUBI

User Friendly Death (2007) | Kinoteka Film Festival 2017

Dir: Marcin Koszałka | Doc | Poland | 69min

With 28 credits to his name since starting out in 2000, Marcin Koszałka is easily one of the most successful Polish cinematographers working today. Known within the industry for his interest in difficult subjects his full-length documentary revolves around the people who work at a funeral parlour at Kedzierzyn-Kozle and a body incineration centre in Czech Ostrava. The film shows what happens to human bodies after death and how the employees in these places go about their business inured to the macabre nature of their work. Koszałka’s illustrates how it is possible to become disaffected by death and dealing with the dead once we have become accustomed to it, now matter how grim. In a dispassionate and matter of fact treatment Koszałka shows how even the smell of the formaldehyde starts to become almost unnoticeable as the workers go about their daily business in the morgue.

Koszałka is known as a hands on filmmaker, often credited as writer and director, and at times editor. His meticulous attention to detail have made him a highly sought after collaborator working with Borys Lankosz on The Reverse (2009), Jacek Bromski on Entanglement (2011) and most recently with Michał Rosa on Happiness Of The World (2016). So far in his career most of his auteur work has been short and full length documentaries, all of which, to at least a certain extent, deal with the sad truths of life, and learning to live with them. His three shorts including Such A Nice Boy I Gave Birth To (2000) about his relationship with his parents as well as Till IT Hurts (2008) concern themselves with one of his recurring themes: the often irreparable damage that an upbringing can have on a person. His main subject however is death and its omnipresence within life, highlighted here in Declaration Of Immortality (2010) and User-Friendly Death (2007). His latest film The Red Spider which he directed, wrote, photographed and edited is also screening during Kinoteka 2017.

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 17 MARCH – 5 APRIL 2017

 

Ashes and Diamonds | Popiol i Diament (1958) | Kinoteka 2017

Dir: Andrzej Wajda | Poland | Wartime Drama | 103MIN

ASHES AND DIAMONDS is undoubtedly a film noir. Not only has Wajda borrowed the sinister shadows and the black and white aesthetic from the masters of the genre, but he has given the film a hero who is already as good as dead from the outset. Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski) and his friend Andrzej are fighters for the Polish Home Army, which battled against the Germans for the Government in Exile in London. Now, on May 8th 1945, their new enemies are the Communists. The men receive an order to kill the party secretary Szczuka. But they fail, and kill two civilians instead. After spending the night with the bar maid Krystyna, Maciek shoots the party secretary the next day, and escapes with Andrzej on a lorry. They meet Drewnowski, a Communist functionary, who is working for Home Army, and warns the two. Maciek, who does not know that Drewnowski is on his side, runs away, is shot and dies on a rubbish dump.

The greatest irony is that Wajda’s interpretation of the film differs diametrical from the production studio ‘Kadr’ and indeed the whole Stalinist state apparatus, which obviously saw the two assassins as counter-revolutionaries, coming to an deserved end. For Wajda, and some of the cast and crew, the opposite was true. But even with a pro-communist interpretation, ASHES AND DIAMONDS is a deeply nihilistic film: even though the war is won, destruction is absolute, and the future looms grey and unwelcoming. The film was shot in a small town where nearly everybody knew each other. Nobody trusts their neighbours: be it for collaboration with the Germans, or the competition for a place in the new order – this is a fearful town. The fireworks, which celebrates the end of the war, and masks the shots fired by Maciek, is anything but a signal for peace. Dark and foreboding, ASHES AND DIAMONDS is not so much the final chapter of WWII, but the first skirmish of an occupation. AS

KINOTEKA 2017 | 4 APRIL 18.30 | BARBICAN

Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things (2016) | Bfi Flare Festival 2017

Dirs: Mark Kenneth Woods | Michael Yerxa | Canada | Doc | 71min

Taking its name from the Inuktitut language translation of lesbian and gay, literally: “two soft things rubbing together” and “two hard things rubbing together” this documentary explores the experiences of LGBT Inuits and examines their survival since the 1950s where colonisation, religion, forced migration, and cultural assimilation impacted on their communities in northwest Canada. This is largely viewed from the perspective of the small but growing community of LGBT Inuit people living in Nunavut, where they prepare for one of the world’s more remote and snowbound Pride festivals, taking place in the territorial capital of Iqaluit.

It emerges that LGBT identity and long-term same-sex relationships have always existed in Inuit culture, and same-sex sexual activity was common and accepted, particularly as a remedy for social and sexual isolation during times when men and women were segregated from each other as the men left for the traditional hunting season. These cultures norms continued until Catholicism emerged as a dominant religion during the 1950s, although Inuit spirituality still forms an important of their culture, despite many having been taught that homosexuality is incompatible with their traditions, causing a number to move south to large Canadian cities such as Ottowa and Quebec.

Without a straightforward narrative but benefitting from superb cinematography of the wild and snowy landscapes of the region, the film takes on an episodic style with the directors combining archive footage and photos with a series of talking head interviews with those who have commited to uncovering and reclaiming the hidden history of the Inuks, amongst these are filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, politicians Jack Anawak and Paul Okalik, and activists Allison Brewer, Nuka Fennell and Jesse Mike. MT

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 16-26 MARCH 2017

 

 

The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (2017) | Bfi Flare 2017

Dir: Jennifer M Kroot | Doc | US/UK | 91min

Armistead Maupin churned out copy like a demon according to his editor at the San Francisco Chronicle where he worked as a regualr columnist. His prodigious talent and remarkable work ethic was possibly due to his strict upbringing by a father whom he admits to hating, according to Jennifer Kroots informative biopic of the writer and longtime advocacy for queer civil rights, and creator of the popular Tales of the City franchise.

Enriched with a commentary from talking heads Sir Ian McKellen, Laura Linney and Amy Tan, Kroot’s documentary is the first to chart the life of a writer who has known success and personal tragedy and now seems to have largely vanished from the scene, so the film will certainly be greeted with warmth and appreciation by his fans and those who have enjoyed his work, whatever the critical appraisal.

Kroot covers Maupin’s career as a journalist right through to his status as a US household name with an impressive array of photographs and archive footage showing how the he struggled to come out, as the son of a white supremacist father, and ended up with a series of gay lovers, one of whom had partnered Rock Hudson, eventually emerging as an avant-garde figure of his generation, or so the luminaries would have us believe. Rather a shame then that the film has a rather lightweight quality with cartoonish 1970s visuals in the style of Monty Python or TV’s Magpie, and unimaginative and lacklustre format. MT

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 16-26 MARCH 2017

 

Holy Motors (2012) Arrow online

Director: Leos Carax | Cast: Denis Lavant, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue | 120mins.  Drama

Leos Carax is always full of surprises and Holy Motors is no exception. Weird and beguiling, it’s another fantasy trip into the unknown from the Cinema de Look movement focusing on style over narrative with a dynamite Denis Lavant as the central character Mr Oscar.

From the opening titles this darkly comic kaleidoscope fires up our imagination – how can a respectable business man start the day in suit, tie and City mode and then morph into a series of different guises arriving home in the back of a limo .

As Mr Oscar, Denis has fun with wigs, make-up and special effects costumes that transform him into many weird guises: a street beggar, a performance artist and a graveyard ghoul, to name but a few. During this nocturnal reverie a frisky Eva Mendes is carried off on his shoulders and there’s an impromptu turn by Kylie Minogue who bursts into song on the Pont Neuf and then throws herself off the roof of a disused Parisian clothing store in an odyssey of bizarre and outlandish antics. Suspend your disbelief, sit back and just let the whole thing wash over you. MT.

ARROW ONLINE in March 2021 | CANNES PREMIERE 2012

 

 

 

 

 

Happiness of the World | Szczescie Swiata (2016) | Kinoteka Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Michal Rosa | Cast: Karolina Gruszka, Dariusz Chojnacki, Agata Kulesza, Dorothea Segda, Andrzej Konopka, Krzysztof Stroinski | Poland 2016, 98 min

Best known for his Karlovy Vary winner Silence, Michal Rosa’s latest drama is set in the Southern Polish region of Silesia where the male occupants of a block of flats are obsessed by the charms of a beautiful Jewish woman. This is an enigmatic tragi-comedy that takes place in two parts: the first opens shortly before the outbreak of the Second World in the Summer of 1939, and the second, after the War is over.

IMG_3493Roza (Gruszka) is no femme fatale: she unwittingly becomes the focus of the sexual longings of her male neighbours; her only wish is to make men happy. The elderly neighbour downstairs hangs on her every word, when he is not tending to his orchids. He will later move into Roza’s flat, to be close to her in spirit. Then there is Rufin (Chojnacki), a mathematical genius, who works as a liftboy in a hotel, but has a very limited imagination: he tells everybody, including his wife Klara (Segda) and sons Emil and Kamil, that life is simple, just a question of ‘getting from A to B’. Later Kamil will have a fatal bike accident, and Klara will punish him forever. When he first sets eyes on Roza, who introduces him to dancing, he is positively enchanted to discover that you don’t always have to go from A to B to achieve success. Gertruda (Kulesza/IDA) keeps her family’s Jewish identity under wraps, along with that of her son Tomasz (Stroinski). But her husband Konrad (Konopka) has gone a step further: he lives and works in Germany, pretending to be of Aryan descent. His sister Gertruda is in a psychiatric hospital – and he has plans for her to be put to death: “The time has come, to decide who should live, and who is only a burden.” Tomasz is forbidden to speak Jiddish, but when he meets Roza, he suddenly remembers his identity, making his mother furious. After the invasion of Poland by the Germans, Roza is summoned to the Gestapo Office, but now none of the tenants want to help her – apart from a man living in the basement, who has written a famous (imagined) Baedeker guide, describing places all over the world he has never visited.

HAPPINESS OF THE WORLD is sometimes is too opaque for its own good, so just sit back and enjoy the madcap story with its endless twists and turns. Marcin Koszalka (The Red Spider) serves as the film’s DoP evoking a stunning world of sumptuous visual images where Katowice is one of the main characters, along with a brilliant ensemble cast. AS

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 17 MARCH UNTIL 5 APRIL 2017

Something Better to Come | Kinoteka Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Hanna Polak | Documentary | Denmark/Poland/Japan/Netherlands/USA 2014 | 98 min.

Filmed over 14 years, Hanna Polak’s portrait of survival in Europe’s largest junkyard, the Svalka, just 13 miles away from the Kremlin, is a sobering witness report of utter deprivation. What makes it even worse (and sometimes unbearable to watch) is that the majority of those living inside the guarded fenced-in area are children and teenagers, exploited by a Mafia who runs the hell-on-earth camp for profit.

Centred around Yula, who was ten when Polak (The Children of Leningradsky) starting filming, Something Better to Come, shows the daily struggle of those who are not only homeless but have to survive the harsh winters in make-shifts huts, whilst scrounging the rubbish heaps around them for something to sell to the Mafia overseers, who pay them with alcohol (often of the deadly moonshine variety) and substandard food.

Yula and her mother entered the junkyard camp after Yula’s father died. Since the flat was in his name, the two became homeless. Many others landed in this circle of hell because their estate blocks were demolished, making space for the building of more upmarket property. Yula’s mother is an alcoholic, like many others here. Survival rate is not very high, the lack of medical support one of the reasons.

When Yula got pregnant, she moved with her mother to live with her grandfather in his ramshackle house (which was still luxury compared with their Svalka ‘housing’). But the grandfather abused Yula physically, calling her a whore, and the women moved out before the birth of the child. In hospital, Yula decided to give up her baby for adoption – a sad, but rational decision. But somehow Yula got lucky: the authorities found a flat for her – the equivalent of winning the lottery. After all the misery, Polak ends on an uplifting note, with Yula, her partner and her week old baby daughter happy together in their flat.

This lucky exception should not deflect from the utter misery witnessed beforehand. This is straight out of Gorky (a quote from his ‘Depth’ opens the film), a pre-industrial hell. But the physical suffering is often outweighed by psychological trauma. Again and again we hear the children say, “I want to be treated like a human being”. It is heart-breaking to see them crawl through the dirt in their search for anything they can sell to their ‘guards’, and, sometimes being killed in the process when they get in the way of the bulldozers. On the radio, we hear Putin’s voice, virtually unknown in 2000, when he was elected first as president. Later he talks about the great progress made in Russia, where more and more children are born, showing how positive families in the country must be feeling.

Something Better to Come is an exceptional and unique documentary – directed, written and photographed by Polak, after she could not find anybody else to pick up the camera. The editing too was a lengthy process: many contacted were overwhelmed by the material, others promised to help, only to find better remunerated work in Hollywood. It is due Polak’s perseverance in raising awareness of this truly dreadful camp-of-no-hope, a real dystopian nightmare, right next to the seat of government of a major power in world politics. AS

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH UNTIL 5 APRIL 2017

Playground |Plac zbaw (2016) | Kinoteka 2017

Dir: Bartosz M. Kowalski | Screenwriters: Bartosz M. Kowalski, Stanislaw Warwas

Cast: Michalina Swistun, Nicolas Przygoda, Przemek Balinski, Patryk Swiderski, Pawel Brandys, Anita Jancia-Prokopowicz, Pawel Karolak, Malgorzata Olczyk

88min | Thriller | Poland

From a country known for its strong family values and staunch Catholicism comes PLAYGROUND, the debut feature of Bartosz M Kowalski who slowly constructs a story so doom-laden and harrowing it will stay will you for a very long time. It brings to mind the tragedy of 3 year old toddler Jamie Bulger who disappeared from a Liverpool shopping centre in 1993, never to be seen again.

Kowalski’s minimal approach to his co-scripted and produced subject matter is laudable as he explores, in a rather ominous tone, the early days of summer for a couple of pubescent boys as they kick over the traces of dwindling boyhood in the final term at junior school. Impressively performed by a trio of newcomers, this brutally stark thriller throws up a number of question marks about the future of an underprivileged youth in Poland who have have clearly not benefited from the spoils of post EU enrichment, whilst growing up untrammeled by the stern regime of the post communist years, of which their parents still bear the legacy from their own upbringing. This regime inculcated discipline, commitment and obedience to their elders. And although the privations are still present, these youngsters are from the internet generation which has allowed them to access unsuitable material and resulted in a dumbed down and casual attitude to violence and pornography before their own moral compass has had a chance to healthily be set.

Szymek (Nicolas Pryzgoda) lives in a broken down apartment block and is part-time carer for his physically handicapped father who is spends his time listening to classical music in bed, causing the boy to punch him up in unbridled frustration. His schoolfriend Czarek (Przemek Balinski) lives nearby in a squalid tenement where he shares a bedroom with his much younger brother who cries all time. “He’s still a child, and so are you, only much older” chides his mother (a hagard and harried Malgorzata Olczyk). Meanwhile, his older brother jeers at him when asked for some spare cash. None of this justifies delinquency but a toxic dynamic develops when he gets together with his mate. We see them secretly taunting plump school girl Gabrysia, on account of her puppy fat, and she mistakes their attentions for romantic interest, led on by another girl in her form: Children can be so mean. Plucking up courage, Gabrysia asks Szymek to meet her in a remote farm-building with the idea of asking him for a date. But when he turns up with Czarek, the two humiliate her, recording the footage on mobiles until she runs away, driven to tears.

The final scenes take place in silence, apart from some distant chatter and ambient birdsong, as we see Czarek and Szymek walking a gleeful toddler out of a shopping-mall. Clearly they have tempted him away with the promise of sweets or a treat. Straining to make out what happens next is an eye-bleedingly horrific experience as the images blur and fade into the distance, but never seem to end. MT

KINOTEKA 2017 | 19 MARCH 15.00 | REGENT STREET CINEMA

Quand on a 17 ans (Being 17) | BFI Flare Film Festival

Director: André Téchiné (Les Témoins) Writers: André Téchiné, Céline Sciamma

With Sandrine Kiberlain, Kacey Mottet Klein, Corentin Fila, Alexis Loret

Drama | World premiere | France

Revered writer|director André Téchiné portrays adolescent sexual awakening, loss and love in the snowy landscapes of the French Pyrenees. Wild Reeds will spring to mind here, as will his co-writer Celine Sciamma’s rites of passage films Tomboy and Girlhood. But this is a work of multi-layered subtlety that pictures two rival teenagers at loggerheads in a close-knit community where change comes slowly and in unexpected ways

Poignant upbeat but always real BEING 17 has a searing sense of place and of the local traditions in this farming community as it moves through three seasons winter, spring and summer. Stunningly captured by cinematographer Julien Hirsch’s spectacularly scenic shots of vermillion sunsets and icy mountain vistas, the story opens at the cattle farm where teenage Thomas (Corentin Fila), the bi-racially adopted son of Christine (Mama Prassinos) and Jacques (Jean Fornerod) helps out with the animals while studying at the main lycée several hours ride away in the valley. A loner, he resents the more intelligent Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein), a gawky but sensitive kid who doesn’t hide his talent in the classroom. That prompts Tom to beat him up after school, but Damien is too tough let it worry him. Living in the lcoal town with his doctor mother Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain) he also enjoys boxing, training locally with old family friend Paulo (Jean Corso).

Damien’s father, Nathan (Alexis Loret), is in the French airforce stationed oversees. Marianne treats Thomas’ mother Christine one day and discovers she’s pregnant. Marianne invites Thomas to stay while his mother is resting, unaware that the two boys are sworn enemies and she secretly quite fancies Thomas. The boys’ animosity is pictured in frequent punch ups that somehow start to spark feelings of another nature between them. Klein was pictured in the equally snowy Sister (2012) and has since blossomed developing an raw and piercing sensitivity in his acting which he brings to his role as Damien. As Thomas, Corentin Fila has his own fawn-like sensuously tempered with impetuousness.  The genesis of their relationship is so subtle as to be imperceptable but gradually manifests itself from close contact during their tussles. Drawn together from lonliness and, to a degree, isolation it is bred from a mutual longing for emotional and physical closeness  but is conveyed in bewildered feelings of insecurity and is tenderly moving to watch. There are so many strands here interacting and evolving, yet Téchiné blends them seemlessly together to create a dynamic that feels natural and inevitable as life in village moves on. For her part, Kiberlain lights every scene as a warm and loving mother who is also intuitive, kind and completely natural.

The occasional score is judiciously sparing at just a few points and the tone natural throughout, this is an immersive and satisfying French drama which, along with Things to Come, is sure to go down well with the arthouse crowd.

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 16-26 MARCH 2017

It’s only the End of the World | BFI FLARE Film Festival

Director: Xavier Dolan Writer: Xavier Dolan based on a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce

97min | Drama | Canada

At 27, Canadian maverick Xavier Dolan has made six good features in eight years. So eventually there had to be an exception and it premiered here at Cannes Film Festival in the main competition.

Innovative and always inventive Dolan’s films all driven by a passionate energy and incredible insight as he strives for unusual angles and plot twists in his ambitious narratives and impressive visual style. But here’s the kicker, IT’S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD is not his original source material and that is possible why it’s his least enjoyable feature to date.

Beautifully shot with some outstanding climaxes and lows, the drama is adapted for the screen by Jean-Luc Lagarce with some intense turns from its French cast: Gaspard Ulliel (making his second appearance at the festival this year) plays  Louis, a gay man returning home to his family after over a decade, to reveal his terminal illness and to deal with another thorny issue: “the illusion that I am the master of my life,” which he explains in an opening voiceover.

His dominating mother Martine (Nathalie Baye); his mixed up sister Suzanne (Léa Seydoux); and older brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel), who brings his delightful wife (Marion Cotillard, in an underutilized role), to meet Louis for the first time in his return home after 12 years absence. Antoine is the antagonistic link is the otherwise delighted family circle, and he reacts with Cassel’s trademark belligerence which is intolerable in the car scene where is driving Louis to see his childhood home.

Intimate in setting yet far-reaching in its scope and resonance, those familiar with family disarray will find the film disturbing and disruptive but it never feels claustrophobic despite its domestic confines thanks to Dolan’s visual inventiveness, clever lighting techniques and use of occasional flashbacks to a golden past that fills Louis with nostalgia. Along with Marion Cotillard’s character, Louis emerges the most sympathetic character: softly-spoken and placcid, his eyes well up frequently at the heart-breaking scenario which all feels so familiar to his past strife and his quiet disappointment and hurt is palpably expressed in a subtle facial expressions. Realising he is better off on his own he abruptly leaves. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | COMPETITION ENTRY

 

Afterimage | Powidoki (2016) | Kinoteka Polish Film Festival

IMG_3487Dir.: Andrzej Wajda | Cast: Boguslaw Linda, Zofia Wichlacz, Bronislawa Zamachowska, Aleksandra Justa | Poland | 98 min.

Andrzej Wajda’s final film, an unsentimental bio-pic covering the last years of the avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski (1893-1952), is the opposite of a melancholic swansong: AFTERIMAGE is a vicious attack on Stalinist repression and censorship, filmed by a man still young at heart, who never gave up the fight against an inhuman dictatorship regime which perverted the idea of equality.

Despite losing a leg and an arm in active service during WWI, Strzemisnki (a magnificent turn by Linda) led a vibrant life, shown in the opening sequence, when he rolls down a grassy hill with his students of the State Higher School of Arts in Lodz, which he had founded in 1945. A popular lecturer, all his students stood by him when he was dismissed from his post in 1950 for refusing to submit to the doctrine of Socialist Realism. One of his students, Hania (Wichlacz), eventually fell in love with him, but was rebuffed by the artist, because he knew he was dying of tuberculosis. But there was still time for a family drama: Strzeminski had left his wife, the famous sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (Justa), whom he had married in 1920, and who lived with their young daughter Nika (Zamachowska – in a case of life copying art, Justa’s Kobra is Zamachowska’s real life mother). Despite the family’s creative talents, resources were tight. Zamachowska has an other-worldly screen presence: she stands out as a fearless and self-possessed child. particularly in the scene where she walks alone behind the coffin in her broken down shoes and only coat (which she turns inside out after chastisement from a passer-by for its bright colour). After Kobra’s death, Nika moves in with her father and tenderly cares for his needs while lecturing him to eat more and smoke less. But when Hania appears on the scene, on the crafty pretext of recording “The Theory of Vision” on a typewriter stolen from the Art School, Nika makes no bones about moving into the local childrens’ home, where at least she gets a free uniform and new footwear.

The bureaucratic authorities gave Strzeminski a final warning after he damaged a street banner bearing a picture of Stalin, because it cut out the natural from his studio window. It counted for nothing that the painter was the co-founder of the world-famous BLOK group in 1924, a loose association of Cubists, Constructivists and Suprematists, including Malevich (whose students Kobra and Strzeminski had been), as well as El Lissitzky. After Strzemisnki’s dismissal from the Higher Art School, two events followed: firstly, his students’ exhibition was destroyed by hooligans hired by the State Authorities; then came the enforced closure of the Neoplastic Room in the Museum in Lodz, which Strzemisnki had opened in 1948 (and included five Spatial Compositions by Kobro, who nevertheless was not invite to the opening). Further humiliation followed: he was thrown out of the Artists Union, barring him from buying any more painting materials. Since food was only obtainable on ration cards for the employed, his status as unemployed meant that he was reduced to starving. Although his students tried to find odd jobs for him, Hania even getting arrested,  Strzeminski’s body eventually gave up just after Christmas 1952. Whilst Wajda concentrates on the last years of Strzeminski’s life, there is certainly another story to be told: daughter Nika has published a memoir of her parents “Love, Art and Hatred” in 1991.

César-winning (The Pianist) DoP Pawel Edelman’s resplendent visual style records the hardship of the post-war years, and the bitter hounding of a great artist by a posse of petit-bourgeois functionaries, who hide behind their orders from above. The Stalinist regime robs everything from Strzemisnki: even his love for the cinema, which he leaves with his daughter, after having to watch an infuriating propaganda newsreel. An Afterimage is the visual impression that remains on the retina after viewing an image: what will be remembered from Andrzej Wajda’s work is not the narratives that cleverly navigate through Stalinist restrictions and bans, but the memory of his fight to record the truth behind the events in over fifty films that he made from the 1950s onwards. In AFTERIMAGE Wajda drives his last spear into the heart of the Stalinist monster. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH TO 5 APRIL 2017

After Louie (2016) | BFi Flare

Dir.: Vincent Gagliostro | Cast: Alan Cumming, Zachary Booth, Sarita Chadhury, Everett Quinton | USA | 100 min.

First time director/co-writer Vincent Gagliostro explores the current LGTB scene in New York, with this rather episodic yet unsentimental portrait of three different generations of gay men.

Centred around painter turned video filmmaker Sam Cooper (Cumming), has recently made a film about his dying friend, an important campaigner in the 80s and 90s. At the age of 55, Cooper’s apparent midlife crisis leads him to embark on an affair with the much younger Braeden (Booth), who is living with a boyfriend who is HIV positive. After a night of passionate sex, Braeden is very surprised to find 500$ in his trainers: he was in it for the fun, whilst the older man, rather cynically, saw it as a transaction. Cooper the hearts of the audience, when he criticises a couple of recently married friends, for their “white middle-class values, being traitors to the gay men who died in the last century” – this is particularly offensive, since one of them is black – and Sam is the stereotypical white, wealthy middle-class artist. Meanwhile, Cooper continues to pay Braeden for his sexual favours – a moot point with his live-in boyfriend –  he meets up with his ex-college teacher Julian (Quinton), who is trying hard to age gracefully. The only voice of reason in this mayhem of contradictory emotions comes from Maggie (Chadbury) a black mother.

AFTER LOUIE doesn’t quite hang together despite some insightful moments. Visually weak and weighed down with verbose dialogue, it comes across more like a work in progress than the finished article. AS

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH – 27 MARCH 2017

 

A Date for Mad Mary (2016) | BFi Flare

Dir.: Darren Thornton; Cast: Seana Kerslake, Tara Lee, Charleigh Baily; ROI 2016, 82 min.

The feature made for TV debut of director/co-writer Darren Thornton, is a lively but somehow implausible story about a young girl suffering from arrested development. Conventional camerawork doesn’t help with DoP Ole Bratt Birkeland’s images looking tired along with the very clichéd casting.

Mary (Kerslake) has just left prison after a six-month stretch for disfiguring another inmate’s face. In her late teens, Mary, wearing her working class background on her sleeve, doesn’t want to grow up but she has outgrown her role of the rough Tom-Boy ‘in Perpetua’. Her best friend Charlene (Bailey), is about to get married to an older, middle-class man. In spite of many denials, Mary is jealous of Charlene and somehow dreads the wedding in which she is one of the bridesmaids, having to give a speech. More and more isolated, at odds with her self as much her environment, Mary manages to ostracise nearly everyone – except for Jess (Lee), the wedding photographer, who is also a talented singer. After a passionate night, the two very different women deal in their own way with their relationship: Jess, introvert and sensitive, questions Mary’s adoration for Charlene, telling her that she is just competing with her friend, whilst Mary, in her very abrasive way, soon manages to alienate Jess with her loutish behaviour.

Despite of being a decent stab at a Lesbian romance, the drama’s lack of authenticity lets it down: Mary is shown as being so relentlessly awful it’s impossible to imagine that anybody would like her, let alone fall in love with her and the telegraphed happy-ending not helping matters, A Date for Mad Mary is often very embarrassing, and much less funny than the filmmakers imagined. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL  17-27 MARCH 2017

Fashion In Film Festival 2017 | 11 – 26 March

Fashion In Film celebrates its Tenth Anniversary throughout London with a selection of rare and exciting screenings, talks and an exhibition exploring the potent visual means through which film can break away from known reality and herald new worlds of the future or conjure up and celebrate a sumptuous visual past.

The programme showcases an eclectic array of well-loved and neglected features, documentaries and shorts. Discover or revisit Alain Resnais’ LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, Richard Massingham’s wartime propaganda IN WHICH WE LIVE, Nick Knight’s early fashion film SLEEP.

TONY TAKITANI (2004)  The Hoxton, Holborn 18.30, Monday 13 March

BLACK TIE  The Hoxton, Holborn, 18.30 + AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF – Tuesday 14 March

IKARIE XB-1 (1963) Prince Charles 20.45 + EVERYTHING BUT EVERYTHING IN BRI-NYLON – 14 March 

THINGS TO COME (2016), Prince Charles Cinema, 20.45 – 15 March

DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) Picturehouse Central, 18.30 + CHILDHOOD STORAGE, 16 March

LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961), Picturehouse Central, 21.00, 16 March

In_the_Mood_for_Love_bfi-00n-3xqIN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001) Curzon Soho, 18.00 – 17 March

CLEO FROM 5 – 7 (1962)  The Hoxton, Holborn, 20.45 – 17 March

VERTIGO (1958) Curzon Soho, 15.00 + THE PERFECT EMBRACE – 18 March

BEYOND THE ROCKS (1922), Rio Cinema, 13.00 – 19 March

SOLARIS  (1972) Curzon Bloomsbury, 20.30 – 19 March

THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1969) Curzon WC1, 18.30 – 20 March

AELITA: QUEEN OF MARS (1924) Genesis Cinema, 20.30 – Tuesday, 21 MARCH

PRINCESS RACOON (2005), Curzon Soho, 20.30

TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942), 20.30  Genesis Cinema + In Which We Live – 24 March

Holy Motors

BARBARELLA (1968), Barbican Centre, 14.00 – 25 March

HOLY MOTORS (2012) Barbican Centre, 16.00 (right) – 25 March

THE INFERNO UNSEEN  Henri-Georges Clusot’s unfinished last film Barbican Centre, 16.00 – 26 March

FASHION ON FILM | 11 – 26 MARCH 2017 full programme AND TICKETS 

 

 

The Good Postman (2016) | Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Dir. Tonislav Hristov | Finland/Bulgaria 2016, | Doc | 82 mins.

In a remote village deep in the Bulgarian countryside only 36 people turned up to vote in the local elections. Great Dervent is crumbling to the ground and clearly on its last legs but resourceful local postman Ivan has a regeneration plan. Wealthy Syrian refugees have left traces in the decrepit school building in their search for a new home, and Ivan suggests to the villagers that they all gather round and welcome the newcomers into their community. Some agree but some are sceptical that the refugees will take over the few remaining jobs and prove a threat with their ‘criminal’ ways. And who can blame these hospitable and decent people who are used to their own kind and unaccustomed to outside influences?. There is no internet here but the media has not helped matters, whipping up a sentiment of zenophobia with negative TV reportage that fuels the growing climate of ultra-right nationalism.

Glowing with the bucolic splendour of this lush land in the extreme South on the border  with Turkey, Tonislav Hristov’s documentary is cinematic and soulful in tone, but very much along similar lines as the recent Ukrainian Cowboys (2016). Ivan the postman does not only deliver letters but also tea and sympathy to the ageing villagers, even doling out advice on water bills and medical help, he fervently believes the Syrians are a good thing: “Together, between us, we’ll create a good environment in the village”, “there will be children and they will laugh”.

Typically it is the latest immigrants to the village who are the most hostile about Syrians and other newcomers. Ukrainian wayfarer and recent arrival Halachev has taken a strident anti-immigration stance, considering his own credentials. Setting up a cranky electric organ on the common he preaches a negative diatribe: “Bulgaria for Bulgarians, the Syrians are worse than Gypsies”.

Hristov’s rather rambling but watchable documentary is accompanied by a mournful occasional score of folkmusic. It is a sad and rather pitiful story that contrasts sharply with the region’s peaceful and gently rolling countryside. As Ivan’s kindly wife sighs: “you remember a man for his goodness. People danced. Now nothing”. And clearly Ivan is a good and persevering man who will be remembered for his generosity of spirit in a fight that very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world. MT

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL | 6 – 17 March 2017

Man of Iron (1981) | Kinoteka Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Andrzej Wajda; Cast: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Marian Opania, Krystina Janda; Poland 1981, 156 min.

Andrzej Wajda, who died last October aged 90, saw himself as the chronicler of Polish post-war history. MAN OF IRON is a direct sequel to Man of Marble (1977), which landed the director in hot water with the Stalinist censors, and not for the first or last time. Whilst MAN OF IRON would win the Palme d’Or in Cannes on the year of its release, Wajda had to shoot his next film, Danton, in France – before returning to Poland, for another round of fighting with the censors.

Set at the beginning of the Eighties, the journalist Winkel (Opania) is a borderline alcoholic, who works for State TV and Radio and is fed up with everything, including himself. He is sent by his boss to Gdansk to cover the Solidarnosc uprising where the strikers are seemingly winning, he has a clear directive: to find as much dirt as possible to smear the leader Maciej Tomcyk (Radziwiilowicz) – not only in the eyes of the public, but also those of his fellow strikers. But Winkel seems to wake up from a long intellectual and moral coma, and perversely joins Tomcyk and his cause. With the help of Agnieszka (Janda), who featured in Man of Marble, he discovers, that Tomcyk is the son of Mateusz Birkut (played also by Radziwilowic), an emblematic worker of regime, whose history Agnieszka researched in Man of Marble. It emerges that Birkut was killed in one of the earlier fights between Solidarnosc and the police during the Sixties. If you were puzzled by the ending of Man of Marble, this information is proof of the censorship which insisted on that Wajda remove a central part of his narrative. But what we also learn in MAN OF IRON is that Tomcyk is Birkut’s son, and is wrestling with a guilt complex, regarding the death of his father. Whilst Birkut and his fellow workers did not support the students in their strike against the system in the late Sixties, the students reciprocated leaving the workers alone in the early Seventies, when Birkut was killed. Winkel and Agnieszka (under surveillance by the secret police), both seem to find new identity in the renewed struggle.

It is quite clear that Wajda does not see MAN OF IRON as a work of fiction: whilst the colours are bleached out in the fictional parts, the black and white newsreel and documentary clips are much more vibrant. Furthermore, we see Lech Walesa, not only in the newsreel images, but he also acting in the film during Tomcyk’s wedding. It is fiction that informs the events, not the other way round.

With Wajda, the personal and the political are always deeply intertwined. Winkel and Agnieszka are the Alter Egos of the director, searching for the truth, sometimes defeated, but always ready to rise again. DoP Edward Klosinski (Man of Marble), again keeps the images of this Wajda epic memorable. Erasing the borders between fiction and documentary, the director creates an immediacy, which pulls the audience right into the cauldron of the confrontations. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA IN TRIBUTE TO ANDRZEJ WAJDA

The Red Spider|Czerwony Pajak (2015) | Kinoteka 2017 | 17 March – 5 April

Dir/cine. Marcin Koszalka | Thriller | Poland |  Czech Republic | Slovak Republic | 2015 | 90 min.

With a quiver of macabre shorts and documentaries under his belt, Krakow-born filmmaker Marcin Koszalka is one of contemporary Poland’s most interesting talents and gathers around him an award-winning design crew.. Inspired by real events, his first fiction feature is a stylishly pristine and cryptic affair that delivers its sinuous storyline in a tightly-paced 90 minutes.

There are sinister things going on in communist Krakow in 1967. In a snowbound park, champion diver, medical student and dutiful son Karol Kremer discovers the multilated body of a teenage boy on his way home. In the shadows, lurks a man in a beret and Karol follows him home to discover he is the local vet, Lutek. The nightly news announces the 11th victim of a serial killer, a young boy. But Karol (Filip Plawiak) is hardly a straightforward chap himself and clearly a fantasist who becomes obsessed with the murders, visiting Lutek (Adam Woronowicz) with his ailing pet terrier (who he has pre-poisoned), and cross-examining him over the murders, which the vet doesn’t deny. Meanwhile, Karol is also conducting a slow-burning seduction of female photographer Danka who soon becomes the killer’s next victim in a frenzied hammer attack. Kremer is arrested as the prime suspect and bizarrely goes along with police inquiries, relishing the opportunity of becoming the centre of attention yet oblivious to the consequences.

More than just a film about serial killing, THE RED SPIDER is very much an evocative mood piece echoing unsettling political events of the time of widespread student protests with the government in disarray in the run-up to the Prague Spring in neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Koszalka’s immaculate camerawork echoes the chilly climate of sexual repression and uncertainty of the strictly Catholic country. Magdalena Dipont’s sets evoke the sleek minimalism of Sixties design in the interiors and street scenes. Although much of the narrative remains fairly enigmatic, Koszalka constructs a spider web of plausibilities that are not beyond reasonable doubt, and the froideur of perfectly-pitched performances adds allure to this his frigid thriller. MT

KINOTEKA 2017 | 17 MARCH 5 APRIL 2017

Beyond Words (2017)

Dir.: Urszula Antoniak; Cast: Jacub Gierszal, Stanislaw Chyra, Christian Löber, Justyna, Wasilewska; Netherlands/Poland 2017, 97 min.

Urszula Antoniak’s (Code Blue) fourth feature is a melancholic and moody portrait of Michael, a young, Polish born lawyer in contemporary Berlin who, in spite of his German citizenship, feels alienated in the superficially glamorous German capital. Luminously captured in ice-cold black-and-white by Dutch DoP Lennert Hillege, this is a modern version of Musil’s Man without Attributes.

Michael (Gierszal), blond and blue-eyed like a Napola graduate, is asked by his boss Franz (Löber) to take the pro-bono case of an African poet claiming asylum in Germany. But it turns out that the pair have met before and Franz has turned into a proud philosopher questioning the right of nationality with Michael who rejects the case when Franz reminds him of his own origins, commenting “You are very different when you talk Polish. Like a little boy”.

Out of the blue, Michael’s father Stanislaw (Chyra) appears at his doorstep. Stanislaw has been in hiding after some trouble with the authorities in Poland (it is not clear if these were pre-or past 1989), he doesn’t stay for long but his visit leaves his son more insecure than beforehand. Franz emerges an isolated and avoidant figure with few friends apart from a Polish waitress, Alina (Wasilewska from Ida) who, in vain, wants some commitment from him. His dilemma is perfectly illustrated in a short exchange with his father who asks if he feels accepted: “They can’t ignore me”, comes Michael’s reply. “But is that enough?” says the father. “For a start, yes”.

Antoniak emigrated from Poland to the Netherlands, and her own background obviously comes into play with her character Michael – who takes  a while getting used to his father calling him by his given name of Michal. Clearly he is trying to bury his past, and apart from a yearly visit to his mother’s grave, he obliterates his Polish identity. But in spite of being a qualified lawyer, he remains an outsider, his friendship with Franz is very one-sided: Michael tries to copy him like a chameleon, without really liking what he sees. Franz, ironically, treats Michael like an exotic animal but never as an equal. Apart from a sequence towards the end, Michael controls himself rigidly, he treats himself like a work in process. In spite of a weak ending, Beyond Words is a fascinating study of estrangement in a place where the past is barely concealed under a forced modernity. Michael lives an a-historical life in Berlin, ignoring his roots, not wanting to be reminded that he too was once an immigrant. His brittle personality allows him to function in his job; but he is indifference personified.

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | LONDON

Planet Single (2016) | Kinoteka 2017 | 17 March – 26 April

Dir.: Mitja Okorn; Cast: Agnieszka Wiedlocla, Maciej Suhr, Piotr Glowacki, Weronika Ksiezkiewicz, Tomasz Karolak, Michel Czernek, Danuta Stenka; Poland 2016, 136 min.

Director Mitja Okorn’s portrait of contemporary Polish society is a bitter farce about a nation in the grip of media mania, where everybody lives on their smartphones scrambling for public success.

Ania (Wiedlocla), a timid music teacher, and TV host Tomek (Suhr) could not be much more different at the outset. Fighting for a place in the sun on all levels: at school she has to share the gymnasium with boisterous boys, who drown out her class with their ball games,  and at home, she is repressed by her mother (Stenka), who has not to come to terms with the death of her husband, and is needy for attention despite Ania sacrificing a career as a concert pianist to look after her.

Tomek is cocksure to begin with, but his bravado – usually in form of obnoxious, misogynist remarks in front of the camera – is hollow. The TV presenter relies totally on his producer Marcel (Glowacki), who he has copied since secondary school. Tomek picks Ania as one of his contestants for his TV Internet dating show, where he uses a puppet to represent the put-upon music teacher. Meanwhile, Ania’s best friend Ola (Ksiazkiewicz), married to the bone-headed Bogdan (Karolak), is set up by her step daughter, the teenager hoping to get rid of Ola. Ania ends up falling for Antoni (Czerneck), a grieving widower with a little daughter, who joins Ania’s class. But Tomek becomes jealous and wants to sabotage their relationship.

Just when the story is heading for happy-endings all around, destroying everything shown before, a surprising turn of events proves the shallowness of the characters who, sadly, prove to be as shallow and self-seeking as the premise suggests. Below the saccharine coating of the jokes and over-the-top gags THE SINGLE LIFE is suffused with bitterness, and there is a palpable sense of disillusionment with a society that encourages personal and professional success to be played out to the greatest possible audience. DoP Tomasz Madejski (The mighty Angel) conjures up brilliant images at TV the Station (with a viciously ruthless station boss), and behind closed doors, where people imitate their professional counterparts desperately searching for recognition and positive ratings, spinning their own stories with great aplomb. Enjoyable and illuminating, but at 136 minutes far too self-indulgent.

SCREENING AT KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017

The Eccentrics: The Sunny Side of the Street (2015) | Kinoteka 2017

Dir: Janusz Majewski | Musical Drama | Poland | 112min

Janusz Majewski’s stylish musical drama sees a former soldier and jazz fan return to Poland after the Second World War where he forms a swing band striking a chord of optimism in dreary fifties Warsaw. The venture is a roaring success and soon Fabian (Maciej Stuhr) is dating Modesta (Natalia Rybicka), a beautiful and mysterious fellow musician who joins the players as a vocalist. Intoxicated by their newfound freedom and excited about the future, the two lovers are the talk of the town but Poland is changing as positive and negative influences from the West make their lives more complicated. Although slightly bogged down by its superfluous subplots, ECCENTRICS is well worth seeing for its exuberant jazz numbers sung in perfect tune by the leads (unlike the lovers in La La Land) and for its stunning period set design and costumes. MT

SUNDAY 26 MARCH 19.30 REGENT STREET CINEMA | KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017

The Apology (2016) | Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Dir.: Tiffany Hsiung; Documentary; Canada 2016, 104 min.

Filmmaker Tiffany Hsiung’s debut is a moving but never sentimental tribute to three elderly women from China, South Korea and the Philippines. They all have something in common: During the Japanese occupation of the South-Asian subcontinent during WWII, they were amongst the 200,000 prisoners, and were confined in so-called “Comfort Houses”, where they were raped for years, many of them just thirteen or fourteen years old. For decades they have been protesting and campaigning, asking the Japanese government – in vain – for an apology.

Grandma Gil lives in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China and Grandma Adela in the Philippines. It is now seventy years, since they were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery – and have lived silently with their ‘shame’ for most of their lives, they are spending the last years of their lives campaigning. Even their closest relatives, were not told about their ordeal for decades, in some cases. The stories are grim: the girls were abducted on the streets, or taken from their families, the parents being beaten up. One woman reports, that she was beaten unconscious when she entered the “Comfort House” – and raped brutally before gaining consciousness. Others were sterilised, some had babies, which did not survive. After the war, hardly anyone was aware of the tragedy, since the survivors felt guilty and did not want to bring shame to their families.But this has changed: Gil, the spiritual leader in South Korea, has arranged demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy every Wednesday since 1992. Number one thousand was ‘celebrated’ with a golden statue of an elderly woman placed in front the embassy building.

But the Japanese reaction is vicious: in Osaka (mainly) young people organise a counter demonstration, calling “for the Korean ‘whores’ to go home”. And Mayor Hasimoto, MP of the Restauration Party, goes on TV, to declare, that the “Comfort Homes” were a necessity. Gil and her followers find a kinder audience at a Japanese Women’s University, where one girl breaks down in tears, having heard for the first time in her life about the suffering of these poor women. THE APOLOGY ends with Gil speaking in front of UN, having gathered more than 1.5 million signatures for a petition, asking Japan for an official apology. You have to see THE APOLOGY, even if it breaks your heart. AS

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL

Innocent Sorcerers | Niewinni Czarodzie (1960) | Kinoteka 2017

Dir: Andrzej Wajda | Drama | Poland | 87min

In early 1960s Warsaw, Bazyl (Tadeusz Lomnicki) is a young doctor who plays in a jazz band. He is a dreamer, not really unhappy, but indolent. His fake blond hair is one of the reasons for his popularity with women, but he is unable to commit to a relationship. At work, where he looks after the boxers of a state run club, he is equally bored. Only music seems to keep him alive, but afterwards he hangs around in the pubs, waiting for something to happen. Bazyl’s friend Edmund (Zbigniew Cybulski) hangs out with him during the long nights, hoping in vain to pick up one of Bazyl’s cast-offs. One evening, the two men set a trap for Edmund to get off with one of the girls, but the young Pelagia (Krystyna Stypolkowska) does not fall for it, and Bazyl – largely through boredom – spends the night with her. He leaves Pelagia the next morning, only to find her in his flat on his return: Bazlyl doesn’t want to acknowledge that he has fallen in love with her, neither does he want to show her any signs of affection. When she decides to leave, Bazyl lets her go against his better judgement.

Roman Polanski has a vignette in the film, playing bass. And although Wajda directed, the drama very much belongs to scripter, Jerzy Skolimowski’s; Bazyl being a prototype of Skolimowski’s hero in Walkover, who is like most of his protagonists, an outsider. INNOCENT SORCERERS is full of ironies and alienation. Bazyl and Edmund are running away from a society where they feel outsiders, but, equally, are not committed to anything else – they are directionless individuals, wasting their time. Hardly surprising, therefore, that Bazyl is no match for Pelagia, who looks through him from the start. Bazyl started out trying to manipulate Pelagia into Edmund’s arms, but ends up becoming her prey. Krzysztof Winiewicz’s camerawork shows melancholic images of a rather nondescript environment in 1960s Warsaw, the pubs are are as faceless as Bazyl’s studio flat. The characters seem to live in a void, only music keeping them alive. AS

KINOTEKA 2017 | 24 MARCH 19.30 | CLOSE-UP CINEMA

 

Man of Marble (1976-7) | Kinoteka 2017

220px-Man-of-marble-posterDir.: Andrzej Wajda

Cast: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda, Jacek Lomnicki

Poland 1977, 165 min.

Wajda had to wait 15 years between finishing the script with Aleksander Scibor-Rylski and the film’s production in 1976/77. Despite this, the fact that he was allowed to shot the film at all is a small miracle, considering that it is a frontal assault on the evils of Stalinism in a country still under the iron fist of Russia. MAN OF MARBLE is set on the line of Wolfgang Leonhardt’s famous book of the denunciation of Stalinism: “The revolution eats its children”. The victim in this case is a fictitious Stakhanovite worker, Mateusz Birkut, who in the early fifties laid 28,000 bricks in a shift, setting a record, which made him a (short-lived) hero. He becomes the subject of a young film student, Agnieszka, who chooses him as the subject for her diploma film. Soon it becomes apparent, that the authorities are not keen for Agnieszka to continue, and her project is stopped and the material confiscated. But the student does not give up, after finding and interviewing the ex-hero’s son Maciej (both father and son are played by the same actor, J. Radziwilowycz), she learns that Birkut senior has been dead for years, after falling from grace. Wajda wanted to end the film showing his death in the clashes in Gdansk in the early seventies, but the censors  insisted on an open ending. (In MAN OF STEEL (1981) Wajda showed Birkut’s fate as he had planned for MAN OF MARBLE).

The beauty of this film lies in its complexity: Birkut is a submissive hero, believing in Stalinism, a system which would crush him. He is quite close to the young film student, who “re-discovers” him – only to be told, that her work too, is not needed. The label of “socialist hero” disguised the decency and humility of Birkut, his real qualities made him a hero, not his propaganda value for an inhuman system.

Wajda’s lucidity in making this contrast between the system and its idealistic followers, is even more valid today, because now, decades after the fall of Stalinism, it becomes clearer every day, that  Stalinism had very little in common with Socialism but was just a tool of the Russian State for its expansion, in the same way, as its oligarchy today uses its economic power of capitalism, to supress and annexe its neighbouring states. AS

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 25 March | Close-Up Cinema | 16.00

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A 2-DISC SPECIAL EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE AT SECONDRUNDVD.COM.

 

Promised Land (1975) | Ziemia Obiecana | Kinoteka 2017

Director: Andrzej Wajda | Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Anna Nehrebecka, Tadeusz Bialoszcztnski, Bozena Dykiel, Franciszek Pieczka, Danuta Wodynska | Poland  160min

The Promised Land is Epic in every true sense of the word. It is a massive, sprawling, all-encompassing, vast film that rolls relentlessly onwards with all the energy of the industrial revolution that it portrays and yet never leaves behind the microscope on the wild, immense , tangled emotional landscape of the people that populate it. Wonderful.

Despite being made almost forty years ago, this astonishing work hasn’t aged a day. Concerning Lodz’s emerging textile industry at the turn of the century, three young friends, a Polish aristocrat, a German and a Jew plot to make their fortunes by building their own factory, whatever the cost.

And here, Wajda is in his element, displaying the insane wastage of wealth, built out of the rags and ruins of the destitute, forced to work as children in the hard, filthy, dangerous factories, to be inevitably plucked either by the wealthy or by the work.

As with all the best films created under a punitive regime, this is a work of allegory and symbolism all wrapped in a huge dollop of humour and laced with arsenic; there’s no hiding the fact that this depiction of rampant capitalism actually alluded to the Communist politics of the time.

This is filmmaking at its peerless best. The concept, the execution, the cast, the design and the acting all conspire to create a masterwork in film. It’s what we go to the cinema for. Wajda’s vision and the mastery of his medium was there for all to see in his WWII trilogy, A Generation, Kanal and Ashes And Diamonds; three films worshipped and copied by a generation thereafter. Heaven only knows why this one didn’t go on to win its nominated Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Andrzej Wajda survived the Second World War in Nazi-occupied Poland. In 1942, he joined the Resistance until the war ended in 1945. In 1946 he moved to Krakow where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, before moving on to study film. His appreciation for life as well as art must indeed have been hard won.

The cast is enormous and some of the larger scenes have a host of extras that today’s directors can only dream of. One of the many outstanding qualities ofThe Promised Land is the fully-rounded, flawed nature of all of the characters. Not many come out the other side as morally sound or principled and the steamroller charitably called ‘progress’ soon crushes those that do.

Tradition, honour, integrity, respect, faith, humanity and an honest living are all tokens thrown in to stoke the fire of greed, driving this story forward. Things being what they are now, it is  hard not to reflect how the story this film tells was never more apposite. A visionary film with its evergreen themes. MT

 KINOTEKA 2017 | 16 March 19.00 | CLOSE-UP CINEMA

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500 Years (2017) | HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL

Dir.: Pamela Yates; Documentary, Guatemala 2017, 106 min.

500 YEARS is the final part of Pamela Yates Guatemalan trilogy, which started in 1983 with When the Mountains Tremble, followed by Granito: How to Nail a Dictator in 2011. The three chapters of 500 years explore the struggle of the indigenous Ixil Maya over the last half millennium, since South America was colonised by Spanish forces, destroying a culture much older than the one of the European barbarians.

Part one deals with the trial of General Rios Montt, which started in 2013. Montt had come to power with the help of the Reagan administration in 1982, and was responsible for the genocide in which 100 000 Maya citizens were killed and 45000 ‘disappeared’, just like in Argentina at about the same time. 626 villages were destroyed, the survivors mourn the death, often of their children, like the parents of Ines, who was killed aged 16, in combat against the military forces. Maya women were gang raped by soldiers; the filmmakers uncover the ruins of a former ‘interrogation centre’, were a special ‘Rape Room’ had been set up. The small town of Salquil Grande was burned down to the ground by the soldiers in 1982, but has been rebuilt since, and is now again a centre for resistance for Mayans. Montt, bearing an eerie resemblance to Auguste Pinochet, sits unmoved through his trial, whilst his lawyers try to sabotage the proceedings, even walking out. The witnesses, particularly the women, are heart breaking. Some can’t even look at Montt. But the general’s daughter, Zury Rios, is adamant that all witnesses are paid money to denounce her father. She soon sets herself up as the presidential candidate for the Viva Party. Interviews in the streets of Guatemala City prove her point of view: many citizens do not believe that genocide happened in their country.

Part two looks at the history of the country, starting with the foundation of a democratic Guatemala in 1944. Ten years later, Jacobo Arbenz, president of the Republic, who had instigated land reforms, was overthrown in a CIA coup, and later murdered in Mexico. An era of instability followed, escalating into a civil war, which lasted from1960 to 1996. By now, the Mayans had been forced from the most fertile land into the mountains. But since 2010, dam building and mining projects mean that they are driven from their land again with force. The gigantic infrastructure projects also threaten ecological turmoil.

Uprising’, the last chapter, is the most impressive: it shows the disposal of president Otto Perez Molina (a former Inspector General of the Armed Forces) from office, for corruption in 2014. Whilst Yates shows the Maya population, participating joyously in the demonstrations and blocking highways, the real reason for Molina’s resignation and imprisonment was that he had lost the support of the, mostly European, middle classes. They had looked on, whilst the health and education services of the Mayas had been cut by the government, but were in uproar when the same happened to them.

Nevertheless, 500 YEARS ends on an uplifting note, when the new generation of Maya fighters let fly a huge, multi-coloured kite in their mountain village: “When we die, we die in peace, because of the struggle we have been in in”. Unfortunately for them, the new president, Jimmy Morales (a former TV comedian), who was elected in 2015 with a majority of 67%, has denied that there ever was a genocide of the Mayans.
Shot mostly on eye-level by DoPs Melle van Essen and Rene Soza, 500 YEARS is a sobering history lesson. It is also a structural triumph, gathering all the information in 106 minutes. Roger C. Miller’s score is, appropriately, melancholic. A true milestone.

SCREENING DURING HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL |

 

Afterimage (2016) | Kinoteka 2017 | 17 March -5 April 2017

Dir: Andrzej Wajda | Script: Andrzej Mularczyk | Cast: Boguslaw Linda, Aleksandra Justa, Bronislawa Zamachowska, Zofia Wichlacz, Zofia Wichlacz, Krzysztof Pieczynski | Biopic | Polish | 98min

The last work of Poland’s most revered postwar filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda (Promised Lands, Pan Tadeusz), is a fiercely committed obituary of Wladyslaw Strzeminski, one of his country’s most strikingly visionary contemporary artists, victimised by the communist regime all the way to his death in 1952. As played by Boguslaw Linda, whose features bear more than a passing resemblance to both Wajda and Strzeminski, this is a fitting end note to Wajda’s career; the filmmaker recently passed away at the age of 90, leaving a filmography largely dedicated to crucial moments and leading characters in the history of his country.

The film stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist although it’s clearly a festival item per excellence – after all, no film event would want to miss the last work of a grand master. This is an essential addition to the tragic cultural history of the communist era in Eastern Europe and the disasters wrecked by this totalitarian rule. Since Wajda’s career was launched at about the same time this story takes place, his intimate knowledge of the background is not necessarily the result of thorough research but also an expression of personal frustrations and pain he experienced himself through long patches of his own artistic life.

Strzeminski, born in 1893 in Minsk, now the capital of Belarus, and educated in St. Petersburg, lost an arm and a leg in WW1, despite which he attended the First Free State Workshops in Moscow and was close to such ground- breaking avant-garde artists of that period as Malevich and Chagall. In 1923 he moved to Warsaw to become one of founders of the constructivist group Blok.

A scholar, theoretician and art historian, Strzeminski formulated the Unism theory, an artistic conception based on the integrity of the universe which considers the levels of artistic, scientific and cultural achievements as an indication of social development. Most of his ideas about art in general and visual arts in particular are to be found in his posthumous Theory of Vision, published by his students after his death.

Wajda’s film, written by Andrzej Mularczyk, picks Strzeminski up in 1949, when he is about to be fired from his teaching job at the Higher School of Visual Arts in Lodz over preaching a modernity strictly opposed to the populist demands of the Communist Party.

The film’s plot follows the regime’s systematic efforts to break down this headstrong, unbending artist who refused to compromise on any artistic grounds whatsoever. A chain smoker and man of great personal charm, exclusively dedicated to his art who, notwithstanding his disabilities, was living on his own at the time – apart from irregular visits from his teenage daughter – he carried on teaching his devoted students in as much as was tenable.

With his work systematically destroyed and obliterated, Strzeminski was gradually deprived of any income, fired from the Artists Union and even denied the right to buy paints. Pushed into utter misery and forced to accept degrading jobs, only to be kicked out of them as well, he collapsed one day on the street, was taken to a hospital where he died of tuberculosis in 1952.

Wajda, whose early films (Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) are considered definitive portraits of Poland of that period and who clashed often throughout his long career with the Polish communist regime (on films such as Man of Marble), evidently felt strongly for Strzemynski and his fate, seeing in him a symbol of the creative artist crushed down by a narrow-minded, ferociously dictatorial regime which allows no digression.

Lynda, one of his country’s leading actors, who was associated with most of the great films coming out of Poland in the 80’s and 90’s – including Wajda’s own Man of Iron – is probably the perfect fit for the role, not only because of his obvious thespian gifts but also his physiognomy.

A remarkably neat, correct, and historically faithful picture, Wajda’s passionate veneration for Strzeminski clearly led to a rather didactic approach. Characters are not too deeply probed, there are heroes we admire, villains we detest and nothing much in between, but some scenes, such as the funeral of Strzeminski’s estranged wife, the sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, and the moment when he finds out about her death, a few days later, are truly moving.

DoP Pawel Edelman are, as always, exquisite, but the art direction fills the screen with freshly made, antiseptically clean sets, seemingly never lived-in before. This may be rather out of tune, but despite it, the film still stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist. AS

Oscars 2017 | Best Foreign Language Film

In the super-sized build up to next year’s 89th Academy Awards – the following titles have been selected in the short-list for 2017. The winner was, of course, THE SALESMAN

30.SIC-TANNA-1TANNA – (Australia) is a tragic and magical love story whose implications ripple out into the wider world and connect us with the narrative of disappearing communities and remote tribes. Australian helmers Bentley Dean and Martin Butler make their first foray into narrative features in a stunningly cinematic film set in Vanuatu in the South Pacific and starring real villagers.

LAND OF MINE – (Denmark) Martin Zandvliet writes and directs this moving anti-war treatise that follows a young group of German POWs made the enemy of a nation, where they are forced to unearth two million landmines with their bare hands (Main image).

image3TONI ERDMANN – (Germany) The toast of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Maren Ade’s hilariously irreverent comedy has a bittersweet heart of gold – thanks to its tour de force performance from Austrian maverick Peter Simonischek who is made poignantly aware of the tragic legacy of his misjudged parenting skills by uptight daughter Ines (Sandra Huller).

THE SALESMAN – Asghar Farhadi tells a grim story of a couple’s deteriorating relationship in contemporary Teheran.

img_3149A MAN CALLED OVE – Swedish director Hannes Holm’s literary-based dark comedy explores themes of immigration, loneliness and old age in exploring the world of an desperate man whose life is given meaning by his new neighbours from abroad. MT

THE 89TH ACADEMY AWARDS TOOK PLACE IN LOS ANGELES IN JANUARY 2017

 

7 Minutes (2016) | Cinema Made in Italy

Dir: Michele Placido | Writer: Stefano Massini| Michele Placido | 88min | Drama | Italian

Veteran Italian director Michele Placido’s grainy slice of social realism is a timely and engrossing character drama that succeeds despite its low budget credentials and grainy feel. Based on real events, 7 MINUTES is told in intimate close-up from the POV of its female characters who all work in a textile factory in the outskirts of Rome.

Very much along the lines of the Dardennes Brothers’ Two Days, One Night (2014) this is a much more intense and angry affair but its feisty authenticity conveys the feeling of betrayal and bitterness that the women feel when they are given two hours to decide the fate of 300 of their colleagues facing redundancy in an increasingly hostile and stressful urban environment where they are all struggling to make ends meet.

Impassioned performances by Clémence Poésy and Karen Di Porto (in debut) the standouts. Anne Consigny plays the factory boss with sensitive grace in this intelligent and believable story based on a play by Stefano Massini . MT

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 1-5 MARCH 2017

 

The Confessions | Le Confessioni (2016) | Cinema Made in Italy 1-5 March 2017

Dir: Roberto Ando | Cast: Toni Servillo, Daniel Auteuil, Pierfrancesco Favino, Moritz Bleibtreu, Connie Nielsen, Mari-Josee Croze, Lambert Wilson, Richard Sammel, Johan Heldenbergh, Togo Igawa | 103min | Thriller | Italy

Toni Servillo and Daniel Auteuil star in Roberto Ando’s slick and timely political thriller that follows the exploits of a savvy monk who attempts to outmanoeuvre the European delegates at a fictional G8 summit.

Sadly lacking the delicious dark humour of Ando’s breakthrough Viva la Liberta that screened during last year’s festival, this is an intelligent and self-assured affair occasionally spiced with irony and graced with a starry international arthouse cast including Connie Nielsen, Lambert Wilson and Moritz Bleibtreu.

Invited to the IMF summit by one of the other delegates – from countries that represent 50% of the World’s wealth – Roberto Salus, a monk and writer, adds a touch of calm integrity but also a twist of tension to the top secret Monetary Fund get together in his chaste alabaster garb and sincere gaze that contrasts amusingly with the less than trustworthy-looking official attendees (particularly Bleibtrau’s Mark Klein) gathered together in the secluded spendour of a luxury German resort. Two other ousiders are also there to monitor the talks: a musician, and Connie Nielsen’s glamorous author of children’s books, complete the trio.

Auteuil plays the strung out, suicidal master of ceremonies, Daniel Roche, who has summoned the Monk to hear his confession before he pops his clogs, to the annoyance and suspicion of the assembled crew and  who wonder what was said by Roche to Salus in his final hour, and whether he alluded to their secret scheme to bankrupt the world’s poorer economies. His tête à têtes with the monk unfold in flashback adding a frisson of insight as the political narrative progresses.

Although there are overtones that something greater and more powerful may be at work here, Ando and co-scripter Angelo Pasquini fail to develop this supernatrual strand to the film’s slight detriment making the political story less resonant than it could have been. That said, LE CONFESSIONI remains an intriguing and enjoyable watch, largely due to the strength of its performances – particularly from Toni Servillo – Maurizio Calvesi’s arresting cinematography and Nicola Piovani’s atmospheric and stately occasional score. MT

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY 1-5 MARCH 2017

 

Berlinale 2017 | Competition WINNERS

img_3189ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE | BEST ACTRESS
South Korea
By Hong Sangsoo (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Right Now, Wrong Then)
With Kim Minhee, Seo Younghwa, Jung Jaeyoung, Moon Sungkeun, Kwon Haehyo, Song Seonmi, Ahn Jaehong, Park Yeaju
World premiere

EL BAR (The Bar) | Spain
By Álex de la Iglesia (Mad Circus, The Day of the Beast, The Oxford Murders)
With Blanca Suárez, Mario Casas, Carmen Machi, Terele Pávez, Secun de la Rosa, Alejandro Awada, Joaquín Climent, Jaime Ordóñez
World premiere – Out of competition

HELLE NACHTE (Bright Nights) | Germany / Norway
By Thomas Arslan (Dealer, Vacation, In the Shadows, Gold)
With Georg Friedrich, Tristan Göbel, Marie Leuenberger, Hanna Karlberg
World premiere

JOAQUIM | Brazil / Portugal
By Marcelo Gomes (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, The Man of the Crowd, I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You)
With Julio Machado, Isabél Zuaa, Nuno Lopes, Rômulo Braga, Welket Bungué, Karay Rya Pua
World premiere

MR LONG / Germany / Hong Kong, China / Taiwan
By Sabu (Monday, Chasuke’s Journey)
With Chen Chang, Sho Aoyagi, Yiti Yao, Junyin Bai
World premiere

RETURN TO MONTAUK | Germany / France / Ireland
By Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum, Diplomatie)
With Stellan Skarsgård, Nina Hoss, Susanne Wolff, Niels Arestrup
World premiere

Wild MouseWILDE MAUSS | Wild Mouse) | Austria | BEST ACTOR 
By Josef Hader
With Josef Hader, Pia Hierzegger, Georg Friedrich, Jörg Hartmann, Denis Moschitto
World premiere – First Feature

BodyA teströl és a lélekröl (ON BODY AND SOUL) Hungary | GOLDEN BEAR WINNER

Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi gained international recognition winning the Golden Camera at Cannes (1989) for her debut My 20th Century. Since then she has won a clutch of minor awards and here she is at Berlinale for the first time in competition with World premiere drama with an all Hungarian cast of Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély, Zoltán Schneider

AnaANA, MON AMOUR | BEST ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Romania / Germany / France
Romanian filmmaker Călin Peter Netzer was the surprise winner of the Golden Bear in 2013 with his impressive psychological drama exploring just how far a professional woman will go to protect her adult son in Child‘s Pose. His latest drama in competition at Berlinale stars Mircea Postelnicu, Diana Cavallioti, Carmen Tănase, Adrian Titieni, Vlad Ivanov
World premiere

BEUYS – Documentary

Last year’s Golden Bear winner was an Italian documentary Fire At Sea. This year German director Andres Veiel (Black Box Germany, Addicted To Acting, If not us, Who) will show his latest documentary, a World premiere in competition. In 2011 he won the Alfred Bauer Award with If Not Us, Who? a biopic of the Baader-Meinhof Group.

COLO
Portugal / France
Portuguese director Teresa Villaverde is much celebrated in her own country and has won prizes at Venice, Lecce and Ankara for her films (The Major Age, The Mutants, Trance). With João Pedro Vaz, Alice Albergaria Borges, Beatriz Batarda, Clara Jost. She is in the competition line-up for the first time with her drama COLO 

THE DINNER 

US director Oren Moverman is best known for his writing talents scripting Love & Mercy, The Messenger and Rampart
His latest film is a mystery thriller based on Dutch writer Herman Koch’s novel with echoes of Roman Polanski’s Carnage (2011) where two well-to-do couples discuss the misdemeanours of their teenage children. Stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall, Chloë Sevigny | World premiere

FeliciteFélicité | GRAND JURY PRIZE

Back in 2012 Senegalese auteur Alain Gomis gave us one of the most moving and life-affirming films about death: TEY 
In his latest, a World premiere in Competition at Berlin, he casts Véro Tshanda Beya, Gaetan Claudia, Papi Mpaka his latest drama set in the former French colony.

THE PARTY
United Kingdom
Famous for the stylishly inventive curio Orlando, British director Sally Potter is back with a tragicomedy that sounds a lot like Festen where a much hyped party ends in tears. A glittering cast of Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall. World premiere

POKOTPOKOT (Spoor) | ALFRED BAUER PRIZE

is billed as a mystery crime drama from Polish Great Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, Bitter Harvest, Kobieta samotna)/ the German, Polish World Premiere has Agnieszka Mandat, Wiktor Zborowski, Miroslav Krobot, Jakub Gierszał, Patricia Volny, Borys Szyc

 

The Other Side of HopeTOIVEN TUOLLA PUOLEN (The Other Side of Hope) | BEST DIRECTOR 
Another Helsinki-set dark comedy from the Finnish maverick Aki Kaurismäki (The Match Factory Girl, Juha, Le Havre) kicks the year off to a great start. Regular collaborators Kati Outinen and Tommi Korpela stars alongside Sakari Kuosmanen, Sherwan Haji
in this International premiere which opens in Finland the week before.

MujerUNA MUJER FANTASTICA | BEST SCRIPT 
Chile / Germany / USA / Spain
By Sebastián Lelio (El Año del Tigre, Gloria)

Lelio gave the fabulous GLORIA that won a Silver Bear in 2013 for Paulina Garcia’s witty and wise portrait of a feisty middle-aged woman who refuses to give up on love in the riviera city of Montevideo.  His latest drama stars Daniela Vega, Francisco Reyes, Luis Gnecco, Aline Küppenheim, Amparo Noguera in World premiere

BERLINALE 2017 \ COMPETITION WINNERS

 

 

Ana, Mon Amour (2017) | Berlinale Competition

Dir.: Calin Peter Netzer; Cast: Diana Cavallioti, Mircea Posteinicu, Adrian Titieni, Igor Caras-Romanov; Rumania 2017, 125 min.

Calin Peter Netzer won the Golden Bear in 2013 with his mother son drama Child’s Pose. Ana, Mon Amour is another thoughtful, persuasive portrait of shifting power within a relationship, this time between a man and woman in love.

Ana (Cavaliotti) and Toma (Posteinicu) meet at university. Their intense relationship suits the rather introverted Ana, who is suffers from childhood trauma. And Toma,, whose last girlfriend cheated on him, is pleased to be the only person in Ana’s life and openly admits that one he loves for her ardent faithfulness. But soon dark secrets start to come to light and it emerges that Ana’s father Igor (Caras-Romanov) is in reality her stepfather, and highly possessive of his stepdaughter. When Igor dies a year later, Ana is grief stricken and takes medication for her anxiety only to discover she is expecting. After the birth of her son Tudor, Ana goes back to work and gradually changing the dynamic in her relationship with Toma, who regresses into a hypochondriac recluse. Ana starts to enjoy the buzz of her workplace, gets a divorce, while Toma tries, with the help of the analyst, to come to terms with his past: his mother did not love his father, and concentrated her affections on him.

His father, much more in need of his mother than the other way round, is living a lie: pretending that he only stayed with the family for Toma’s sake. Toma is left with explanations, but no way out: he has become an amalgamation of the old Ana and his father: a hypochondriac recluse, who pretends he cares for Tudor, but really only wants to win Ana back. He even spies on Ana, and accuses her of being unfaithful with a man, who is in fact her birthfather, who helps her to come to terms with her past and emancipation from Toma.

Calin Peter Netzer’s slow-burn character drama is almost a clinical study of the phycology of a relationship, savours and lingering over each meticulous detail and development. DoP Andrei Butica, who also shot Child’s Pose, finds innovative angels to keep the audience engaged in the story but Cavallioti, is the real star of Ana: her metamorphosis from doormat to liberated woman is full of nuances, both moving and infuriating at the same time. In spite of its length, Ana is a watchable, intense and intimate portrait of female liberation. AS

ANA, MON AMOUR | BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | IN COMPETITION

Atlantic (2017) | Berlinale

Dir.: Risteard O’Domhnaill; Narrator: Brendan Gleeson; ROI/Canada/Norway 2016, 80 min.

Once upon a time, fishing was seen as rather a precarious and romantic existence traditionally passed down through families who supplied local needs around the coasts and later further inland when fresh fish could be sent by train packed in ice to the large cities. But this all changed radically in the latter part of the 20th century: first multi-national companies, then globalisation ushered in a new era – not only for the work force, but also for the environment. ATLANTIC is a tale of three fishing communities in Ireland, Newfoundland and Norway. The stories vary from country to country, but they all share a gloomy outlook in common.

On Newfoundland, fisherman Charlie Kane speaks about the changes in his village, Renefs: Once 650 citizens lived here, surviving with 52 fishing boats. But in the early 1990s, the cod dried up, due to environmental circumstances and the appearance of Super-trawlers, forcing the local fishermen to struggle for an existence. Now Kane has a quota of just two tons of fish – as much as the family consumed in the winter months. His sons had to change professions: and now work for a multi-national oil drilling company in shifts of 21 days on and 21 days off. The money is good, but when they go fishing, now just a hobby, they think about the lifestyle they never had: videos from their childhood show them on the boats “being more in the way than helpful”. Charlie Kane died in 2014, and his sons are threatened with redundancy, after the oil price collapsed last year. After a long fight with Denmark, who are the de-facto rulers of Newfoundland and Labrador, the local population is ready for change, brought, again, from far away from their field of influence.

Jerry Early from the West Coast of Ireland, has just been found guilty of fishing outside Irish waters. He is going to appeal at a higher Court, but his chances are small. Ever since Ireland joined the EU in 1973, foreign vessels from Span, France, Germany and Portugal are allowed to fish, the Irish government sacrificing its fishing industry for access to the Common Market. But worse was to come: after oil was found in the Irish Sea in 1975, the government had learned from their mistakes and made the oil companies share their profits with the Irish Free State. Minister Justin Keating looked to the successful Norwegian model, and signed a contract where the profits were split equally, and the companies would pay a 50% tax rate. But this all changed again in 1987, when Minister Ray Burke re-negotiated the contract, very much in favour of the multi-national companies. The same Ray Burke, was later sentenced to six month in prison for tax fraud. Little can be done about the ‘super trawlers’, who seem to break all laws. On one of them, the Jan Maria, the logbook stated that 9000 tons of herring was caught. But it later transpired that only 5000 tons arrived at shore, the ship releasing 4000 tons of smaller fish back in the water. But the fine was more symbolic: the captain had to pay a laughable sum for false bookkeeping.

Bjorn Nicolaisen might be the luckiest of the trio because Norway has invested the wealth from its oil boom into a modern and wealthy society, making sure that the companies did pay their fare share to the nationally owned Statoil company, and the last incoming government set up a moratorium of four years for further drilling in the Norwegian waters – but the fishing industry has suffered considerably, since the companies started exploring the waters with a blast technique, which, as Heike Verter, a marine biologist explains, makes the fish disappear for hours. Already Skate have completely vanished. Further changes for the worse are expected, when the government moratorium comes to an end later this year.

Narrated by Brendan Gleeson, ATLANTIC would make a great pairing with Leviathan (2012) that shares its grim message: between the profiteering companies, weak governments and environmental threats, an old industry is dying. It is not just the fishermen who lose their jobs and homes: we are losing a valuable natural resource that feeds our population because the way it is run now is totally unsustainable.

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | CULINARY SCREENINGS

Masaryk: A Prominent Patient (2017)

Dir: Julius Ševčík | Cast: Karel Roden, Hanns Zischler, Oldřich Kaiser, Arly Jover, Paul Nicholas, Dermot Crowley, Milton Welsh. Eva Herzigová, Emília Vášáryová, | Czech/Slovak Republic | Czech, English | 114 min ·

Philosopher Tomas Masaryk became the first President and founder of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and was an advocate of Czechoslovak independence during the First World War. He also championed the country’s Jewish population knowing how hard it was to build a sense of pride in a people with a history of subjugation. Of his two sons – one died of typhoid – this is the story of Jan Garrigue Masaryk (1886-1948), a mentally unstable bon viveur whose engaging cynicism served him well as Czechoslovakian Ambassador in London’s Hampstead in the run up to the Second World War.

Directed by Julius Ševčík this gripping and lushly-mounted imagined drama focuses on a tight window in wartime politics alternating between historical and fictionalised plotlines as it sashays suavely between London, Prague and a New Jersey sanatorium, where after the death of his father in 1938, Masaryk (a convincing Karel Roden) is supported by German psychiatrist Dr Stein – a saturnine Hans Zischler – and a charming American journalist Marcia Davenport (played gracefully by Arly Jover).

As a result of diplomatic tactics and the signing of the Munich Agreement, Britain and France condone Nazi Germany’s invasion of his country – bringing Europe one step closer to the Second World War. Masaryk believes he has failed as a diplomat, lost credibility in the eyes of the powers that be, and brought shame on the legacy of his father, Tomas.

A PROMINENT PATIENT follows Masaryk closely during his time as Ambassador showing how the tense political and social ambiance played tricks with his delicate mental disposition. Martin Strba’s agile camera glides impressively over Prague and London often tracking top secret negotiations in the privacy of fast moving vehicles, hurtling along the beaches of the South Coast. Ševčík plays fast and loose with the facts and political purists will no doubt throw their hands up in horror at some of the scenes, but this is nevertheless an enjoyable romp that will appeal to arthouse audiences with its elegant settings, engaging performances and terrier-like pacing contrasting with more languorous scenes such as those between Masaryk and his married English lover, Lady Anne Higgins (Gina Bramhill).

Whether or not Masaryk did indeed receive treatment in America is uncertain, but the idea that he was mentally unstable is the conceit on which Ševčík and his scripters Petr Kolečko and Alex Königsmark base their narrative. And it is certainly a ploy that serves this drama well offering a sinister and unsettling undertow to the recognised uncertainty of the political climate on the cusp of the Second World War. MT

BERLINALE 2017 PREMIERE | HISTORY TODAY

Newton (2017) | Berlinale Forum | CICAE Award

Dir.: Amit V Masurkar; Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathy, Anjali Patil; India 2017, 106 min.

Director/co-writer Amit V Masurkar’s second feature is a light-hearted critical analysis of the limits of personal endurance and the validity of elections in an India divided by class and plagued by civil war.

In central India, civil servant Newton (Rao), sees himself as the advocate of a modern country. Unfortunately for him, not many agree with him least of all his parents, who want him married to an under-age bride, who left school at the age of thirteen. Newton (who constructed his name from two Indian names he was given at birth) is understandably angry, clearly his parents just want to benefit from the bride’s generous dowry, at the expense of his future happiness and satisfaction. A strong – but equally naïve – believer in democracy, Newton is sent out as the Returning Officer in a jungle voting polling station where Maoist guerrillas are putting the local inhabitants under pressure not to vote. Newton soon collides with the commander of the military unit, Aatma Singh (Tripathy), who is in charge of security, and does not want to risk the lives of his men in a battle for 76 votes, which he sees as a charade – which is more or less true. But Newton is supported in his zealous efforts to get the village population to vote by the local schoolteacher Maiko (Patil). She is much more realistic than Newton and is able to speak the Ghondi dialect of the region, since the local villagers do not understand Hindi. Whilst Singh charms the clueless UN observers, Newton and Maiko bring the majority of the voters to the ramshackle polling station. There, the ultra modern voting machines – clashing very much with the dilapidated environment, are a challenge too great for the voters – but Singh, eager to please the observers, tells them to “use the machines like toys”, which they do. Newton is still not happy; he wants to wait for the remainder of the local electorate. Losing patience, Singh pretends that Newton and his polling station helpers are under fire from guerrilla forces, and evacuates everyone. Newton, who is not fooled, challenges the commander and the unit with extreme measures.

Newton is a stubborn anti-hero. His achilles heel is a disregard for his better informed friends (Maiko) and foes (Singh). A foreigner in this part of his own country, he is totally unaware of the power positions. The villagers are as much under threat from the guerrillas as the local militia, it does not matter to them which side burns down their houses and steals their food. Their understanding of democracy has nothing to do with the countless names presented on the voting machines – the village elder simply tells Newton that he is “selected to speak for them in the parliament in Delhi”. Newton’s one-man stand may be honourable, but he helps nobody, his pride bordering on arrogance. Still, he is preferable to the opportunists of all colours he encounters, and is rewarded in the end with a personal happy-ending.

Masurkar very clearly shows the limits of parliamentary democracy in a country like India where feudalism and religious bigotry are still the most potent pillars of the state. Newton fails not because of his lack of courage, but because he too believes in a democratic process, which is unachievable under the circumstances. He fails to acknowledge that the poor villagers are the victims of both factions fighting on their behalf. DoP Swapnil S Sonawane creates a real war zone in the jungle, contrasting very much with the city atmosphere Newton is accumstomed too. Rao is convincing as the prickly anti-hero, and Patil’s Maiko is calm and collected – qualities none of the men achieve. AS

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | FORUM 

Beuys (2017) Free online at the Goethe Institute

Dir: Andres Veiel Germany 2017 | German, English, Doc | 107 min: English/German

The 12th of May would have been Joseph Beuys’ 100th birthday. To mark the centenary and shed light on the German artist’s legacy The Goethe Institute is offering a free screening of Andreas Veiel’s documentary about the artist.

Beuys attempts to capture the essence of one of Germany’s most famous conceptual artists, blending previously unpublished archive footage and informative interviews with the artist and his friends and collaborators, such as British art curator Caroline Tisdall.

The artist and visionary ‘man with the hat’ was, and still is, ahead of his time – thirty years after his death in 1986. He was the first German artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, while at home his work was often still derided as the ‘most expensive trash of all time’. Once asked if he was indifferent to such comments he retorted: ‘Yes. I want to expand people’s perceptions.’ Beuys also later reveals that his art was ‘a weapon against the enemy’; his felt piano is considered by many to be one of his most accessible pieces. But the most memorable is his dynamic living multi-location sculpture that embodies his Green credentials – 7000 oak trees with stone pillars beside them, creating a constantly evolving art piece that aimed to be an international ‘method of communication’ or ‘Gesamptkunstwerk’ – the Japanese intended to contribute financially to the project, but have sadly failed to do so, as yet.

Andres Veiel lets the artist speak for himself allowing his cheerful, warm charisma to surface, hiding a difficult traditional upbringing in a well to do industrialist background in Cleves, where he was expected to take over the family business. The secret of his hat is revealed to be the result of a war wound while parachuting from his plane. Although he is no longer with us, his expanded concept of art feeds directly into today’s social, political and moral debates. Beuys will be Beuys. MT

GOETHE INSTITUTE 12-15 MAY 2021 | BERLINALE  2017 COMPETITION

Return to Montauk (2017) Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Dir: Volker Schlöndorff | Cast: Nina Hoss, Stellen Skarsgard, Niels Arestrup | Ger/France/Ire | English | 106 min · Drama

Nina Hoss and Stellan Skarsgard grace Volker Schlöndorff’s elegantly chilled cocktail of literary lives and romantic recidivism that premiered in at Berlinale several years ago, then disappeared before coming to Amazon Prime

Stellan Skarsgard is Max Korn, a seasoned writer who knows how to project romantic illusions of love in his relationships, but whose fame has taken him to a place of unreality, and who’s totally unaware of it. During his life, he has moved through a series of female conquests without really engaging with anyone. In New York to promote a book with his latest – much younger – partner (Susanne’s Woolf fawning ‘creative’ groupie), he reconnects, via a business associate (a sinister and alluring Niels Arestrup) with Nina Hoss’ glamorous Rebecca.

Rebecca is another brief fling from the past who appears aloof at Max’s reappearance, scarcely concealing a troubled secret behind her own sophisticated persona. These central characters make a fascinating couple – much in the style of After Midnight: Max is accessible yet empty inside; Rebecca’s outward frostiness conceals a romantic but disillusioned idealist . An impromptu trip to the tip of Long Island to view Rebecca’s putative holiday home is the catalyst for a tender eruption of feelings that flood back when she confesses her troubles to the now enraptured Max.

Shot on a handheld camera in the slick Manhattan venues and limpid platinum beaches of Montauk, on the tip of Long Island, this an engrossing and emotionally moving story of lost opportunities and dreams that asks the question: do we settle for the ordinary or the life less ordinary? MT

SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM FESTIVAL’S Volker Schlöndorff. RETROSPECTIVE | ALSO ON AMAZON PRIME

somniloquies (2017| Berlinale Forum

Dirs: Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor | UK,France,USA | Doc | 77 min

Songwriter Dion McGregor became famous in the 1960s for narrating his dreams in his sleep. These often amusing reveries are the focus of Leviathan directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel in a documentary that conjures up the revealing reveries of our deep subconscious that float around when we fall into dream sleep.

McGregor is so far the world’s most prolific recorded sleep talker and his dreams have long been analysed by psychiatrists who claim that he speaks from his motor cortex. His softly spoken voice invites us into his dreamscape “come-on in, I said I would grant an interview”. He talks about his imaginary town for midgets where there are baby animals too. “Did you ever sea a midget twist? It’s the cutest thing”

Some of it is gibberish but other times his monologues verge on the semi-pornographic where he talks about a rape in a hijacked ambulance and creates imagined scenarios with neighbours and acquaintances such as Mrs Evelyn Dangerfield and her “platinum bush” and her butler Carver: “deep in the bowels of his room I think he’s really a carver”; and the lady who cuts elastic out of people’s underwear. McGregor also muses over “supervised conception” that takes place in a “fuckwaggon” on Fridays and the “watchwaggon” of Wednesdays: “we’re just a nation of voyeurs”. In the final moments of this intriguing visual experience McGregor grows agitated: “let’s go to future land, the present is squalid”. And that was only the Sixties.MT

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017

13th Glasgow Film Festival | 15 – 26 February 2017

Creative Scotland is the impetus behind the city’s annual celebration of cinema with GFT, CCA, Cineworld and Grosvenor cinemas participating to host films, alongside unique pop-up cinemas everywhere from snowy ski slopes to the Barras. Now one of the largest film festivals in the UK – this year’s extravaganza will feature over 310 separate events and screenings, showcasing over 180 films including 9 World and International premieres.

IMG_3267The standout World premiere this year has got to be MAD TO BE NORMAL (26 February), starring David Tennant as infamous Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing. The festival will also showcase the World premiere of BENNY (22 Feb), the story of local hero Benny Lynch, widely considered the greatest boxer Scotland has ever produced. Fusing archive footage, animation and interviews with contemporary boxing stars, the film charts the rise and tragic fall of the Gorbals-born people’s champion. Other films to look out for are Aki Kaurismaki’s THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE, Kate Shortland’s BERLIN SYNDROME and Raoul Peck’s I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (left) which has its World premiere at Sundance 2017.

More Glasgow sporting legends get the big screen treatment in the International Premiere of Celtic Soul (26 Feb), as Canadian actor-filmmaker Jay Baruchel (How To Train Your Dragon) embarks on an epic trip to Celtic F.C’s Parkhead to see his beloved Hoops in action.

Glasgow Film Festival audiences will also be the first to catch European premieres including: the charming road movie Folk Hero & Funny Guy (20 and 21 Feb) starring US indie favourites David Cross and Alex Karpovsky and Steven Ellison’s (aka Flying Lotus) dark and twisted directorial debut KUSO (24 Feb), featuring exclusive new tracks from Aphex Twin and Thundercat.

SUB HUB | MUSICAL EVENTS

The daytime cultural wing of Glasgow’s legendary Sub Club – host a special screening of Raving Iran (19 Feb), an exhilarating look at DJs Anoosh and Arash continually risking their freedom to play their beloved dance tunes in Tehran, where Western music is banned, plus there’s the UK premiere of Contemporary Color (18 and 19 Feb), a glorious celebration of the US high school culture of colour guard routines – where flag spinning meets rhythmic gymnastics- featuring new musical commissions from David Byrne (Talking Heads), St Vincent, Ad-Rock and more.

TRUE NORTH: New Canadian Cinema

In the year that Canada celebrates the 150th Anniversary of Confederation, Glasgow Film Festival focuses on exciting new and re-discovered voices in Canadian cinema, sponsored by Telefilm. A celebration of the great diversity of talent in Canada’s national cinema, the TRUE NORTH strand includes: Aletha Arnaquq-Baril’s controversial documentary study on the seal hunting ban and the detriment it brings to the Inuit community Angry Inuk (2916) (23 and 24 Feb); BOUNDARIES (20 and 21 Feb), Québécois filmmaker Chloe Robichaud’s wry satire on the exploitation of natural resources; Phillipe Lesage’s nightmarish looks at the horrors of childhood stalking the mind of sensitive young Felix in The Demons (2015)  (22 and 23 Feb) and a chance to step back in time and marvel at hipster Toronto in the 1950s with a rare screening of Sidney J Furie’s trailblazing A Cool Sound From Hell (1959) (25 Feb).

CULT CLASSIC AND RETROSPECTIVES

Alongside all the hot new premieres, Glasgow Film Festival brings some classic gems back to the big screen. A DANGEROUS DAMES strand salutes the alluring femme fatales of film noir – from Lana Turner in the definitive version of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981) (19 Feb) to Kathleen Turner’s unforgettably steamy debut in BODY HEAT (1981)  (24 Feb). All Dangerous Dames screenings are free to attend.

Toshiro Mifune is one of the few Japanese to become a truly international movie star. Audiences can relive some of his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa including SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) (21 Feb) and STRAY DOG (1949) (17 Feb) and learn more about the man himself in the Scottish premiere of MIFUNE: The Last Samurai (16 and 24 Feb), narrated by Keanu Reeves.

THESE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS | FOR TICKETS \ FULL PROGRAMME VISIT 

Avanti Popolo (1986) | Berlinale Classics 2017

Dir.: Rafi Bukai | Cast: Salim Dau, Suhei Haddad, Barry Langford | Israel | 84 min.

Rafi Bukai’s directorial debut started out as a mere graduation film from the Department of Film Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, but has become a classic: The story of two Egyptian soldiers trying to find a way home in the last days of the Six Day War, is a turning point in Israeli film history. Bukai wrote and co-produced the film which had a recent renaissance at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2016, where its 30th anniversary was celebrated with a brand new digital restoration copy. The two main actors were in attendance, as well as DoP Yoav Kosh and the widow of the director.

Set in 1967 in an expanded Israel, the Sinai peninsula, two Egyptian soldiers, Haled el Asma (Dau) and Gassan Hamada (Haddad), are trying to find a way back to Cairo. They are tired, hungry and thirsty – the last thing on their mind is fighting. Haled, who is an actor in civil life, tries to wow the Israeli soldiers with Shakespeare: “I am a Jew!” he shouts. “Hath not a Jew eyes?”. But his Shylock speech does not cut the mustard with the Israelis: “He’s got his roles confused”, says one of them. Luckily, the two Egyptians later discover an UN jeep containing a dead soldier and two bottles of whisky – as well as an umbrella. Defying their religious laws, the two drink the alcohol and stumble on with the umbrella, holding out against the burning sun, through the desert: Becket could not have staged it better. Later, they meet a British war correspondent (Langford), who is angry that the war is as good as over. He has come for blood and action, and is adamant to succeed: “The war will be over when I say the war is over”. Finally, the duo meet three Israeli soldiers who have given up by now, shooing the Egyptian soldiers away like mangy dogs, and together they sing “Avanti Populo”, the anthem of the Italian Communist Party. None of them understand the meaning of the words.

When AVANTI POPOLO was entered as the Israeli hopeful for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film in 1986, Ariel Sharon, ex-General and then Minister of Industry and Commerce, called it “a self-destructive portrait of inept Jews”. Sharon, like many others, obviously hankered back to the ‘good, olden days’ of Israeli cinema, when blond, blue-eyed Jews easily defeated ugly, hateful Arabs on the screen – evoking memories of the cinema of a certain Dr. Goebbels. Alas, thirty years on, AVANTI POPULO looks like Utopia: the current Israeli film landscape, like the political consciousness of the nation, is very much aligned with what went on before Bukai’s breakthrough. Isaac Zablocki, director of the Israeli Film Centre in NYC agrees: “There has been a significant drop in work which challenges the Status Quo. The tone of the current Cultural Ministry has made filmmakers, who are pitching and producing films with political content afraid. No one wants to be public enemy number One.”

DoP Yoav Kosh, debuting like Rafi Bukai, has made sure, that the images are sparse, the colours are washed out, there is little movement, everything is seen like in a feverish dream, the protagonist moving slowly forward through a mist of sand and sun. Rafi Bukai would only direct one more feature film (Marco Polo: The missing chapter, 1996), but he would produce the international success Life According to Agfa (1992), which won its director Assi Dayan (son of the general and war hero) a ‘Special Mention’ at the Berlin Film Festival. AS

SCREENING AT BERLINALE 2017 | CLASSICS SECTION | 9-19 FEBRUARY 

 

California Dreams (2017) | Woche der Critik 2017

Dir.: Mike Ott; Cast: Cory Zacharia, Kevin Gilger, Carolan J. Pinto, Neil Harley, Patrick Ilaguno; USA 2017, 85 min.

Director/writer Mike Ott (Lake Los Angeles) explores a personal, not to say idiosyncratic, view of actors on the (often imagined) fringe of Hollywood – always just a step away from realising their dream in Tinsel Town. Having set up auditions in a small town in California, Ott interviews them at length and discovers a great deal of sadness, but also perseverance against the odds.

First up is Cory Zacharia. The two first met working on a student film and this is now their fourth collaboration together. Cory, like all the others, has to do a scene from his favourite Hollywood film; Ott hoping to find out what makes them tick. Cory is in his late twenties with severe learning difficulties and lives with his Mum in a housing project in Lancaster/Cal. Having grown up as Jehovah’s Witness, he has difficulties regarding his sexual orientation: his mother had him locked up twice in mental institutions, after she found out that he had sex with men. His oppressive home life is reason enough to dream himself away to Hollywood. Cory also has a fixation with Finland, particularly the women there, who he imagines are waiting for him, fulfilling his dream of absolute and perfect love. But first he has to find a way to go to Berlin, to star in a film produced by a certain Herr Henning, who phones often and is angry that Cory has not found a way to pay for a plane ticket.

Next is Carolan J. Pinta who grew up in a musical family and had a career in commercials and TV as a teenager, but now lives in her car. She dreams about writing a bestseller which would be made into a big Hollywood film, finally winning her an Oscar: her acceptance speech performance is honed to perfection. Carolan takes her eighty pound boxer dog Lady Jenna Theresa where ever she goes.

Kevin Gilger aka The Dog, has been a professional actor since his childhood. For the past nine years he is impersonating Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman. Chapman plays a sheriff, who is chasing Cory all over the place, the pair are very close to the spirit of the Mike Sennett silent comedies.

And finally, Patrick Ilaguno was born in the Philippines, after emigrating to the USA he studied film at Long Beach City College, College of the Canyons and Cal State University LA. He is working at the Six Flags Magic Mountains car park, but always visits festivals in the region. Still a virgin, he hopes that a career in films will make him more acceptable to women.

In the end, Cory finds a (staged) truly Hollywood-like ending, in slow motion and with a rapturous music score. As Ott put it: ”This is a film about the dream of making it in Hollywood. That contrast between who we really are as people, and who we want to be in the hallucination that is cinema, is something I find so inspiring and at the same time heart breaking”.

DoP Mike Gloulakis finds the right images for all stages of this journey: Slapstick, Western and Romance genre photography confronts the hard, documentary style of the real life story of the protagonists. Ott carefully avoids sentimentality and judgement – he simply tells it like it is. AS

WOCHE DER CRITIK TAKES PLACE IN BERLIN DURING BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 |

Loving Pia (2017) AT ELSKE PIA | Berlinale Forum

Dir.: Daniel Borgman; Cast: Pia Skovgaard, Celine Skovgaard, Jens Jensen, Putte Jensen; Denmark 2017, 100 min.

Filmmaker Daniel Borgman (The Weight of Elephants) has achieved an astonishing hybrid between documentary and feature: his portrait of Pia, an intellectually challenged woman in her sixties, is a cinematographic declaration of love, not only for Pia, but for everyone who life difficult each day without help.

Pia Skovgaard lives with her mother Guittou (Celine Skovgaard) in a farmhouse on the Danish island of Langeland. Guitto is a translator in her eighties who grew up in France. Pia is fond of their goose Lola, whom she treats like an equal. We first meet her declaring she wants to marry Jose, who lives in Lusac. Her mother later tells her that she has picked up this person from the TV, and that she should look for a real person to marry. Pia goes every day to the day centre, where she enjoys occupational therapy and gymnastics. Guittou is worried that she won’t be around for much longer and tries to prepare Pia for a life on her own. On the way to visit a care home, Pia meets Jens tending his boat in the small harbour. Jens’ wife has left him, and he only has the occasional company of his sister Putte. The two begin a tentative relationship and Guittou hopes it might work out. But after Pia talks Jens into visiting the Den Bla Planet Aquarium in Copenhagen – both of them are fascinated with fish – the relationship flounders: Jens feels that Pia’s conversation is too lightweight: “you just want to make jokes”, dumping her on their return to the island far away from her house. At home, and we leave the two women as we met them: Pia trying to keep reality and fiction apart for her daughter.

The lyrical, poetic film language is underlined by the images, which are shot on 16mm with very long and fixed shots (shades of Manoel de Oliveira), which are different from the shot/counter shot and edit of the conventional narrative film. Whilst segments of the story are fictional, they are embedded in the real life story of Pia. LOVING PIA has a languid quality, which makes the audience part of Pia’s life: it works like waves washing up to the shore, leaving strong emotions behind. AS

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017

Spoor (2017) | Berlinale Competition

Dir: Agnieszka Holland | Drama | Poland|Germany|Czech Republic|Sweden|Slovak Rep 2017 Polish | 128 min · Colour

Agnieska Holland returns to Berlin with a harebrained environmental thriller that gets off to a glorious start but gradually wanders way off piste in the snowy mountains east of Wroclaw, on the Polish Czech border.

It follows the exploits of a retired construction engineer turned eco-warrior who has nestled down to a cosy retirement in a pretty wooden chalet where she lives with her two collies, campaigning for animal rights and teaching part-time at the local primary school. .

One day her beloved dogs disappear. On a snowy winter’s night shortly afterwards she discovers the dead body of her neighbour next to some deer tracks. More people die in a similarly mysterious way. All of them were pillars of the village community, and all were passionate hunters, so Janina turns detective to find out what happened.

Initially the kind and cuddly Janina Duszejko’s efforts are laudable but gradually we start to take her less seriously as she degenerates into a tubby troublemaking Miss Tiggywinkle whose emotional outbursts do her cause a great injustice, despite her worthy efforts to find clues. This is a society that glories in killing animals, regales in the hunting season and even celebrates it in the local church, so a careful campaign is clearly needed sensitively to get to the bottom of things.

Ms Holland has been making award-winning films since the 1970s and SPOOR is spectacularly crafted on the widescreen as the camera sweeps across snowy landscapes where scampering wild boar, deer and badgers glory in their native setting. Summery flower-filled meadows and verdant hillsides glow with lush vegetation. This is a feast for the eyes.

So why does she ruin this marvellous opportunity to support animal rights and the anti-hunting campaign with a film based on an unstable earth mother who turns into a nutter, going into battle with her fellow villagers like an unguided missile?. The locals are an unsavoury bunch who delight in skinning animals alive, hunting out of season and gamble and whore openly. To shame them would be as easy as falling off a pine log.

Holland’s script is a collaborative effort based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel. Clearly Agnieska Mandat relishes the thorny central role and avidly conveys the deep sympathy and anguish animal lovers feel when they witness cruelty. The support cast is poorly underwritten: Boros (Miroslav Krobot) the bug-hunting wayfarer who she beds and bonks; Dyzio (Jakub Gierszal) a young computer guy who suffers from seizures, and the subplot of a girl who is clearly being abused is never explored satisfactorily. All go to make this a sadly missed opportunity for something really resonant and meaningful. What a shame the animal kingdom has been let down. Antoni Komasa-Lazarkiewicz’s sinister score attempts and succeeds in initial gravitas. MT

BERLINALE 9-19 2017 | IN COMPETITION

Just like our Parents | Como Ossos Pais (2017) | Berlinale

 

Dir/scr. Laís Bodanzky. Brazil. 2017. 102 mins

Brazilian director Lais Bodansky’s domestic drama is an upbeat but fraught and female-focused affair that brings nothing new to the familiar theme of mother-daughter conflict and ineffectual fathers and husbands.

In a leafy upmarket part of Sao Paulo a pleasant family lunch on the terrace ends in a tears after a devastating revelation rocks the family foundations leaving a put-upon working wife and mother to re-evaluate her marriage, her career and even her origins

There is no easy answer when Rosa (Maria Ribeiro) discovers that her father is not the man who brought her up but a key member of the Brazil’s government. Her self-centred mother Clarice delivers the brusque announcement that she conceived her only daughter during a business trip and is not about to apologise for the affair which contributed to her own marriage breakdown. Hurt and saddened, Rosa terminates all contact but soon the two are talking again with Clarice delivering another bombshell:that she has terminal cancer. Rosa reacts to all this by turning her energy inwards to examine her own situation and decides to contact her real father.

Rosa’s husband Dado (Paulo Vilhena) is a lightweight environmentalist who flirts iwth his colleagues, avoids the chores then wonders why they don’t have sex anymore when leaving Rosa to do the lion’s share of school runs and cleaning.

This is a breezy and natural film with plenty of drama and shouty scenes leavened by shrewd insights. The lighter moments emerge when Rosa becomes close to another parent, Pedro, on the school run. The love hate relationship between mother and daughter is dramatically rich and certainly more mature than the resentments that poison Rosa’s turgid marriage in this decent but unmemorable Sao Paulo snapshot. MT

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 |

 

 

 

Discreet (2017) | Berlinale Forum

Dir.: Travis Mathews; Cast: Jonny Mars, Atsuko Okatsaka, Bob Swaffar, Jordan Elsass; USA 2017, 80 min.

Writer/director Travis Mathews (Interior. Leather Bar) relies very much on atmosphere in this moody drifter/road movie, set in a desolate Texas, where the anti-hero is alienated and caught in a diffuse past.

DISCREET starts and ends in a setting alongside a stream where in the opening scene a black body bag is thrown into the water, but hardly moves. It is Alex (Mars), the main character, who throws the body bag into the river, and, throughout the film, he is in communication with Mandy (Okatsuka), who runs a website called ‘Gentle Rhythm’. It’s content is always introduced by image of flowery wallpaper, through which Mandy tries to communicate her peaceful mantra.

But Alex is anything but at peace: he seems to be traumatised by an enigmatic past, and is constantly driving around in his car. After we watch two men in a porn booth masturbating, Alex arranges a meeting in his bedroom between homosexual men, coaxing them into absurd sex games. But most of his time is spent with his grandfather John (Swaffar), who lives in a dilapidated cottage in a fenced in property, where Alex is questioned extensively before being allowed to enter. Soon Alex picks up the young boy Zack (Elsass), who might be his younger Alter Ego. The grandfather is suffering from Parkinsons and Alex employs Zack to feed John. Whilst Alex visits the porn booth again, Mandy declares that she “is ready for the day”. Finally we learn the secret of the body bag – but even this throws up more questions than answers.

Mathews was clearly trying to evoke alienation and displacement for an American male who has not freed himself from his childhood, reliving it is constantly whilst driving aimlessly in an hostile environment. Unable to have any meaningful relationships, he uses Mandy’s website as a form of outlet, dreaming of a better future, without being able to envisage it clearly.

But Alex’ fragmentation is duplicated in the film’s structure, which allows the audience not vey much insight. Whilst certain segments are interesting, they do not really form a cohesive narrative together. Doing away with a narrative structure is fine, but one has to replace it with something, not just impressions and repetitions. The male lead is too weak to drive proceedings forward in a meaningful way. DoP Drew Xanthopoulos has the thankless task of holding everything together. He tries his best and succeeds with some disturbing images, particularly in the claustrophobic world of the porn booth. But overall DISCREET fails to make an impression as a gay interest piece or a mainstream arthouse title – even at eighty minutes.AS

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | Forum

Vazante (2017) | Berlinale Panorama Special

Dir: Daniela Thomas | Adventure Drama | Brazil / Portugal 2017 | 116 min · Black/White

This languorously seductive lush-mounted arthouse piece is the feature debut of Walter Salles’ regular collaborator Brazilian director Daniela Thomas. It explores transitional race and gender relations sixty years before the end of slavery, in 1820s Brazil, with a tantalising drama that focuses on a group of charismatic performances rather than adopting the more traditional approach of highlighting colonial myths.

composed on the widescreen and in intimate close-up in glowing black and white, her gorgeously teasing linear narrative slowly unfolds relying on atmosphere and a series of sparsely dialogued episodes which unspool against the backdrop of the glorious meadows and mountains of the Chapada Diamantina, that runs north and south through Bahia.

Mine owner Antonio has been forced to turn his back on diamond mining and switch to cattle and crops, in a remote estate where he lives with his black slaves and a group of indigenous retainers. Returning home from a trip he discovers his wife has died in childbirth, he decides to marry her pubescent niece Beatriz, who is a feisty tomboy who is unemotionally unprepared for a relationship with a man, and is still playing barefoot in the fields. Preoccupied with survival Antonio makes frequent forays to re-build his fortune and while he’s away, Beatriz is bored and lonely in their large home with only her taciturn grandmother for company with tragic results for all concerned.

Exuding a heady atmosphere of palpable racial tension intensified by its steamy steamy exotic setting VAZANTE is an impressive debut that will entrance cineastes with its gripping plotline, visual allure, feminine perception and captivating acting from a largely unknown cast. In pacing and ambience VAZANTE echoes Embrace of the Serpent. MT

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | SPECIAL SCREENING

Barrage (2017) | Berlinale Forum

Dir: Laura Schroeder | Cast: Lolita Chammah, Thémis Pauwels, Isabelle Huppert, Charles Müller, Elsa Houben, Marja-Leena Juncker, Luc Schiltz (Pol) | Luxembourg / Belgium Franc |112 min

Three women are united in Laura Schroeder’s second feature, which is very much a family affair with Isabelle Huppert and her daughter Lolita Chammah starring in their real life roles, as Elisabeth and Catherine.

Catherine returns home to Luxembourg after a decade in Switzerland during which her daughter Alba been looked after by her own mother Elisabeth. From the side of the tennis court, she watches Elisabeth coach Alba, her face clearly showing how well she remembers this mixture of stimulus and humiliation from her own childhood but Catherine needs to reassert her motherly authority and rightful place in the heirarchy – not easy when Huppert is in charge. The dynamic between the trio constantly changes with Catherine sometimes feeling like a sister to Alba but Schroeder’s skillful narrative is underpinned by some serious undertones which the three manage deftly in their subtle and entertaining performances.

The action takes place over a few days and little is known of Catherine’s past although she has clearly got some serious issues to deal with that have left her unstable and during a day in the country with Alba events come to a head explaining the film’s rather omenous title. And although Huppert is not always present her presence is strongly felt as a dominating force to be reckoned with – perfectly suiting her profile as a powerful actor in often tricky roles.

Laura Schroeder keeps emotional distance from her characters by using the Academy ratio, used after the Silent era when synchronised sound was first introduced in 1929, and this gives this potent character study rather a formal detached feel rather than an intimate ambiance. Despite this BARRAGE offers insight into women’s minds that will resonate with audiences familiar with the territory. MT

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | Forum Section

 

 

Django (2017) | Berlinale Competition

Dir: Etienne Comar | Cast: Reda Kateb; Cécile de France (Louise); Beata Palya, Bim Bam Merstein; Gabriel Mirété; Vincent Frade; Johnny Montreuil, Raphaël Dever | 117 min · Colour

Etienne Comar (Of Gods and Men) sadly fails in his attempt to bring the jazzy verve of Belgian-born Romany Django Rheinhardt’s music to the rescue of this rather earnest biopic, although it cleverly carries the undertone of Nazi persecution of his people during wartime France during 1943, based on the fictional novel Folles de Django by Salatko, who co-wrote the script.

After a thrilling opening in Paris where the musician entertains enraptured audiences while German officials set up a propaganda initiative against his ‘degenerate’ jazz, a narrative torpor sets in despite a game and committed lead performance from Reda Ketab as the charismatic and carefree strummer with Cecile de France seductively sinuous as his agent, who enhances his publicity value to the top brass, while remaining in cahoots with them. Django thinks his popularity will give him protection from the Nazis but wisely refuses to go on tour in Germany after pressure from the powers that be, taking refuge with his wife Naguine (the Hungarian singer Beata Palya) in a village near the Swiss border, where he reconnects with other members of his family, composes a classical work “Requiem for the Gypsy Brothers”, and makes a crafty bid for freedom via Lake Geneva into Switzerland, the Nazis hot in pursuit.

Despite its drawbacks DJANGO offers decent entertainment and is certainly worth a watch for its colourful cinematography and historic footage, but Colmar’s studious and rather stodgy narrative flies in the face of the cherished allure of the musician who captured our collective imagination and fondness with his effervescent brand of jazz. MT

BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | IN COMPETITION

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Mes Nuits Feront Echo (Still Night, Still Light) | Rotterdam International Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Sophie Goyette | Cast: Eliane Prefontaine, Gerardo Trejoluna, Felipe Casanova; Canada/Mexico | Drama | 98 min | 2016

First time director/writer/editor/producer Sophie Goyette has created her own universe with this evocative feature, which is best described as a dreamy poem about love, loss, longing and music. The Canadian director, whose short films have been shown at all major film festivals, has successfully moved the boundaries: Mes Nuits allows us to see through the cracks of human nature in a reverie that is half dream, half reality.

The characters linger, we only get glimpses of them, but music, in many forms, is the connecting element. Debut DoP Lena Mill-Reulliard’s images heighten an atmosphere of yearning; colours dissolve delicately as tunnels and railways link the transience of the narrative. The nature scenes have a strong link to the poetry of Hermann Hesse. But the overall impression is elusive: Goyette has developed a film language which feels quite unique and unlike more conventional films.

Set in Montreal and Mexico, the film is divided into three chapters, in the first we meet Eliane (Préfontaine, who also composed the score), sitting in a Montreal garden in a ‘princess’ costume, entertaining a group of young girls at a birthday party. The atmosphere is somewhat unreal, the staging feels like we are watching a dream: this is the consistent element through the whole film. But after the ‘performance’, when talking to the host of the birthday party, Eliane gives us clues about herself: she wanted to go to the conservatoire to study singing but although her voice was up to the challenge she had never learnt how to read music, never mind score a melody played by a pianist during the examination. “I gave in an empty sheet with my name on it”.  Clearly there are reasons for this : Eliane has lost her parents in an accident, and she has not come to terms with it. To put some distance between herself and the trauma she travels to Mexico where she takes up residence in a house owned by the middle- aged Romes (Trejoluna), whose son she is teaching piano.

Once in Mexico, Eliane feels threatened by her new surroundings: “Mexico is hot, dangerous”. But she stays, and visits an open-air concert with Romes, where music by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel transports her to another level – a fairy tale featuring an ancient dog. Romes has learned his English from watching American TV, and their communication is often difficult. Nevertheless, they seem to be at peace with each other. Elaine then talks about Chopin’s lifelong  depression, and we learn that he dedicated his last composition to his doctor. Eliane and Romes visit a mystical place called Cutemaco, where Romes has spent magical holidays as a child.

The focus then switches to Romes, who has lost his mother two years previously and still yearns for her. They talk on the phone together, but we don’t know if this is Romes’ dream or past reality. Romes is married, but we never see his wife, as he grows more and more morose. He is also troubled by the relationship with his father Pablo (Casanova), whom he accuses of having been cold towards his mother. He visits the old man in a care home, and they suddenly decide to visit China, “because we don’t have much time left”. In an unnamed metropolis in China, Pablo then becomes the central figure of the third chapter and as the denouement unspools, Romes’ story becomes clearer. Utterly unique and spellbinding. AS

MES NUITS FERONT ÉCHO by Sophie Goyette wins Impact Cinema Bright Future Award

SCREENING AS PART OF THE CINEMA BRIGHT FUTURE STRAND | INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM | 25 JANUARY – 5 FEBRUARY 2017

 

City of the Sun (2017) ****

Dir: Rati Oneli | Georgia / USA / Qatar / Netherlands 2017 | Georgian | Doc | 104 min · Colour

Up to 50 percent of the world’s manganese, a vital metal across the globe, used to be mined in Chiatura, in western Georgia. Today, it resembles an apocalyptic ghost town. Mzis qalaqi portrays a few of the remaining inhabitants. Music teacher Zurab dismantles ramshackle concrete buildings and sells the iron girders to make some money on the side. Archil still works in the mine but his real passion is the local amateur theatre group. Despite being malnourished, two young female athletes still train stoically for the next Olympic Games.

In his documentary debut, director Rati Oneli provides fascinating insights into a living environment whose bleak industrial ruins appear at once colossal almost like a film set. A jumble of clapped out electric wires and ageing cable cars runs through the city like the clogged-up arteries of an ailing organism that resists the flow of life in untiring fashion. Mzis qalaqi brings home the ephemeral nature. In a city where the sun never shines, only the inhabitants generate warmth. Oneli succeeds in achieving far more than the mining companies are capable of: His camera brings that most valuable of resources to the surface – humanity.

SCREENING DURING BERLINALE 2017 | Panorama section.

 

In the Intense Now (2017) | Berlinale Forum

Dir: João Moreira Salles | Doc | Brazil | 127 min · Black/White & Colour

In 1966, whilst on a cultural tour of China, the director’s mother captured on film her impressions of the country and its people. Forty years later, her son discovered her material. He comments on the images taken by his enthusiastic mother by quoting the impressions of Italian author Alberto Moravia, who also travelled through China and was able to closely observe Maoist policies. His mother’s journey during the first year of the Cultural Revolution also provides a starting point for João Moreira Salles’ exploration of other societies in the midst of upheaval. Making use of archive images, he dissects and analyses the Brazilian coup of 1964 and the end of the Prague Spring in August 1968. He also returns – repeatedly – to the Parisian riots in May which found a ‘star’ revolutionary and mediator between Paris and Berlin in the shape of Daniel Cohn-Bendit. An essayistic and at the same time personal exploration of the parallel stories of revolution in Prague, France and Brazil – and their failure. By juxtaposing amateur footage and archive material the film succeeds in pointing out connections between the sources of these images and their political contexts. Mind-blowing stuff and recommended viewing.

SCREENING DURING BERLINALE 2017 |

Sundance Film Festival | Awards | 2017

THE US GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY

dina_still1 copyDINA U.S.A. (Directors: Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini)

An eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door-greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story.

THE US JURY PRIZE: DRAMATIC

I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE. / U.S.A. (Director/: Macon Blair) —

When a depressed woman is has a burglary, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves, alongside her obnoxious neighbour. But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth against a pack of degenerate criminals. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow, Jane Levy, Devon Graye.

THE WORLD GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY

Last Man in AleppoLAST MEN IN ALEPPO / Denmark, Syria (Director: Feras Fayyad)

After five years of war in Syria, Aleppo’s remaining residents prepare themselves for a siege. Khalid, Subhi and Mahmoud, founding members of The White Helmets, have remained in the city to help their fellow citizens—and experience daily life, death, struggle and triumph in a city under fire.

THE WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE:DRAMATIC

Nile Hiton IncidentTHE NILE HILTON INCIDENT / Sweden, Germany, Denmark (Dir/Writer: Tarik Saleh)

In Cairo, weeks before the 2011 revolution, Police Detective Noredin is working in the infamous Kasr el-Nil Police Station when he is handed the case of a murdered singer. He soon realizes that the investigation concerns the power elite, close to the President’s inner circle. Cast: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Mohamed Yousry, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar.

THE AUDIENCE AWARD US: DOCUMENTARY

CHASING CORAL / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Orlowski) main picture

Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.

THE AUDIENCE AWARD: US DRAMATIC

9438-UN17_CROWNHEIGHTS_still1_KeithStanfield__byBKutchinsCROWN HEIGHTS / U.S.A. (Dir/Writer: Matt Ruskin)

When Colin Warner is wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to proving Colin’s innocence. Adapted from This American Life, this is the incredible true story of their harrowing quest for justice. Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell, Amari Cheatom.

THE AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY

Teenager vs. SuperpowerJOSHUA:  Teenager vs. Superpower / U.S.A. (Director: Joe Piscatella)

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

THE AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC

SuenoSUENO EN OTRA IDIOMA (I Dream in Another Language) / Mexico, Netherlands (Dir: Ernesto Contreras, Writer: Carlos Contreras)

The last two speakers of a millennia-old language haven’t spoken for 50 years, when a young linguist tries to bring them together. Yet hidden in the past, in the heart of the jungle, lies a secret concerning the fate of the Zikril language. Cast: Fernando Álvarez Rebeil, Eligio Meléndez, Manuel Poncelis, Fátima Molina, Juan Pablo de Santiago, Hoze Meléndez.

THE DIRECTING AWARD : U.S. DOCUMENTARY

8413-UD17_FORCE_still1_TheForce_academygraduation__byPeterNicks copyPeter Nicks for his film THE FORCE  / U.S.A. (Director: Peter Nicks)

This cinema verité look at the long-troubled Oakland Police Department goes deep inside their struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson and an explosive scandal.

THE DIRECTING AWARD: U.S. Dramatic

Eliza Hittman for her film BEACH RATS / U.S.A. (Dir/Writer Eliza Hittman)

A dudebro on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online. Cast: Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, Kate Hodge.

THE DIRECTING AWARD: World Cinema Documentary

WinniePascale Lamche, for her film WINNIE / France (Director: Pascale Lamche)

While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.

THE DIRECTING AWARD: World Cinema Dramatic

gods-own-countyFrancis Lee, for his film GOD’S OWN COUNTRY / UK: Francis Lee)

Springtime in Yorkshire: isolated young sheep farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path. Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alec Secareanu, Ian Hart, Gemma Jones.

THE WALDO SALT SCREENWRITING AWARD: U.S. Dramatic

IGW_SUNDANCE_FIRST_LOOKMatt Spicer and David Branson Smith, for their film INGRID GOES WEST U.S.A.

A young woman becomes obsessed with an Instagram “influencer” and moves to Los Angeles to try and befriend her in real life. Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen.

OTHER AWARDS

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Inspirational Filmmaking

STEP_STILL_1 copySTEP / U.S.A. (Director: Amanda Lipitz) — With dreams of becoming the first in their families to attend college, a group of seniors from an inner-city Baltimore girls high school strives to make their step dance team a success against a backdrop of social unrest in a troubled city.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling

Strong-Island_film-stillSTRONG ISLAND / U.S.A., Denmark (Director: Yance Ford) — Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing

Editors Kim Roberts and Emiliano Battista for UNREST: U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Brea)

When Harvard PhD student Jennifer Brea is struck down at 28 by a fever that leaves her bedridden, doctors tell her it’s “all in her head.” Determined to live, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story—and four other families’ stories—fighting a disease medicine forgot.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award:

ICARUS-Sundance-Still copyICARUS / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Fogel)

When Bryan Fogel sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller involving dirty urine, unexplained death and Olympic Gold—exposing the biggest scandal in sports history.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Cinematography to:

3758-UN17_YellowBirds_still1_AldenEhrenreich_JackHuston_TyeSheridan__byBobMahoneySifeddineElAmineDirector of Photography Daniel Landin for THE YELLOW BIRDS / U.S.A. (Director: Alexandre Moors, Writers: David Lowery, R.F.I. Porto)

Two young men enlist in the army and are deployed to fight in the Iraq War. After an unthinkable tragedy, the returning soldier struggles to balance his promise of silence with the truth and a mourning mother’s search for peace. Cast: Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Patric, Toni Collette, Jennifer Aniston.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance

11115-UN17_RoxanneRoxanne_still1_ChanteAdams__byTomZubackChanté Adams, in ROXANNE, ROXANNE / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michael Larnell)

The most feared battle MC in early-’80s NYC was a fierce teenager from the Queensbridge projects with the weight of the world on her shoulders. At age 14, hustling the streets to provide for her family, Roxanne Shanté was well on her way to becoming a hip-hop legend. Cast: Chanté Adams, Mahershala Ali, Nia Long, Elvis Nolasco, Kevin Phillips, Shenell Edmonds.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Director

Maggie Betts, for her film NOVITIATE: U.S.A. (Dir/Writer: Maggie Betts)

In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church. Cast: Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor.

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Excellence in Cinematography

machinesCinematographer Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva for MACHINES / India, Germany, Finland (Director: Rahul Jain) — This intimate, observant portrayal of the rhythm of life and work in a gigantic textile factory in Gujarat, India, moves through the corridors and bowels of the enormously disorienting structure—taking the viewer on a journey of dehumanizing physical labour and intense hardship.

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Commanding Vision

MotherlandMOTHERLAND / U.S.A., Philippines (Director: Ramona S. Diaz) — Taking us into the heart of the planet’s busiest maternity hospital, the viewer is dropped like an unseen outsider into the hospital’s stream of activity. At first, the people are strangers. As the film continues, it’s absorbingly intimate, rendering the women at the heart of the story increasingly familiar.

A World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling

RumbleRUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World / Canada (Directors: Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana) — This powerful documentary about the role of Native Americans in contemporary music history—featuring some of the greatest music stars of our time—exposes a critical missing chapter, revealing how indigenous musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives and, through their contributions, influenced popular culture. Cast: Robbie Robertson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Martin Scorsese, Tony Bennett, Steven Tyler, Iggy Pop.

A World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography

Axoloti OverkillCinematographer Manu Dacosse for Axolotl Overkill / Germany (Director and screenwriter: Helene Hegemann) — Mifti, age 16, lives in Berlin with a cast of characters including her half-siblings; their rich, self-involved father; and her junkie friend Ophelia. As she mourns her recently deceased mother, she begins to develop an obsession with Alice, an enigmatic, and much older, white-collar criminal. Cast: Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Arly Jover, Mavie Hörbiger, Laura Tonke, Hans Löw, Bernhard Schütz.

A World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematic Vision

Free and Easy / Hong Kong (Director: Jun Geng, Screenwriters: Jun Geng, Yuhua Feng, Bing Liu) — When a traveling soap salesman arrives in a desolate Chinese town, a crime occurs, and sets the strange residents against each other with tragicomic results. Cast: Xu Gang, Zhang Zhiyong, Xue Baohe, Gu Benbin, Zhang Xun, Yuan Liguo.

unnamed-2 copyA World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Screenplay

Screenwriter Kirsten Tan for Pop Aye / Singapore, Thailand (Director and screenwriter: Kirsten Tan) — On a chance encounter, a disenchanted architect bumps into his long-lost elephant on the streets of Bangkok. Excited, he takes his elephant on a journey across Thailand in search of the farm where they grew up together. Cast: Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Penpak Sirikul, Bong.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 19-29 JANUARY

Berlinale | Panorama films 2017

The German production TIGER GIRL by Jakob Lass will open this year’s edition of Panorama Special at Berlin’s Zoo Palast cinema, along with the previously announced Brazilian production VAZANTE.

In TIGER GIRL’s fast-paced narrative, a strong friendship develops between two women, one in which conventional value systems begin to unravel, in what amounts to a veritable moral portrait of the underbelly of today’s German republic. Daniela Thomas’ VAZANTE represents for its part the programme focus “Black Worlds”, which is also reinforced by the freshly confirmed inclusion of the South African production VAYA by Akin Omotoso, which offers an immersion in the urbanity of Johannesburg.

The fourth film from Brazil is COMO NOSSAS PAIS(Just Like Our Parents) by Laís Bodanzky, who depicts the everyday lives of three generations in Sao Paulo as a pyrotechnic display of individual passions and existential delusions staged with a sublime naturalness.

With DISCREET, US indie director Travis Mathews, a chronographer of a gay Western modernity, is showing his second film in Panorama. An eerie soundscape floats atop his often elliptically edited story, which revolves around a man approaching middle age who gets caught up in the darker depths of his past.

The original style of Moroccan filmmaker Hicham Lasri was already apparent at Panorama 2015 in The Sea is Behind and on display again last year in Starve Your Dog. Now he returns for the third time with Headbang Lullaby, a visually stunning psychedelic fairy tale swimming in vibrant colour and full of absurd situations, which also takes a long socially critical look at the history of Lasri’s native Morocco.

Naoko Ogigami already enchanted audiences in Berlin with Megane in 2008 and Rentaneko in 2012. In her most recent film Karera ga Honki de Amu toki wa (Close-Knit), the Japanese director employs contemplative, focussed imagery to honour a potential matter-of-factness for non-normative sexualities and the value of families that are defined by love and care and not by conventions.

Three modern arthouse films from China and Hong Kong shed some fresh light on the complex upheavals afoot throughout the vast country. Establishing alternatives for one’s self within authoritarian systems is a great step towards individual freedom: In Bing Lang Xue (The Taste of Betel Nut), we experience the whirlwind of young love on a resort island, while in Ghost in the Mountains and Ciao Ciao, a French co-production, we bask in the breath-taking landscapes of the Chinese highlands through the power of adept cinematography.

In his New Zealand film One Thousand Ropes, Samoan director Tusi Tamasese creates mythic images full of tension and concentration to relate the story of Maea, the baker and male midwife with the healing hands, whose personal demons play an integral role in his everyday life.

Today whole hordes of young cosmopolitans are drawn to Berlin by the promise of happiness that the city has come to represent – three films that pay tribute to this vision in extremely different manners are gathered at Panorama: the psycho thriller Berlin Syndrome by Australian director Cate Shortland, featuring Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt and Matthias Habich; the feminist fairy tale The Misandrists by Berlinale regular Bruce LaBruce; and the para-pornographic work of underground science fiction Fluidø, by Taiwanese-American artist Shu Lea Cheang.

E U R O P E

Thirteen more films have been confirmed for the final selection from Europe alone. These include works like the Spanish debut feature Pieles (Skins) by Eduardo Casanova, Rekvijem za gospodju J. (Requiem for Mrs. J.) by Serbia’s Bojan Vuletić, Ferenc Török’s 1945 from Hungary and God’s Own Country, Francis Lee’s feature-film debut from United Kingdom. Teona Mitevska returns with a bitter depiction of Macedonian adolescents trying to get their bearings in When the Day Had no Name. Also returning to Panorama are Norwegians Ole Giæver, with the emancipatory and philosophical self-examination Fra balkongen (From the Balcony), and Erik Poppe with Kongens Nei (The King’s Choice), which deals with the Norwegian king’s resistance to the German armed forces in World War II.

Luca Guadagnino will show his French-Italian account of summer love, Call Me by Your Name featuring Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar, a screen adaptation of André Aciman’s novel of the same name, co-written with James Ivory (left).null

The Belgian-French-Lebanese co-production Insyriated by Philippe Van Leeuw is an intense chamber drama featuring Hiam Abbass as a woman trapped in the family’s apartment while a war rages on outside. Kaygı (Inflame) by Ceylan Özgün Özçelik tells the story of the incremental roll-out of wide-spread censorship of the press in Turkey and its effect on the work of a young female journalist. And finally there is Georgian director Rezo Gigineishvili’s Hostages, in which a longing for freedom and independence escalates into a readiness to use violence for young Soviet citizens during an airplane hijacking set in 1983.

Panorama main programme | Panorama Special

1945 –  Hungary
By Ferenc Török
With Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Eszter Nagy-Kálózy
European premiere

THE BERLIN SYNDROME – Australia
By Cate Shortland
With Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt
European premiere

THE TASTE OF BETEL NUT (main pic) Bing Lang Xue – Hong Kong, China
By Hu Jia
With Zhao Bing Rui, Yue Ye, Shen Shi Yu
World premiere

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME – Italy / France
By Luca Guadagnino
With Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois
European premiere

CIAO-CIAO – France / People’s Republic of China
By Song Chuan
With Liang Xueqin, Zhang Yu
World premiere

JUST LIKE OUR PARENTS – Como Nossos Pais Brazil
By Laís Bodanzky
With Maria Ribeiro, Clarisse Abujamra, Paulo Vilhena, Felipe Rocha, Jorge Mautner, Herson Capri, Sophia Valverde, Annalara Prates
World premiere

DISCREET – USA
By Travis Mathews
With Jonny Mars, Atsuko Okatsuko, Joy Cunningham, Bob Swaffar
World premiere

FLUIDO  – Germany
By Shu Lea Cheang
World premiere
Fra balkongen (From the Balcony) – Norway
By Ole Giaever
World premiere

GHOST IN THE MOUNTAINS – People’s Republic of China
By Yang Heng
With Tang Shenggang, Liang Yu, Shang Meitong, Xiang Peng, Zhang Yun
World premiere

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY – United Kingdom
By Francis Lee
With Josh O’Connor, Alec Secăreanu, Gemma Jones, Ian Hart
European premiere

HEADBANG LULLABY  – Morocco / France / Qatar / Lebanon
By Hicham Lasri
With Aziz Hattab, Latefa Ahrrare, Zoubir Abou el Fadl, El Jirari Benaissa, Salma Eddlimi, Adil Abatorab
World premiere

HOSTAGES – Russian Federation / Georgia / Poland
By Rezo Gigineishvili
With Merab Ninidze, Darejan Kharshiladze, Tina Dalakishvili, Irakli Kvirikadze
World premiere

INSYRIATED – Belgium / France / Lebanon
By Philippe Van Leeuw
With Hiam Abbass, Diamand Abou Abboud, Juliette Navis, Mohsen Abbas, Moustapha Al Kar
World premiere

CLOSE-KNIT Karera ga Honki de Amu toki wa (Close-Knit) – Japan
By Naoko Ogigami
WithToma Ikuta, Rinka Kakihara, Kenta Kiritani
World premiere

INFLAME – Kaygı Turkey
By Ceylan Özgün Özçelik
With Algı Eke, Özgür Çevik
World premiere– Debut film

THE KING’s CHOICE Kongens Nei – Norway / Sweden / Denmark / Ireland
By Erik Poppe
With Jesper Christensen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Karl Markovics, Tuva Novotny, Katharina Schüttler, Juliane Köhler
European premiere

THE MISANDRISTS – Germany
By Bruce LaBruce
With Susanne Sachsse, Kembra Pfahler
World premiere

ONE THOUSAND ROPES – New Zealand
By Tusi Tamasese
With Uelese Petaia, Frankie Adams, Væle Sima Urale, Ene Petaia, Beulah Koale, Anapela Polataivao
World premiere

PIELES (Skins) – Spain
By Eduardo Casanova
with Ana Polvorosa, Candela Peña, Carmen Machi, Macarena Gómez, Secun de la Rosa, Jon Kortajarena, Antonio Duran “Morris”, Eloi Costa
World premiere – Debut film

REQUIEM FOR MRS J  Rekvijem za gospodju J.  – Serbia / Bulgaria / Macedonia / Russian Federation / France
By Bojan Vuletić
With Mirjana Karanović, Jovana Gavrilović, Danica Nedeljković, Vučić Perović
World premiere

TIGER GIRL – Germany
By Jakob Lass
With Ella Rumpf, Maria Dragus
World premiere

VAYA – South Africa
By Akin Omotoso
With Mncedisi Shabangu, Zimkhitha Nyoka, Nomonde Mbusi, Sihle Xaba, Warren Masemola,
Zimkhitha Nyoka, Nomonde Mbusi, Azwile Chamane
European premiere

WHEN THE DAY HAD NO NAME – Macedonia / Belgium / Slovenia
By Teona Mitevska
With Leon Ristov, Hanis Bagashov, Dragan Mishevski, Stefan Kitanovic, Igorco Postolov, Ivan Vrtev Soptrajanov
World premiere

Supporting Film

VENUS  – Filó a fadinha lésbica (Venus – Filly the Lesbian Little Fairy) – Brazil
By Sávio Leite

Already Announced Titles

CENTAUR – Kyrgyzstan / France / Germany / The Netherlands, by Aktan Arym Kubat
HONEYGIVER AMONG THE DOGS – Bhutan, by Dechen Roder
PENDULAR – Brazil / Argentinia / France, by Julia Murat
THE  – South Africa / Germany / The Netherlands / France, by John Trengove
VAZANTE – Brazil / Portugal, by Daniela Thomas

BERLINALE 2017 | PANORAMA SECTION | 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017

Goodfellas (1990) | Scorsese Retrospective

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Writers: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese | Cast: Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro | US | Crime Drama

Gangster movies hold a fascination in the public imagination with the genre catching fire in the 1960s when charismatic antiheroes like Bonnie and Clyde and the Kray Twins were celebrated for their criminal antics – but generally met a sticky end.

Growing up in New York, Martin Scorsese was familiar with the various cultural divides (Jewish,Irish,Italian) from his personal experiences in Little Italy and poured all this energy into his thrillers from the Depression with Boxcar Bertha (1972), to the visceral brutality of Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi-Driver.

The sheer upbeat energy of GOODFELLAS often makes the blood-soaked gushes of violence all the more breathtaking – especially where Pesci is concerned, and this is all punctured with caustic wit as Scorsese cleverly captures the Jewish situational humour in scenes featuring Hill’s wife, brilliantly played by Lorraine Bracco (as Karen), with ehoes of the best of Woody Allen. Yet there’s also the visceral punch of the love affair between Karen and Henry who express their passion in a way that’s seldom seen on screen – this is desire that doesn’t need to feature scenes of steamy love-making to make it palpable and real. Their chemistry makes for a interesting contrast with the more latent but just as tangible desire and longing that burned between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung’s characters in Wong Ka Wai’s In the Mood for Love.

Based Nicholas Pileggi’s book ‘Wiseguy’, and now celebrating its 50th annivesary, the film opens with Hill’s chillingly memorable words: “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster”, and takes us on a rollercoaster rake’s progress within a Mafia clan where Hill earns his stripes and twice serves time – if you could call it that – together with his brothers in jail. In actual fact these incarcerations were just a microcosm of his normal life: cooking, crooking and companionship continued on as normal – just in the confines of the jail. But it was the drugs that finally got to Hil although underneath it all, Pesci plays him as a emotionally rather a weak and unstable character who was just looking for an escape route. He finds this by entering a witness protection programme that saw him surviving iwth a new identity after giving evidence that ked to the conviction of his mafiosi colleagues.

All the velocity and verve of the filming panache carries the narrative forward like a steam-train of expert freeze-frames and long takes with Bernard Herrmann’s atmospheric score and a melee of modish tunes the shriek the 70s taking us back to those magnificent years of political incorrectness and gutsy romance.

GOODFELLAS is Scorsese at his very best with its iconic turns from De Niro (Jimmy Conway), Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito, ) and Ray Liotta whose vituperative viciousness unnerves the audiences from the very start. He’s a man with nothing to lose and his passion for Jewish princess Karen – Elaine Bracco at her most vibrant, is what love is all about. Their affair fizzes like a firework alongside the crime narrative making GOOFELLAS Scorsese at his very best. MT

COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS, A NATIONWIDE RE-RELEASE ON 20 JANUARY ACCOMPANIES THE MARTIN SCORSESE RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI THROUGHOUT JANUARY 2017

Berlinale Forum | The daring and the avant-garde

FORUM: REALISTIC AND SURREAL

The 47th Berlinale Forum strand allegedly offers the most daring and challenging fare of the festival often featuring films that are ethnographic, political and experimental in nature and where the landscape frequently takes on a leading role.

This year focuses on South and Latin American films. Davi Pretto’s narrative feature Rifle sets out for the endless plains of the Brazilian south to stage a modern Western there. A taciturn former soldier is employed to guard a small landholder’s estate. But when an agricultural company seeks to buy up the land, he reacts in truly drastic fashion.

Peruvian brothers Alvaro und Diego Sarmiento find stunning images to convey the leisurely flow of life in a verdant river landscape in Río Verde. El tiempo de los Yakurunas (Green River. The Time of the Yakurunas) exploring the daily routines of the indigenous inhabitants of Peru’s Amazon region.

In Casa Roshell, Chilean director Camila José Donoso assembles a portrait of a most unusual institution in the Mexican capital, a place where men learn to be women during the day, before the parties get going at night. All manner of boundaries blur in this tiny utopia: between gay, straight and bi, male and female, past and present, reality and fiction.

Vladimir Durán’s debut feature Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) is at once realistic and surreal and one of three Argentinian films showing in the main programme. Ten-year-old Axel lives with his mother and three sisters in a flat in Buenos Aires. They’d be a perfectly normal family if only the mother weren’t imprisoned in one of the rooms.

El teatro de la desaparición (The Theatre of Disappearance) by sculptor and installation artist Adrián Villar Rojas presents a hypnotic triptych which depicts latent states of war, drawing on sensual images seemingly only tenuously connected that employ disparate styles and jump freely from continent to continent.

Albertina Carri’s Cuatreros (Rustlers) examines Argentina’s complex recent past: Isidro Velázquez was a bandit and dissident active in the 1960s whose story formed both the basis for a sociology book by her father Roberto Carri and a feature film that is now lost. The director draws on archive images to bring her own biography into alignment with wider historical events.

The Sensory Ethnographic Lab has already been well-represented at the Forum and Forum Expanded in the form of Sweetgrass, Leviathan and Yumen and several of its key figures now return to this year’s programme. Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Somniloquies works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep. In El mar la mar, J.P. Sniadecki and Joshua Bonnetta dissect the Sonoran Desert – a landscape marked by the border between the United States and Mexico.

North American cinema once again forms a strong presence at this year’s Forum. Golden Exits by Alex Ross Perry tells the story of a young Australian woman who comes to New York for a few months and unwittingly throws the lives of two couples into disarray.

Menashe, the feature debut by Joshua Z Weinstein, is set in Borough Park, Brooklyn and is almost entirely in Yiddish. The titular Menashe fights to keep custody of his son following the death of his wife. Yet the Hasidic community demands he lead a more ordered life and find a new spouse, neither of which come easy to this kind, but awkward loner.

Amman Abbasi is also showing his debut feature at the Forum. It tells the story of a thirteen-year-old who has lost direction following the death of his brother, meaning that being initiated into a local gang now appears a necessary step towards becoming a man. Dayveon is a search for brotherhood in an African American community in the rural South.

Jeremy Levine and Landon Van Soest’s sensitive long-term documentary For Ahkeem was shot in Missouri, and follows Daje, who lives with her single mother in St. Louis. Like many black teenagers in the neighbourhood, she has problems at school, while her everyday life is shaken again and again by the violent deaths of her friends.

There is a strong German element to the documentaries this year. Ann Carolin Renninger and René Frölke’s Aus einem Jahr der Nichtereignisse (From a Year of Non-Events) follows a year in the life of a 90-year-old north German farmer, who lives alone on a rural farmstead.

Heinz Emigholz, a familiar Forum guest for many years now (and a verbose talker), returns to the programme with his “Streetscapes” series, which loosely links together four separate films. 2+2=22 [The Alphabet] documents the recording sessions for the album “ABC” by electronic music group Kreidler in Tbilisi, Georgia. Bickels [Socialism] examines the architecture of Samuel Bickels, who created numerous kibbutz buildings and museums in Israel. Streetscapes [Dialogue] is a fictionalised dialogue about filmmaking based on the protocols of a mammoth psychoanalysis session and was shot in buildings by Julio Vilamajó, Eladio Dieste and Arno Brandlhuber in Uruguay and Berlin, some of which then pop up again in the final chapter Dieste [Uruguay].

Nicolas Wackerbarth’s feature Casting is also dedicated to the process of filmmaking. Director Vera is unwilling to compromise when it comes to finding the right lead actress for a Fassbinder remake for television. Acting assistant Gerwin delivers dialogues with a bevy of famous actresses and soon realises that this could be his big chance. The film’s starry cast includes Ursina Lardi, Andrea Sawatzki, Corinna Kirchhoff, Judith Engel, Marie-Lou Sellem and many more.

The films of the 47th Forum

2+2=22 [The Alphabet] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany – WP

Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) by Vladimir Durán, Argentina / Colombia – WP

At Elske Pia (Loving Pia) by Daniel Joseph Borgmann, Denmark – WP

Aus einem Jahr der Nichtereignisse (From a Year of Non-Events) by Ann Carolin Renninger, René Frölke, Germany – WP

Autumn, Autumn by Jang Woo-jin, Republic of Korea – IP

Barrage by Laura Schroeder, Luxembourg / Belgium / France – WP

Bickels [Socialism] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany / Israel – WP

Casa Roshell by Camila José Donoso, Mexico / Chile – WP

Casting by Nicolas Wackerbarth, Germany – WP

Chemi bednieri ojakhi (My Happy Family) by Nana & Simon, Germany / Georgia/France

Cuatreros (Rustlers) by Albertina Carri, Argentina – IP

Dayveon by Amman Abbasi, USA – IP

Dieste [Uruguay] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany – WP

Drôles d’oiseaux (Strange Birds) by Elise Girard, France – IP
For Ahkeem by Jeremy Levine, Landon Van Soest, USA – WP

Golden Exits by Alex Ross Perry, USA – IP

Jassad gharib (Foreign Body) by Raja Amari, Tunisia / France

Loktak Lairembee (Lady of the Lake) by Haobam Paban Kumar, India

Maman Colonelle (Mama Colonel) by Dieudo Hamadi, Democratic Republic of Congo / France – WP

El mar la mar by J.P. Sniadecki, Joshua Bonnetta, USA – WP

El mar nos mira de lejos (The Sea Stares at Us from Afar) by Manuel Muñoz Rivas, Spain / The Netherlands – WP

Menashe by Joshua Z Weinstein, USA / Israel – IP

Mittsu no hikari (Three Lights) by Kohki Yoshida, Japan – WP

Mon rot fai (Railway Sleepers) by Sompot Chidgasornpongse, Thailand

Motherland (Bayang Ina Mo) by Ramona S. Diaz, USA / The Philippines – IP

Motza el hayam (Low Tide) by Daniel Mann, Israel / France – WP

Mzis qalaqi (City of the Sun) by Rati Oneli, Georgia / USA / The Netherlands / Qatar / USA – WP

Newton by Amit V Masurkar, India – WP

Occidental by Neïl Beloufa, France – IP

Qiu (Inmates) by Ma Li, People’s Republic of China – WP

Rifle by Davi Pretto, Brazil / Germany – IP

Río Verde. El tiempo de los Yakurunas (Green River. The Time of the Yakurunas) by Alvaro Sarmiento, Diego Sarmiento, Peru – WP

Shu’our akbar min el hob (A Feeling Greater than Love) by Mary Jirmanus Saba, Lebanon – WP

somniloquies by Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France / USA – WP
Spell Reel by Filipa César, Germany / Portugal / France / Guinea-Bissau – WP

Streetscapes [Dialogue] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany – WP

Tamaroz (Simulation) by Abed Abest, Iran – WP

El teatro de la desaparición (The Theatre of Disappearance) by Adrián Villar Rojas, Argentina – WP

Tiere (Animals) by Greg Zglinski, Switzerland / Austria / Poland – WP

Tigmi n Igren (House in the Fields) by Tala Hadid, Morocco / Qatar – WP

Tinselwood by Marie Voignier, France – WP

Werewolf by Ashley McKenzie, Canada – IP

Yozora ha itsu demo saikou mitsudo no aoiro da (The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue) by Yuya Ishii, Japan – WP

BERLINALE FILM FESTVAL | FORUM | 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017

Sundance Film 2017 | 19-29 January 2017

thoroughbredIn Park City Utah, the SUNDANCE INSTITUTE sets the indie film agenda for 2017 with a slew of provocative new titles for this year’s festival which runs from 19-29 January. These will take part in the U.S. Competition, World Competition and NEXT strands, and an environmentally focused programme entitled New Climate.

30473930013_86dc9f4f65_zRobert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance, is joined by chief programmer John Copper programmer for 2017’s theme: climate change and environmental preservation. The New Climate program builds on the Institute’s longstanding commitment to showcasing environmental films and projects, that in the past have included An Inconvenient Truth, Blackfish, The Cove, Gasland, Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction and Collisions. This year’s programme includes Jeff Orlowski’s follow up to his coruscating documentary Chasing Ice, with Chasing Coral, which follows a team of divers, photographers and scientists exploring the world’s changing coral reefs; Trophy, an in-depth look at the controversial, multi-billion-dollar big-game hunting industry; Water & Power: A California Heist, an investigation of California’s convoluted water system; Plastic China an examination of employee life at a Chinese recycling plant; and Machines, (above) a portrait of the rhythm of life and work in a gigantic textile factory in Gujarat, India.

U.S.   D R A M A T I C    C O M P E T I T I O N

Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.

bandaid_still1_adampally_fredarmisen_zoelisterjonesBAND AID / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Zoe Lister-Jones) — A couple who can’t stop arguing embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage: by turning their strife into songs and starting a band. Cast: Zoe Lister-Jones, Adam Pally, Fred Armisen, Susie Essman, Hannah Simone, Ravi Patel. World Premiere

BEACH RATS/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Eliza Hittman) — An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online. Cast: Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, Kate Hodge, Neal Huff. World Premiere

8777-un17_brigsbybear_still1_kylemooney__bychristiansprengerBRIGSBY BEAR/ U.S.A. (Director: Dave McCary, Screenwriters: Kevin Costello, Kyle Mooney) — Brigsby Bear Adventures is a children’s TV show produced for an audience of one: James. When the show abruptly ends, James’s life changes forever, and he sets out to finish the story himself. Cast: Kyle Mooney, Claire Danes, Mark Hamill, Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins. World Premiere

BURNING SANDS / U.S.A. (Director: Gerard McMurray, Screenwriters: Christine Berg, Gerard McMurray) — Deep into a fraternity’s Hell Week, a favoured pledge is torn between honouring a code of silence or standing up against the intensifying violence of underground hazing. Cast: Trevor Jackson, Alfre Woodard, Steve Harris, Tosin Cole, DeRon Horton, Trevante Rhodes. World Premiere

CROWN HEIGHTS / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Ruskin) — When Colin Warner is wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to proving Colin’s innocence. Adapted from This American Life, this is the incredible true story of their harrowing quest for justice. Cast: Keith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell, Amari Cheatom. World Premiere

9635-un17_goldenexits_still1_emilybrowning_adamhorovitz__byseanpricewilliamsGOLDEN EXITS/ U.S.A. left (Director and screenwriter: Alex Ross Perry) — The arrival of a young foreign girl disrupts the lives and emotional balances of two Brooklyn families. Cast: Emily Browning, Adam Horovitz, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwartzman, Chloë Sevigny. World Premiere

THE HERO / U.S.A. (Director: Brett Haley, Screenwriters: Brett Haley, Marc Basch) — Lee, a former Western film icon, is living a comfortable existence lending his golden voice to advertisements and smoking weed. After receiving a lifetime achievement award and unexpected news, Lee re-examines his past, while a chance meeting with a sardonic comic has him looking to the future. Cast: Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon, Krysten Ritter, Nick Offerman, Katherine Ross. World Premiere

unnamedI DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE / U.S.A. left (Director and screenwriter: Macon Blair) — When a depressed woman is burgled, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves, alongside her obnoxious neighbour. But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth against a pack of degenerate criminals. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow, Jane Levy, Devon Graye. World Premiere. DAY ONE

igw_sundance_first_lookINGRID GOES WEST / U.S.A. (Director: Matt Spicer, Screenwriters: Matt Spicer, David Branson Smith) — A young woman becomes obsessed with an Instagram lifestyle blogger and moves to Los Angeles to try and befriend her in real life. Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen. World Premiere

12520-un17_landline_still2_jennyslate_abbyquinn__byjojowhildenLANDLINE/ U.S.A.- left (Director: Gillian Robespierre, Screenwriters: Elisabeth Holm, Gillian Robespierre) — Two sisters come of age in ’90s New York when they discover their dad’s affair—and it turns out he’s not the only cheater in the family. Everyone still smokes inside, no one has a cell phone and the Jacobs finally connect through lying, cheating and hibachi. Cast: Jenny Slate, John Turturro, Edie Falco, Abby Quinn, Jay Duplass, Finn Wittrock. World Premiere

NOVITIATE / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maggie Betts) — In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church. Cast: Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor. World Premiere

patti_cake_still-tif_rgbPATTI CAKE$ / U.S.A – left -. (Director and screenwriter: Geremy Jasper) — Straight out of Jersey comes Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Killa P, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, an aspiring rapper fighting through a world of strip malls and strip clubs on an unlikely quest for glory. Cast: Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty. World Premiere

ROXANNE ROXANNE / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michael Larnell) — The most feared battle emcee in early-’80s NYC was a fierce teenager from the Queensbridge projects with the weight of the world on her shoulders. At age 14, hustling the streets to provide for her family, Roxanne Shanté was well on her way to becoming a hip-hop legend. Cast: Chanté Adams, Mahershala Ali, Nia Long, Elvis Nolasco, Kevin Phillips, Shenell Edmonds. World Premiere

TO THE BONE / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marti Noxon) — In a last-ditch effort to battle her severe anorexia, 20-year-old Ellen enters a group recovery home. With the help of an unconventional doctor, Ellen and the other residents go on a sometimes-funny, sometimes-harrowing journey that leads to the ultimate question—is life worth living? Cast: Lily Collins, Keanu Reeves, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Alex Sharp, Liana Liberato. World Premiere

walking-outWALKING OUT / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: Alex Smith, Andrew Smith) — A father and son struggle to connect on any level until a brutal encounter with a predator in the heart of the wilderness leaves them both seriously injured. If they are to survive, the boy must carry his father to safety. Cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins, Bill Pullman, Alex Neustaedter, Lily Gladstone. World Premiere

3758-un17_yellowbirds_still1_aldenehrenreich_jackhuston_tyesheridan__bybobmahoneysifeddineelamineTHE YELLOW BIRDS/ U.S.A.- left-  (Director: Alexandre Moors, Screenwriter: David Lowery) — Two young men enlist in the army and are deployed to fight in the Gulf War. After an unthinkable tragedy, the surviving soldier struggles to balance his promise of silence with the truth and a mourning mother’s search for peace. Cast: Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Patric, Toni Collette, Jennifer Aniston. World Premiere

U. S.   D O C U M E N T A R Y    C O M P E T I T I O N

Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people and events that shape the present day.

CASTING JONBENET / U.S.A., Australia (Director: Kitty Green) — The unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey remains the world’s most sensational child murder case. Over 15 months, responses, reflections and performances were elicited from the Ramsey’s Colorado hometown community, creating a bold work of art from the collective memories and mythologies the crime inspired. World Premiere

svii_in_coral_triangle_-_photo_by_xl_caitlin_seaview_survey-copyCHASING CORAL/ U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Orlowski) — Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. World Premiere. NEW CLIMATE

CITY OF GHOSTS/ U.S.A. (Director: Matthew Heineman) — With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today. World PremiereD

DINA/ U.S.A. (Directors: Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini) — An eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door-greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story. World Premiere

8275-ud17_dolores_still2_doloreshuerta__bygeorgeballis-copyDOLORES/ U.S.A – left – (Director: Peter Bratt) — Dolores Huerta bucks 1950s gender conventions by co-founding the country’s first farmworkers’ union. Wrestling with raising 11 children, gender bias, union defeat and victory, and nearly dying after a San Francisco Police beating, Dolores emerges with a vision that connects her newfound feminism with racial and class justice. World Premiere

THE FORCE / U.S.A. (Director: Pete Nicks) — This cinema vérité look at the long-troubled Oakland Police Department goes deep inside their struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson and an explosive scandal. World Premiere

icarus-sundance-still-copyICARUS / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Fogel) — When Bryan Fogel sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller involving dirty urine, unexplained death and Olympic Gold—exposing the biggest scandal in sports history. World Premiere

THE NEW RADICAL / U.S.A. (Director: Adam Bhala Lough) — Uncompromising millennial radicals from the United States and the United Kingdom attack the system through dangerous technological means, which evolves into a high-stakes game with world authorities in the midst of a dramatically changing political landscape. World Premiere

NOBODY SPEAK: Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of a Free Press / U.S.A. (Director: Brian Knappenberger) — The trial between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media pitted privacy rights against freedom of the press, and raised important questions about how big money can silence media. This film is an examination of the perils and duties of the free press in an age of inequality. World Premiere

quest-still1_jonathanolshefski-copyQUEST / U.S.A. (Director: Jonathan Olshefski) — For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family’s 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it’s a testament to love, healing and hope. World Premiere

STEP / U.S.A. (Director: Amanda Lipitz) — The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city. World Premiere

STRONG ISLAND / U.S.A., Denmark (Director: Yance Ford) — Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change. World Premiere

sequence_02-00_23_42_03-still008TROPHY / U.S.A.- left- (Director: Shaul Schwarz, Co-Director: Christina Clusiau) — This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities. World Premiere. NEW CLIMATE

UNREST / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Brea) — When Harvard PhD student Jennifer Brea is struck down at 28 by a fever that leaves her bedridden, doctors tell her it’s “all in her head.” Determined to live, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story—and four other families’ stories—fighting a disease medicine forgot. World Premiere

waterandpowercaliforniaheist_still1-copy Water & Power: A California Heist / U.S.A. (Director: Marina Zenovich) — In California’s convoluted water system, notorious water barons find ways to structure a state-engineered system to their own advantage. This examination into their centers of power shows small farmers and everyday citizens facing drought and a new, debilitating groundwater crisis. World Premiere. NEW CLIMATE

unnamed-1WHOSE STREETS? / U.S.A. (Director: Sabaah Folayan, Co-Director: Damon Davis) — A nonfiction account of the Ferguson uprising told by the people who lived it, this is an unflinching look at how the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown inspired a community to fight back—and sparked a global movement. World Premiere. DAY ONE

W O R L D    C I N E M A    D R A M A T I C   C O M P E T I T I O N

Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.

axoloti-overkillAXOLOT! OVERKILL/ Germany (Director and screenwriter: Helene Hegemann) — Mifti, age 16, lives in Berlin with a cast of characters including her half-siblings; their rich, self-involved father; and her junkie friend Ophelia. As she mourns her recently deceased mother, she begins to develop an obsession with Alice, an enigmatic, and much older, white-collar criminal. Cast: Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Arly Jover, Mavie Hörbiger, Laura Tonke, Hans Löw, Bernhard Schütz. World Premiere

berlin-syndromeBERLIN SYNDROME/ Australia (Director: Cate Shortland, Screenwriter: Shaun Grant) — A passionate holiday romance takes an unexpected and sinister turn when an Australian photographer wakes one morning in a Berlin apartment and is unable to leave. Cast: Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt. World Premiere

CARPINTEROS (Woodpeckers) / Dominican Republic (Director and screenwriter: José María Cabral) — Julián finds love and a reason for living in the last place imaginable: the Dominican Republic’s Najayo Prison. His romance with fellow prisoner Yanelly must develop through sign language and without the knowledge of dozens of guards. Cast: Jean Jean, Judith Rodriguez Perez, Ramón Emilio Candelario. World Premiere

dont-swallow-my-heartDON’T SWALLOW MY HEART, ALLIGATOR GIRL!/ Brazil, Netherlands, France, Paraguay (Director and screenwriter: Felipe Bragança) — In this fable about love and memories, Joca is a 13-year-old Brazilian boy in love with an indigenous Paraguayan girl. To conquer her love, he must face the violent region’s war-torn past and the secrets of his elder brother, Fernando, a motorcycle cowboy. Cast: Cauã Reymond, Eduardo Macedo, Adeli Gonzales, Zahy Guajajara, Claudia Assunção, Ney Matogrosso. World Premiere

FAMILY LIFE/ Chile (Directors: Alicia Scherson, Cristián Jiménez, Screenwriter: Alejandro Zambra) — While house-sitting for a distant cousin, a lonely man fabricates the existence of a vindictive ex-wife withholding his daughter, in order to gain the sympathy of the single mother he has just met. Cast: Jorge Becker, Gabriela Arancibia, Blanca Lewin, Cristián Carvajal. World Premiere

FREE AND EASY / Hong Kong (Director: Jun Geng, Screenwriters: Jun Geng, Yuhua Feng, Bing Liu) — When a traveling soap salesman arrives in a desolate Chinese town, a crime occurs, and sets the strange residents against each other with tragicomic results. Cast: Gang Xu, Zhiyong Zhang, Baohe Xue, Benshan Gu, Xun Zhang. World Premiere

gods-own-countyGOD’S OWN COUNTRY / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Francis Lee) — Springtime in Yorkshire: isolated young sheep farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path. Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alec Secareanu, Ian Hart, Gemma Jones. World Premiere

MY HAPPY FAMILY / Georgia (Directors: Nana & Simon, Screenwriter: Nana Ekvtimishvili) — Tbilisi, Georgia, 2016: In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents’ home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins. Cast: Ia Shugliashvili, Merab Ninidze, Berta Khapava, Tsisia Qumsishvili, Giorgi Tabidze, Dimitri Oragvelidze. World Premiere

nile-hiton-incidentTHE NILE HILTON INCIDENT / Sweden (Director and screenwriter: Tarik Saleh) — In Cairo, weeks before the 2011 revolution, Police Detective Noredin is working in the infamous Kasr el-Nil Police Station when he is handed the case of a murdered singer. He soon realizes that the investigation concerns the power elite, close to the President’s inner circle. Cast: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Mohamed Yousry, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar. World Premiere

 

pop-ayePOP EYE / Singapore, Thailand (Director and screenwriter: Kirsten Tan) — On a chance encounter, a disenchanted architect bumps into his long-lost elephant on the streets of Bangkok. Excited, he takes his elephant on a journey across Thailand in search of the farm where they grew up together. Cast: Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Penpak Sirikul, Bong. World Premiere. DAY ONE

SUENO EN OTRO IDIOMA (I Dream in Another Language) / Mexico (Director: Ernesto Contreras, Screenwriter: Carlos Contreras) — The last two speakers of a millennia-old language haven’t spoken in 50 years, when a young linguist tries to bring them together. Yet hidden in the past, in the heart of the jungle, lies a secret concerning the fate of the Zikril language. Cast: Fernando Álvarez Rebeil, Eligio Meléndez, Manuel Poncelis, Fátima Molina, Juan Pablo de Santiago, Hoze Meléndez. World Premiere

the-woundTHE WOUND / South Africa (Director: John Trengove, Screenwriters: John Trengove, Thando Mgqolozana, Malusi Bengu) — Xolani, a lonely factory worker, travels to the rural mountains with the men of his community to initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood. When a defiant initiate from the city discovers his best-kept secret, a forbidden love, Xolani’s entire existence begins to unravel. Cast: Nakhane Touré, Bongile Mantsai, Niza Jay Ncoyini. World Premiere

W O R L D   C I N E M A    D O C U M E N T A R Y    C O M P E T I T I O N
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.

the-good-postmanTHE GOOD POSTMAN / Finland, Bulgaria (Director: Tonislav Hristov) — In a small Bulgarian village troubled by the ongoing refugee crisis, a local postman runs for mayor—and learns that even minor deeds can outweigh good intentions. North American Premiere

in-loco-parentisIN LOCO PARENTIS / Ireland, Spain (Directors: Neasa Ní Chianáin, David Rane) — John and Amanda teach Latin, English and guitar at a fantastical, stately home-turned-school. Nearly 50-year careers are drawing to a close for the pair who have become legends with the mantra: “Reading! ’Rithmetic! Rock ’n’ roll!” But for pupil and teacher alike, leaving is the hardest lesson. North American Premiere

IT’S NOT DARK YET / Ireland (Director: Frankie Fenton) — This is the incredible story of Simon Fitzmaurice, a young filmmaker who becomes completely paralyzed from motor neurone disease but goes on to direct an award-winning feature film through the use of his eyes. International Premiere

JOSHUA: TEENAGE VRS SUPERPOWER / U.S.A. (Director: Joe Piscatella) — When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents. World Premiere

last-man-in-aleppoLAST MEN IN ALEPPO/ Denmark (Directors: Feras Fayyad, Steen Johannessen) — After five years of war in Syria, Aleppo’s remaining residents prepare themselves for a siege. Khalid, Subhi and Mahmoud, founding members of The White Helmets, have remained in the city to help their fellow citizens—and experience daily life, death, struggle and triumph in a city under fire. World Premiere

machinesMACHINES / India, Germany, Finland (Director: Rahul Jain) — This intimate, observant portrayal of the rhythm of life and work in a gigantic textile factory in Gujarat, India, moves through the corridors and bowels of the enormously disorienting structure—taking the viewer on a journey of dehumanizing physical labor and intense hardship. North American Premiere. NEW CLIMATE

MOTHERLAND/ U.S.A., Philippines (Director: Ramona Diaz) — The planet’s busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies. World Premiere

plastic-chinaPLASTIC CHINA/ China (Director: Jiu-liang Wang) — Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture. International Premiere. NEW CLIMATE

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World / Canada (Director: Catherine Bainbridge) — This powerful documentary about the role of Native Americans in contemporary music history—featuring some of the greatest music stars of our time—exposes a critical missing chapter, revealing how indigenous musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives and, through their contributions, influenced popular culture. World Premiere

TOKYO IDOLS / United Kingdom, Canada (Director: Kyoko Miyake) — This exploration of Japan’s fascination with girl bands and their music follows an aspiring pop singer and her fans, delving into the cultural obsession with young female sexuality and the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies. World Premiere

winnieWINNIE / France (Director: Pascale Lamche) — While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner. World Premiere

unnamed-3THE WORKERS CUP / United Kingdom (Director: Adam Sobel) — Inside Qatar’s labour camps, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own. World Premiere. DAY ONE

N E X T

Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this programme. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema. Presented by Adobe.

columbus-nextCOLUMBUS / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kogonada) — Casey lives with her mother in a little-known Midwestern town haunted by the promise of modernism. Jin, a visitor from the other side of the world, attends to his dying father. Burdened by the future, they find respite in one another and the architecture that surrounds them. Cast: John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Rory Culkin, Michelle Forbes. World Premiere

DAYVEON/ U.S.A. (Director: Amman Abbasi, Screenwriters: Amman Abbasi, Steven Reneau) — In the wake of his older brother’s death, 13-year-old Dayveon spends the sweltering summer days roaming his rural Arkansas town. When he falls in with a local gang, he becomes drawn to the camaraderie and violence of their world. Cast: Devin Blackmon, Kordell “KD” Johnson, Dontrell Bright, Chasity Moore, Lachion Buckingham, Marquell Manning. World Premiere. DAY ONE

deidra-laney-rob-a-trainDEIDRA & LANEY ROB A TRAIN / U.S.A. (Director: Sydney Freeland, Screenwriter: Shelby Farrell) — Two teenage sisters start robbing trains to make ends meet after their single mother’s emotional meltdown in an electronics store lands her in jail. Cast: Ashleigh Murray, Rachel Crow, Tim Blake Nelson, David Sullivan, Danielle Nicolet, Sasheer Zamata. World Premiere

A GHOST STORY / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Lowery) — This is the story of a ghost and the house he haunts. Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky, Liz Franke. World Premiere

gookGOOK / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Justin Chon) — Eli and Daniel, two Korean American brothers who own a struggling women’s shoe store, have an unlikely friendship with 11-year-old Kamilla. On the first day of the 1992 L.A. riots, the trio must defend their store—and contemplate the meaning of family, their personal dreams and the future. Cast: Justin Chon, Simone Baker, David So, Curtiss Cook Jr., Sang Chon, Ben Munoz. World Premiere

l-a-timesL.A. TIMES / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michelle Morgan) — In this classically styled comedy of manners set in Los Angeles, sophisticated thirtysomethings try to determine whether ideal happiness exists in coupledom or if the perfectly suited couple is actually just an urban myth. Cast: Michelle Morgan, Dree Hemingway, Jorma Taccone, Kentucker Audley, Margarita Levieva, Adam Shapiro. World Premiere

LEMON/ U.S.A. (Director: Janicza Bravo, Screenwriters: Janicza Bravo, Brett Gelman) — A man watches his life unravel after he is left by his blind girlfriend. Cast: Brett Gelman, Judy Greer, Michael Cera, Nia Long, Shiri Appleby, Fred Melamed. World Premiere

MENASHE / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Z Weinstein, Screenwriters: Joshua Z Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz, Musa Syeed) — Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood. Cast: Menashe Lustig. World Premiere

PERSON TO PERSON / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Dustin Guy Defa) — A record collector hustles for a big score while his heartbroken roommate tries to erase a terrible mistake, a teenager bears witness to her best friend’s new relationship and a rookie reporter, alongside her demanding supervisor, chases the clues of a murder case involving a life-weary clock shop owner. Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Michael Cera, Tavi Gevinson, Philip Baker Hall, Bene Coopersmith, George Sample III. World Premiere

thoroughbredTHOROUGHBRED / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Cory Finley) — Two teenage girls in suburban Connecticut rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. In the process, they learn that neither is what she seems to be—and that a murder might solve both of their problems. Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francie Swift, Kaili Vernoff. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL \ 19-29 JANUARY 2017

 

Films from the Magnetic North | Berlinale 2017

Cinema Born of the Icy Cold is the feature of the Berlinale NATIVe 2017 strand that highlights ten features from Indigenous Films from the Arctic Circle, and nine shorts.

The Sámi are Europe’s only Indigenous people and 2016’s Kuun metsän Kaisa (Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest), by Finnish Skolt Sámi director Katja Gauriloff, explores the story of Gauriloff’s charismatic great-grandmother Kaisa. This personal and poetic documentary film effortlessly weaves original film and sound recordings from the 1930s to the 1970s together with animated sequences and folk tales of the Skolt Sámi. It stands as a testament to the eventful history of the Skolt Sámi and their struggle to preserve their unique culture in the wake of resettlements brought about by shifting borders throughout the course of the 20th century.

The narrative of surviving communities under pressure to assimilate social change also influences other Indigenous people of the area around the Arctic Circle home: these include the Inuit of Canada; the Greenlanders; the communities in Russia’s Kola Peninsula as well as the Yakuts and Chukchi of the Russian Federation’s Eastern Siberian region.

Sustainability, climate change, delocalisation and questions of Indigenous rights and self-empowerment are further themes addressed in this year’s featured films. “Climate change in the Arctic and the economic machinations of the industrialised nations of the West represent serious impositions in the everyday lives of the Indigenous communities which still inhabit the region.

For the first time, NATIVe will also be represented in the special series Berlinale Goes Kiez with an additional screening of the documentary film Angry Inuk, which provides insight into the Inuit perspective on the heated international debate surrounding seal hunting.

Feature Films at NATIVe:

24 Snega (24 Snow)
By Mikhail Barynin, Russian Federation 2016 | Documentary form

Despite the sacrifices it entails, Sergei passionately devotes his life to traditional horse breeding, toughing out the winter in the taiga like a lone cowboy hero. Spectacular cinematography conveys the biting cold feeling of nomadic life in Sakha. (International Prem).

Angry Inuk
By Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Canada 2016 | Documentary form

A vivid depiction of the quiet anger of a people whose very subsistence is being threatened from many angles. An outcry to reassess the preconceptions around commercial seal-hunting, while illustrating the role of global sealskin trade for Inuit.

Johogoi Aiyy (God Johogoi)
By Sergei Potapov, Russian Federation 2016 | Documentary form

The young horse herder Johogoi feels summoned by the equine deity to attend the celebrated summer festival of Sakha. His excitement radiates through his smile as he participates in the rituals, believing he will find the woman who appears in his dreams. (International premiere)

Jumalan morsian (A Bride of the Seventh Heaven)
By Anastasia Lapsui, Markku Lehmuskallio, Finland 2003
With Angelina Saraleta, Viktoria Hudi, Ljuba Filipova, Jevgeni Hudi

At birth, Syarda was promised as a bride to Num, the highest god of the Nenets. Now an elderly lady, still bound to this fate, she tells the story of her wistful, yet self-determined life to a blind young girl who alleviates her loneliness.

Kniga Tundry. Povest’ o Vukvukaye – Malen’kom Kamne. (The Tundra Book. A Tale of Vukvuka – the Little Rock.)
By Aleksei Vakhrushev, Russian Federation 2011 | Documentary form

Jovial and as energetic as a teenager, the wise Vukvukai guides his nomadic Chukchi community. These tough reindeer herders survive in their snowy wonderland despite the harsh threats posed by the weather and Russian politics.

Kuun metsän Kaisa (Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest)

By Katja Gauriloff, Finland 2016 | Documentary form
The Swiss author Robert Crottet visits the Skolt Sámi and records spirited Kaisa’s unique storytelling gift. Handmade animation and rare archival footage illustrate the full world of the Skolt Sámi, from magical moments to the hardships of war.

Maliglutit (Searchers)
By Zacharias Kunuk, Canada 2016
With Benjamin Kunuk, Jocelyne Immaroitok, Karen Ivalu, Joseph Uttak

The tranquil life of a nomadic family in Nunavut is torn apart by a marauding gang of hunters looking for wives. Kuanana, the head of the family, goes out for revenge. A poetic Inuit Western. European premiere

Sameblod (Sami Blood)
By Amanda Kernell, Sweden 2016

With Lene Cecilia Sparrok, Mia Erika Sparrok, Maj Doris Rimpi, Julius Fleischanderl
Another chance to see the story of a teenage girl from a traditional Sámi family who yearns to be accepted by the Swedish society of the 1930s, a society full of prejudice and discrimination against her people. A shrewd commentary on institutionalised abuse and its consequences.

Seitsemän laulua tundralta (Seven Songs from the Tundra)
By Anastasia Lapsui, Markku Lehmuskallio, Finland 2000

With Vitalina Hudi, Hatjako Yzangi, Gregory Anaguritsi, Nadezhda Volodeeva
A rich contemplation of the Nenets in a seven-part chronicle, each guided by a meaningful song. Once a free people, the Soviet rule arrives to infringe upon their culture, affecting their identity irreversibly. An emotional political statement.

SUME – Mumisitsinerup Nipaa (SUMÉ – The Sound of a Revolution)
By Inuk Silis Høegh, Greenland / Denmark / Norway 2014 | Documentary form

For the Greenlanders of the 1970s, the surge of the progressive rock band SUME was mind-blowing: lyrics in their own language, inspiring them to act against the repression of their people. This is the compelling testimony to their revolution.

BERLINALE 2017 | 9 – 19 FEBUARY 2017 

Le Fils de Joseph (2016) | The Son of Joseph

Director: Eugene Green

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Fabrizio Rongione, Victor Ezenfils 

Eugene Green, the American born director continues to explore themes of creativity, family connection and the nature of fatherhood in his latest drama, his most delightful and effective since the Portuguese Nun.

Vincent (newcomer Victor Ezenfils) lives with his loving mother Marie (Natcha Regnier) in Paris, but still feels troubled and let down. Determined to find his father, he sets in a voyage of discovery that the director tackles through a series of five parables relating to the Holy Family entitled: The Sacrifice of Abraham; The Golden Calf;  The Sacrifice of Isaac; The Carpenter and The Flight into Egypt.

Made on a low budget, yet none the worse for it, this satirical drama follows Green’s usual mannered style: the characters talk in perfect diction directly to the camera as if reciting their lines from a book, often moving slowly away from the camera. Cinematographer Raphael O’Byrne’s uses a static arthouse two-shot technique but also captures the beauty of the Parisian skylines and the lush landscapes of the Normandy countryside.

Vincent finally manages to track down his father through a change meeting at a party. Oscar Pormenor (a snarling Mathieu Amalric) is a successful publisher with a wife, three kids and a mistress who also runs his affairs in a small hotel in Paris. Oscar is odious and arrogant; entirely uninterested in his family who he regards with disdain. Copying the front door key to his father’s office, Vincent manages to eavesdrop on Oscar and decides very quickly that this is a man he has no wish to be his father, or any other relation. While hiding under his couch, while Oscar is in flagrante with his secretary, Vincent also discovers that he has an uncle Joseph, and contrives a meeting with him in a nearby bar, where they chat and get on admirably.

Vincent’s hatred of his father grows so vehement that one day he decides to attack him in his office and handcuff him to his chair in exactly the same position as that of his print of Caravaggio’s painting ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac’, which hangs in his bedroom in the flat. Running away, before revealing his identity to Oscar.

Vincent and Joseph (La Sapienza star Fabrizio Rongione), become close as they visit museums and parks in the vicinity. In the Louvre, Vincent admires Philippe de Champaigne’s The Dead Christ and Joseph the Carpenter by Georges de la Tour, and the title of the film becomes clear when Vincent happens to mention that Joseph was not Jesus’ real father but became his father by looking after him.

When Vincent asks Joseph for dinner, the biblical link falls into place in a light-hearted way, without becoming too serious or religious. The humour lies in this constant juxtaposition of the religious and secular elements, always feeling fresh and light-hearted and thoroughly amusing.

The final act takes the trio to Normandy where they visit Joseph’s family home where Oscar is unexpectedly hosting a reception and calls the police when he suspects gatecrashers upstairs in the property.  Religious associations aside, the ensuing beach caper involves the police and a donkey and will go down well with arthouse and mainstream audiences alike with its infectious feelgood appeal. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 DECEMBER 2016 at PICTUREHOUSES AND CINE LUMIERE 

 

Mother (2016) | Nordic Baltic Film Festival 2016

Writer|Dir: Kadri Kousaar, Tiina Malberg, Andres Tabun, Andres Noormets, Siim Maaten, Jaak Prints, Katrin Kalma, Getter Meresmaa | Drama | Estonia | 89min

Estonia’s official Oscar foreign language hopeful is a sardonic suspense drama that explores themes of responsibility, personal freedom and community in a small town near Talinn.

Described by its prize-winning director Kadri Kousaar as Baltic Noir, it has the dark humour of Aki Kaurismaki and its heroine – a put-upon middle-aged mother (Elsa) forced to care for her comatose adult son – is Estonia’s answer to Kati Outinnen with her own brand of miserable charm. MOTHER also has Kousaar’s regular Finnish cinematographer Jean-Noel Mustonen whose visual style here has a striking resemblance to that of the Swedish breakout hit A Pigeon Sat on a Branch (2014) but the remainder of the crew is female (and blond).

Only a woman can understand Elsa’s life of quiet desperation trapped in a loveless marriage with her avoidant husband Arvo (Andres Tabun) and financially wrung out by her son Lauri (Siim Maaten) who was born when she was only 17, chaining her to domestic drudgery and destroying her dreams of studying in Moscow. Elsa channels her frustrations into obsessive cleaning routines in their cramped cottage, using gardening as a displacement activity for addressing her marital woes with Arvo. To make matters worse, Lauri is now bedridden after a mysterious shooting incident and Elsa is forced to care for his every need. The only glimmer of hope is her secret lover Aarne (Andres Noormets) – Lauri’s geeky colleague from school – who visits at inopportune moments bearing bunches of flowers and sexual favours which Elsa snatches hungrily rather than amorously while fending off a stream of unwelcome visits from Lauri;’s friends, confessors and hangers-on.

All this is treated with a tongue in cheek, toy-town briskness. The crime element of MOTHER is of secondary interest to its fascinating study of small-town social politics: Kousaar uses Lauri’s deaf mute status as a backcloth to expose the possible motives of his would be assassin: with each visit an intriguing story unspools encouraging the viewer to become amateur sleuth in a guessing game: was it his girlfriend, his childhood friend, his mate, or his doting pupil, and why?. It then emerges that Lauri took out a large sum of money shortly before the shooting, so clearly a financial incentive was the motivating factor in the crime. And it appears that several of Lauri’s guests are aware of the money stashed somewhere in the house and furtively look for it while Elsa’s back is turned.

Kousaar certainly takes on some heavyweight issues: her Cannes selected debut Magnus (2007) dealt with suicide: The Arbiter was concerned with abortion and genetics and now MOTHER sees dark comedy in tragedy and female desperation. Performances are strong with Malberg superb is her first lead role and Noormets and Tabun providing suitably insipid male support. But in the end, Kousaar makes fun of her tragic heroine after exposing her bitter hopelessness, and even her pathetic paramour ends up betraying her. Elsa is a sad character but her flaws are understandable and her motives justifiable in the circumstances. Arvo is a cypher whose only regret is that he never got to know his son, not to mention his wife. MOTHER is based on a play by Irish writer Kevin McCann and although Kousaar’s film is an inoffensive domestic drama is offers a rich underbelly of food for thought. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BALTIC NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | DECEMBER 2016

 

Havarie (2016) | Promised Land Symposium

DIR: Philip Scheffner | Merle Kroger | Doc | 93min | Germany

A tribute to those who constantly risk their lives in hope of a better future, HAVARIE is the documentary curio of Philip Scheffner who gave us Revision and The Haffmoon Files . This is a slow-burning affair that focuses on the grainy footage of a group of men who are adrift in a in a small dinghy in the narrow stretch of water between Southern Spain and North Africa. Scheffner has chosen to extend the original three-minute clip by slowing it down to a running time of 93 minutes – a feature that will no doubt bemuse audiences who come expecting action.

HAVARIE is informed by a series of voiceovers and radio communications that take place between the local Spanish coast guards and the cruise ship that spotted the men on their precarious mission to reach mainland Europe but whether this is really their mission remains unclear. Any why they are not picked up by the captain of the ship is never explained or explored.

In an attempt to add context, we hear from putative family members who have made it to Europe but are clearly finding the going uncertain and not have yet discovered the crock of gold they were possibly hoping for. Scheffner alludes to an undercurrent of terror and abuse in their countries of origin but this is merely conjecture as the provenance of the stranded men is never clarified.

HAVARIE doesn’t have the same resonance as Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerilitz but some viewers may find it moving and it certainly offers food for thought on the continuing narrative of migration and displacement. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE PROMISED LAND SYMPOSIUM AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE GOETHE INSTITUTE IN LONDON. 

Bugs (2016) | Nordic Baltic Film Festival 2016

Dir.: Andreas Johnsen; Documentary with Ben Reade, Josh Evans, Roberto Flores; Denmark/Netherlands/France/Germany 2016, 73 min.

Director/DoP Andreas Johnson (Al Weiwei: The fake Case) tries to get the audience to accept a foodie future that largely consists of bugs and maggots. In 2050 these critters might be on our menu, to cover our need for protein, when normal sources run out. In BUGS Chef Ben Meade and the food researcher Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab in Copenhagen (which launched the famous Noma restaurant) take on a peripatetic journey to the future of the culinary world.

With the planet’s population up to nine billion by 2050, this documentary suggests that 70% of our protein food intake will come from insects, bugs and maggots. And the pair set off to Europe and further afield places like (Uganda, Kenya, Mexico to show us the future. The two indulge in whatever comes their way on the menu, and they seem to enjoy it, amidst cries of “Best maggot/insect/bug I ever tasted” ringing out again and again, as they  gladly devour tasty morsels, or slurp honey from sting-free bees in Uganda. But we never learn the names or the history of the people interviewed in these distant eateries; the film concentrates on the action –  digging into huge anthills, where the adult researchers squash the termite queen, whilst a couple of boys at the neighbouring anthill are skilled in bringing the “delicacy” out in one piece.

Reade is perceptive, he does not want to industrialise the maggot culture fearing, rightfully, that the giant industrial corporations would monopolise and cash in on this eco-conscious fare for their own interest: meaning profits. But their enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of them: like in Kenya, when Reade exclaims “who needs a healthy bank balance, when you have such tasty and healthy food for free in your own garden”. Whilst the food is indeed delicious and superior to our own supermarket ready-meals, it is the sheer and utter poverty in many African countries that has driven the population to cultivate their anthills for food.

Johnsen, who has introduced us to the wriggly foodstuffs that might be our diet of the future, should be praised for his ground-breaking effort. But as with most founding fundamentalist, they leave some details unanswered, and some of us need more information, particularly about the background and work methods of the interviewed food experts abroad. Nevertheless, anybody wanting to know more, can travel to Scotland where Ben Reade is chef at the Edinburgh Food studio, or to Copenhagen where Roberto Florez cooks meals (based on sustainability) at the 5-star Noma. AS

THE NORDIC BALTIC FILM FESTIVAL | 1-11 DECEMBER 2016

Heritage of Love (2016) Geroy | Russian Film Week 2016)

Dir.: Yuriy Vasilev | Cast: Dima Bilan, Swetlana Ivanova, Jurgita Jurkuta, Alexandr Baluev | Russia | 96 min.

Some films are difficult to take seriously – and Yuriy Vasilev’s Heritage of Love, starring the Eurovision Song Contest winner Dima Bilan, falls into this category. A hotchpotch of advertising show reels make up the narrative – by Natalya Doroshjevic and Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina – so phony, that even Leni Riefenstahl would have asked for a re-write, probably resulting in a turgid melodrama.

Set a hundred years apart, this ‘eternal’ love story plays out between Andrey (Bilan) and Vera (Ivanova) in 20th century and the present day. We first meet the doomed couple near St. Petersburg in 1914, when princess Vera hangs out in a tree near the royal palace, chided first by her sister – for jumping out of the tree; then later by her mother, who wipes a speck of grass from her face, calling her “dirty as a street urchin”. The little tear-away is very much Daddy’s darling, and her father has just bought a new car, a Russo-Bolt, which will feature again in the film’s contemporary setting of Paris. After some officers re-enact the William-Tell scene with a hapless private on the estate of the Royals, captain Kulikov arrives just in time to admire Vera dancing happily in the water fountains and hear about the outbreak of the First World War.

Later, when the war seems to be lost, and the October Revolution is around the corner, the perfidious Tershenko (Baluev), a suspicious merchant, upsets the aristocrats (Vera is working as a nurse in a very clean field hospital), with talks of their deserved doom. He is in love with Vera’s sister Irina (Jurkute), but she looks down on the “shopkeeper”, who confesses ”you are the meaning of my life”. This meets with derision with Irina’s response  “I hate you” – leaving him rather on the spot.

Meanwhile, Andrey has joined the White Army fighting the Reds, were he succumbs to a bullet, sacrificing himself for a superior. Those still interested (and able to tolerate the creaky performances) should know that the evil Tershenko-look-a-like bribes Andrey, and sends the him to contemporary Paris in order to swindle a Russian duchess (sic) out of a Russo-Bolt, which is priceless. Andrey meets Vera, when the she causes a flowerpot to drop from her balcony onto his head….

Heritage of Love was shown at the Marche du Film at Cannes this year. We learn from press releases that “industry professionals warmly received the film; some wept whilst watching”. We are also informed, that Dima Bilan “arrived in Cannes for the theme party on board a yacht”. He cheerfully greeted those attending the ‘premiere’ aboard the yacht, which was designed in the style of the movie: characters’ costumes (incl. blue Bilan’s uniform, memorable from the movie) and seamen’s caps sporting the words “The Heritage Of Love” (this is the international name of the picture), as songs of Dima Bilan ringing out through the festivities, accompanied by French wines – the reception was a success!” Shame about the film. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 2 DECEMBER 2016 | RUSSIAN FILM WEEK UNTIL 4 DECEMBER 2016

Austerlitz (2016) | Tallinn Black Nights 2016

Dir: Sergei Losnitza | Doc | Ukraine | 94min

In a former Nazi concentration camp where tee-shirted tourists snigger, snack and shuffle with selfie-sticks, Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Losnitza (Maidan) brings rhythm and rigour with his sober yet richly textured black and white portrait that a sense of sad irony at the banal contrast between the tortured past and the insouciant contemporary.

On the outskirts of Berlin, Sachsenhausen is now a memorial to the many thousands who met their death there. Set up as an interrogation centre during the Second World War; the Gestapo questioned prisoners of war in spartan conditions of near starvation and physical privation. The captives were then gassed alive in the showers and were later imcinerated in the vast ovens by a series of Sondercommandos (themselves prisoners) who were also regularly exterminated, although the final Sondercommando 14 unit left the site to tell their tale.

Using the burbling background of human chatter and the ambient sounds of nature as his soundtrack, Losnitza’s static camera records a typical summer’s day here in a series of long takes. The first sobering one lasts nearly fifteen minutes. Eventually a narrative emerges as we learn about the history of the camp from the (here) Spanish and American tourist guides whose desultory diatribes recount the events that took place during the Holocaust. Tourists look on, some in voyeuristic amazement. But for many the site seems just another picnic site in their daily agenda.

Contemplative and unsettling, Loznitsa’s film illustrates the spectacular banality and insuperable void between past and present. Although we look and learn can we ever really engage and comprehend the events that took place when many are faced with so many momentous tragedies of our own in the 21st century. Losnitza opens up the debate with his remarkable documentary.

Austerlitz takes its title from the final work by the German novelist W.G. Sebald. The film is a sober yet strangely satisfying piece: at the end we do feel as we have not only learnt facts but experienced the gravity of the momentous tragedy that went on here. While the film’s structure initially seems simple, each successive composition moves nearer to its subject allowing our thoughts to wander and engage with the horror of what went on during the world’s last war. MT

TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016

 

Diving into the Unknown (2016) | Nordic Baltic Film Festival 2016

Dir: Juan Reina | Doc | Finland | 90min

A documentary that will appeal to those who get their kicks from extreme sports or the great outdoors DIVING INTO THE UNKNOWN follows four Finnish cave divers trying to recover the bodies of their colleagues (who died in 2014), in a feat that pushes out the boundaries of this dangerous sport.

Many may question the thrill of plumetting into perilous potholes: Cave diving carries the added bonus of the freezing cold water and ice.  In Norway, documentarian Juan Reina follows the group to Mo i Rana, northern Norway, as they defy the authorities – who have failed to bring up the bodies – in a life-challenging mission of covert recovery, 100 metres below the surface, and in strictest secrecy. Visually striking snowbound landscapes and computer graphics help us to appreciate just what is at stake during this dangerous opertion. Clearly careful planning and working in unison are the main considerations, and Reina spends time interviewing the party as they organise the life-threatening trip before heading into the hostile terrain in this isolated part of the pennisula. Chainsaws are needed to cut through the ice before they can descend into the freezing subterranean depths of the Plura river, taking with them breathing equipment and heavy hearts. Failure is clearly not an option this time, and the men emotional and nervous, not least because they are technically unauthorised to proceed. But their fear is made more tangible by the very nature of cave-diving, that requires mental strength and self-belief as well as peak physical fitness. And are no longer as young as they were. The emotional unpredictability of the encounter is what seems to fascinate Reina most. And he homes in on the psychological aspects of the dive, as well as the technical difficulties. Crucially the filming relies on cameras strapped to the men, so luckily the director is not forced into the feat of following the divers down himself. What happens next is intriguing in this impressive documentary thriller. MT

THE NORDIC BALTIC FILM FESTIVAL | 1-11 DECEMBER 2016

 

 

In the Blood (2016) | I Blodet | 5th Nordic Baltic Film Festival

Writer/Director: Rasmus Heisterberg | 104min | Denmark | Drama

Award-winning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and A Royal Affair Rasmas Heisterberg gets behind the camera for his directorial debut IN THE BLOOD with some success, although his scathing critique of Copenhagen’s student medical elite fails to reach a satisfying conclusion, feeling more like a freewheeling mood piece capturing the zeitgeist of Summer in Nørrebro, in an alcoholic haze.

His film follows medic in the making Simon (Kristoffer Bech), a brilliant but compulsive student who breezes through exams and spends the evenings partying before heading to the Amazon for a study year with his best friend Knud (Elliott Crosset Hove), an introspective softie whose longtime girlfriend, Mia (Lea Gregersen) leaves him in the opening scenes.

Heisterberg captures the dreamy days of summer and really gets inside the characters concerned. Intimate and even claustrophobic, in a good way – it’s a superb portrait of young middle class privilege where self-centredness and blasé ennui takes centre stage. Knud is the most likeable character and Heisterberg conveys his emotional vulnerability in a role earnestly captured by Elliott Crosset Hove. Simon is less appealing: When caught stealing medical equipment he thinks only of his trip rather than showing any remorse, then becomes obsessed with bar worker Emilie but rather messes her around. This is a soulful and resonating drama that explores its characters effectively without becoming melodramatic or intense. MT

THE NORDIC BALTIC FILM FESTIVAL 1-11 DECEMBER 2016

 

Celine – Louis Ferdinand-Celine (2016) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2016

CÉLINE (LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE)

Dir.: Emmanuel Bourdieu | Cast: Denis Lavant, Geraldine Pailhas, Philip Desmeules | France | 97 min.

Director/writer Emmanuel Bourdieu (Intrusions) is best known outside France for his work as scriptwriter for Arnaud Desplechin (Esther Kahn, My Sex Life, or how I got into an Argument). With Céline, he steps out of the shadow of his famous compatriot, painting an honest portrait of the giant of French literature – who was so viciously anti-Semitic that the Germans avoided publishing most of his violent rants, during the occupation in Vichy France, because they deemed the extremism as counter-productive.

The title promises a bio-pic, but Bourdieu tackles just a few months in the life of the disgraced writer and physician: during his exile in the Danish town of Korsor in 1948, Céline is visited by the American scholar Milton Hindus (1916-1988), who happened to be Jewish, but was so star struck by Céline’s pre-war writings (Journey to the End of the Night and Death on Credit) that he is entrusted with the author’s world-wide rehabilitation, to allow him a return to France. Céline (Lavant) and his wife Lucette (Pailhas), living in a small cottage in the woods, eagerly await Hindus’ (Desmeules) arrival – whilst both are very much aware of Celine Anti-Semitism, they both hope he might be their ticket back to France – because he is Jewish. At first, Hindus walks voluntarily into the trap set for him by the devious couple: Lucette fawns over him, whilst the author supresses his contempt for Hindus, whom he just sees as a useful dilettante. Hindus has just come to talk literature, but Céline is only interested in discussing how Hindus can help him to persuade the French Government to allow the collaborator’s return. Slowly it dawns on Hindus that he is merely a pawn, and when he learns that a Danish doctor did not find the steel-plate in Céine’s skull, which the author claimed was a result of a wound from WWI, he withdraws slowly. During a drunken night spent by the trio outdoors, Céline and his wife lose their self-control under the influence of alcohol.

Bourdieu shows Céline not as a mad genius, but a rather small-minded little man who has to be right at all costs, offending others at will, unable to take any criticism himself. He is a wild little bourgeois, who happened to have talent as a writer. Céline is scheming, but when his patience snaps, he is only too proud to admit to his fascist beliefs: “Aryan culture came to an end at the battle of Stalingrad”. At the same time, Céline and other ‘intellectuals’ in Europe were not taken in by Hitler; whom they despised but used the power the Nazis gave them to persecute Jews. As for Hindus, on whose book The Crippled Giant, the film is based, his rude awakening helped him to value his Jewish identity for the first time in his life. Céline and his wife, alas, returned to France in 1951 after being pardoned, where the auhor went on writing and espousing his unrelenting racism.

DoP Marie Spencer skillfully conveys this prison-like atmosphere of Céline’s Danish exile: at night the musty brown Autumnal shadows see him again and again grabbing a pitch fork to defend himself against imagined intruders. Suicidal, Lucette is forced to take his revolver away as the two engage in a morbid web of deceit from which Hindus has to de-entangle himself. The only real light occurs at the end of the film, when Hindus is sitting in a bus to Copenhagen, fleeing the malign influence of his manipulators. Lavant and Pailhas are brilliant, but Desmeules is not given much identity, his Hindus seems too reserved to be a match for Céline. Far from being a story from yesterday, Céline asks the audience to re-examine questions about art and politics, and the role of the author in society as a whole. AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FESTIVAL NATIONWIDE UNTIL

Underwire Festival | London 2016

red-road-290x290UNDERWIRE FILM FESTIVAL exclusively celebrates female filmmaking talent across the crafts from Directing, Producing, Screenwriting, Editing, Cinematography, Sound Design, and Composing. Founded in 2010 by Gabriella Apicella and Gemma Mitchell the festival has awarded training and mentoring opportunities to over 40 filmmakers, and has screened over 300 films.

In a time of where the UK has a female Prime Minister, women still over make up only 21.8%* of a typical feature film crew. And the more opportunities available to start honing their craft, the better it will be for women in filmmaking careers and so that female stories get to be heard and to be enjoyed all over the World.

Now in its seventh year, UNDERWIRE has become a BAFTA recognised festival and is working with some of the best independent cinemas in London, including Genesis Cinema, BFI Southbank, ArtHouse Crouch End and Barbican.

UNDERWIRE FESTIVAL 2016 | ARTHOUSE VENUES ALL OVER LONDON | 30 November -5 DECEMBER

The High Frontier (2016) | Fantastic Fest | Austin, Texas

Writer|Dir: Wojciech Kasperski Cast: Andrzej Chyra, Marcin Dorocinski | Thriller | Poland | 98min

Andrzej Chyra (In the Name 0f) and Marcin Dorocinski (Anthropoid) are the stars of this stylish survival thriller that makes great use of stunning snowbound locations and an atmospheric soundtrack in a trekking holiday that turns into a sinister endurance test for a family of three.

Chyra is Mateusz a former frontier official who is keen to toughen up his teenage boys and teach them the meaning of machismo through heavy drinking bouts and stiff walks through the remote snowscapes and hostile terrain of Poland’s border with Ukraine.

The trip gets off to an inauspicious start when their truck hits a deer on the way to the wood cabin that is to be their remote retreat and the claustrophobic setting for this unsettling nail-biter. Shortly after they arrive the mood turns tense when Janek (Bartosz Bielenia) and Tomek (Kuba Henriksen) open the door to a bloodied and bruised man called Konrad (Marcin Dorociński), who promptly collapses at their feet. Mateusz ventures into the permafrost to look for Konrad’s vehicle and discovers more injured survivors of a serious crash, But while he is gone, the teenagers find themselves having to deal with Konrad who turns out to be a vicious psychopath, despite his life-threatening injuries, and by the end it’s clear that someone is going to die.

Debut director Wojciech Kasperski certainly knows how to generate an unsettling ambience with a sinister soundtrack and DoP Lukasz Zal (IDA) supports the story with his impressive camerawork complimenting the remote locations and edgy standoff between Konrad and the boys. But his script sadly lets him down and leaves the boys robbed of any personality – let alone masculinity – until the final scenes. And with Andrzej Chyra gone for most the running time, the emphasis is on Dorocinski to carry the action forward almost singlehandedly  – apart from a scene featuring Andrzej Grabowski (Lechu) – with Bielenia and Henriksen paling into insignificance as sappy teenagers in rather underwritten roles. It is never made clear why Konrad is free to be travelling with the truck that overturned or why Lechu suddenly turns up at the cabin in its isolated location. The film picks up in the final act where a corruscating finale is the payoff for those who stay the course of this relentlessly gruelling story. MT

THE HIGH FRONTIER WON BEST SOUND AT THE POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2016

 

 

El Rey Del Once | The Tenth Man | UK Jewish Film Festival

Director: Daniel Burman | Cast: Alan Sabbah, Julieta

70min | Drama | Argentina

In Daniel Burman’s upbeat rites of passage drama EL REY DEL ONCE, Alan Sabbagh plays a typical put-upon Jewish softie returning home to Buenos Aires in the hope of reconnecting with his ageing father. Ariel emigrated to New York and in the intervening years his father Usher has founded a charity foundation in Once, the city’s Jewish district where Ariel spent his youth. But Ariel’s dreams of a father son reunion are drowned in the cacophony of demanding duties that Usher ropes him into while keeping a distinctly low profile himself.

Burman’s film brilliantly conjurs up the close and often stifling nature of the orthodox Jewish community and Once looks very much like old districts of Tel Aviv. The friendly openness of the people and their paranoia and hypochondria seeps through the narrative but also their endless support of one another. In Buenos Aires, everyone is talking and no one’s listening and Ariel feels desperate for a real connection. He’s drawn to Eva, a charity volunteer who also feels cut off from her family. Eva’s strength lies in her silent radiance. An orthodox girl, she nurtures Ariel with home cooking and the precious gift of listening while he reflects on his troubled soul and slowly, unwittingly, he falls in love.

With endless phonecalls from his girlfriend back home creating an oppressive claustrophobia, Ariel re-examines his life. Eva becomes jealous and after submerging herself in the mikveh, (a purifying bath often taken after a period) the two end up in bed and conversation flows for the first time. EL REY DEL ONCE is told as a straightforward narrative; the final act brings a happy ending but not a surprising one as Ariel volunteers to sit shivah as the tenth, vital man at a local funeral.

This is Daniel Burman’s third film at Berlinale where he once more explores the father son dynamic with a lightness of touch that is occasionally moving. As Ariel moves from darkness to light towards his inner strength, he finds himself at the centre of a community where he rightly belongs. Burman’s previous films at Berlin were El abrazo Partido (in Competition in 2004) and Derecho de familia (in Panorama in 2006). MT

SCREENING DURING THE UKJFF AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE 17 NOVEMBER 2016 | BERLINALE 2016

Dong-ju : The Portrait of a Poet (2015) | London Korean Film Festival 2016

Dir: Lee Joon-ik | Writer: Shin Yeon-sik | Cast: Kang Ha-neuf, Park Yung-min | Drama | 113min | Korea

Much of Korea’s historical cinema harks back to the Colonial era as blockbuster director Lee Joon-ik teams up here with arthouse auteur Shin Yeon-sik (The Russian Novel) for a stylish black and white indie biopic of Yun Dong-ju, an early 20th century poet (sensitively played by Kang Ha-neuf) whose voice conveyed the sentiment of an entire generation in Korea when the country was under Japanese rule.

Lee’s delicately romantic and often humorous treatment is underpinned by Shin’s potent script that successfully evokes the artistic subject matter, exploring Yun’s lyrical poems that led to his imprisonment by the Japanese authorities who tortured and emotionally abused him, along with his friend and resistance activist Mong-kyu, during the Second World War.

The tone is light but serious in a narrative that explores the young mens’ burgeoning creative talents and the difficult relationship with their traditional parents – who try to force them into more solid professional careers – as they hone their craft in preparation for university. Deeply affected by Japanese Imperialism, the education system comes under pressure as Japan’s try to submerge Korean heritage and force its own culture on the country through the educational establishments.

Young ‘matinee idol’ stars Kang Ha-neul and Park Jung-min are well cast and supported by more established performers. This is a film that will possibly have more appeal to young audiences than the more diehard arthouse connoisseurs but offers thoughtful insight into an interlude of Korea’s creative past. MT

THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016

Keep Quiet (2016) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2016

Dir.: Joseph Martin, Sam Blair | Documentary with Csanad Szegedi |  UK/Hungary | 91 min.

Directors Joseph Martin and Sam Blair have created an impressive portrait of Hungarian fascist turned orthodox Jew Csanad Szegedi, whose conversion seems too good to be true for many. But much more important than the Szegedi story itself, this documentary shows again that many survivors of the Shoah have “kept quiet” not only about their suffering in the camps, but about their Jewish identity as a whole.

When Csanad Szegedi became vice-president of the far-right Hungarian Jobbik Party in 2008, he was only 26 years old. His party would gain 14% of the national vote, and Szegedi was elected as an MEP in 2009. He was also the co-founder of the “Hungarian Guard” in 2007, the paramilitary wing of Jobbik, which modelled itself on the “Iron Guard”, the Hungarian fascist organisation which supported the Horthy Regime from 1920 onwards. This was so radical in its Anti-Semitism that Eichmann said at his trial in Jerusalem: “we had it so easy in Hungary, because the locals were so helpful”.  Subsequent letters from the SS to Himmler revealed the Germans complained about the “unnecessary brutality towards the Jews” of their Hungarian allies.

Szegedi was a violent Anti-Semite, proud of his country’s dealings with the Jews until 1945. But in 2012, a political ally and former skinhead, Zoltan Ambrus, discovered that Szegedi was actually Jewish: his grandmother Katalyn Molnar (née Meisels) was actually deported to Auschwitz; she survived, but hid her tattooed camp number on her wrist, from the family.

Szegedi left Jobbik, and with the help of Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, converted to Judaism: he was circumcised in 2013. His conversion was not always greeted with approval in the Jewish Community: at the Jewish Youth Congress in Berlin, a Hungarian woman, who had to flee Hungary because of the violent Anti-Semitism, accused Szegedi of “faking it”. Others came to the same conclusion: since the media-savvy Szegedi could not be the “King” of Anti-Semitism, he tried to be the King of Judaism. When the newly converted Jew flew to Montreal, to speak at a Jewish Congress, he was not allowed into the country. Rabbi Oberlander had to defend Szegedi to the Jewish community, many of them were angry about the Rabbi’s support for the Hungarian.

The most moving and important sections of the documentary are Csanad’s conversations with his grandmother, and his visit to Auschwitz with the Holocaust survivor Eva ‘Bobby’ Neumann. Katalyn Molnar tells her grandson that she kept quiet about her ordeal, “because “we had been so good at playing out the illusion [to be Christians] and I was ashamed of my tattoo, so I covered it up”. Even after Szegedi talked to his grandmother on her deathbed, he was still n denial about the Holocaust. That would change, when he visited Auschwitz with Neumann, who again talked about trying to hide her experiences:” I never allow myself to show my true feelings”. Confronted with reality of the death-camp, Szegedi caves in “It was really like in Schindler’s List”.  The last word should go to Neumann, who lost all her family on the selection ramp in Auschwitz: “Our souls froze”.

The lesson of KEEP QUIET is that Csanad Szegedi’s fake identity is actually irrelevant. In the event, he has subsequently emigrated to Israel. But the long-term effects of concealing their identity for  survivors of the Shoah, are much more corrosive and important issues: at a time when Holocaust deniers and the never-ending chorus of “let’s draw a line, it was over seventy years ago” gather in strength and find youthful supporters like Szegedi in Hungary, they all should all be reminded that some victims are still alive, and still paying for the crimes of the European Nazis. Hungary is not alone in its official rejection of the truth about the Holocaust. AS

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES UNTIL 20 NOVEMBER NATIONWIDE

Two Women (2016) | Russian Film Week 30 Nov – 4 Dec 2016

Dir: Vera Glagoleva | Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anna Astrakhantseva, Nikita Volkov, Anna Levanova, Sylvie Testud | 100min | Drama | Russia

This lush-looking love story turns out to be a sterile and stuffy affair despite Ralph Fiennes’ ambitious attempt to learn Russian for his portrayal of a spurned suitor in Vera Glagoleva’s screen adaptation of Turgenev’s stage play A Month in The Country.

Turgenev, a close friend of Henry James, wrote the play during the final years of Tsarist Russia, when it was still considered risqué for its saucy subject matter rather than its politics. It didn’t reach the stage until 1872 due to the censors, but Glagoleva’s film version, shot in 2014, has failed to get off the ground for reasons that will gradually become apparent.

The role of Mikhail Rakitin also feels like a throwback to the 199os for Fiennes who has since evolved into a fascinating and versatile actor in A Bigger Splash, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Hail Caesar and In Bruges, but here the emotionally buttoned-down and rather winsome part has firmly clips his wings, and feels artificial.

Actress-turned-filmmaker Vera Glagoleva and her scripters Svetlana Grudovich and Olga Pogodina-Kuzima suggest we ‘imagine ourselves in the film’s characters, despite the 19th century setting’, but instead we feel alienated from them in this detached and often clichéd period drama which is a million miles away from Stephane Brizé’s highly successful recent attempt to pull this off in his recent screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s Une Vie – A Woman’s Life .

Glagoleva casts Russian actors who are largely unknown on the international circuit so there is nothing familiar to engage us with the material – even Sergey Banevich’s original score feels flat and un-engaging. Fiennes’s role is also a minor one in a story majoring in women at different stages of their lives, who are feeling insecure for various reasons connected to their femininity, as this is all their have to identify them. There is Natalya (Anna Astrakhantseva) who is afraid of losing her looks despite her solid marriage to a rich landowner Arkady (Aleksandr Baluev). Flirting with family friend Fiennes, she secretly lusts after her son’s tutor, the much younger Alexei (a sultry Nikita Volkov). Her adopted daughter Vera (Anna Levanova), meanwhile also has her eye on Alexei. The weather cleverly charts their emotional ups and downs, although the play’s original humour is sadly lacking replaced by a rather foreboding tone that constantly threatens to bring bad news in this colourless and melodramatic treatment. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | REGENT STREET CINEMA | 30 NOV – 4 DEC 2016

 

 

The Last Princess | London Korean Film Festival 2016

Dir: Hur Jin-ho | Biopic Drama | 127min | South Korea

Hur Jin-ho gives full rein to romantic melodrama in his sumptuous retelling of the unhappy life in exile of Princess Yi Deok-hye, who was the last member of Korea’s Joseon Royal Dynasty. Based on Kwon Bi-young’s novel of the same title, it chronicles her life from a tiny child in the Changdeok palace in Seoul, until her capture by the Japanese authorities who transported her to Japan where she lived a cloistered existence until the last years of her life in her beloved country. Interwoven into the period narrative is a strand that takes place in 1960s Seoul that offers romantic and historical resonance to the central story that deals with the princess’s tragic life.

Son Ye-jin is leads with a performance of regal dignity tinged with discrete emotional interludes in this illuminating study that exposes not only the cruelty of the Japanese but also the treachery of the  Koreans who betrayed their own people by kowtowing to Japanese imperialism, many ending up in positions of power after the Japanese annexation ended in 1945.

This is a more sombre offering than Park Chan-wook’s recent drama The Handmaiden although it deals with another historical interlude in the history of the Korean occupation. Hur, Lee Han-eol, and Seo Yoo-min begin their narrative a decade into Japanese occupation with King Gojong (Baek Yun-sik) still acting as the leader of his country and doting on his youngest child Deok-hye. Her confidence in her father’s love instills an unshakeable self-belief in the little princess who is seen in floods of tears in a touching scene where he father is dies after drinking a poisoned persimmon cocktail.  Later she defies the Japanese authorities  by refusing to wear a kimono and asserting her authority with graceful detachment as an inspiration leader for her people, although in private she is miserable and desperate to return home. In Toyko she is reunited with Kim Jang-han (Park Hae-il), to whom she was betrothed in childhood, and who is now high up in the Imperial Japanese Army and working alongside Deok-hye’s nephew Prince Yi Woo (Go Soo) for the underground resistance movement. He hatches several plans to get her and her brother Crown Prince Yi Eun (Park Soo-young), to safety in Shanghai but the wicked Japanese Chief of Staff always manages to rumble them. This no-win stalemate for Deok-hye climaxes in a torrid night in a hut with Jang-han followed by a momentous meltdown on a white sandy beach where, once again, an escape plot is foiled by the arch-villian, arriving on the boat she thought would take her to freedom. Although the THE LAST PRINCESS is a well-crafted historical drama that feels like a Hollywood epic with its rousing orchestral score and grippingly eventful storyline. MT

THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016 NATIONWIDE

Germans & Jews | UK Jewish Film Festival 2016

Director: Janina Quint; Documentary; USA 2016, 76 min.

Janina Quint’s directorial debut is an illuminating portrait of contemporary Jews and Germans living together in a precocious co-existence, that uncovers more questions than answers.

Quint structures her documentary around interviews famous people – like the popular German singer Herbert Grönemeyer – and a room full of ordinary citizens, where equal numbers of Germans and Jews discuss their experience of living together. There are about 200 000 Jews living in Germany today, that is exactly 0,2 % of the whole population. It is therefore very likely that many Germans outside the big cities – particularly Berlin, where the overwhelming majority of Jews live – never come in contact with a Jewish person. It is hardly a surprise that most of this documentary is shot in the reunified capital, where many Jews from the old USSR- and some Israeli emigrants – have re-settled.

Before we listen to contemporary problems of coexisting, we hear from the older generations of re-migrants – such as the publisher Rafael Seligmann, who was born in 1947 in Tel Aviv – talking about how life has changed for Jews living in post-war Germany. After Goebbels declared Germany “Judenfrei” (free of Jews) in 1943, meaning that 523 000 German Jews had ‘disappeared’, the majority murdered in Concentration Camps; about 27 000 Jews lived in West Germany at the beginning of the 50s. The overwhelming emotion of Germans in those days was enormous self-pity, they would not stop about talking about how victimised they were. The Nazi past, particularly the Holocaust, was a taboo in post-war West German society; whilst the population in the GDR, celebrated victory over he Nazis, thanks to their Soviet liberators, but was wary of the Jewish survivors, in the majority communists, whose religious freedom was curtailed. The Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, followed by the Auschwitz trials in West Germany, at the beginning of the Sixties, changed attitudes in the Federal Republic. The student uprising in 1968 brought a confrontation between Nazi parents and their children, and the USA TV series ‘Holocaust’ in 1979 was watched by over ten million in West Germany, children asking their parents “if this really had happened”.

Today many Germans of the younger generation don’t want to be lectured about the Holocaust anymore; recent polls show that about 27% of reunited Germans are Anti-Semitic, the most mentioned complain is “that Jews have too much influence”. One of the reasons for this is the fact, that about 20% of the German population has a migrant background, often coming from Muslim countries, where Anti-Semitism is rife. Anti-Semitism in Germany today centres around the human rights record of the state of Israel in the occupied territories – which is hardly worse than that of many other countries in the region, and around the world. The most ironic interviews are with emigrants from Israel, who prefer a life in Germany to their homeland, “because it is safer to live in Germany than in Israel”. Because the Germany of today is part of a democratic Europe, third generations Jews and Germans may be able live together (even though an emotional chasm still exists), but for any older Jews there is still the post-war consensus of living out of suitcases, promising to “be next year in Jerusalem”.

GERMANS & JEWS tries to spin the theory of change, which makes co-existence between Germans and Jews possible. But by mentioning these statistics, it somehow contradicts itself. By leaving out the growing danger of European fascism, which manifests itself in Germany with recent elections successes of the German ADF party, an extreme right-wing organisation, Quint paints a rather hopeful and optimistic picture. But she still tackles a necessary conundrum: how far can the past between Germans and Jews be ignored, before it becomes a denial?. AS

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016 | NATIONWIDE

Sembene! (2016) | Rebel with a Camera Season

Dir: Samba Gadjigo | Doc | 89min | Senegal

Samba Gadjigo captures the life of Sénégal director, writer and freedom fighter Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007) in this engagingly hagiographic documentary that offers up fascinating archive footage, photos and interviews to paint his story with heartfelt vigour, without examining a ruthless ego necessary for political success.

Sembène’s modest start in life took him as a teenager to portside Dakar where he worked as a docker and – because Black Africans were banned from filmmaking in the French colonies – eventually made his journey to France and to international recognition as a film director with his 1966 feature Black Girl, a cinema vérité portrait of a Senegalese maid working for a wealthy family in France. But most importantly Sembène was to raise the profile of the terrible process of FGM with his colourful drama Moolaadé in 2004 that was to be the glittering jewel in the crown of his 40-year career. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE REBEL WITH A CAMERA SEASON NATIONWIDE 

EVOLUTION Mallorca International Film Festival 2016 | 3 -12 November 2016

EL DESTIERRO | THE EXILE ( 2015) Dir.: Arturo Ruiz Serrano; Cast: Joan Carlos Suau, Monika Kowalska, Eric Frances | Drama | Spain | 88 min.

Arturo Ruiz Serrano’s directorial debit is an uneasy and sometimes unsettling film set during the Spanish Civil War. It features – literally – a ménage-à-trois between two Fascist soldiers and a young Polish woman fighting for the International Brigades.

Theo (Suau) and Silverio (Frances) have the arduous and gruelling job of guarding an isolated mountain outpost in a remote, primitive stone hut. One day, Silverio, a burly macho, finds Zoska an injured Polish woman in the mountains and brings her back into the hut where it emerges that she is fighting for the Republicans. After saving her life by stopping her bleeding to death from a gunshot wound, Silverio then tries to rape her – but is prevented when Theo’s intervenes. But Zoska eventually sleeps with Silverio, but somehow falls in love with Theo, whose virginity appeals to her desire to be sexually in control. After Zoska succeeds in seducing the earnest young man (while Severio is asleep), the trio settles down to a peaceful co-existence. This tranquil state of affairs is interrupted when one of the soldiers, delivering food parcels, spots Theo and Zoska half-naked. Jealous, he verbally abuses her whereupon Theo intervenes. Silverio more or less stands by, his macho image brought into question: he would have allowed her rape but he somehow finds this violent confrontation unacceptable.

Serrano’s study of soldiers away from the battlefield provides an inventive moral counterpoint to the usual subject of wartime. Watchable enough, it is hard to find EL DESTIERRO credible: there are too many over-simplifications that stem from the male characters: Theo and Silverio clearly represent polar opposites on the moral compass, but they feel like caricatures. And Zoska’s only function is to be with the men and do the washing, in a poorly underwritten female characterisation. One suspects that Serrano wanted to show that loves conquers all, even in the time of war, but he has failed miserably: his debut is implausible, and sometimes downright sordid. DoP Nicolas Pinzon creates an evocative romantic mountain idyll, but the narrative lets him down.

EL DESTIERRO | OPENING NIGHT GALA | THE 5TH MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 3 – 12 NOVEMBER 2016 

TOUR DE FRANCE (2016)  | Dir: Rachid Djaidani | Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Sadek, Louise Grinberg, Nicolas Maretheu | 95min | Drama | France

Rachid Djaidani’s buddy road movie feels like an attempt to wave an Olive Branch in a France very much divided by recent terrorist unrest. And Gerard Depardieu has gamely volunteered to give the project credibility as the central character Serge, a raddled and mildly cantankerous widower who honours his dead wife with a painting trip round the Gallic coast, tracing the steps of her favourite artist, the maritime painter Joseph Vernet. His voluble chauffeur on this freewheeling creative odyssey is French-born Arab musician Far’hook (Sadek), and a cheesy but nourishing friendship blossoms between the pair that ultimately has Serge rooting for the rapper in the final redemptive scene that takes place at Far’hook’s hip hip event in Marseilles.

Once on the road, Far’hook is far from the angry hoodlum he would us believe in his punchy hip-hop lyrics. More of a puppy dog than a rottweiler, he emerges a metaphor for the marginalised youth of France, documenting the seaside séjour on his mobile and striking up a flirty friendship with a girl they meet along the way (Louise Grinberg). Meanwhile, painting serves as both a tribute to his wife and therapy for the ‘loss’ of his own son ‘Bilal’ (Nicolas Marétheu) who left home to become a Muslim and found his way into music.

TOUR DE FRANCE however corny, is a cheerful tale of racial diversity. Very much about the healing and unifying power of music, it serves as a well-intentioned balm to pour over his country’s troubled times.

TOUR DE FRANCE | CLOSING NIGH GALA | THE 5TH MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | NOVEMBER 3-12 2016

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION
Luca Tanzt Leise, Director: Philipp Eichholtz (Germany)
After years of depression Luca reinvents herself with the help of new friends.

Nirgendwo, Director: Matthias Starte (Germany)
A stranger in his own life, Danny reluctantly returns to his childhood home after his father’s sudden passing. He rediscovers his hometown as a summery paradise.

Anna’s Life, Director: Nino Basilia (Georgia)
Anna a single mom is forced to take four jobs to support herself and her autistic son, she decides to leave Georgia but it’s easier said than done. Director will be in attendance.

A Heavy Heart, Director: Thomas Stuber (Germany)
A former East German boxing champion working as a bouncer and debt collector reflects on life when he is diagnosed with ALS.

Pura Vida (After Words), Director: Juan Feldman (US)
A librarian facing a mid-life crisis travels to Costa Rica in search of enjoying life to the fullest.

Kiss Me Kill Me, Director: Casper Andreas (US)
While confronting his unfaithful boyfriend, Dusty blacks-out. When he comes to, his boyfriend has been murdered and he’s the prime suspect. Director will be in attendance.

Parasol, Director: Valéry Rosier (Belgium)
Holiday time, a Mediterranean island. The determination, no matter the cost, to make things change. Nostalgia for a past that never existed.

Bittersweet Days, Director: Marga Melià (Spain)
Julia rents a room to Luuk. Their cohabitation will make them rethink their lives: are they living the way they really want to? Director will be in attendance.

Where to Miss?, Director: Manuela Bastian (Germany)
We follow Devki’s story, as it tell us why Indian women find it difficult to free themselves from their traditional roles.

Dusky Paradise, Director: Gregory Kirchhoff, (Germany – Made in Baleares)
After the death of his parents a young man travels to Mallorca to live in their house and look after their turtle.
Director in attendance.

Autumn Fall, Director: Jan Vardøen (Norway)
Ingvld entangles herself with two men, it is a very dangerous journey.

Buddymoon, Director: Alex Simmons (US)
Jilted groom David is convinced by his best man Flula to continue with his planned honeymoon. Lead actress Lilith Stangenberg in attendance.

Hotel Problemski, Director: Manu Riche (Belgium)
For the refugees of the multinational residential centre somewhere in Europe, this black comedy reveals their daily stuggles and laughs.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Oasis: Supersonic, Director: Mat Whitecross (UK)
An in-depth look at the life and music of Manchester-based rock band, Oasis <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?

The Karamazoffs (A walk on the SoHo years), Director: Juan Gamero (Spain)
In the 1960s, New York’s SoHo was occupied by artists from around the world, The Karamazoffs, a group of Barcelona artists relive their experience during those wild years in SoHo.

In Europe’s shadow, Director: Florian Schnell (Germany)
Human rights activist Elias Bierdel commentates throughout the film and meets refugees from different countries and activists.

De Lola à Laila, Director: Milena Bochet (Spain)
From mother to daughter the film shifts to a reflection about female emancipation, fight, movement and cinema.

The Key to Dalí, Director: David Fernández (Spain)
Tomeu L’Amo, a Majorcan scientist and artist bought an unknown painting in an antique shop 25 years later, he tries everything to get it certified as a real Dalí. Cast&Crew will be in attendance.

THE MALLORCA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 3-12 NOVEMBER 2016 

Tour de France (2016) | Mallorca International Film Festival 2016

 

 

Nocturnal Animals (2016) | Venice 2016 | Grand Jury Prize

Dir: Tom Ford | Cast: Jake Gyllenhal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Michael Sheen

116min | drama | US

Like his handmade suits or ballgowns, Tom Ford’s films are always beautiful and well-crafted and his Venice competition hopeful NOCTURNAL ANIMALS adds some inventive and surprising detailing to its exciting plot: there are shades of David Lynch, Nicholas Winding Refn and even Paul Verhoeven to this darkly louche and occasionally sordid thriller that takes you to unexpected places, even if it takes its time in getting there.

This is his most intriguing film so far and also feels like his most confident and sure-footed with its well chosen cast, fabulous locations and the sheer swaggering boldness of its aesthetic, complemented by Abel Korzeniowski’s sinister and suggestive score,   marking Ford out to be an accomplished storyteller as well as a accomplished couturier to the rich and famous. Suave and intoxicating, the narrative interweaves three strands that visit the present and past reality, and depart into a darkly imagined cul de sac that serves as a timely retribution for its heroine’s mispent romantic past.

As with A Single Man, Ford has adapted his script, this time from American novelist Austin Wright’s 1993 Tony and Susan, and the film’s title comes from the book within that novel. As the piece plays out it emerges that nocturnal animal was the name given to the heroine (Amy Adams) by her author and now ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) on account of her inability to sleep.

The film opens as Adams’ Susan is a successful gallery owner living in a sumptuous modernist lakeside home in LA and married to an attractive husband (Armie Hammer) who sleeps around. While he is away in New York one weekend, she receives a manuscript of her ex husband’s book and reading it she is drawn into its shady and provocative storyline that appears to shadow their former life together – 20 years ago –  in ways that are both louche and disturbing, leaving her emotionally shaken up and stirred.

Although outwardly a consummate professional, Adams’ vulnerability smoulders under her impeccable tailoring (Gucci?) and after a telling phonecall with her husband, she drifts off into a reverie of her past love life while she reads Edward’s manuscript. It tells how Tony (Gyllenhaal again), is driving in West Texas with his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and their precocious daughter India (Ellie Bamber) when their car is ramrodded by a trio of menacing hoodlums (one is Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the saga does not end well. Susan is transfixed by the novel through the small hours as flashbacks of her former life remerge to taunt and shame her. Gripped by its sordid storyline she reads on: enter Michael Shannon’s seedy sheriff Bobby Andes who is determined to track down the perps and – in an unexpected twist – not afraid to serve mean justice on them due to his terminal cancer. Back in her bedroom Susan realises the error of her ways reflecting on how she left Edward because he lacked the backbone to follow his dreams.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS is packed with fabulous performances from Laurie Linney in cameo as Susan’s patrician mother, Michael Sheen as a gay man married to her best friend , Jena Malone as a gallery assistant, and Shannon as the quinessential hard bitten chain-smoking cop and the narrative strands cleverly dovetail into the satisfying finale that combines a gritty sun-drenched Western with the steely glamour of frigid LA.

Apart from the Seamus McGarvey’s brilliant visuals there is plenty of amusing texture to keep you on your toes in the meticulous masterpiece – from twinking nightscapes to witty interludes and Adams is luminuous as Susan in her second appearance here at Venice Film Festival. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER| IN COMPETITION

6 Reasons to visit the UK Jewish Film Festival 2016

The UK Jewish Film Festival is back to celebrate its 20th edition beginning a nationwide tour that kicks off in London on 5th November with INDIGNATION one of the best US dramas of the year. The chemistry crackles between Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon in James Schamus’ feisty adaptation of Philip Roth’s bestseller about of an Orthodox young man from a working class background who wins a university scholarship in 1950s America and is swept off his feet by a blonde blue-stocking from the other side of the tracks. Tracy Letts gives an impressive turn as the Dean of Studies. (+introduction by director James Schamus).

Denis Lavant plays the central role in Emmanuel Bourdieu’s intelligent post-war drama LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE (2016) that explores identity, moralism and Art through a meeting in 1948 between one of France’s best known writers and Nazi collaborators, and exiled American Jewish scholar Milton Hindus, during their exile in Denmark. This is an engrossing drama that shows how two intellectuals grow to admire each other, despite their glaring differences. (+ Q&A with actor Philip Desmeules).

The tragic story of Anne Frank has captured the imagination of filmmakers in various guises from a Japanese animation by Akinori Nagaoka to Robert Dornhelm’s more traditional TV take with Ben Kingsley as Otto Frank. The festival screens the UK premiere of this sumptuous German-directed drama, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank) which has Lea van Acken (Stations of the Cross) as the Jewish teenager whose secret diaries record the teenage angst of growing up in hiding from the Nazis in wartime Amsterdam. The Wall star Martina Gedeck plays her mother Edith.

img_3021Comedy features in a welcome ‘Laugh’ strand with THE LAST LAUGH from documentarian Ferne Pearlstein (Freakonomics). Mel Brooks, Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sarah Silverman and Joan Rivers guarantee laugh out loud moments exploring the boundaries between humour and taboo subjects including the Holocaust and anti-seminitism. At what point is it acceptable for comedians to take on the most serious of topics and how does one comedian make us laugh while another falls at on his or her face? There are some unexpected insights here. (+panel discussion with Debbie Chazen, Josh Howie, and other British comedians). 

EVERYTHING IS COPY is a biopic that looks at the life of Nora Ephron through the lens of her son, and filmmaker, Jacob Bernstein. The documentary brings new insight into the American scripter, director and journalist who was particularly well known for her romantic comedies When Harry met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Silkwood.

small-world-of-sammy-lee-01And from the archives comes British director Ken Hughes’ restored crime caper starring the vastly underrated talents of Anthony Newley, alongside Robert Stevens, Warren Mitchell and Julia Foster. THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE (1963) sees Newley playing the fast-talking, card-playing, peep show compere trying to raise money to cover his debts in a charismatic snapshot of Sixties Soho, captured by the legendary cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky (Get Carter) with a jazz score by Kenny Graham. MT

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 5-20 NOVEMBER 2016 | NATIONWIDE

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London Korean Film Festival 2016 | 3-27 November 2016

Yourself copyThe LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL  (LKFF) celebrates its 11th year running with an extended run from 3 – 27 November at accessible state of the art venues around London.

Opening with the UK Premiere of female director Lee Kyoung-mi’s The Truth Beneath at Picturehouse Central, in keeping with this year’s edition which has a ‘Special Focus on Women’. Hong Sang-soo’s San Sebastian Best Director winner Yourself and Yours, (left) is one of the titles worth seeing.  So often called the “Woody Allen of Korean cinema”, his films are full of dry wit and probing characterisations. His 18th feature is the closing gala at Regent Street Cinema on 27 November.

The Focus on Women strand will screen 11 key works. Worth looking out for will be a rare screening of Nam-ok Park’s 1955 drama The Widow (Mimangin), (image below) the first film to be directed by a Korean woman. The festival also explores Korea’s New Wave before presenting UK premieres of the latest Korean outings: Jin-ho Hur’s The Last Princess (2016) a biographical drama set during the Korean struggle for Independence under Japanese rule. Two documentary features join the programme in the shape of Wind on the Moon, a charming documentary that explores the life of a mother and her deaf mute child and Keeping the Vision Alive (2001), Yim Soon-rye’s study that explores the journey of Korea’s women filmmakers.

unknownYoung-joo Byun’s tense mystery thriller Helpless (Hoa-cha) (2012) and for those that like their cinema dark and vengeful there is Woo Min-hun’s Inside Men (2016) featuring Korean star turn Lee Byung-hun as a wronged political henchman; the European premiere of Asura: City of Madness, Kim Sung-soo’s impressively over-the-top and violent gangster thriller, where a shady gets caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And flying the flag for the country’s animated talent is Seoul Station (2016) a prequel to the breakout zombie hit of the summer Train to Busan. MT

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 3-27 NOVEMBER 2016 

 

Take Me Home (2016) | Tribute to Abbas Kiarostami

Director, Scriptwriter, Photographer: Abbas Kiarostami | Editor: Adel Yaraghi | Visual Effects Supervisor: Ali Kamali
Music: Peter Soleimanipour

16min | Iran | Black & White

Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran to a professional artist father who influenced his decision to study design. After winning a painting competition, he went to study graphic design, working as a commercial artist, graphic designer, illustrator and eventually shooting adverts the 1960s.

This artistic training informs his filmmaking and is noticeable here in a 16 minute short entitled TAKE ME HOME. The film is really all about symmetry and gracefully illustrates Kiarostami’s natural ability and visual flair in understanding shape, form and architectural perspective.

TAKE ME HOME is engaging as a film and satisfying as a multimedia piece of art. In Southern Italy, a little boy drops his football at the top of a narrow stone stairway outside his home, As the ball bounces downwards, our eyes are drawn along with it, in an endless rhythm from side to side, as it travels to the bottom. Each perfectly framed tableau could stand as an individual piece of artwork. Put simply, the film shows the balance of lines and perspective, the chiaroscuro shadows that move and constantly change from dark to light in the black and white minimalism of shades of graphite grey and chalky white as the football cascades inexorably connecting each frame to the next in a mesmerising sprial study that draws us in, until a little boy retrieves it and goes back home. Adel Yaraghi’s perfect editing and Peter Soleimanipour’s upbeat original score give this a hopeful and positive feel. From a more complex perspective TAKE ME HOME is a metaphor for life’s diurnal rhythms soothing us reassuringly in the knowledge that whatever happens,  and despite the endless chaos of the day, all will be well in the end. MT

SCREENED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 | TAKE ME HOME IS ON A FESTIVAL WORLD TOUR AS A TRIBUTE TO ABBAS KIAROSTAMI (1940 – 2016)  

 

 

 

The Widow (1955) | Mimangin | London Korean Film Festival 2016

imagesDir: Nam-ok Park | Writer: Bo-ra Lee |Cast: Min-ja Lee, Seong-ju Lee, Tak-kyun Lee, Ai-shim Na, Dong-hu Shin, Yeong-suk Park

90min | Drama | Korea

Nam-ok Park was a Korean athlete who turned her talents to film journalism and eventually to filmmaking. Her feature debut and only film is a tenderly told domestic drama that doesn’t idolise maternal love in its exploration of the realities of postwar life from a female perspective in 1950s Korea. Unfortunately, the final scenes of the film have been lost and so actual outcome remains an eternal enigma.

Young war widow and refugee Shin (Lee Min-ja) has been left to fend for herself and her young daughter Ju (Lee Seong-ju). The financial help she gets from a dutiful married friend of her husband, Lee Seong-jin (Shin Dong-hun), is misinterpreted by his jealous and controlling wife (Park Yeong-suk), who suspects the two of having an affair, intuitively sensing his strong feelings for Shin.

Sensitively-crafted and photographed in the leafy suburbs of Seoul, the film provides insight into the social politics of the day, showing how women were forced to rely on manipulative behaviour due to their lowly status in comparison to men. Rich women, such a Mrs Lee, were able to take lovers to entertain them while their husbands were busily running empires., and Mrs Lee pays a young man called Taek (Lee Taek-kyun), to take her out and about and one day while the two are frolicking on the beach, Taek saves little Ju from drowning in the sea.

Shin meanwhile, is more impressed by Taek’s masculinity than Mr Lee’s romantic gestures and cleverly uses his money to set a business, tempting Taek to move with her and be a business partner, while paying a neighbour to looks after Ju. But the plan falls through when Taek’s former girlfriend suddenly turns up, not having died in the war after all, and Taek is also forced to make a choice between his past love and his future prosperity. There’s nothing new about the message here: that honest women and men will always follow their heart, while weaker souls have to resort to scheming and subterfuge. MT

THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES NATIONWIDE UNTIL 27 NOVEMBER 2016

 

The Woman Who Left (2016) | Golden Lion Winner | Venice 2016

THE WOMAN WHO LEFT (ANG BABAENG HUMAYO)

Dir.: Lav Diaz; Cast: Charo Santos-Concio, John Lloyd Cruz, Micheal de Mesa, Sharmaine Buencamino, Nonnie Buencamino, Marjorie Lorico, Jean Judith Javier; Philippines 2016, 226 min.

After winning the Berlinale Silver Bear in February for his eight hour epic A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, Philippine maximalist Lav Diaz – as usual – directed, photographed, wrote and edited The Woman who Left, a revenge drama (running a mere 226 minutes), for which he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this September. Venice was where he rose to international fame, winning in the Horizon section for his seven and half hour long Melancholia (2008), a psychological drama about Philippine resistance fighters coming to terms with their defeat. The past and present of this war torn and utterly poor country, being the subject of nearly all Diaz’ films.

Horacia (Santos-Concio), a teacher, has been in prison for a murder she did not commit. We meet her first in jail, working the fields, and afterwards teaching some of her inmates reading and writing. After thirty years, she has given up any hope of a release, but out of the blue, her best friend Petra (S. Buencamino) confesses she was the culprit, having been paid by Rodrigo Trinidad (de Mesa) to frame Horacia. It seems Rodrigo wanted to punish his former lover for marrying another man. On the same day Horacia leaves prison, Petra commits suicide. After meeting her daughter Minerva, now thirty-seven, Horacia learns, that her husband has died and her son is missing. She starts leading a double life: during the day she organises the poor neighbourhood, setting up a restaurant, and teaching the children and young adults. At night, she turns into an angel of revenge, plotting to kill Rodrigo, a gangster who is living in a heavily guarded community. In the dark streets she meets the snack vendor Magbabalot (N. Buencamino) and another homeless man, Mameng (Jean Judith Javier), and finds out that Rodrigo goes every morning at five to the cathedral to pray. We watch Rodrigo, trying to confess to the priest, but he is just too proud and wicked to really repent. Horacia also takes care of the transvestite Hollandia (John Lloyd Cuz), a prostitute, who is beaten up. For the first time, Horacia opens up, telling Hollandia she was on the way to kill Rodrigo, when she found him injured in the gutter. She is unaware of the consequences this confession has, and we see her last in the fog and mist of Manila, distributing leaflets, looking for her son.

The Woman Who Left is shot in the typical Diaz way: low key black and white, with high contrast lighting. It often feels like one is watching a silent film such as Metropolis, early Eisenstein works or the first part of Mark Donskoy’s Gorky trilogy My Childhood. When Horacia walks the nightly streets, she reminds us of Murnau’s phantom. The glacial pacing contributes to a nightmarish atmosphere, the blackest of noir. Horacia uses different names for herself, indicating that her personality is splitting. We see the shadow world she moves in, out of her POV: the focus is blurring, particularly at a scene at the beach, when handheld camera images get more and more out of focus. In common with many Diaz films, the past takes over the present, destroying the main protagonist’s identity.

Making her first screen appearance for over eight years after resigning as CEO of ABS-CBS Broadcasting Corporation, Charo Santos-Concio is brilliant in the title role. Dignified, but increasingly losing her faculties, she sings to herself more and more, and joins Hollandia for a chorus of “Somewhere” from Westside Story, one of the most touching scenes of this epic journey into darkness.

Whilst the editor in Diaz is still not disciplined enough to cut the favourite images of the DoP Diaz, The Woman who Left is still very restrained, compared for example with A Lullaby. For anyone who has never seen a Diaz film, it is difficult to explain the magnetism his work has: one is literally drawn into his world, lives through the film, the absurd length strangely helping this process of going into a parallel universe. He creates another world, and after leaving the cinema, anything seems simply second best. Diaz’ magic cannot be expressed with words, but when you watch The Woman who Left, you will understand. AS

THE WOMAN WHO LEFT | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 | WINNER OF THE GOLDEN LION FOR BEST FILM 

King of Jazz (1930) | LFF 2016

king-of-jazz_lugosiDIR: John Murray Anderson

CAST: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff, Glenn Tryon, William Kent, Slim Summerville, The Rhythm Boys

USA / Musical / 105min

The only film ever directed by Broadway showman John Murray Anderson (1886-1954), KING OF JAZZ was conceived – as the Rhythm Boys put it – as a “super super special special production!” showcasing bandleader and self-proclaimed ‘King of Jazz’ Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) and his music. Having spent over a year in gestation at a cost of nearly $2 million before finally hitting cinemas long after the craze for “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” big screen musicals had run its course, despite also being all-colour it was a cataclysmic box office flop when it opened in the spring of 1930. It would have brought Universal to its knees but for the success of All Quiet on the Western Front, released three days earlier; although it was popular enough abroad to break even eventually.

But KING OF JAZZ has enjoyed the last laugh. It exists! And people are still watching it!! This vast, sprawling folly is one of the very few musicals shot entirely in early two-colour Technicolor to have actually survived in colour, has now been restored to something like its original form – and there has never been anything else quite like it!

The Technicolor process in those days was limited to just two primary colours, and sometimes looks almost like sepia; and the strange combination of brick red and sea green does occasionally become a little wearing. The ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ sequence, for example, proved a nightmare to shoot; both because of the intense heat from the lights required (which caused the varnish on the violins to peel and the wood in the pianos to warp) and because despite everyone’s best efforts the Technicolor process as it then existed simply could not manage the colour blue. They eventually had to settle for a Rhapsody in Turquoise. For the magnificent job that he did with the limited palette at his disposal, art director Herman Rosse was rewarded with the first ever Academy Award to go to a Technicolor feature.

The blue eyes of the young Bing Crosby – then one of a trio under contact to Whiteman called The Rhythm Boys – show up vividly in his close-ups, however. Starting with the opening credits (under which the Young Groaner can be heard singing ‘Music Hath Charms’), he occasionally saunters in and out of the proceedings; although his big solo number ‘The Song of the Dawn’ went to John Boles because Bing was in the slammer for a drink-driving offence when it was being filmed.

From the very start the audience is put on notice that they are in store for something unprecedented when we are treated to an animated prologue by Walter Lantz featuring Whiteman himself in what was the first cartoon ever to be made in Technicolor. The makers evidently threw in any bright idea that took their fancy, starting with the introduction of the members of Whiteman’s band by having them climb out in miniature from a valise brought on to the set by Whiteman, following by a magnificently coloured sequence in which they present themselves by playing individual tunes with their instruments. Of the many visual jolts the film supplies the most startling may well be when a very convincing miniature of New York is suddenly invaded by King Kong-sized chorus girls; not to mention Whiteman himself apparently performing an energetic Charleston. As a further bonus much of the choreography and camera angles of the chorus girls (who perform their first routine sitting down) are obviously pre-Code; ditto Marion Stattler being flung about in a very short skirt and frilly knickers to the strains of ‘Ragamuffin Romeo’ sung by the elfin Jeanie Lang. The comic quickies too include a remarkable array of jokes about drunkenness, adultery; and other details like a chorus sheet that pops up in Hebrew wouldn’t have been a feature of the more whitebread Hollywood product later in the decade. (Another comic skit – ‘All Noisy on the Eastern Front’ – plugs that spring’s concurrent blockbuster from Universal).

The pace of the film actually picks up as it progresses, and of the big production numbers themselves, ‘Happy Feet’ is easily the liveliest and most engaging; with Al Norman’s rubber legs flopping around like those of the cartoon Whiteman did in the prologue. The grand finale, ‘The Melting Pot of Music’, on the other hand, goes way over the top in its extravagance and exposes Anderson’s theatrical background by repeatedly shooting the participants as if on a stage (the original director, Paul Fejos would probably have made better use of the famous camera crane he created for the film Broadway).

And then there’s the complete lack of black faces from the final line up. We see bagpipes, Irish harps and Viennese waltzes – but nothing from Africa. Throughout King of Jazz Africa’s contribution to jazz is almost totally ignored, yet there are JUST sufficient acknowledgments of the existence of black people to suggest that the film is attempting to introduce them into the film, but is doing so almost subliminally to avoid offending sensibilities south of the Mason-Dixon line. The only black face we see in the entire film is of a pretty little black girl we see sitting on Whiteman’s lap at the conclusion of the number ‘A Bench in the Park’. Later on Whiteman informs us that “Jazz was born in the African jungle, to the beating of the voodoo drum,” and the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ sequence begins with the gleaming, dramatically lit physique of black dancer Jacques Cartier dressed as an African chieftain beating that very drum. Less remarked upon is the choice of Africa as the setting for the opening sequence; as if making discreet acknowledgement of the input from that continent by beginning the film there. RICHARD CHATTEN

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016 

You are My Sunday | Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016) | LFF 2016

Writer|Dir: Milind Dhaimade | Cast: Shahana Goswami, Meher Acharia-Dar, Avinash Tiwary, Suhaas Ahuja, Pallavi Batra, Nakul Bhalia Milind | 119min | Comedy drama | India

Advertising exec turned filmmaker Milind Dhaimade offers up a feelgood snapshot of modern Mumbai in this lively and watchable comedy drama that interlaces the lives of five ordinary young men who just want to be happy and play football at the weekends on Juhu Beach. At least, that’s the plan.

According to Dhaimade, not all modern Indians are striving, high-powered yuppies, and YOU ARE MY SUNDAY certainly proves his point. The humour here ranges from witty to hilariously dark and even raucous as Dhaimade hopes to show a new world of Indian independent cinema, with a charm and honesty that is truly representative of the urban youth – Speaking in a mixture of English and Hindu – they all still live with their families, apart from one who lives with some rats.

The story kicks off during one Sunday. The group are playing a freewheeling game of footie, when a senile old man called (Appa) joins in and accidentally kicks the ball into a nearby political rally. As a penalty, the five friends are banned from their Sunday routine game and their growing frustration gradually seeps into their private lives, even seriously disrupting their close friendship. All this all unravels in a light-hearted way thanks to some dry situational humour that confirms Dhaimade has his finger firmly on the international pulse.

Taking pity on Appa, one of the guys takes the old man home where he meets his forthright daughter (Shashana Goswami) and the attraction is instant. Being shy of her sparky intelligence, he then back-peddles until a tentative romance is kindled on a glorious beach where the mood turns dreamy and introspective, as he soulfully admits:”the problem with city life is there’s no place to enjoy the little things”. But suddenly having cold feet, he deep-sixes their dalliance and the action moves on, much to her disappointment. Meanwhile, another guy is having problems with his mother who keeps harping on about his single status – nothing new there – but he urges her to “relax”. YOU ARE MY SUNDAY works best in the scenes were Dhaimade’s wicked sense of humour runs free.  One involves a ridiculous incident underlining misogyny in the workplace where one of the guys is forced to defend his co-worker when she is given the sack, her boss trying to blame her for his own internet porn habit.

Well-performed and intelligently scripted, TU HAI MERA SUNDAY could benefit from tightening its slightly saggy middle section. That said,  film’s optimism and sheer joie-de-vivre, helped along by some really catchy musical choices, makes this a thoroughly enjoyable ride through the domestic life of contemporary Mumbai. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016 |

 

Quit Staring at my Plate (2016) | NE GLEDAJ MI U PIJAT |Warsaw Film festival 2016

Dir.: Hana Jusic, Cast: Mia Petricevic, Croatia 2016, 105 min.

Marijana (Petricevic) has the misfortune to be a member of the most dysfunctional family in a small Croatian town. At 24, she works as a midwife assistant in the local hospital where the staff are all fearful of keeping their jobs. But life at home is even worse: her father is a tyrant, beating her with a towel when she gets on his frayed nerves. Her brother is an overweight layabout who has never worked a day in his life, but is protected by their mother, who, like her son, is only interested in stuffing her face with food. Marijana meanwhile is fit and slim, always trying to make the best of herself. Things go from bad to worse after the father suffers a stroke and she is forced to care for him whilst sharing a bed with her mother, who has fled the marital bedroom.

Without a boyfriend, Marijana takes up casual sex, but it fails to satisfy her emotional longings. Sliding more and more into a masochistic way of life. Marijana is finally ‘saved’ by her mother in an unexpected release. Although freedom now beckons, the young woman is not quiet sure yet what do with it .

Jusic crafts a fine portrait of a person who is driven to despair by her repressive family, and retreats into herself. Without a concrete identity – apart from feeding her family – she succumbs to her grim existence as a cleaner. Petricevic is brilliant, and Jusic observes her with distance and slight humour. Cinematography is also impressive, with particularly good use made of camera angles that swoop down on Marijana in her hopeless existence. Yet despite of its grim subject matter, Quit Staring is energetic and innovative drama. A little gem. AS

IN COMPETITION AT WARSAW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

Porto (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Gabe Klinger; Cast: Anton Yelchin, Lucie Lucas, Francoise Lebrun, Paulo Calatre; Portugal/France/USA 2016, 75 min.

In his feature debut, director/co-writer Brazilian filmmaker Gabe Klinger relies almost totally on atmosphere and some beautiful, dreamy images – but leaves his two main characters largely underwritten so the audience is left guessing.

American traveller Jake (Yelchin, in his final role) meets French archaeologist Mati (Lucas) in Porto, where the two have a passionate one-night stand. Jake wants a relationship, but Mati returns next day to her professor and lover Monteiro Oliveira – in spite of her misgivings about the relationship. In the end we see her regreting her decision to her mother (Leburn) in Paris.

The narrative is split in three sections: Part I, “Jake” tells the story of how the two lovers met at a restaurant. Part II, “Mati” features the archaeologist being disappointed by her marriage, which leads to a split which seriosuly affects her daughter, before setting out to Paris to meet her mother. Part III “Mati and Jake” is a very detailed observation of their sexual relationship.

Trying hard to emulate the Nouvelle Vague, Klinger relays on the wonderful camerawork of DoP Wyatt Garfield (Mediterranea), whose Porto is a city of wonders. So are the interior shots, creating magic out of the simplest rooms; whilst the images in the restaurant, where the couple meets, are full of enigmatic longing. This makes for an enjoyable watch. Unfortunately, we learn next to nothing about the protagonists who are purely intuitive, acting on impulse. PORTO is at its best in the scene where Mati returns with Oliveira to her flat, only to find Jake still in bed. The much older professor is very restrained, making small talk, as if nothing has happened. But Klinger never explains any motivations, the trio remains a total mystery, making it impossible for anyone to care for any of them. What remains are images, unsettling in their mysterious otherworldliness. An enigmatic tribute to Anton Yelchin. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

The Last Laugh (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir: Ferne Pearlstein | Doc | US | 88min

With the help of Mel Brooks, Larry David and Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone, documentarian Ferne Pearlstein explores how humour can come out of taboo topics such as the Holocaust.

THE LAST LAUGH discovers that it’s all down to who is telling the jokes and how much time has elapsed since the tragedies occurred. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried comes up with a neat solution:”tragedy plus time equals comedy”.  So it’s ok to joke about ‘The Spanish Inquisition’ but ‘9/11′ is still understandably out of bounds. Brooks’ 1968 film The Producers was considered an outrage back in the day, but his later 2005 version (directed by Susan Stroman) was given the thumbs up. And jokes can often be cathartic in times of great stress. Concentration camp survivor Firestone claims that humour was the only weapon they all had against the Nazis. Brooks terms this “Revenge by ridicule”.

But despite satirising Hitler even Mel Brooks finds it difficult to joke about the Holocaust. Something that Joan Rivers managed to pull off on The Tonight Show. Apart from The Producers, making fun of the Nazis is almost a sub-genre in Hollywood from Mel Brooks’ The History of the World (1981) to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) and Holocaust survivor and comedian Robert Clary talks about appearing in the TV series Hogan’s Heroes with reference to his young days entertaining in the camps.

Yet Brooks decries Life Is Beautiful, as being the ‘worst film every made” so humour doesn’t always work Holocaust wise. The rule of thumb when lampooning any tragedy seems to be ‘stick with the turf”. Roughly translated this means : Jews can joke about Jewish tragedies such as the Holocaust, and Black people can send up slavery; but neither should cross either other’s boundaries, which somehow makes sense.

THE LAST LAUGH slightly loses its way in the last half hour when it broadens the debate and but it’s watchable and entertaining for the most part. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2016

 

The Bait (Tope) | LFF 2016

Dir: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Cast: Sudipto Chatterjee, Kajal Kumari, Ananya Chatterjee, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Paoli Dam

88min | Fantasy Drama | India | Bengal

Putting the art into arthouse, Bengali director Buddhadeb Dasgupta takes Bandyopadhyay’s short story and creates a gorgeously vivid and surreal melodrama shot through with touches of magic realism and whimsy and set in the lush and languid landscapes of rural Bengal. This often poetic literary adaptation is evocatively steeped in sensuous imagery and cultural references, conjuring up its ancient folklore with dreamlike sultriness and gentle comedy.

Lost in the past, Sudipto Chaterjee plays a fierce and arrogant Raja living in faded splendour in a palace deep in the jungle, whilst his plumb lover Rekha (Ananya Chatterjee) feasts on bananas and dreams of escaping; clearly a dissillusioned romantic. Meanwhile the Raja has pretensions to greatness and spends his days dancing fiestily around the exotic palace and its extensive grounds, chanting and generally trying to impress anyone with his wild ambition to kill the local tiger. His nose is rather put out of joint when a Kolkata film crew arrives to make a documentary about the tiger. This seems to upset his feudal sensibilities and he reacts with pompous hostility to the well-intentioned filmmakers. Meanwhile there are two other strands to the storyline: a colourfully clad low caste girl dances on a tightrope through the fish-filled river beds, and a mad former postman Goja (Chandan Roy Sanyal) chants jibberish from the branches of a tree, strewn with his postbags full of mail.

The denouement is sudden, startling, and open to interpretation as the narrative plotlines come elegantly together. THE BAIT is a beguiling and bewitching film full of rich colours, seductive warmth and exotic mysticism. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

 

Planetarium (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir|Writer: Rebecca Zlotowski | Cast: Nathalie Portman, Lily Rose Depp, Emmanuel Sallinger, Alexandre Zloto | Drama | 105min | Franco Belgian

Rebecca Zlotowski follows her nuclear-power-based love story Grand Central with a drama that is more about psychics than physics. PLANETARIUM is of the ether and floats sumptuously and delicately through a pre-war story of supernatural powers possessed by two gorgeous sisters who arrive in Paris from New York to perform seances, connecting the living with the dead. Zlotowski has written the script herself in an meandering and impressionist style-narrative that gracefully conjures up the febrile state of Europe in the late 1930s, capturing a magical moment in time that is both starstruck and doomed. The girls’ whimsical story is firmly anchored by a powerful racist subplot involving its lead male character André Korben, a wealthy Polish Jew.

Natalie Portman is the brightest star of PLANETARIUM as Laura Barlow, but she is surrounded by a galaxy of sparkling performances from Lily Rose Depp, who comes into her own as the younger and more ethereal sister Kate;  Emmanuel Salinger as Korben, a film producer who part-finances and accommodates the girls in his elegant Art Deco home; and Alexandre Zloto who plays a silver-tongued René-Lucien Chomette (aka René Clair best known for his work with silent film in the 1930s and titles such as A Nous la Liberté and Le Million). Seeing that times are hard seance-wise in the run up to the war, Korben seizes on the potential of a supernatural-themed film harnessing the skills of The Barlow Sisters, as a potential career in acting beckons for Laura. Sadly despite a fascinating detour into cinematic methods of the era, this film within a film burns a financial hole into Korben’s production company and the story ends as a tragedy after his Jewish roots are exposed and he is sent ‘East’ (to the gas chambers). But not before the champagne flows and a seriously soigné time is had by all. So even if Zlotowski’s storyline often blinds you with its science and the odd plothole, it does so in such a fabulously enjoyable and inventive way with stunning costumes, glamorous locations and starry encounters, by the end it’s all been a blast. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016 | VENICE REVIEW

 

American Honey (2016) | Cannes Film Festival | Jury Prize 2016

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Sasha Lane, Shia LaBoeuf, Arielle Holmes, Corey McCaul Lombardi

142mins | drama | US

Andrea Arnold’s US debut is a runaway road movie that follows fiesty newcomer Sasha Lane across America’s Midwest with a crowd of defiant drifters trying to sell something that nobody really wants on a journey that never comes to much but rambles enjoyably on its way. Drawing parallels with Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park there are also echoes here of Larry Clark’s loose brand of sexuality in the partying and free-wheeling fun that goes on as the band bond with Shia LaBeouf adding his own brand of charisma. Although there are some magical moments with Jake (Shia LaBeouf), adding his own brand of charisma to the road show as head of sales in a drama that drifts along dreamily often in a drunken haze.

This is fun for the first hour but only two other characters stand out: surfer dude Corey (McCaul Lombardi), and ditzy Pagan (Arielle Holmes in a similar role to her character in Heaven Knows What). The tone is upbeat and rebellious in this melange of meandering and amorphously linked encounters, but for its scant three hour running time it lacks dramatic torque for the most part working best as a euphoric mood piece where the romance between Star and LeBoeuf is the slow peddling driving force.

The visuals are vibrant and sensual whether on the widescreen or in the more intimate spaces of the van and motel rooms and Arnold never judges her characters letting them glide on in the glory and occasionally more soberly in this (for them) memorable story with its eclectic musical moments from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s “Careless Love,”. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

Private Property (1960) | LFF 2016

DIR/Writer: Leslie Stevens | Cast: Kate Manx, Corey Allen, Warren Oates, Robert Ward, Jerome Cowan | Drama | 79min

PRIVATE PROPERTY was an independent production marking the directorial debut for his own company Daystar of the Broadway playwright and screenwriter Leslie Stevens (1924-1998). Immediately condemned by the Legion of Decency when it opened in New York in April 1960, the Production Code Administration denied the film a code seal; making Private Property the first U.S. feature film to be released without code approval since Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm five years earlier.

Seen today – without giving away too much of the plot – it’s pretty clear that what appalled the censors about Private Property at the time was less the looming threat of violence throughout than the raw sweaty concupiscence driving the three main characters – two unkempt young drifters played by Corey Allen and Warren Oates (in his first major screen role) who first spy upon, then invade the plush home of a frustrated housewife played by Stevens’s then-wife Kate Manx; later described by Andrew Sarris after her suicide in 1964 as of “hauntingly stupid blonde beauty”. (The title Private Property plainly refers to both Ms Manx and her Beverly Hills home). Filmed in just ten days in the summer of 1959 for under $60,000 in Stevens & Manx’s own Hollywood Hills home; Stevens had the great good fortune to be able to call upon the skills of the veteran Hollywood cameraman Ted McCord – known in equal measure for his extreme cantankerousness mitigated by his great resourcefulness on location while filming classics like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and East of Eden – whose long tenure at Warner Brothers had recently come to an end and was available for a fraction of his usual fee. Under McCord’s seasoned tutelage the newly restored film looks sensational.

Although it’s lack of MPAA approval had discouraged any major distributors from picking up Private Property for a commercial release, its scandalous reputation brought it a successful run in art cinemas across Europe, and it eventually grossed over $2 million before quietly dropping off the radar for nearly fifty years (it has never been included in any of Leonard Maltin’s film guides, for example), and it would have left an even worse taste in the mouth if it had still been in circulation at the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969. It left a lasting impression on those who saw it, however. The late Dave Godin wrote in 1999 that “Very few people seem to have heard of, let alone seen, this bizarre and strange film, but it is ripe for re-discovery as a precursor of the harsher realism that American movies were able to explore once censorship restrictions were lifted.” Finally a print was discovered at UCLA, who screened their restoration of it last year as part of its 2015 Festival of Preservation.

Sarris dismissed Stevens’s next feature, Hero’s Island (1962) – an 18th Century historical adventure in Technicolor again featuring Manx and Oates and starring James Mason – as “best left to the more esoteric film historians”; while Stevens surpassed himself with the even more esoteric Incubus (1966), a horror film starring William Shatner with dialogue entirely in Esperanto. His company Daystar had in the meantime moved into TV production, where Stevens created his biggest splash as the creator of the evergreen cult series The Outer Limits; and went on to enjoy a long and busy career in television while also pursuing an enthusiasm for New Age philosophy. Richard Chatten

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2016 until 16 OCTOBER

The Noon Witch (2016) Polednice | LFF 2016

later inspired an 1896 symphonic poem by Antonin Dvorak.

DIR: Jiri Sadek | 90min | Horror | Psychodrama | Czech Republic.

Sun-baked cornfields make for an unusual setting in Czech director Jiri Sadek debut feature which takes inspiration from a folkloric poem by Karel Jaromír Erben. With echoes of Philip Ridley’s twisted tale The Reflecting Skin this slim but imaginatively-crafted psychodrama is permeated by a sinister tone of baleful remorse.

A grieving woman Eliska (Anna Geislerova) and her young daughter Anetka (Karolina Lipowska) move back to her husband’s birthplace in a remote country village where they hope to start a new life in a dilapidated cottage. Eliska has not yet told Anetka that her father will not in fact be joining them – or that he is dead. And this monumental lie is pivotal to the toxic dynamic that slowly develops between the pair, fuelled by the daughter’s festering resentment and her mother’s growing guilt.

Plagued by sweltering heat and unwelcome support from the invasive locals, the two get off to a difficult start. Their neighbours consist of a sexually predatory (and married) odd job man  and the Mayor’s mentally unstable wife (Daniela Kolarova) who killed her only son, and warns of ‘The curse of the Noonday Witch’, which is about to strike again.

Sadek echews the usual blood and gore settling for jump cuts and macabre visions of a goulish black-hooded figure, and it’s clear from the start that Eliska’s and her daughter’s psychological state are to blame for these negative vibes and despite convincing performances the dialogue is often trite and mostly redundant. Where the film triumphs is in Alexander Surkala’s florid 35mm cinematography that glows resplendently particularly during the impressive solar eclipse scene.  MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

 

 

Mirzya (2016) | LFF 2016

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Dir: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra | Cast: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Siyami Kher, Om Puri, Art Malik, K K Raina, Anjali Patil | 130min | India

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s latest Hindi drama is an ambitiously mounted and dazzling lyrical epic that interweaves the legendary Punjabi love story between Mirzya and Sahiban “If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt – only love”. The traditional version opens in the magnificent desert fortresses of Rajasthan and tantalizingly precedes each episode of the reimagining of a modern day Romeo and Juliet, where school friends Monish and Suchitra found first love in modern Delhi as children and then unite as adults in the 21st century. However, Monish (Harshvardhan Kapoor) now works for a prince, to whom Suchitra (Saiyemi Kher) is engaged to be married.

What makes MIRZYA so appealing to watch is the dynamic performances of newcomers Harshvardhan Kapoor and Saiyami Kher who are glamorously gorgeous both as a modern couple and as their mythical counterparts. A tunefully rhythmic soundtrack by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy sets the extravaganza off on its way, and minimal CGI effects depict an exotic bird involved in the narrative, zooming exuberantly into the sky in a metaphor for the feelings of the lovebirds themselves.

MIRZYA has brave intentions and plenty of chutzpah, but much of the story gets confused as it flips backwards and forwards and the result is an over melodramatic affair that often feels implausible and over-excited in the contemporary context, despite the convincing onscreen chemistry of the leads. MIRZYA is certainly spectacular to look at and entertaining to watch,  but the narrative fails to be convincing despite the director’s best intentions. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

 

Blue Velvet Revisited (2016) | LFF 2016 | World Premiere

Dir: Peter Braatz | With David Lynch, Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper | Doc | 86min

Aficionados of the iconic thriller made in 1985 by David Lynch will be entranced by Peter Braatz’s documentary BLUE VELVET REVISITED which world premieres here in London on 7 October 2016. The director served as an editor on the original film made in Wilmington, North Carolina and this ‘meditation on a movie’ offers a collection of his personal musings – a daily chronicle – of the making of the original that has achieved cult status in the intervening years.

In a grainy indie style Braatz pieces together his footage to form a collage of the shoot with cast members chatting and hanging around on set: Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper and Kyle MacLachlan, all recorded on his Super 8 camera. There are some insightful interviews with Lynch himself, who comes across as confident and articulate, and talks of mastering new technology so that he can “think” his films onto the screen without the endless preparation entailed in each frame and scene. Isabella Rossellini and DoP Frederick Elmes offer their feelings about the film and the personalities involved. These are spliced with evocative inter-titles picking out buzz words and phrses so familiar in the film “a candy-coloured clown” (originally from Roy Orbison’s song) and “tiddlywinks” are a few. The film speaks for itself and has a pleasurable rhythm of its own although there is no clear narrative, as such. Braatz cleverly evokes the detached, unsettling terror and dreaminess of the original and has obtained Lynch’s exclusive permission to document his drama with this material that has never previously been seen by the public. BLUE VELVET REVISITED feels as much a reverie of filmmaking in the eighties as a trippy voyeuristic voyage back in time. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 16 OCTOBER 2016

 

Voir du Pays (Stopover) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin: Cast: Ariane Labed, Soko, Ginger Romain; France/Greece 2016, 102 min.

Sisters Delpine and Muriel Coulin (17 Girls) surprise us with a tense yet reflective portrait of French women, fighting in the army alongside men. As one would expect, misogyny, in all forms, from verbal to violent, is at the centre of this captivating film that stars Ariane Labed and Soko.

Set on the island of Cyprus in the autumn of 2012, just before newly elected President Hollande would withdraw French troops from the Afghan war, STOPOVER follows a battalion of French soldiers returning from a tour of Afghanistan. Before they go back to their families, the army has set up a demob camp in a luxury hotel as an antidote to PTSD.

For two close friends, Aurore (Labed) and Marine (Soko), who grew up together in Lorient, and joined the army together these three days will decide their future (“Lorient is an army town, what else was there to do?”). Together their debate the aftermath of conflict: “What the hell was I doing in Afghanistan” – but they will both reach differing conclusions by the end. After their arrival in the hotel, they are annoyed to have to share their room with a third person Fanny (Romain), but soon the daily remedial sessions – with help of virtual reality simulations – take over. All the soldiers have reacted differently to the hostilities, most of them are traumatised by the loss of their friends. It is that the three days merely scratch at the surface, the whole exercise is just a placebo. The men are sexually frustrated, at first voicing their repressed anger at the women soldiers, then, after the trio drives off with some local men, the violence explodes. Two of the women get off with Cypriots, and after the French soldiers follow them to a local restaurant, there is talk about “taking our women and our wine”. Knives are drawn, before the French soldiers drive off. On the way to the hotel, they kill a goat and one of the soldiers tries to rape Aurore “I show you that I have balls, but you don’t”. Marine just comes in time to save her friend. On the flight to France, Aurore asks Marine why she is fighting – Marine’s answer “defending France, Europe”, which is not enough for Aurore any more.

The French title Voir du Pays means “see the world”, a slogan the Army uses to seduce recruits to join. Aurore and Marine have seen little outside Lorient before they embarked on their army careers. But the directors make it clear that women experience fighting on a different level: Marine can’t get the image of her dead compatriot out of her head. “It goes round like a loop”, she tells Aurore. On the other hand, some of the male soldiers are thirsty for more battle. Aurore’s statement regarding her male fellow soldiers: “They need an enemy”.

DoP Jean Louis Vialard creates a fake world in the hotel in stark contrast to what have happened in Afghanistan. Once again leads Ariane Labed and Soko are impressively convincing in this watchable and resonant war drama which won Best Script in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes 2016. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

Dearest Sister (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Mattie Do; Cast: Amphaiphun Phommapunya, Vilouna Phermany, Tambet Tusk, Manivanh Boulom; Laos/France/Estonia 2016, 100 min.

Laotian director Mattie Do’s claim to fame is that she has directed two of the thirteen films produced in her country. Genre-wise, DEAREST SISTER could be called a horror film, but it is much more: a ghostly treatise on family relations, class and colonialism.

Nok (Phommaphuna), a village girl, is called to the capital Vientiane to look after Ana (Permany), a distant relative, who lives with her Estonian husband Jacob (Tusk) in a splendid villa. Nok is supposed to help Ana, who is slowly going blind, but she uses her employer’s disability to her own advantage. The maid (Boulom) and her husband, the gardener, both despise Nok, who has a room in the house, whilst they have to sleep outside in a covered shelter. Soon we realise that Ana’s illness is not only physical: she can communicate with the dead but is often not able to differentiate between the ‘ghosts’, and real people. She also obtains numbers from the dead, which she relates to the materialistic Nok, who uses them successfully to play the lottery. Nok turns out to be a nasty piece of work, using her wages for clothes and glitzy objects instead sending the money – as promised – home to her poor family in the village. After Ana’s sight is saved by an operation, Nok fears that she will become redundant, and at the same time, the servants take their fate in their own hands: the long repressed conflicts of interest explode, setting up a violent denouement for all concerned.

Without resorting to a gore fest of slashing, jump-cuts or over-sensational horror elements, Do and her cinematographer Mart Ratassepp’s evoke a netherworld of menace where the horror is subdued but deadly– even the ghosts appear to be human as Ana’s state of mind enables her to slip between both worlds in a visually captivating tale of sexual politics. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

All of a Sudden | Auf Einmal (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Azli Özge; Cast: Sebastian Hülk, Julia Jentsch, Hanns Zischler, Sascha A. Gersak, Luise Heyer; Germany/Netherlands 2016, 112 min.

German/Turkish filmmaker Asli Özge (Lifelong) has developed a well-constructed narrative about young bourgeois Germans, who seem on the outside to be unlike their infamous Nazi grandparents, but, as it turns out, have more in common than first appears.

Karsten (Hülk), in his mid-twenties, works in a bank and has steady relationship with Laura (Jentsch). When she is away on a business Karsten decides to give a party, and soon finds himself alone with Anna, celebrating her birthday with some flirtatious fun. One thing leads to another and suddenly we see Karsten running to a nearby hospital, which is closed. He returns, and eventually phones an ambulance – but it’s too late, Anna is dead. It transpires the young woman was German, but lived in Russia for a while where she was married with a daughter. Questioned by police, Karsten has no answer as to why he he didn’t phone for an ambulance immediately. And to make matters worse, he has hidden Anna’s underclothing, which Laura finds on her return. The autopsy result shows that Anna took medication for asthma; the alcohol she consumed was contraindicative, and led to a cardiac arrhythmia. She more or less suffocated. At home with his parents, Karsten compares himself to his racist father Klaus (Zischler), who has offered the Russian family a financial settlement, which they have refused. “I am like you”, Karsten exclaims, “ I just want to look superior”. Nevertheless, he soon changes his mind, and visits Andrej (Gersark), Anna’s husband, but manages to upset him too with some high-handed behaviour. Later he is cleared in court, and starts to take revenge on his superiors at the bank (who had demoted him during the case) and on his former girlfriend Judith (Heyer), whom he now blames for his relationship breakdown with Laura.

Unfortunately, All of a Sudden runs into difficulties early on: Özge aims for enigma but her direction is often clumsy and overlaboured: images and words overlapping, stretching the threadbare chronicle to the maximum. Despite a competent performance, Hülk is never able to show the slightest menace, leaving us in doubt about his involvement with Anna and what emerges at the end is rhetorical rather than meaningful. Emre Erkmen’s superb camerawork supports the rather limp realism,  but makes evocative use the small Rhineland town of Altena with memorable results. AS.

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

 

Private Property (1960) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Leslie Stevens; Cast: Kate Manx, Corey Allen, Warren Oats, Robert Ward; USA 1960, 79 min.

Leslie Stevens (1924-1998) is hardly a household name – but the director/writer of PRIVATE PROPERTY – a film wrongly panned by Andrew Sarris – has contributed significantly to film history: he not only adapted the play The Left Handed Gun by Gore Vidal for Arthur Penn’s screen version of 1958; but, as executive producer of Daystar Productions, he was responsible as writer and director for the cult series The Outer Limits (1963-65).

PRIVATE PROPERTY starts with a long tracking shot, two men seemingly crawl out of the ocean and walk along the beach. They soon steal from a petrol station attendant, and force the guy, who gave them a lift to LA, to follow a posh Corvette car, driven by an attractive blond woman. Then Duke (Allen) and Boots (Oats) settle into an empty house in Beverly Hills, overlooking the property of Ann (Manx) and Roger Carlyle (Ward). Whilst watching Ann sunbathing, Duke promises Boots, who has never slept with a woman, and is obviously gay, that he will make Ann sleep with him. Duke, a psychopath who can mirror the wishes of people he wants to seduce, gets to work, and introduces himself to Ann as a gardener. The bored housewife is only too glad of company, her husband spends all day in the office and travels often, and she and Duke get very close. But when Duke is about to make his move, he introduces Boots and Ann runs away from him. What follows is a surprising orgy of violence.

Shot in five days for $60 000 at the home of the director, who was married to Manx at the time – she would commit suicide at the age of 34 after they split up in 1964. PRIVATE PROPERTY was condemned by The League of Decency and did not get a PCA certification. It nevertheless grossed over two million US dollars, even though it could only be seen outside the big cinema chains. Stevens, who had worked with Orson Welles at the Mercury Theatre, shared his former boss’s taste for unsettling subjects, and innovative camera angles. DoP Ted McCord (East of Eden, The Sound of Music) moves the camera often from the POV of Duke and Boots, catching Ann like an animal in the zoo: she is their object; but, in spite of Freudian innuendos, like opening a bottle of perfume with a stopper resembling a dildo – not a sexual one. Duke is only interested in his power games, and for Boots, she represents just a fairy-tale figure, who he wants to admire but only from a safe distance. The black and white images, sometimes grainy, sometimes dreamy, capture a creepy atmosphere, a sort of harbinger of the future when the Manson gang would commit their murders ten years later. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

CallBack (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir: Carles Torras | Cast: Martin Bacigalupo, Lilli Stein, Larry Fessenden, Timothy Gibbs | Thriller | Spain | 80min

Catalan director Carles Torras makes his English language debut a watchable and darkly drole character study of a small time New York actor who gradually reveals his psychopathic nature in this lean and stylish thriller.

Slick and slightly sepia-tinted, CALLBACK stealthily follows Larry de Cecco (a sardonic Martin Bacigalupo) as he goes about his business playing bit roles for adverts that deal with the ennui of city life and keeping up with the American Dream (‘Drink megaboost, and you’ll be fine). At first Larry seems to rub along with this rather humdrum existence, at least that how it all appears. He clearly doesn’t have the chops to grab the headlines performance-wise, so he works in removals as a sideline, and often helps himself to things belonging to the people he moves, to the irritation of his weary boss (Larry Fessenden). By night, Larry is a peeping Tom to his latest tenant Alexandra (Lilli Stein) who also has aspirations to act, and amongst his other behavioural issues, he has a tendency for temper tantrums for which he attends the sessions of of a local religious pastor, purporting to be a ‘born again’ Christian..

But there’s something unpleasantly creepy about Larry who would certainly freak you out if you spent time with him at home. And flatmate Alexandra (Lilli Stein) is clearly either naive or far too polite to make anything of the way Larry talks in American clichés: ‘here’s some fresh towels’; ‘I’m a very driven person” and ‘thank you for sharing this with me’ or the way he plays Tchaikovsky classics at full volumn his car (is there a US equivalent to classic fm?). Musical choices add bathos to this delicious drama with Jimmy Fontana’s sixties love song “Il Mondo,” suggesting that Larry’s schizoid personality is fully conversant with a romantic life that he is unable to fulfil.

And soon enough Alexandra gains confidence in the de Cecco household, eventually falling foul of Larry’s romantic sensibilities over dinner one night. The result is shockingly grim. But Bacigalupo is simply dynamite in his creation of Larry (his voice even sounds like Vincent Price at one point) which dovetails  with Lilli Stein’s foxy turn as Alexandra, making this compact and understated psycho thriller eventually worth its weight in gold. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

 

King Cobra (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir: Justin Kelly | Cast| James Franco, Christian Slater, Garrett Clayton | 87min | Drama

The ubiquitous James Franco was once a name to be conjured with: Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, 127 Hours and even Pineapple Express showed initial promise for his sterling efforts and energetic talents as an actor, director and writer. But Interior Leather Bar set him off down another track and Every Thing Will Be Fine followed. In KING COBRA he is back on form, once here again teaming up with Justin Kelly (I Am Michael) and lending a certain charisma to his supporting role in this rather seedy gay porn outing, based on the true story of the early career of the soi-disant ‘Brent Corrigan’ (aka Sean Paul Lockhart) played by Garrett Clayton, who we first meet, aged 17, auditioning for Cobra Video, an amateur gay porn company set up by King Cobra himself, Stephen (Christian Slater).

From the get go, audiences will smell a rat when they see Stephen salivating at the discovery of his nascent porn starlet while still purporting to be straight: when his sister offers to set him up on a blind date, he protests:  “I can manage my own love life”. You bet he can, and it all originates from the privacy of his own home.

At first Stephen appears to be a relatively low key nonce. He is sadly aware that his ageing looks are a hindrance in bedding desirable under-age men. Although Sean claims to be 18. But delusion is his only bedfellow, and while he  kids himself that Lockhart and he are lovers,  the blond boy-star has other plans. Far too cute to fall in with Stephen,  he swiftly leverages his burgeoning potential by demanding more money from the slippery entrepreneur. And soon enough, perky porn producer Joe (Franco) comes sniffing along and smartly involves Lockhart his boss a ‘ménage à quatre’ with his easygoing partner Harlow ( Keegan Allen) and thus the ‘Viper Boys’ are born, servicing their physical and financial lives. But Joe is clearly also a profligate narcissist with a penchant for fiery temper tantrums when he is thwarted.

KING COBRA’s narrative plays out as a fascinating character study between the four men and their sexual interplay with some decent performances in scenes of an often graphic nature that will go down well if gay sex or gay porn is your schtick. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5 -16 OCTOBER 2016

Rara (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Pepa San Martin; Cast: Julia Lübbert, Emilia Ossandon, Mariana Loyola, Augustina Munoz, Daniel Munoz, Micela Christi; Chile/Argentina 2016, 92 min.

Filmmaker Pepa San Martin delivers a stingingly truthful portrait of family disintegration in her promising debut RARA, where a father uses the sexual orientation of his ex- wife to gain custody of their two daughters. Based on a true case in Chile, RARA is a sad account of judicial prejudice, told often in an ironic tone when describing situations bordering on the absurd.

In the Argentine city of Mar de Plata, Paula (Loyola) has left her husband Victor (D. Munoz) and taken their kids Sara (Lübbert) a maudlin teenager, and her much younger sister Catalina (Ossandon) to form a new family with. Lia (A Munoz). Things come unstuck when Sara tells her father about harassment at school because she lives with “two Mommies”, and Victor, a one time supporter of Pinochet in Chile, starts a court case to get custody of his two daughters, ably supported by a “tame” psychologist and his influential mother.

The catalyst of the narrative is Sara, whose teenage angst is driving her into the arms of her father, sometimes against her own will. Homelife for Paula and Lia is often problematic with the two arguing and causing friction between Catalina and her sister. At school, Sara’s best friend, Pancha (Christi), is everything Sara wants to be: slim, articulate, and indulged by her rich parents. Victor, manipulative by nature, uses Sara’s birthday party to alienate her from his ex-wife – after all, his house is much bigger than Paula’s. When Sara stays out late – just another attempt to copy Pancha – the situation boils over.

RARA, means strange in Spanish, and is certainly the situation finds herself in caused by adults who say something, but mean exactly the opposite. Sara flirts with co-student Julian, her sister is obsessed by a little kitten – their worlds do not meet. On top of it, Victor is a true macho man: when his new partner Nicole tells him to wash his hands before lunch, he immediately hits back, shouting at Sara to take her feet off the sofa.

RARA’s strongest moments are these small observations. The true victim is Sara, who is not only used by her biological parents as a pawn, but also is left to mother Catalina, since her father is hopeless at communicating with his girls and Paula is too engaged in her emotional struggle with Lia to notice, let alone care. Carried by Lübbert and Ossandon, RARE is always lively and tenderly humane as evoked in DoP Enrique Stindt visuals that contrast the two very different family homes, but also create lyrical scenes of the city, where Sara will find her freedom away from the interfering and selfish adults. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016 | BERLINALE 2016 REVIEW

Moonlight (2016)|LFF 2016

Dir.: Barry Jenkins; Cast: Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Andre Holland, Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Janelle Monae, Jharrel Jerome; USA 2016, 110 min.

Barry Jenkins’ second feature MOONLIGHT is a mixed bag after the much-praised Medicine for Melancholy. High on atmosphere, but relying too much on atmosphere and restricted by a very episodic narrative, this gay interest drama is carried most of the time by great acting.

We first meet the main character, Chiron, in Miami, first as a small boy in Chapter One “Little”: Chiron (Hibbert) is running away from bullying kids, but his mother Paula (Harris) is not much help, since she is a good customer of the rather sensitive drug dealer Juan (Ali), who takes Chiron under his wing, helped by his partner Teresa (Monae). The dichotomy is that Juan is ruining Chiron’s home life, whilst fathering him at the same time. Chapter Two, “Chiron” sees the teenage boy, played by Ashton Sanders, questioning his sexuality, after an encounter with Kevin (Jerome). Torn between violence and passion, Chiron again ends up as victim. Chapter Three “Black” features the adult Chiron (Rhodes), who is a successful drug dealer, having pumped up his body meticulously in the gym. He meets a man from his past, and again, the quest for his own sexuality is the central answer to this episode.

Adapted from a play by Tarell McCraney by the director, MOONLIGHT leaves very much unsaid – behind the clichés – we suspect, there is a different Chiron hiding. The two main women in the film, his mother and Theresa, are not drawn out enough as real personalities and are mere cyphers, unlike Juan, who makes the most impressive impact on Chiron’s life. DoP James Laxton creates a wonderful mix between social and poetic realism. MOONLIGHT could have easily been set in South America; the glimmering light on the beach being central to the story. But some moments of magic do not compensate for the missing dramatic arc and dialogue which is often trite.

Certainly not a failure, MOONLIGHT nevertheless represents no progress for Jenkins; underlining the truism that any director’s second film is often the most difficult. AS

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL FROM 5-16 OCTOBER 2016

12th London Spanish Film Festival | 22-29 September 2016

The London Spanish Film Festival is back this Autumn for its 12th edition and a unique opportunity to watch some UK premieres at Ciné Lumière and the Regent Street Cinema. The season opens with La Novia, Paula Ortiz’s second film, based in Federico García Lorca’s classic Bodas de sangre and closes with, Endless Night (main picture) Isabel Coixet’s Berlinale 2015 title, which stars Juliette Binoche and Rinko Kikuchi, an intimate but rather portrayal of the relationship between two women from two opposite worlds.

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This year’s festival includes a Catalan Window with the fresh but solid debut, Les amigues de l’Àgata, and a drama about the battle of the Spanish Civil War, Ebre, which will be presented by the historian and Hispanist Paul Preston. Possibly the standout film is Victor Erice’s El Sur, a masterpiece about loss and memory, which also forms part of the BFI’s Pedro Almodóvar’s retrospective. Films in competition are marked with a **.

LA NOVIA**

Dir. Paula Ortiz, with Inma Cuesta, Alex García, Asier Etxeandia, Manuela Vellés, Leticia Dolera, Luisa Gavasa | Spain/Germany | 2015 | 96 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Based on Federico García Lorca’s play Blood Wedding, which is considered one of his best works, La novia tells us the story of a tragic love triangle set in the deep South of Spain. Ortiz’s treatment of Lorca’s play is respectful and very close to the original poetic dialogue, while the photography of Miguel Amoedo enhances a fable-like atmosphere with nuances of a catastrophe. All performances are powerful but special mention deserves that of Luisa Gavasa, worth of a Greek tragedy, in the role of the cold-hearted widow, mother of the groom.

The film will be followed by a Q&A (tbc) with Prof. Maria Delgado (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)

Thu 22 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

MARÍA CONVERSA

Dir. Lydia Zimmermann, with Blanca Portillo, Agustí Villaronga, Colm Tóibín | Spain | 2016 | 59 min. | col | doc | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Blanca Portillo has one of Spain’s richest, unstoppable acting careers in film, TV and theatre. She won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palm Award for her work in Pedro Almodóvar’s film Volver and her work has been awarded several times.Zimmermann’s documentary follows the actress’s creative process as she prepares to incarnate María of Nazareth in Colm Tóibín’s play Mary’s Testament under the direction of Agustí Villaronga. A privileged and enriching insight into the work of one of the most interesting Spanish actresses of all times.

The film will be followed by an on-stage conversation between Blanca Portillo and Prof. Maria Delgado (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

Fri 23 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

4d34c9cceae77577eb2f62fb66674ee7FALLING**

Dir. Ana Rodríguez Rosell, with Emma Suárez, Birol Ünel | Spain/Dominican Republic | 2015 | 89 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish, English, German and Turkish with English subtitles | European premiere

Alma and Aslan, now separated, meet in the place where they spent their best years married. While they remember their shared dreams and try to figure out what went wrong, Aslan tries to change Alma’s memories and make sense of them for a new life. Shot with a very small crew in the dream setting of the Dominican Republic, Falling is a very intimate film where the enormous talent of the actors thrives under the perceptive and sensitive direction of Rodríguez Rosell, who visited us with her debut film, Buscando a Eimish, also featuring Suárez and Ünel, a few years ago.

Followed by a Q&A with Ana Rodríguez Rosell, Emma Suárez and Birol Ünel

Sat 24 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LA PUERTA ABIERTA**

Dir. Marina Seresesky, with Carmen Machi, Terele Pávez, Asier Etxeandia | Spain | 82 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Through the years, we have programmed Marina Seresesky’s shorts (La boda and El cortejo) and are delighted now to show her first feature film, the moving, at times even poetic, story of Rosa, an embittered middle-aged prostitute living with her mother – who was a prostitute as well. When Rosa accepts to take Lyuba, an orphan little Russian girl, it seems that redemption might still be possible. Machi’s is a poignant, memorable performance. The humour is brought by a superb Etxeandia in the role of a foul-mouthed transvestite.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

Sat 24 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

A_PERFECT_DAY_deltoro-2 copyA PERFECT DAY

Dir. Fernando León de Aranoa, with Benicio del Toro, Tim Robbins, Mélanie Thierry, Olga Kurylenko | Spain | 2015 | 106 min. | col | cert. 16 | In English, French, Serbian and Spanish with English subtitles

Fernando León de Aranoa’s film revolves around the efforts of a group of aid workers to remove a corpse from a well in an armed conflict zone in the Balkans. What initially seemed like a relatively simple task turns out to be a nearly impossible mission complicated by bureaucracy and the stubbornness of the population in conflict. The director achieves with remarkable skill, consistency between the different yearnings of the international, polyglot array of characters in a frustratingly complicated context. Like a Russian doll, the film is a drama inside a comedy, inside a road movie, inside a war movie…

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Sun 25 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

BERSERKER**

Dir. Pablo Hernando, with Julián Génisson, Ingrid García Jonsson, Vicenc Miralles | Spain | 2015 | 100 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

When Hugo Vartán, a struggling writer, finds out that someone he vaguely knows was connected to a murder, the next thing he does is to set out to investigate the facts and use the story to write his next book – which needs to be delivered in a few weeks. As his investigation progresses, Hugo finds himself entering an enigmatic, dangerous world that doesn’t belong to him. Will he go ahead with the investigation for his new book or will he stay away beware of any consequences it may have in this life? Hernando’s second feature film is an accomplished and compelling thriller balanced with graceful suspense.

Preceded by the short EL CORREDOR | The Runner

Dir. José Luis Montesinos, with Miguel Ángel Jenner, Lluís Altés | Spain | 2014 | 12 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Five years ago the boss closed the company and fired 300 workers. The first day that he goes out to run he meets one of them.

Followed by a Q&A with Pablo Hernando

Sun 25 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LOBOS SUCIOS**

Dir. Simón Casal, with Marian Álvarez, Ricardo de Barreiro, Manuela Vellés | Spain | 2015 | 105 min. | col | In Spanish and German with English subtitles | UK premiere

Manuela and the poor population of her small village in Galicia work in the mines retrieving and processing wolfram for the Nazis, who need this rare metal for the Third Reich’s war machine. When some of the miners plan a revolt against Franco’s military men and the Nazis, while her sister is helping Jews cross the border into Portugal, she must decide if she can remain neutral in a time of war. Inspired by real events in the early 1940s, Casal manages nonetheless to infuse the Galician mountains, forests and wolves with a mysticism and magic very much in line with the mythology of that part of Spain. Marian Álvarez, as usual, delivers here a powerful and nuanced performance.

Preceded by the short ECO | Echo

Dir. Xacio Baño, with Xosé Barato, Rocío González | Spain | 2015 | 20 min. | col | In Spanish and Galician with English subtitles | UK premiere

Echo’s voice was stolen and she was sentenced to repeat what everyone else said. Trapped, she decides to take shelter in a cave and to distance herself from human touch.

Followed by a Q&A with Lobos sucios’s Executive Producer and Scriptwriter Paula Cons and Nir Cohen, Film Programmer at UK Jewish Film

Tue 27 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

NACIDA PARA GANAR** | Not What It Looks Like

Dir. Vicente Villanueva, with Alexandra Jiménez, Victoria Abril, Cristina Castaño | Spain | 2016 | 95 min. | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Encarna, a thirty something girl from Móstoles (Madrid) traumatised from childhood by a joke made by the most successful comedy duo in Spain in the national TV, is trapped in a monotonous life between her selling mattresses and her hiding from her mother that her life-long lover is her old Geography teacher. For Encarna it seems impossible to change anything in her life… until she meets an old school friend whose life seems to be one success after another. Ironic, and cruel at times, Villanueva’s is a comedy with tinges of surrealism and esperpento in its most realistic way, which includes Victoria Abril playing a fictitious Victoria Abril.

Preceded by the short DETOUR

Dir. César Espada, with Eulàlia Ramón | Australia/Spain | 2015 | 11 min. | col | cert. 16 | In Spanish and English with English subtitles | UK premiere

The adventures of a Spanish nymphomaniac smuggling drugs in Australia.

Followed by a Q&A with Eulàlia Ramón

Wed 28 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

Nobody wants copyENDLESS NIGHT |Nadie quiere la noche

Dir. Isabel Coixet, with Juliette Binoche, Gabriel Byrne, Rinko Kikuchi | Spain/France/Bulgaria | 2015 | 104 min. | col | cert. 12A | In English and Inuktitut with English subtitles | London premiere

Josephine Peary is trying to reach her husband, who is in a geographic quest to the North Pole. Upon the impending arrival of the Arctic winter, she finds herself stuck with an Inuit woman and trying to survive the impossible conditions of the harsh climate and the scarcity of food. Inspired by real events, the intimacy of the two women is superbly shown by the Catalan filmmaker and the two actresses are at their very best. The costumes by Clara Bilbao together with Jean-Claude Larrieu’s cinematography make for some really stunning images.

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Thu 29 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

B A S Q U E   W I N D O W

ACANTILADO** | The Cliff

Dir. Helena Taberna, with Daniel Grao, Juana Acosta, Goya Toledo, Ingrid García Jonsson, Jon Kortajarena | Spain | 99 min. | col | cert. 12A | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Gabriel has to put his promising political career on hold when a mass suicide of members of a sect takes place and his little sister, Cordelia, whom he hasn’t seen for years, seems to be involved. With the help of his sister’s former lover, Helena, and the police inspector, Santana, he’ll try to find Cordelia and the sect’s leader. The beautiful cinematography of Javier Agirre captures the extraordinary landscape of the Canary Islands, helping evidence the emotional state of the characters. The thriller is based on Lucía Etxebarría’s book El contenido del silencio.

Preceded by the short 36 HOURS, by Vincent Lacrocq and Kristell Chenut, with Jon Kortajarena, Clément Chabernaud | US/France | 9 min. | col | cert. PG | In Spanish and French with English subtitles

Against the stunning backdrop of Lanzarote, a poetic reflexion on life and unexpected encounters.

Followed by a Q&A with Jon Kortajarena

Fri 23 Sep | 8.45pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

AMAMA** | Grandma | Abuela

Dir. Asier Altuna, with Nagore Aramburu, Amparo Badiola, Klara Badiola | Spain | 2015 | 103 min. | col | cert. PG | In Basque with English subtitles | London premiere

Amaia grew up in a farm with her parents, brother and grandmother. A video-artist, she finds inspiration in the context in which she grew up and, particularly, in her amama (grandmother) and in the conflicting relationship with her father, who remains firm in his traditional farmer beliefs. A poetic homage to the Basque rural world and matriarchy, a world that is disappearing, Altuna’s Amama is a film with several layers, which, in the end, aims for reconciliation between tradition and modernity.

Preceded by the short LOST VILLAGE, by George Todria, with Kakkha Kobaladze, Lia Abuladze | Spain | 2015 | 15 min. | Without dialogues | UK premiere

A middle-aged man and a woman are the only people living in an abandoned village when lights start appearing in some of the empty houses. Their lives will never be the same again.

Followed by a Q&A with Asier Altuna

Mon 26 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

MV5BMTY1ODIyMjU0Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzUwOTI5NjE@._V1_UY1200_CR117,0,630,1200_AL_PIKADERO**

Dir. Ben Sharrock, with Bárbara Goenaga, Lander Otaola, Joseba Usabiaga | Spain | 2015 | 98 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Basque with English subtitles | London premiere

The eyes of the Welsh filmmaker based in the Basque Country, Ben Sharrock, perfectly capture the mood among Basque youths caused by the economic crisis gripping Spain and making them unable to fly the parent’s nest. Penniless Gorka starts an unlikely relationship with Ane. Both broke, they try to consummate their relationship somewhere, in the car of Gorka’s friend Iñaki. The frustration in front of a hopeless future economic independence gets hold of Gorka, while Ane dreams of leaving for another country.

Followed a Q&A with actress Bárbara Goenaga

Mon 26 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LEJOS DEL MAR** | Far From the Sea

Dir. Imanol Uribe, with Elena Anaya, Eduard Fernández | Spain | 2015 | 105 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

When Marina, a doctor living in Almería, leaves her work place one day, the last thing she expects is to see Santi, with whom she had a terrible encounter when she was a child. Recently released, Santi, who has been in prison since then, has come to visit an old cell mate, who is terminally ill and whom Marina is taking care of. One of the most established filmmakers in Spain, with unforgettable films like La muerte de Mikel (1983), Días contados (1994) or El viaje de Carol (2002), Uribe offers us here a wonderful meditation on love, loss and absence with the support of the superb performances of two of Spain’s best actors, Fernández and Anaya.

Followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker

Tue 27 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

UN OTOÑO SIN BERLÍN** | An Autumn Without Berlin

Dir. Lara Izaguirre, with Irene Escolar, Tamar Novas | Spain | 2015 | 95 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

June comes back to her hometown after some time spent abroad, but her family and her first love are not the same. Like the southern autumn wind, June is going to change everything, getting back her place in the family and the dream shared with Diego of going together to Berlin. Izaguirre’s first feature film is, in a fresh and elegant way, a story about love and personal growth. Irene Escolar, sixth generation of one of the most established actors sagas in Spain, the Gutiérrez Caba, received a special mention for her work at San Sebastian Film Festival last year as well as the Best New Actress Goya Award. Tamar Novas, best known to British audiences for his work in The Sea Inside or Broken Embraces, delivers as well a strong and nuanced performance.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with the director

Wed 28 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

 

C A T A L A N   W I N D O W

EBRE DEL BRESSOL A LA BATALLA** | Ebre. From the Cradle to the Battle | Ebro. De la cuna a la batalla

Dir. Román Parrado, with Oriol Plà, Roser Tapias, Àlex Monner | Spain | 2015 | 80 min. | In Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

The Spanish Civil War as a war of attrition. In 1938 the War had already worn out both armies and the spirits of the whole population. The National army however had the support provided by Hitler and Mussolini whereas the Republican army was ignored by the rest of Europe as these countries were more worried about a possible world war. It is in these conditions that, in an effort to stop the National army from crossing the river Ebre, the Republic calls to arms thousands of youths aged 17 and 18. The story of some of these youngsters is narrated by Parrado with fresh enthusiasm and passion, all the while staying true to the facts.

Preceded by an introduction by Hispanist Prof. Paul Preston (London School of Economics)

Sat 24 Sep | 4.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LES AMIGUES DE L’ÀGATA** | Àgata’s Friends | Las amigas de Àgata

Dir. Laia Alabart, Alba Cros, Laura Rius, Marta Verheyen, with Marta Cañas, Carla Linares, Elena Martín, Victoria Serra | Spain | 2015 | 70 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Les amigues de l’Àgata is a thoughtful and delicate portrait of four young friends through the eyes of Àgata, now in her first university year, who sees how the relationship with her school friends is transformed in their lives in Barcelona as well as during a trip to the Costa Brava. An exceptional final thesis in which all four directors have shared all tasks, the film establishes itself as their opera prima, with the assistance and tutorials of, among others, Isaki Lacuesta and Elías León Siminiani.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with one of the directors

Sun 25 Sep | 4.15pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière)

SPECIAL SCREENING 

El_Sur_(The_South)_Dir_Victor_Erice_pic_4 copyEL SUR | The South

Dir. Víctor Erice, with Omero Antonutti, Sonsoles Aranguren, Icíar Bollaín | Spain/France | 1983 | 95 min. | col | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles

In collaboration with the BFI, as it is part of Pedro Almodovar’s carte blanche for their full retrospective about him and upon their re-release of this timeless masterpiece, we are proud to programme Victor Erice’s melancholic reflexion on the passing of time and loss. He does so through the eyes of Estrella, a little girl who grows up in a town in the North of Spain, fascinated by the secrets and the past of her beloved father, who was raised in the South.

The film will be introduced by Geoff Andrew, film critic and programmer

Thu 22 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

THE 12 LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 22 -29 SEPTEMBER 2016 

 

Trezoros (Treasures) The Lost Jews of Kastoria (2016)

TREZOROSDir.: Lawrence Russo, Larry Confino; Documentary; USA 2016, 93 min.

For many centuries Jews and their Greek Orthodox neighbours have co-existed peacefully in the picturesque Greek town of Kastoria, on a peninsula near the Albanian border. The two communities celebrated their Holy Days together, Christians visited the Jews for Passover, Jewish citizens celebrated Christmas with their friends. On Good Friday the Jews lit the fire for their friends, every Sabbath Christians returned the favour.

The multi-cultural idyll would come to a traumatic end in March 1944, when German troops deported nearly one thousand Kastorian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Just thirty-five survived, some of them tell their stories to filmmakers Lawrence Russo and Larry Confino (Racing Romans) from Kastoria, Thessaloniki, Athens, Tzur Moshe, Tel Aviv, Miami, Los Angeles and New York.

In October 1940 Italy invaded Greece from Albania, which they had occupied. But the Greeks fought back and soon half of Albania was in their hands. In April 1941 the Germans came to the aid of their Italian Allies, occupying Greece. But German troops soon left Kastoria, which was occupied by Italians who did not share the Germany’s racist racist stance. But eventually Italy capitulated in June 1943 and the Germans entered Kastoria on the night of March 23rd, and whilst black snow was falling from the ashes of Vesuvius, they captured all the Jewish pupils in the local Girl’s School and deported them two days later to a camp in Armintio, from where they were transported to Auschwitz. Only Maurice Rosso escaped but warned his Christian friends, not to help them: “Don’t hide us, they will kill you too”. Lena Elias Russo and her brother Beni Elias tell their stories in this  observational yet poignant portrait of survival.

Never cloying or sentimental, Treasures is a melancholic good-bye to an era of Greek multiculturalism, destroyed by the Nazi machine. The individual stories about the camps are heart-breaking, and beyond our comprehension. TREASURES pictures a microcosm of the greatest mass-murder in human history; the few survivors of this Greek tragedy scattered all over the world, having to re-built their lives, never being able to forget their families who perished, or the life they once had shared with them. AS

SCREENING DURING THE RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL London | 27th 5.45pm in VUE Piccadilly then October 14th in New York Village Theater cinema | November 2 in Melbourne | from 26th November in Los Angeles Music Hall cinema

 

San Sebastian International Film Festival | Competition | 16 -24 September 2016

f1_5818The competition for the Golden Shell takes place in the Basque capital of San Sebastian Film Festival this year from 16 – 24 September. Twenty five films now make up the official selection and include a sparkling array of prominent world premieres from seasoned auteurs along with ground-breaking new filmmakers. French directori, Arnaud des Pallières, whose last two titles screened at Venice, will be there for the first time with Orpheline. Sergi López (Harry, he’s here to Help) once again figures on the cast, alongside Adèle Haenel (L’Apollonide), Adèle Exarchopoulos (La vie d’Adèle / Blue is the Warmest Colour), Solène Rigot (17 filles) and Gemma Anterton (007: Quantum of Solace). The film explores four moments in the lives of four women.

Smoke and Mirrors copyThe Chilean director, filmmaker and producer Fernando Guzzoni returns to San Sebastian, after winning the Kutxa-New Directors Award in 2012 with his first full-length feature Carne de Perro (Dog Flesh), he presents Jesus, a drama that looks at the relationship between a father and his son; and, as a backdrop, the portrayal of his country through two generations.

Hong Sang-soo will be there with his latest film, Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot / Yourself and Yours. Un Often described as South Korea’s answer to Woody Allen, he has previously be lauded with the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes for Hahaha (2010); the Silver Leopard for Best Director at Locarno for Our Sunhi (2013); and the Golden Leopard once again at the Swiss festival for Right Now, Wrong Then (2015).

As You Are, first feature film by the 23 year old director and actor Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, comes with the acclaim of the US Dramatic Special Jury Award picked up at Sundance. Co-written with Madison Harrison, star of his short film As a Friend (2014), and headlined by Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games), Owen Campbell (Conviction) and Charlie Heaton (the breakout TV series Stranger Things), the film explores the friendship between two teenagers and a girl in their class, which both unites and pulls them apart and leads to a criminal investigation.

Jätten / The Giant is the feature debut of Swedish writer and filmmaker Johanes Nyholm and a poignant portrait of a mentally and physically disabled man who sees an opportunity to reunite with his birth mother in a national petanque championship.

bigasxbigas_filmpicture_11626Three additional titles now complete this year’s line-up. The documentary Bigas x Bigas was compiled from more than 500 reels of family footage by Luna and Santiago Garrido Rua before Luna died in 2013, best known for his comedies Jamon, Jamon (1992) and Golden Balls (1993).

Colossal at that premiered at Toronto this week, stars Anne Hathaway playing a lightweight ditzy girl who discovers a link between herself and a giant lizard that is causing mass destruction in Tokyo.

snowden copy

Oliver Stone’s Snowden and A Monster Calls by J.A. Bayona, both participating out of competition; the special screenings of Manda huevos and Vivir y otras ficciones (Living and Other Fictions); and the other four competing films: the Spanish productions El hombre de las mil caras (Smoke amd Mirrors) by Alberto Rodríguez, Que Dios nos perdone (May God Save Us) by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and La reconquista (The Reunion) by Jonás Trueba, in addition to

pastoral copyAMERICAN PASTORAL | US | DRAMA | 126min

Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Connelly star in Ewan McGregor’s debut about a family threatened by differences of political opinion in postwar America.

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut.

As You Are copyAS YOU ARE | MILES JORIS-PEYRAFITTE (USA) | 110min | US | Drama
Jack is a high school student who lives with his single mother Karen in a nondescript suburban town. Considered a social outcast and loner, Jack is friendless until Karen’s new boyfriend Tom moves in and brings his son Mark into their lives. The two outsiders quickly bond and form a tight friendship and, after a chance encounter at a diner, bring fellow student Sarah into their group. The three teens become each other’s saving grace until changing relationships and emerging secrets force them to look at themselves and see how far they are willing to go to live the lives they choose.

Yourself copyYOURSELF AND YOURS | HONG SANG-SOO (SOUTH KOREA) | Drama |
Painter Youngsoo and his girlfriend Minjung split when she sees another man. He is clearly in turmoil and his disenchantment with his girlfriend seems to be a metaphor for his general dissatisfaction with the world around him.  Isabelle Huppert stars in her second collaboration with the South Korean auteur.

JÄTTEN / THE GIANT
JOHANNES NYHOLM (SWEDEN – DENMARK)
Rikard is a 30-year-old disabled man with abandonment issues who occasionally escapes into an imaginary existence featuring a 50 metre high giant, convinced that his estranged mother will take him back if he wins the Scandinavian petanque championship. Rikard will do the impossible to make his dream come true.

Jesus copyJESÚS (JESUS)
FERNANDO GUZZONI | Drama |
In Santiago, Chile. Jesús, 18, lives alone with his father Hector in a flat where the TV covers up their inability to communicate. The rest of the time, he dances in a K-pop band, hangs out with friends and does drugs constantly seeking new excitement. One night, he finds it during an unexpected adventure with his mates.

Lady Macbeth copy

LADY MACBETH | WILLIAM OLDROYD (UK) | Drama

Shades of Lady Chatterly’s love run through this latest offering of the Scottish play sub-genre. In Rural England, 1865. Katherine is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, and his cold, unforgiving family. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Nocturama copyNOCTURAMA | BERTRAND BONELLO (FR/GER/BEL | Drama

One morning in Paris a group of young guys from different backgrounds begin a strange dance through the labyrinth of the metro and the streets of the capital. They seem to be following a plan. Their gestures are precise, almost dangerous. They come together in the same place, a department store, at closing time. Paris erupts. The assault begins…Vincent Rottiers stars (Dheepan, Renoir).

Orphan copy

ORPHELINE / ORPHAN | ARNAUD DES PALLIÈRES (FRANCE) | Drama
Four moments in the lives of four female characters. Sandra’s youth as she moves to Paris and has a brush with disaster. Karine’s teenage years, an endless succession of runaways, men and mishaps. The childhood of Kiki, captured as a game of hide and seek, turns to tragedy. And the grown-up life of Renée, a woman who thought she was safe from her own past.

I AM NOT MADAME BOVARY

fp_643536_10890Chinese director Xiaogang Feng is perhaps best known in recent years for his multi-awarded 2010 drama Aftershock set during the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976.  His characters Li Xuelian (Bingbing Fan) and her husband Qin Yuhe (played by the director himself) stage a fake divorce to secure a second apartment in contempo Beijing but when her husband remarries she falls foul of their agreement, as the divorce is upheld in court leaving her reputation and social standing in tatters.

SAN SEBASTIAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 16 – 24 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

Clair Obscur | Tereddut (2016)

Dir.: Yesim Ustaglu; Cast: Funda Eryigit, Ecem Uzum, Mehmet Kurtulus, Okan Yalabik, Serkan Kesucin, Sema Poyraz

100min | Turkey/Poland/France 2016 | Drama

Writer/director Ysim Ustaglu is known for her soulful portraits of characters in challenging circumstances in Turkey. Her latest Clair Obscur is about two women who, at first sight, seem to have very little in common. But as the harrowing narrative unfolds we learn a lot about the fate of many women in Muslim society – regardless of their social status.

Shenaz (Eryigit) works as a psychiatrist in a hospital in small seaside town. One of her patients, a teenager called Elmas (Uzun), has been found one morning on the balcony of the flat she shared with her husband, Koca (Kesucin) and her mother-in-law Kaynana (Poyraz). The older woman, a diabetic, is found dead in her bed, while Koca died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Elmas seems to have no memory of the night in question, but Shenaz works patiently with her to unblock her memory.

It soon emerges that Elmas had to marry her husband, who was in his forties, when she was only thirteen. Her father had her passport changed, and she was literally carted off straight from school. From the first days of their marriage, Koca literally rapes Elmas every night, causing her physical and emotional distress. Shenaz doesn’t fare much better, despite her more privileged background. Her jealous boyfriend is a great cook but a lousy lover who tries to control her. But when Shenaz finally finds someone else, her boyfriend threatens to kill Shenaz and himself.

Clair Obscur is a sensitively told drama but some may find it too opaque and ambiguous; the relationship between Shenaz and the two men in her life only becomes clear at the very end. And her therapy sessions with Elmas show positive results in days – this would take months or even years in a real setting. Still, Eryigit and Uzun are convincing as the two distraught women, and DoP Michael Hammon makes the claustrophobia of their marginalised lives seem real despite its modern day setting, using muted colours in the maritime locations. Clair Oscur is similar in tone to the work of Ustaglu’s fellow countryman Nuri Bilge Ceylan, presenting a unique female voice from Turkey. AS

CLAIR OSCUR won the Golden Tulip Award |  Best Feature | Antalya Film Festival 2016

The Fixer | Fixeur (2016) | TIFF 2016

Director: Adrian Sitaru   Writers: Adrian Silsteanu, Claudia Silisteanu

Cast: Sorin Cocis, Tudor Istodor, Mehdi Nebbou, Diana Spatarescu, Adrian Titeni

110min | Drama | Romania

Romanian New Wave drama The Fixer asks a simple question: how far are we prepared to go to get ahead in our increasingly competitive world? A young Romanian father and hungry trainee journalist at a French network uses a topical sex scandal as an opportunity to make his mark in Adrian Sitaru’s sombre and intense fifth feature, whose non-judgemental stance leaves us to find our own way in the moral maze.

The translator and general ‘fixer’ Radu Patru (Tudor Istodor) pricks up his ears when a breaking news story involving two underage Romanian prostitutes creates an  international scandal. Doing his best to get an interview with the girl involved, without compromising his own moral scruples, Radu soon realises that there is a thin line between professional journalism and dishing the dirt.

Themes of fatherhood, misogyny, and the class divisions of contemporary Europe percolate through  Claudia Silisteanu’s clever script but sadly none of the performances really stand out, making it difficult to engage or empathise with any of the characters, although Tudor Istodor is probably gives the most appealing turn. Shooting in Bucharest and Transylvania, co-writer Adrian Silisteanu dark and desaturated hand-held photographs do their best to capture the dark days of Communism linking the contemporary world with the past in an intriguing but sometimes intractable piece of filmmaking that requires intense concentration to follow the storyline. MT

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 SEPTEMBER 2016

Questi Giorni (2016) | These Days | Venice 2016 | In Competition

Dir: Giuseppe Piccioni | Drama | Italy | 119min

Festival head Alberto Barbera openly lamented the lack of strong Italian titles at this year’s Venice festival and this piece of contemporary social realism certainly confirms his views. An everyday story of cardboard characters it has the luminous presence of Margherita Buy but not even she can save it from the banality of a plot and script that is vapid in the extreme.

Four young women decide to go to Belgrade: you could pick the characters off the shelf: one has cancer; another is a lesbian, the third is pregnant and the fourth has a bad boyfriend. Nothing stands out in their colourless performances and they all appear interchangeable in their personalities. Then there is Professor Mariani (a greying middle-aged man) who tries to be funny in a vain attempt to get off with one of them who must be half his age, and his pupil into the bargain. Meanwhile Margherita Buy’s character, a single mother, flits around desperately trying to gain acceptance by the younger girls, one if whom is her daughter who treats her with utter contempt.

THESE DAYS is reductive, poorly thought out and derisory to women in general and is hopefully not coming to a cinema near you. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Paradise | Rai (2016) | Best Director | Venice 2016

Fir: Andrei Konchalovsky | 130min | Drama | Russia, Germany

Russian veteran Andrei Konchalovsky has been making films for fifty years and bringing them to Venice where he first won the Volpi Cup in 1966 with his debut Pervvy Uchitel. His élatest Golden Lion hopeful PARADISE interweaves three tragic lives during the Second World War – Olga, a Russian countess and member of the French Resistance; Jules, a French collaborator; and Helmut, an aristocratic German SS officer.

PARADISE is a dense and romantically complex piece that provides an intense experience for those who have the stamina for its complicated episodic structure, despite superb performances and outstanding cinematography from Russian DoP and regular collaborator Alexander Simonov (Postman’s White Nights) who also worked with the sadly missed Alexei Balabanov (Brat, Cargo 200). The velvety black and white visuals and combination of 35mm and 16mm perfectly conjure up the war years from 1942-44 and there is sumptuous and intimate attention to detail and lighting throughout the film’s graceful interiors and more grisly scenes in claustrophobic concentration camps evoke a keen sense of confinement. The only scene where freedom is felt is in flashback to the pre-war years where Olga and Helmut frolic on a rooftop (main picture).

Olga is played by the sinuously elegant Russian actress Julia Vysotskay who we first meet after her imprisonment for having taken two Jewish children under her wing in occupied Paris. In the offices of genial police interrogator Jules (Christian Duquesne) she is écross-examined and deftly turns the table on him by seductively opening her legs. In exchange for a Grand Cru classé (1919) she agrees to meet him the following day. But the rendezvous is never to be as Jules is later assassinated while in the woods with his son Emile.

Olga is then sent to a concentration camp but again siezes her chance for freedom when the camp’s rambunctious chargé d’affaires is caught for cooking the books, by Olga’s willowly ex-lover Helmut (Christian Clauss) who hires her as his very personal maid, and as the Nazi’s luck runs out the pair plot their escape via Switzerland until tragedy intervenes.

Scripted by Konchalovsky and Elena Kiseleva, the story unspools via sketchy face-on interviews with Jules, Olga and Helmut dressed in prison garb. These are interlaced with the action scenes and where the film requires intense concentration, making it difficult to engage with the characters and their story. Viktor Sukhorukov’s cameo as Heinrich Himmler is a fascinating interlude but is voiced by another actor in Russian and German, with some technical glitches.

And so PARADISE – an attempt by the Nazis to create a perfect Aerian world – becomes Paradise Lost. Despite the rather complicated mise-en-scene this is nevertheless an achingly beautiful and resonating picture of wartime from one of Russia’s most outstanding filmmakers. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

White Sun (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir: Deepak Rauniyar | Drama | Nepal | 94min

Deepak Rauniyar brings the only Nepalese film to Venice 2016. A delicately drawn and poignant paean to peace after a decade of civil war between Maoists and royalists (1996-2006), it takes place in the foothills of the Himalayas where nearly all the adult males have been wiped out leaving the only the weakened elders.

This is not a political film but a subtle and often intimate intergenerational cinéma vérité style parable where politics often rears its ugly head disrupting the characters’ relationships. Co-written by Rauniyar and David Barker, it takes place in the village of Nepaltra where the sudden death of the former mayor Chitra (Prakash Ghimire), poses a tricky problem: how to remove his body from the house to start the tortuous process towards the riverside where it is to be cremated according to strict traditions governing who can come into contact with the cadaver. There are no strong men to help.

Luckily, Durga (Asha Magrati) is a clever and strong-minded villager who appeals to ex-husband Chandra to make the journey from Katmandu to give his assistance, along with his brother. The long-standing rivalry between Chandra (Dayahang Rai – a famous star in his native Nepal) and his brother Suraj (Rabindra Singh Baniva) adds grist to the dramatic mill along with the fact that Durga’s young daughter Pooja (Sumi Malla) is neither his biological daughter, not that of his sibling. The subsequent journey downhill gives rise to some magnificent local views, all shot on the widescreen, as we get know the colourful local characters amongst whom is 10-year-old porter Badri (Amrit Pariyar), who has known nothing but war, and Deepak Chhetri’s priest who is the feisty star of the film, determined at any price to to resist change, in this thoughtful and deeply resonant arthouse drama. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

The Bad Batch (2016) | Venice 2016

Director: Lily Amirpour

Cast: Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Yolonda Ross, Jayda Fink, Cory Roberts, Louie Lopez, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Diego Luna

115min | Fantasy Drama | US | Iran

A girl walks out alone into a psychedelic desert of cannibals and crazed criminals in Lily Amirpour’s startling but generic follow up to her standout vampire drama A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night making this a visually exciting but narratively torpid experience despite its Mad Max pretensions. The Bad Batch is a brutal and bewildering blowout of surreal and dreamlike sequences that plays with some exciting toys but they all belong to other filmmakers such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert Rodriguez and even Arturo Ripstein.

Outstaying its welcome at nearly two hours, the slim narrative wreaks of genetic or ethnic cleansing and suffers from longueurs, but the buzzy and inventive visuals make it almost worth the ride. Performances are adequate from the ensemble cast; the standout being Keanu Reaves who plays an almost sympathetic cult leader called The Dream. Ex-model Suki Waterhouse looks the part and is adequate as Arlen, the heroine loses an arm and a leg at the start of her journey into a dystopian, incandescent hell of lurid lights, surreal encounters accompanied by a sparky selection of eclectic tunes including All That She Wants, tracks from Chilean artists Darkside, South African hip-hop band Die Antwoord, and indie ambient musician Francis Harris..

After escaping from a penitentiary’s ‘bad-batch’ (delinquents) into the Texan desert, she is abducted by cannibals and maimed for their tea. Being a spunky girl with taut abs, attitude and ‘fear’ tattooed on her fingers, she escapes on a skateboard and is picked up by Jim Carey’s mute wayfarer who takes her in his shopping trolley to the Comfort community who dwell in a walled city where she is equipped with a prosthetic leg and so on. Her search for a suitable soul mate (no kidding) makes her yearn for love and a stocky Mexican called Miami Man could be the answer, but remember – this is dystopia.

The Bad Batch looks sensational and offers light-hearted fun while it lasts but its emptiness leaves you unsatisfied when the titles roll. MT

Venice Film Festival until 10 September | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE WINNER 2016 

Rocco (2016) | Venice Film Festival 2016

Dirs: Alban Teurlai, Thierry Demairziere | 112min | doc | Italy, France

The “Italian stallion” Rocco Siffredi always prayed he would be famous. Growing up in the Adriatic town of Ortona fame eventually came thanks to “the devil between my legs”  fuelled by a massive sex drive that started at an early age. Worshipping his mother Rocco is also a perfect example of the ‘madonna whore complex’ and has a fascinating ability to probe the women he meets both physically and emotionally despite his ordinary looks.

ROCCO is quite simply the self-indulgent story of his journey from council house to penthouse that starts here in the film studio where he is grooming his prospective – mostly East European – ‘porn starlets’ as he talks about his life, his mother and wife Rosa – whom he met on the set of Tarzan X, Shame of Jane . They now have several children. Siffredi has starred in more than 1,500 films over his 30-year career and also had a brief foray into French indie cinema, appearing in Catherine Breillat’s Romance and Anatomy Of Hell. Now in his early fifties, Siffredi has also decided to bow out due to disenchantment with the industry that has financed his entire life.

ROCCO is a well made: a glossy, big screen personalised version of what you might expect to see in online porn sites and, with a threadbare narrative, certainly overstays its running time of nearly two hours. But then porn sells. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

One More Time With Feeling (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir-: Andrew Dominik | with Nick Cave | Biopic | UK | 112min

Embracing the overwhelming grief Nick Cave is feeling due to the death of his son, New Zealand filmmaker Andrew Dominik has chosen to film his biopic in black and white, and with “ridiculous handheld 3D camera” – his words precisely but with the help of Benoit Debie and Alwin Kuchker things finally get on track. Leaving the 3D glasses off detracts nothing from the well-observed but overlong picture of the musician’s experience since the death of his son. Cave brings his own witty stream of consciousness to the party, as we watch the film taking shape in the studio during a pre-recording session.

With his seemingly idyllic life: a wife and soulmate, and twin sons – actor, writer and musician Nick Cave confessed to having it all in Iain Forysth’s (far superior) 20,0000 On Earth. Here he pours his grief on losing a child into a string of striking lyrics (“your legs are so long they should come with their own elevator”). He now confesses to occasionally feeling “an object of pity”, a fact that does not fit well with his own self image, but his natural self-deprecation prevents this from sounding narcissistic. Cave also admits that songs can foretell certain events, as dreams can be visionary, and this is something he shares with his wife whom he describes as multi-facetted. Clearly death and bereavement has brought them even closer together. But as he gets older he feels that “the struggle to do what I do requires more effort”.

The test of a successful biopic must surely be that it offers entertainment not only to fans but appeal to wider audiences. And here Dominik largely fails as the format and filming detracts from the subject matter. Despite these obvious flaws ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING adds a certain something to the Nick Cave experience that will appeal to his many fans and resonate with the bereaved arthouse audiences. Let’s hope there’s more great stuff to come from this engaging musician and lyricist. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Tabl (2016) | Drum | Venice Settimana della Critica 2016

Dir.: Keywan Karimi, Cast: Amirezza Naderi, Sara Gholizade; France/Iran 2016, 95 min.

First time feature film scriptwriter/director Keywan Karimi crafts a disturbingly bleak and noirish picture of life in contemporary Tehran – the city’s name being the only concrete reference to its reality. The narrative is opaque, but everyone can decypher the code used. In October 2015 Karimi was sentenced to one year in prison and 223 lashes for defying the laws of Iran. He is still in a state of limbo, waiting to start his imprisonment.

The film opens as a lawyer (Naderi) is visited by a limping man who dumps a parcel on his desk and disappears. Soon afterwards, the lawyer’s flat is searched, and gets a visit from a man threatening with grave consequences if he does not give up the parcel. The harassment continues, and the lawyer is forced to oeave his flat, sleeping rough or taking a room in a hotel where he meets his girlfriend (Gholizade). The only other person he trusts is his best friend, who happens to be a drug addict. Tragedy eventually forces the lawyer starts to wreak revenge.

DRUM is a Kafkaesque nightmare with images worthy of any Bela Tarr film. Whilst the audience is made well aware of the enemy, the main protagonist is stubborn enough not give in to “them”. Tehran is very much a character here, portrayed as a nightmarish vision of never-ending staircases and vertiginous apartment blocks spelling danger, even in the modern hotel where the lawyer meets his girlfriend. Nothing is safe: the bleakness of the day is just a shade lighter than the nighttime, where most of the action is set. DoP Amin Jaferi evokes a world of shadows and doom where interiors are sparsely lit prison cells. Words do not help: they are either threats or enigma, the Farsi language has lost much of its meaning. Without naming the authorities in Iran, Karimi holds up a mirror to them: they have created a world of fear and hopelessness. What remains is individual resistance, the only way to bring light into the madness created by religious fanatics.

This is not the first time that a filmmaker has been threatened by authorities at home, whilst his film is being shown at a film festival abroad. DRUM is a promising debut. Let’s hope Keywan Karimi’s reprieve follows as soon as possible. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

American Anarchist (2016) Venice Film Festival 2016

Dir.: Charlie Siskel. Documentary; USA 2016, 80 min.

Providing compelling viewing filmmaker Charlie Siskel (Finding Vivian Mayer) interviews William Powell, the author of the infamous ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ (still available on Amazon) in his home in Massat (France) shortly before his death in July 2016. Siskel relentless probing style and cross examination often has the effect of makimg the audence sympathise with Powell who gradually emerges as a man who has suffered emotionally during his peripatetic childhood – he was only 19 years old in 1970, when he wrote the provocative manual that lists amateur bomb-making methods during a time where the US was experiencing a period of cultural and societal shifting, similar to that seen in France with the student riots.

Powell was the eldest son of the spokesman for the UN General Secretary, and he went to be schooled privately in a UK boarding school were he felt as alienated for his ‘English upperclass accent’ as he did later on his return to New York State where was expelled from ‘a school for delinquent children of the rich’. He confesses to feel most at home in countries where he is an outsider, explaining his reason for settling in a remote part of rural France.

The near civil war atmosphere in the USA druing the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s, made many outsiders like Powell feel that the time for revolution had come. After all, Lincoln himself had written about the right of the population to raise up against the government. The Anarchist’s Cookbook sold about 2 million copies – not bad for a book mainly copied from US Army handbooks, and found in public libraries. Powell himself sold the rights to his publisher Lyle Stuart for 10000$, and got royalties of around 5000$. Unfortunately for the Powell, 65 at the time of the film, when ‘interrogated’ by Siskel it also emerges that his book was found in the possession of the perpetrators of the Columbine School shooting, and the Oklahoma City tragedy amongst many others.  “Would you villify the makers of guns?” points out Powell, who maintains his innocence although confesses to feeling a certain amount of regret, if not remorse.

Nevertheless, Powell comes over as haunted man: his whole career in schooling pupils with special needs in Asia and Africa, was blighted by the “Cookbook”: he lost countless positions and always lived in fear that his youthful tract would catch up with him. What is surprising, is the fact, that neither Powell nor SIskel discuss the role of the USA gun lobby and State Weapon laws in the terror acts of the past. After all, the Columbine killers bought their weapons on the net! Who needs “The Cookbook” when they can buy weapons like sweets.

It is the US-gun culture, who is far more responsible for the violence in the streets than any books – and it is defended by politicians of both major parties. As long as no changes in the law are enforced, the status quo is an invitation to run amok – never mind the political/religious affiliation of the disturbed psychopath.

William Powell died suddenly this summer after one year into shooting of the documentary. He atoned all his life for his youthful provocation, helping young students to channel their alienation and aggression into something constructive. As for Siskel: we should thank him for his efforts as a filmmaker, which are invaluable. But one would except a little bit more humility from a man who was involved in controversy himself as a filmmaker of Finding Vivian Mayer and co-producer of Michal Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. Nobody should throw stones – never mind the glass house. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 | UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

Safari (2016) | Venice Film Festival

Dir: Ulrich Seidl | Doc | Austria | 90min

Ulrich Seidl’s deadpan documentary portrait of mindless game hunters in the bushy and peaceful paradise of Namibia’s low veldt is upsetting and deeply enraging. His unjudgemental approach is the ultimate in’ less is more’ craftsmanship, leaving us quietly seething as we sit by powerless as a devastating cocktail of mixed emotions slowly percolates through our consciousness.

In a series of limpidly filmed and perfectly formed tableaux vivants, (that recall those of his last film In the Basement), game hunters talk of their feelings of tension as they carefully track their victims and the extreme euphoria of the adrenaline rush after they have shot their prey – or ‘pieces’ as they call them. One bloated and elderly couple (who look like a pair of raddled wildebeasts) proudly churn out a macabre price list of their upcoming massacre: it would only cost them a couple of hundred euros to shoot an impala. Another young couple – kitted out in the latest safari gear and gold watches – try to defend their actions as somehow beneficial to the ecosystem. So they are killing and getting away with it as do-gooders to the universe. So this is their version of charity work or ‘giving-back’ as it’s glibly referred to nowadays.

Out in the bush Seidl’s camera tracks the hunters on foot and in their jeeps as the trackers mark out the potential prey while a professional marksman accompanies them on foot offering tips and guidance in preparation for the shoot. In one particularly graphic scene a zebra is followed and shot down. The young hunter is then congratulated before posing for photos with his lifeless trophy which we later see being butchered in the makeshift abattoir, ready for its journey back to Austria to guild the wall. Not since the death of ‘Cecil the lion’ in 2015 have we been so moved and angered. This self justification of slaughter is also partly based on the fact that their are purportedly giving the local trackers, rangers and marksman a livelihood. That ghastly feudal adage springs to mind: “it is the duty of the nobleman to give employment to the common man”. But their job is vile and the scene where they are required to skin and dismember a giraffe is one of the most upsetting pieces of footage ever committed to camera.

Humour and light relief comes from watching another raddled old bloke gently snoring – beer can in his hand –  to the ambient sounds  of animals,  as he waits for a potential shoutout behind a bogus hunting cabin.

Apart from the sheer horror of the killings, the most galling aspect of SAFARI is the glee and self-congratulatory nature of the hunters who trespass on this magnificent country. Many who have visited Southern Africa will have seen a notice: “Welcome to our country – take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints”.

The feint-hearted and animals lovers will find this documentary distressing. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

 

Sámi Blod | Sami Blood (2016| Venice Film Festival

Writer| Dir. Amanda Kernell

Cast: Lene Cecilia Sparrok, Mia Erika Sparrok, Maj Doris Rimpi, Julius Fleischandrl, Olle Sarri, Hanna Alström, Malin Crépin, Andreas Kundler, Ylva Gustafsson

110min | Sweden/Denmark/Norway.

Amanda Kernell brings her Sámi heritage to this impressive feature debut, a fresh and painterly portrait of Sweden’s little known history of racism and colonial domination, set during the 1930s and seen through the eyes of a fiercely precocious teenager who is determined to make a future for herself away from the Lapp reindeer-herding community of her childhood.

Kernell’s masterly command of framing, cinematography, script and tone is laudable and her ability to evoke powerful emotions through her central characters sets her out as a real talent  in the making. SAME BLOOD also raises the profile of the Sami community and their fight for a future which very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

The girl in question, Ella Marja is played by newcomer Lene Cecilia Sparrok as a young teen, and Maj Doris Rimpi as an elderly woman (based on the director’s own grandmother) who we first meet in the opening scenes where she has renounced her rheindeer hearding community, an event which sparks off her memories of the past which unspool gradually forming the central narrative. From the beginning Ella Marja is different from her school friends who are all happy to wear the Sami national dress in their local school.

After humiliation during a visit from Swedish scientists when she is forced to strip naked for the collection of genetic data she runs home and is set upon by a group of local Lapp louts. Deciding to call herself Christina, she then runs away to Uppsala where she reconnects with a wealthy Swedish boy she danced with at a party. The two develop a chemistry of sorts and she later turns up at his home in the mistaken belief that Swedish hospitality is as welcoming as that of her native culture. But his parents are clearly suspicious of his intentions and urge him to get rid of her, fearing she may get pregnant or become dependent on him. After attempting to join an expensive local boarding school, she finds her way back to his birthday party one night, and is cajoled into singing a traditional Sami yodelling song, as they look on condescendingly as if she if some circus clown.

Kernell makes great use of the magnificent skyscapes of Lapland and the elegance of Uppsala’s buildings and ‘beautiful people’ with impeccable attention to period detail, sumptuous fashions and glorious Scandinavian interiors . SAME BLOOD is one of the gems of the festival so far. MT

GIORNATI DEGLI AUTORI | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

 

Cafe Society (2016) | Cannes 2016

13227243_1104471159573819_1339233737504469676_o copyDirector|Writer: Woody Allen

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg, Kelly Rohrbach, Anna Camp, Steve Carrell, Parker Posey, Corey Stoll, Judy Davis, Paul Schneider, Ken Stott

96min | Comedy Drama | US

CAFE SOCIETY satirises showbiz and gangsterland America during the 1930s, all wrapped up in a bittersweet romantic love story for a young New Yorker seeking his fortune in Hollywood.

The tone is upbeat and the musical choices spot on as Woody Allen’s latest film opens the 69th Cannes Film Festival with a clever cocktail of razzmatazz and auteur-driven artistry. Sunlit and softly-focused, CAFE SOCIETY blends the hilarious humour of Small Time Crooks, the gorgeous sunsets of Manhattan, the wittiness of Annie Hall and romantic tenderness Husbands and Wives and whizzes it all into a 5-star cocktail where Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart spark like dynamite as young lovers Vonnie and Bobby who meet when the naive Jewish ingenue arrives at the offices of his uncle Phil, a big studio executive in Hollywood, where he fetches up jobless and friendless after leaving New York.

After Bobby turns down the advances of a first time hooker, also in Hollywood to make her name, a tender romance blossoms when Uncle Phil asks Vonnie to show Bobby the sights. It slowly emerges that Uncle Phil also has his finger in this romantic pie, promising to leave his wife Karen for the young brunette, in an on off affair that is celebrated when Vonnie, star struck by Phil’s power play, gives him a signed letter from Valentino for their one year paper anniversary. Meanwhile in New York, Allen plays up the other side of America where Bobby’s classic Jewish mother (a perfectly tart Shae D’Iyn) is keeping the homefires burning, in bitter disgruntlement with her loser of a husband (Ken Stott) “you don’t even have a Jewish head”, and her other son Ben (Corey Stoll), a financially dodgy nightclub owner who deep-sixes his rivals in liquid cement.

Splicing this tender but tragic love story with swipes at the Hollywood machine – “you wouldn’t know me –  I’m a writer”, and his beloved Jewish roots – “when a Jew cooks something it’s always over-done to get rid of the bacteria” – CAFE SOCIETY also offers some sublime musical choices from the vintage jazz world (often performed live) in what is Woody’s wittiest and most incisive film in a long time. Lensed by the thrice Oscar winning DoP Vittorio Storaro, this is a gorgeous film to look at as well as an enjoyable one to watch and the ups and downs of the romantic underpull keep things nicely taut in its modest running time. Jesse Eisenberg comes into his own as Allen’s alter ego, morphing seemlessly from a tentative “deer in the headlights” to a shrewd businessman but decent and disillusioned lover and Kristen Stewart is both vulnerable and alluring as the cunning love interest with her eye to the main chance. Steve Carrell is commanding as the power-punching megalith weakened by the lure of love. At 80 Woody Allen offers a happy ending in a story where the bad get their comeuppance, successful men make the best lovers, and clever women know the difference between the two. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

The Net | Geumul (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir: Kim Ki-Duk | Cast:

Cast: Ryoo Seung-bum, Lee Won-gun, Kim Young-min, Choi Guy-hwa

112min | Korea | Thriller

Nobody wins in Korean maverick Kim Ki-duk’s latest film – a brutal North|South ‘defection’ tragedy that opened the new Cinema del Giardino at Venice Film Festival 2016.

With moments of dark and lacerating humour and a really grim scene where a potential North Korean spy gurgles to his death by swallowing his own tongue, this is a social and political story that condemns both the Communist regime in the North and the South’s rampant Capitalism showing that, at the end of the day, both are morally and politically corrupt and unsatisfactory for completely different reasons – although the North Korean hero, an honest fisherman who thinks the grass is still greener in his homeland until the mournfully tragic denouement.

When his fishing boat breaks down in a slim stretch of water between North and South, sending it into the ‘no go’ zone, he is captured by the South Korean security forces and remanded for questioning. Although he answers openly and frankly, his assigned investigator is an embittered sadist who is desperate to convict him for spying against the South and subjects him to a series of harsh cross examinations reducing his morale to rock bottom despite his fierce attempts at self preservation claiming his toughness and physical strength is earned him the name ‘Iron Fist’ – during his National Service days. A sympathetic guard (who secretly fancies him) desperately tries to protect him in the face of the ambivalent Head of Security but things go from bad to worse when he finally tries to make it on his own when his guard loses him while taking him on a reccy in downtown Seoul – engineered to see if he really has nefarious intentions. ‘Iron Fist’ shows himself to be a good guy by first refusing to open his eyes to avoid the corrupting forces of the surrounding commercial district, and then beating off some venal pimps who are chasing a prostitute clad only in her baby dolls. This lands him back in custody where he is practically forced to defect to the South, on ‘humanitarian’ grounds after insisting on returning home. But his problems are far from over when he is eventually released back to join his wife and daughter in the North.

Kim Ki-duk tells his political satire in a straightforward linear style taking a disenchanted look at each regime, not really coming down on either side but but exposing the gross inhumanity and injustice of both parties. At the end it is the common man who suffer; the ordinary self-employed worker. Sound familiar? MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

You Never Had It – An Evening with Bukowski (2016) | Venice 2016

Director: Matteo Borgardt

With Charles Bukowski

51min | US | Doc

Not really much to be learnt from Silvia Bizio’s seventies interview with the legendary American writer who appears here in LA surrounded by a psycophantic wntourage of his young chain smoking wife Linda Lee and a photographer. Interspersed with Bokowski’s maxims and truisms to a collage of grim photos of down and outs in LA – Jem Cohen style without the irony – Bizio attempts to ask leading questions as they all get drunk together, but is met with a stream of largely uninformative answers laced with plenty of references to the sex that Bukowski is clearly not getting, or managing: pithy it is not. One of two revelations emerge: He puts his candour and insight down to prolonged beatings by his father and dislikes talking to other writers describing it as “like sitting in a bath drinking water”. Bizio was right, her tapes are in poor condition and the sound in Sala Perla was screachingly loud. Stick to his books is the advice here.

SCREENING DURING VENICE FILM FESTIVAL until 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Venice International Film Festival | Competition titles | 31 August – 10 September 2016

CochwLhXgAApL_kThe 73rd edition of Venice International Film Festival runs this year from 31 August until 10 September stealing a march on Toronto with a sparkling array of some of the most innovative arthouse world premieres of the year together more mainstream fare competing for the coveted GOLDEN LION.

Under the auspices of Jury President Sam Mendes, Venezia 73 presents the following films in Competition»

ANA LILY AMIRPOUR – THE BAD BATCH
USA, 115’

Amirpour’s follow-up to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, this dystopian love story is set in Texas amongst a community of cannibals and features locals alongside stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey and Giovanni Ribisi. Amirpour’s regular award-winning DoP Lyle Vincent and musical collaborator  Andrea von Foerster should make this another entertaining watch.

Une Vie © TS Productions 4STÉPHANE BRIZÉ – UNE VIE

Brize’s screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s first novel is a pessimistic study of love and loss seen through the eyes of a Normandy woman in the late 1888s. Starring Judith Chemla, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Swann Arlaud, Yolande Moreau it is a French Belgian co-pro.

DAMIEN CHAZELLE – LA LA LAND (cover picture) USA, 127’

Chazelle’s follow-up to the ubiquitously popular Whiplash is an LA-set love story again music is the theme – this time full on Jazz. Stars Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, J.K. Simmons, Finn Wittrock

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANSDEREK CIANFRANCE – THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS
Usa, Australia, New Zealand, 133’

Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz are the troubled trio in this lighthouse-set story about an Australian couple who adopt a baby discovered in a lifeboat. With Alexandre Desplat doing the score this promises to be a sweepingly romantic love on the rocks affair with some inventive visuals from Macbeth (2015) DoP Adam Arkapaw.

El ciudadano ilustre 1MARIANO COHN, GASTÓN DUPRAT – EL CIUDADANO ILUSTRE
Argentina, Spain, 118’

Award-winning Argentinian directors Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat are best known in their native country particularly for their dark comedy thriller The Man Next Door. Oscar Martínez, Dady Brieva, Andrea Frigerio, Nora Navas, Gustavo Garzón star in this Golden Lion hopeful about a Novel prize winner who visits the town and meets the real people who have been the inspiration for his novels, with some spectacular revelations.

Spira mirabilis 1MASSIMO D’ANOLFI, MARTINA PARENTI – SPIRA MIRABILIS
Italy, Switzerland, 121’

Anyone who saw the documentary ‘Never Ending Factory of the Duomo’ at Locarno last year will be looking forward to this latest documentary offering from the prize-winning Italian director.

 

t0602charo2LAV DIAZ – ANG BABAENG HUMAYO (THE WOMAN WHO LEFT)
Philippines, 226’

Another slow and thorough drama from Diaz this time offering a leading role for veteran Philippina actress Charo Santos-Concio. John Lloyd Cruz also stars.

La región salvaje 1 © Manuel Claro Martín EscalanteAMAT ESCALANTE – LA REGIÓN SALVAJE
Mexico, 100’

Fans of the Mexican director will be thrilled to see that he is back in the competition line-up with another gritty drama from the wilds of his often violent homeland starring Ruth Ramos, Simone Bucio, Jesús Meza, Edén Villavicencio.

Nocturnal Animals 3 © Merrick Morton Universal Pictures InternationalTOM FORD – NOCTURNAL ANIMALS
USA, 115’

A Single Man director and former Gucci impresario Tom Ford’s latest drama is set in California with a starry cast of Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher and Laura Linney. It centres on an art gallery owner who is haunted by the violent subtext of a thriller written by her ex-husband. With Oscar-nominated DoP Seamus McGarvey behind the camera and Ford helming, this should be a good-looking and glamorous affair.

Piuma 5 © Antonello&MontesiROAN JOHNSON – PIUMA
Italy, 98’

British filmmaker, writer and actor Roan Johnson directs an Italian cast in this drama starring Luigi Fedele, Blu Yoshimi Di Martino, Sergio Pierattini, Michela Cescon, Francesco Colella.

IMG_2735

ANDREI KONCHALOVSKY – RAI (PARADISE) 130′

The Russian auteur was last in Venice in 2014 with his Green Drop award-winning drama Postman’s White Nights which is still waiting for a UK release. This Russia Germany co-pro follows three people whose paths cross during wartime: Olga, a Russian aristocratic member of the French Resistance, Jules, a French collaborator and Helmut a senior SS Officer. It stars Julia Vysotskaya, Christian Clauss, Philippe Duquesne, Victor Sukhorukov, Peter Kurt and is shot by ace DoP Aleksandr Simonov (Cargo 200, The Stoker, Heaven on Earth).

CocaSGWWAAAq4XhMARTIN KOOLHOVEN – BRIMSTONE
Holland, Germany, Belgium France, GB, Sweden, 148’
Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Emilia Jones, Kit Harington, Carice Van Houten

Winter in Wartime was Koolhoven’s beautifully crafted and touching wartime drama that never got a UK release but is available for less than a £1 on amazon. This promises to be an epic Western drama that boasts Spain, Hungary, Germany and Austria amongst its settings for a tale of religious vehemence, as the title would suggest.

CocaufJWcAA1veEEMIR KUSTURICA – NA MLIJECNOM PUTU (ON THE MILKY ROAD)
Serbia, GB, Usa, 125’

This film has be mired in controversy for several years, so if nothing else, it will be interesting to see it finally on the big screen. Monica Bellucci was last in Venice in 2014 for Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders and is always worth watching. Emir Kusturica, Sloboda Micalovic, Predrag Manojlovic also star in a drama that is billed as “3 periods in the life of a lucky milkman who ends up as a monk” . Go figure.

Jackie © Stéphanie Branchu copyPABLO LARRAÍN – JACKIE
Usa, Cile, 95’
Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, John Hurt

Eclectic casting here will certainly make Larrain’s drama an intriguing watch if nothing else. But with his latest films Neruda and The Club still resonating amongst critics and audiences, it’s a tribute to the young Chilean director that he has finally made it to the Venice competition line-up with a biopic drama that explores the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy’s days in the immediate aftermath to JFK assassination. Surely it will be better than the last film that tackled this subject at Venice, Peter Landesman’s Parkland.

Coca343XgAQfBvmTERRENCE MALICK – VOYAGE OF TIME
Usa, Germay 90’

Malick is back with a docudrama that may not prove to be as divisive as his recent efforts To The Wonder and Knight of Cups. This sets out to be an examination of the birth and death of the Universe with narration by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Photographed by The Revenant‘s DoP Paul Atkins it should at least offer an eyeful so watch this space. Hopefully no more swirling through sunlit beaches by scantily clad nymphs…but you never know.

CocbcOlWcAAeYm1CHRISTOPHER MURRAY – EL CRISTO CIEGO
Chile, France, 85’

A drama set in a remote backwater of the Chilean desert is Christopher Murray’s third feature – the leading actor is Michael Silva who made his big screen debut in Neruda and here he plays Rafael aka Christ. He is also ‘blind’  Bastian Inostroza, Ana Maria Henriquez, Mauricio Pinto also star.

IMG_2734FRANÇOIS OZON – FRANTZ
France, Germany, 113’

After his gender-bending comedy drama The New Girlfriend, French maverick François Ozon will be in Venice to present a black and white WWII romantic drama starring Pierre Niney (Yves Saint Laurent) and Paula Beer as a couple who meet at the grave of her fiance. Marie Gruber, Ernst Stötzner, Cyrielle Claire provide support.

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GIUSEPPE PICCIONI – QUESTI GIORNI
Italy 120’

Margherita Buy is Italy’s answer to Isabelle Huppert although she tends to take on softer more tentative characters as here where she plays Adria in Giuseppe Piccioni’s literary adaptation of Marta Bertini’s novel about four provincial university friends and their trip to Belgrade, where one of them has a mysterious friend and an possible job opportunity.

Arrival 2DENIS VILLENEUVE – ARRIVAL
Usa, 116’

Set to be the action film of the late summer, premiering at Venice before opening Toronto. Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker lead a starry cast in this Sci-Fi adventure that takes place after alien crafts land across the globe inciting the military to bring in an expert linguist to discover whether they are goodies or baddies.

CoccZmtXYAARypN.jpg-largeWIM WENDERS – LES BEAUX JOURS D’ARANJUEZ (3D)
France, Germany, 97’

Wim Wenders certainly enjoys filming in 3D, this being his second foray – his first Everything Will Be Fine – was met with mixed reviews as to why he’d used the medium for a standard drama that explored the aftermath of a domestic tragedy. Experimental to the last, this stars Reda Kateb, Sophie Semin, Jens Harzer and  Nick Cave who find themselves in the contempo Spanish city of Aranjuez dealing with a complex set of moral and sexual dilemmas. Judging from his previous 3D affair this should be torrid and colourful. MT

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER ADDITIONS TO THE COMPETITION LINE-UP | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 31 AUGUST – 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Toronto Film Festival 2016 | Autumn World premieres

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs from 8 September until 18 September and follows in the wake of VENICE (31 August – 10 September) with a new crop of world premieres and a chance to catch up on the latest films from Cannes and Venice earlier in the Summer.

snowden copyAll the gala titles are world premieres, except for Denis Villeneuve’s ARRIVAL, a sci-fi drama starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, and Jeff Nichols’ interracial drama LOVING, which has Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, and prems at Venice.

The festival opens with Antoine Fugua’s version of the bounty hunting epic adventure THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, and the closing film is Kelly Fremon’s directorial debut THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, a comedy drama exploring teenage awkwardness and angst.

World premiers include Oliver Stone’s long-awaited biopic SNOWDEN (left) with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the NSA whistleblower and Rob Reiner’s LBJ, a drama that shines light on the life  former president Lyndon Johnson played by Woody Harrelsen. It also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Pullman and Richard Jenkins.

Music lovers will be delighted by the inclusion of OLÉ OLÉ OLÉ, Paul Dugdale’s biopic that follows The Rolling Stones’ Latin American and Jonathan Demme’s latest: a concert film about Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience World Tour, Las Vegas concert, entitled JT + THE TENNESSEE KIDS.

Katherine Dieckmann’s STRANGE WEATHER, a drama set in the Deep South stars Holly Hunter and Rooney Mara is cast in the leading role as a mental patient in Jim Sheridan’s THE SECRET SCRIPTURE. She also stars alongside Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel in Garth Davis’ LION which is based on Saroo Brierley’s autobiographical novel A Long Way Home that follows a 5-year-old Indian boy through the streets of Kolkata, eventually ending up in Australia.

Two British film will premiere this year at TIFF. THEIR FINEST directed by Lone Scherfig, has Sam Clafin and Gemma Arterton and A UNITED KINGDOM, Amma Asante’s drama starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike. The French will be represented by Grand Central helmer Rebecca Zlotowski whose PLANETARIUM again stars Lea Seydoux in a story about two sisters (Lily Rose Depp) with supernatural ability.

There will finally be a chance to see Werner Herzog’s latest, hot from Shanghai, SALT AND FIRE is a disaster film that stars Michael Shannon and Gael Garcia Bernal, and Mick Jackson’s Holocaust-themed drama DENIAL which stars Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall.

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON | George Nolfi

CITY OF TINY LIGHTS | Peter Travis | Billie Piper

KING OF THE DANCEHALL | Nick Cannon |

SING | Garth Jennings | Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson

THE JOURNEY | Nick Hamm | Colm Meaney, Timothy Spall

TRESPASS AGAINST US | Adam Smith | Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson

THE WASTED TIMES | Zhang Ziyi, Ge You

I AM NOT MADAME BOVARY | Feng Xiaogang

ORPHAN | Arnaud des Pallieres |  Gemma Arterton and Adele Haenel

THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM | Juan Carlos Medina | Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke.

The Toronto International Film Festival | 8-18 SEPTEMBER 2016

Venice Film Festival | The 1960s and 1970s

Ivan_5Between 1961 and 1962 the Festival became a showcase for renewal in cinema. The different sections included films from free British cinema, the consecration of the nouvelle vague, and young Italian directors: Pasolini, Bertolucci and the Taviani brothers. The Lions were reliable and not lacking in courage: L’année dernière à Marienbad by Alain Resnais and the Zurlini/Tarkovsky team with Cronaca familiare and Ivan’s Childhood.

dreyerThen came the era of Luigi Chiarini, the “professor”; who from 1963 to 1968 renewed the spirit and structure of the Venice International Film Festival. A coherent and authoritative director who spent six years organising series of films according to strict aesthetic criteria regarding selection and resisting the social scene, political pressures and the interference of the film industry. Chiarini skilfully placed the work of masters with that of young emerging talents: Godard and Dreyer, Bergman and Penn, Pasolini and Bresson, Kurosawa and Bellocchio, Truffaut and Rossellini, then Carmelo Bene, Cassavetes and Cavani. This continued up until the last Lion, in 1968, that meant an opening onto the neuer deutscher Film with Alexander Kluge’s Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos.

The Festival (along with the Biennale) still had a statute dating back to the fascist era and could not side-step the general political climate. Sixty-eight produced a dramatic fracture with the past. Up until 1980 the Lions were not awarded.

As an effect of the dissent, prize-giving was abolished in ’68. From 1969 to 1972 the Festival was non-competitive (the first two were directed by Ernesto G. Laura, and the successive one by Gian Luigi Rondi), and numerous parallel festivals were organised. In 1971 John Ford and Charlie Chaplin the following year, received the Golden Lion for Career Achievement assigned by the Festival. 1971 was also the year in which festival audiences saw a Chinese documentary, a filmed ballet which was screened for the first time: Hung sik laung dje ching (The Red Detachment of Women). 

In 1972 the historic city centre of Venice was used as the venue for the “Giornate del Cinema italiano”, in contrast with the Festival held at the Lido. From 1974 to 1976, under the direction of Giacomo Gambetti, an attempt was made at a “different” Festival with “proposals for new films”, tributes, retrospectives and conventions, with some screenings still in Venice. 1977 saw an event focused on cinema in Eastern Europe that was integrated into the Biennale project on “cultural dissent”. The Festival did not take place in 1978.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 31 AUGUST UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Godless | Bezbog (2016) | Golden Leopard Winner | Locarno 2016

Dir: Ralitza Petrova | Cast: Irena Ivanova, Alexander Triffinov, Ivan Nalbantov, Ventzislav Konstantinov, Dimitri Petkov; Bulgaria/France/Den | drama | 100 min.

The first feature film by Bulgarian director/writer Ralitza Petrova, who studied at the NFTS, won the Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, and its main protagonist Irena Ivanova, was awarded the prize for Best Actress. Reminiscent of Jim Thompson, this minimalist, small town noir is a stunning debut from an uncompromising talent.

Gana (Ivanova) is a geriatric and dementia nurse in the small Bulgarian mountain town of Vratsa. The young woman seems caring at first, but it soon emerges that she is stealing her patients’ ID-cards. She, and her partner Aleko (Konstantinoiv), a car mechanic, sell the ID-cards to the local police officer Pavel (Triffinov), who runs a money laundering racket. Pavel is also in league with the local judge (Petkov), who makes sure that any complaints are rebuffed by the court.

However, despite all this criminal activity Dana lives a modest existence with her mother in a run-down apartment block, where gun fire is a nightly occurence. Her sexless relationship with Aleko gets by on a morphine addiction, which Gana steals together with other prescription drugs. Her relationship with her mother is equally emotionless, summed up by Gana herself in the words: “I want to love, but can’t. Neither can you. Do you have any pills for it?”.

Unflitchingly grim, this is a drama that delves into the sad deparavity of modern life in this formally Stalinist state where corruption and larceny seems endemic and continues to thrive despite apparent economic improvememts. But there is a chink of light in the darkness that sees Gana redeeming herself in the final act.

GODLESS takes its – ironic – title from a mountain near Vratsa, were a local priest in the middle ages took his flock and was duly massacred by invaders. The cryptic coda of the film might refer to this. Sparse and unforgiving, Godless is a claustrophobic masterpiece. Rooms are narrow and unlit, grimy snow covers a bleak landscape. Even a brothel scene, where the judge and Pavel copulate, is passionless. In her apartment block, Gana finds a young boy alone in the staircase.  He later wanders off  and watches a couple having sex, having left the door to their flat open. Desolate and abandoned, people in post-communist Bulgaria seem to have given up on themselves. DoPs Krum Rodriquez and Chayse Irvin evoke this grim rigour on 35 mm film, transferred to digital. With its opaque conclusion, Petrova avoids any judgemental comment. GODLESS is a cheerless experience – but it is a gem despite its restricted budget. MT

GODLESS HAS BEEN AWARDED THE GOLDEN LEOPARD AT LOCARNO 2016 AND TOP PRIZE AT THE SOFIA AWARDS 2017

 

Locarno Film Festival 2016 | 3 – 13 August 2016 | WINNERS

imageKnown for its edgy and eclectic selection of international titles, the Locarno International film festival takes place each year in the town’s Piazza Grande in temperatures that often sizzle in the late 30s promising a scorching experience and adding a surreal touch to Carlo Chatrain’s ambitious programming.

This year’s festival runs from 3-13 August opens with US title THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS and closing on a Hindu note with Ashutosh Gowaricker’s MOHENIJO DAHO in a programme that includes 17 world premieres and the latest from Alejandro Jodorowsky – who this year receives a Pardo d’Onore – Arturo Ripstein (International Jury President) Rafi Pitts, Edgar Reitz, Bill Pullman and Radu Jude.

The festival offers a chance to see the latest films from Cannes in the presence of European stars such as Dario Argento – who presides over the Concorso del Presente jury – Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Ken Loach.  And where would be without the doyenne of the European circuit Isabelle Huppert?

This year’s festival celebrates the work of US film director Roger Corman and there will be a retrospective dedicated to ‘Cinema in the young Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963’ while the Open Doors focus showcases eight countries in South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

imageGODLESS by Ralitza Petrova GOLDEN LEOPARD WINNER

BEST ACTRESS: IRENA IVANOVA

Bulgaria/Denmark/France – 2016 – 99’
with Irena Ivanova, Ivan Nalbantov, Ventzislav Konstantinov, Alexandr Triffonov
World Premiere, First feature

The OrnithologistO ORNITÓLOGO by João Pedro Rodrigues | BEST DIRECTOR 

Portugal/France/Brazil – 2016 – 118’
with Paul Hamy, Xelo Cagiao, Wen Han, Chan Sua Lin
World Premiere

imageINIMI CICATRIZATE (Scarred Hearts) by Radu Jude | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

Romania/Germany – 2016 – 141’
with Lucian Teodor Rus, Ivana Mladenovic, Ilinca Harnut, Serban Pavlu, Marian Olteanu, Alexandru Dabija, Dana Voicu
World Premiere

 

imageOSTATNIA RODZINA (The Last Family) by Jan Matuszynski

BEST ACTOR | ANDRZEJ SEWERYN

Poland – 2016 – 122’
with Andrzej Seweryn, Dawid Ogrodnik, Aleksandra Konieczna, Andrzej Chyra
World Premiere

 

Special tributes will focus on the limageate filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Cimino.

THE FULL LINE-UP

Piazza Grande

 

 

AM TAG, ALS DER REGEN KAM by Gerd Oswald

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) – 1959 – 85’
with Mario Adorf, Christian Wolff, Gert Fröbe, Corny Collins

CESSEZ-LE-FEU by Emmanuel Courcol

France – 2016 – 103’
with Romain Duris, Grégory Gadebois

COMBOIO DE SAL E AÇUCAR by Licinio Azevedo

Portugal/Mozambique/France/South Africa/Brazil – 2016 – 93’
with Matamba Joaquim, Melanie Rafael, Tiago Justino, António Nipita, Sabina Fonseca World Premiere

DANS LA FORÊT by Gilles Marchand

France/Sweden – 2016 – 103’
with Jérémie Elkaïm, Timothé Vom Dorp, Théo Van de Voorde, Sophie Quinton
World Premiere

 

INTERCHANGE by Dain Iskandar Said

Malaysia/Indonesia – 2016 – 102’
with Shaheizy Sam, Nicholas Saputra, Prisia Nasution

JASON BOURNE by Paul Greengrass

USA – 2016 – 123’
with Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Julia Stiles, Tommy Lee Jones, Riz Ahmed, Vincent Cassel

LE CIEL ATTENDRA by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar

France – 2016 – 105’
with Clotilde Courau, Sandrine Bonnaire, Noémie Merlant, Naomi Amarger
World Premiere

MOHENJO DARO by Ashutosh Gowariker

imageIndia – 2016 – 153’
with Hrithik Roshan, Pooja Hegde

MOKA by Frédéric Mermoud

France/Switzerland – 2016 – 89’
with Emmanuelle Devos, Nathalie Baye, Diane Rouxel, Samuel Labarthe, David Clavel
World Premiere

PAULA by Christian Schwochow

Germany/France – 2016 – 123’
with Carla Juri, Albrecht Abraham Schuch, Roxane Duran, Joel Basman, Stanley Weber
World Premiere

Poesia_Sin_Fin_1_©Pascale Montandon_JodorowskPOESÍA SIN FIN by Alejandro Jodorowsky

France/Chile – 2016 – 128’
with Adan Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Brontis Jodorowsky, Leandro Taub

 

TEO-NEOL (The Tunnel) by Kim Seong-hun

South Corea – 2016 – 132’
with Ha Jung-woo, Oh Dal-su, Bae Doona
International Premiere

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS by Colm McCarthy

United Kingdom/USA – 2016 – 110’
with Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, Sennia Nanua, Anamaria Marinca, Fisayo Akinade, Anthony Welsh, Dominique Tipper
World Premiere

VINCENT by Christophe Van Rompaey

France/Belgium – 2016 – 118
with Alexandra Lamy, Spencer Bogaert, Barbara Sarafian, Geert Van Rampelberg, Fred Epaud
World Premiere

VOR DER MORGENRÖTE – STEFAN ZWEIG IN AMERIKA by Maria Schrader

Germany/France/Austria – 2016 – 106’
with Josef Hader, Barbara Sukowa, Aenne Schwarz, Matthias Brandt, Charly Hübner
International Premiere

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

imageAL MA’ WAL KHODRA WAL WAJH EL HASSAN (Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces) by Yousry Nasrallah

Egypt – 2016 – 115’
with Laila Eloui, Mena Shalaby, Bassem Samra, Ahmed Daoud, Sabrine, Alaa Zenhom, Mohamed Sharnouby, Lama Kotkot, Enaam Saloussa, Mohamed Farag, Zeina Mansour
World Premiere

imageBANGKOK NITES by Katsuya Tomita

Japan/France/Thailand/Laos – 2016 – 183’
with Subenja Pongkorn, Sunun Phuwiset, Chutlpha Promplang, Tanyarat Kongphu, Sarinya Yongsawat, Hitoshi Ito, Yohta Kawase
World Premiere

 

imageCORRESPONDÊNCIAS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Portugal – 2016 – 145’
with Eva Truffaut, Pierre Léon, Rita Durão, Anna Leppänen, Luís Miguel Cintra
World Premiere

 

 

imageDAO KHANONG (By the Time It Gets Dark) by Anocha Suwichakornpong

Thailand/Netherlands/France/Qatar – 2016 – 105’
with Arak Amornsupasiri, Atchara Suwan, Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Inthira Charoenpura, Rassami Paoluengtong, Penpak Sirikul, Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Waywiree Ittianunkul
World Premiere

 

imageDER TRAUMHAFTE WEG by Angela Schanelec

Germany – 2016 – 86’
with Miriam Jakob, Thorbjörn Björnsson, Maren Eggert, Philip Hayes, Anaïa Zapp
World Premiere

 

 

imageHERMIA & HELENA by Matías Piñeiro

USA/Argentina – 2016 – 87’
with Agustina Muñoz, María Villar, Mati Diop, Julian Larquier, Keith Poulson, Dan Sallitt, Laura Paredes, Dustin Defa, Gabi Saidón, Romina Paula
World Premiere

 

JEUNESSE by Julien Samani

France/Portugal – 2016 – 83’
with Kevin Azaïs, Samir Guesmi, Jean-François Stévenin
World Premiere, First feature

imageKAZE NI NURETA ONNA (Wet Woman in the Wind) by Akihiko Shiota

Japan – 2016 – 77’
with Yuki Mamiya, Tasuku Nagaoka, Ryushin Tei, Takahiro Kato, Michiko Suzuki
World Premiere

 

imageLA IDEA DE UN LAGO by Milagros Mumenthaler

Switzerland/Argentina/Qatar – 2016 – 82’
with Carla Crespo, Rosario Bléfari, Malena Moiron Production: Alina film, Ruda Cine
World Premiere

 

imageLA PRUNELLE DE MES YEUX by Axelle Ropert

France – 2016 – 90’
with Mélanie Bernier, Bastien Bouillon, Antonin Fresson, Chloé Astor, Swann Arlaud
World Premiere

 

imageMARIJA by Michael Koch

Germany/Switzerland – 2016 – 100’
with Margarita Breitkreiz, Georg Friedrich, Olga Dinnikova, Sahin Eryilmaz
World Premiere, First feature

 

 

imageMISTER UNIVERSO by Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel

Austria/Italy – 2016 – 90’
with Tairo Caroli, Wendy Weber, Arthur Robin, Lilly Robin
World Premiere

 

 

 

 

SLAVA (Glory) by Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov

Bulgaria/Greece – 2016 – 101’
with Stefan Denolyubov, Margita Gosheva
World Premiere

FILMMAKERS OF THE PRESENT

AFTERLOV by Stergios Paschos

Greece – 2016 – 94’
with Haris Fragoulis, Iro Bezou
World Premiere, First feature

AKHDAR YABES (Withered Green) by Mohammed Hammad

Egypt – 2016 – 72’
with Hiba Ali, Asmaa Fawzy, Jhone Ikram Hanna, Ahmed Hammad, Samia Hammad, Tamer Abdul Hamid, Ikram Hanna, Nabil Samy, Saad Amer, Basant Khalifa
World Premiere, First feature

DESTRUCTION BABIES by Tetsuya Mariko

Japan – 2016 – 108’
with Yuya Yagira, Masaki Suda, Nana Komatsu, Nijiro Murakami
International Premiere

DONALD CRIED by Kris Avedisian

USA–2016–85’
with Kris Avedisian, Jesse Wakeman, Kyle Espeleta, Louisa Krause
International Premiere, First feature

EL AUGE DEL HUMANO by Eduardo Williams

Argentina/Brazil/Portugal – 2016 – 95’
with Sergio Morosini, Shine Marx, Domingos Marengula, Chai Fonacier, Irene Doliente Paña, Manuel Asucan, Rixel Manimtim
World Premiere, First feature

EL FUTURO PERFECTO by Nele Wohlatz

Argentina – 2016 – 65’
with Xiaobin Zhang | World Premiere, First feature

GORGE CŒUR VENTRE by Maud Alpi

France – 2016 – 82’
with Virgile Hanrot, Dimitri Buchenet
World Premiere, First feature

I HAD NOWHERE TO GO by Douglas Gordon

Germany – 2016 – 100’
with Jonas Mekas
World Premiere

IL NIDO by Klaudia Reynicke

Switzerland/Italy – 2016 – 80’
with Ondina Quadri, Fabrizio Rongione, Diego Ribon, Sonia Gessner
World Premiere

ISTIRAHATLAH KATA-KATA (Solo, Solitude) by Yosep Anggi Noen

Indonesia – 2016 – 97’
with Gunawan Maryanto, Marissa Anita, Eduward Manalu, Melanie Subono

World Premiere

L’INDOMPTÉE by Caroline Deruas

France – 2016 – 98’
with Clotilde Hesme, Jenna Thiam, Tchéky Karyo, Bernard Verley, Pascal Rénéric, Marilyne Canto, Lolita Chammah, Tanya Lopert, Filippo Timi, Renato Carpentieri
World Premiere, First feature

MAÑANA A ESTA HORA by Lina Rodríguez

Colombia/Canada – 2016 – 85’
with Laura Osma, Maruia Shelton, Francisco Zaldua, Clara Monroy, Catalina Cabra, Francisco Restrepo, Juan Miguel Santana, Juan Pablo Cruz, Valentina Gómez
World Premiere

PESCATORI DI CORPI by Michele Pennetta

Switzerland – 2016 – 64′

World Premiere, First feature

THE CHALLENGE by Yuri Ancarani

Italy/France/Switzerland – 2016 – 65’

World Premiere, First feature

VIEJO CALAVERA by Kiro Russo

Bolivia/Qatar – 2016 – 80’
with Julio Cesar Ticona “Tortus”, Narciso Choquecallata, Anastasia Daza López, Rolando Patzi, Israel Hurtado, Elisabeth Ramírez Galván
World Premiere, First feature

SIGNS OF LIFE

300 MILES by Orwa Al Mokdad

Syria/Lebanon – 2016 – 95’

World Premiere, First feature

ANASHIM SHEHEM LO ANI (People That Are Not Me) by Hadas Ben Aroya

Israel – 2016 – 77’
with Hadas Ben Aroya, Yonatan Bar-Or, Meir Toledano, Netzer Charitt, Hagar Enosh World Premiere, First feature

ASCENT by Fiona Tan

Netherlands/Japan – 2016 – 80’ with Hiroki Hasegawa, Fiona Tan

World Premiere

BEDUINO by Júlio Bressane

Brazil – 2016 – 75’
with Alessandra Negrini
World Premiere

POW WOW by Robinson Devor

USA–2016–75′

SVI SEVERNI GRADOVI (All the Cities of the North) by Dane Komljen

Serbia/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Montenegro – 2016 – 100’ with Boban Kaludjer, Boris Isakovic, Dane Komljen

World Premiere, First feature

RAT FILM by Theo Anthony

USA–2016–82’
World Premiere, First feature

THE SUN, THE SUN BLINDED ME by Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal

Poland/Switzerland – 2016 – 74’ with Rafał Maćkowiak  Wilhelm Sasnal World Premiere

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 AUGUST 2016

 

Journey of Hope (1990) | Locarno International Film Festival 2016 | Classics

Director: Xavier Koller

Cast: Necmettin Cobanoglu, Nur Surer, Emin Sivas, Erdinc Akbas

110min | drama | Turkish

Swiss director Xavier Koller’s road movie was the first in the crop of immigration stories that now feels rather dated but still relevant with its poignant humanist appeal and Elemer Ragali’s imaginative cinematography capturing the magnificent scenery of Northern Turkey and Switzerland. In 1991 Journey of Hope won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film firmly nudging Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Best Costume Winner Cyrano de Bergerac out of the way. Its simple but cumulatively gripping linear narrative follows a Kurdish family who naively imagine a better life in Switzerland.

For Haydar, his wife and young family life is tough but reasonably happy in their modest smallholding in Southeast Turkey. But their journey of hope soon becomes one of despair when they sell all their possessions to fund the passage to paradise, as portrayed by images of cuckoo clocks and Swiss chocolate that Haydar buys in his local village grocery store.

Unscrupulous traffickers have now become daily headline news, but 25 years ago they were still the relatively unknown root of transmigration, taking ready cash in return for a perilous and often unsuccessful voyage to Europe. And we soon discover that the family’s sea passage as stowaways and onwards across the snowbound Swiss Alps is a dangerous and misguided one that provides a hefty dose of drama as the entourage stumble across treacherous terrain weighed down by their prized possessions. Predictably fatalistic, Journey of Hope is nonetheless as harrowing and resonant today as it was several decades ago but its characters’ touching humanity and genuine honesty is what really makes it appealing as a story and the performances by the ensemble cast are genuinely moving. Naive they may have been, but there is something laudable about their desire to seek a better life tempted by a picture postcard portraying perfection in the Swiss Alps, and based on the enduring and misguided belief that the grass is always greener on the other side. MT

SCREENING at LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 AUGUST 2016

Where is Rocky II (2016) | Locarno International Film Festival 2016

Director: Pierre Bismuth

With: Ed Rushca, Michael Scott, DV DeVincentis, Anthony Peckham, Mike White

97min | Doc | US

Well known artist Ed Ruscha made an unusual piece of art in 1979 that is surrounded in enigma. He called it Rocky II for several reasons: firstly after the famous film by Sylvester Stallone, and secondly because his first attempt was a miserable failure – it got eaten by animals. The point here is how a seemingly ordinary or even mildly bizarre state of events can be easily and simply transformed into an amusing suspense thriller when it comes to Hollywood, given the right treatment.

But back to the mystery artwork; Fashioned out of wire covered by a fibreglass resin, it emerges in filmed footage that the successful boulder-like sculpture was hidden somewhere in the Mojave desert by the media-shy Rushca, who cannot remember where possibly due to being high at the time. Meanwhile his friend, the screenwriter and documentarian Pierre Bismuth (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is made aware of the existence of the piece and hires a former detective, Michael Scott (who becomes more and more irritated as he’s thwarted) to investigate the missing sculpture by following clues and contacting former colleagues of the artist, leading to this fascinating film which unfolds as Where is Rocky II. The unexpected humour largely springs from Bismuth’s fellow collaborators on the project, the screenwriters DV DeVincentis (Grosse Point Blank, currently working on The Bengali Detective) and Anthony Peckham (Invictus) who create a fiction in parallel narrative to the doc, cleverly editing it and setting it to a classicly ominous and suspenseful score, with hilarious input from Mike White (Nacho Libre).

As we are constantly reminded, truth is stranger than fiction, and the real account of events is far more engaging than the fictional one. Thus Where is Rocky II works simultaneously as a satisfying detective-style documentary; a magnificently shot chase movie and a fascinating lesson in how to make a thriller. Brilliant. MT

The film was presented in Locarno by Art Basel | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 AUGUST 2016

 

Bleak Street (2015) | Calle de la Amarga

Director.: Arturo Ripstein; Cast: Nora Velazquez, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Guillermo Lopez, Juan Francisco Longoria; | 99min | Mexico | Crime Drama

Mexican veteran director Arturo Ripstein (El Carneval de Sodoma) once again films a script by his partner Paz Alicia Garciadiego, telling the story of a double murder in the seedy atmosphere of downtown Mexico City.

As in most Ripstein films, destiny plays a major role in BLEAK STREET, a sordid area that certainly lives up to its name. The main reason for watching Bleak Street is the crisp black & white cinematography of DOP Alejandro Cantu, who shows the gloomy side streets and alleys of Mexico City with an intensity that echoes G W Pabst’s silent German classic Die Freudlose Gasse (1925)

Dora (Velazquez) and Adela (Spindola) are middle-aged sex workers down on their luck and lamenting the lack of work due to competition from younger talent in a profession where experience seems to count for nothing. Their male dependants La Akita (Lopez) and Muerte Chiquita (Longoria), are twin midget brothers who who work in the wrestling ring where they support the normal sized fighters AK-47 and La Muerte. The brothers are so proud of their occupation they even wear their masks at home. Celebrating a big prize win in the ring they organise a special treat for their female companions which ends in tragedy all round.

This is not Ripstein at his best: the main failing with being the two-dimensional characters who are not fully sketched out as real people; but simply there to carry out the film’s message – poverty ruins your life. But the gracefully choreographed shots of the grim backwaters  make up for the lack of connection feels towards the protagonists.

In the aftermath it becomes clear that the four were supposed to meet on a collision course and that the women’s guilt is secondary to the situation they find themselves in. But how can we relate to these men or understand their motives unless they take off their masks? There are other elements here of the silent films of that era: the detective solving the murder being seen not so much as a man of the law, but a rather sinister figure in the same vein as the detectives in Fritz Lang’s films of the same period. AS

NOW ON MUBI | ARTURO RIPSTEIN RETRO

Author: The J T Leroy Story (2016)

Writer|Director: Jeff Feuerzeig | With Laura Albert, Bruce Benderson, Dennis Cooper, Winona Ryder

110min | Documentary | US

Jeff Feuerzeig’s laboured and tedious documentary endlessly explores the story of a damaged woman writer who posed as a man and a transsexual and tricked stars and ordinary people for nearly six years in America.

Claiming sexual abuse from her mother’s boyfriend, Laura Albert aka J T Leroy first came to fame in the late 1990s with a slew of tales that purported to represent the voice and zeitgeist of a section of the community, gaining overnight notoriety. Celebrities such as Winona Ryder and Courtney Love claimed to be on close terms with the amorphously sexual literary talent whose second novel once premiered at the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes.

But the hype ended in 2005 when Laura Albert was revealed as a buxom Brooklyn mother who adopted an English accent purporting to be LeRoy’s manager when actually it was all a con. Albert comes across as a narcissitic bore and during her flowery attempts to redeem herself – decked out as a siren – our interest continues to flag.

Feuerzeig interweaves his expose with multiple flashbacks, news footage and technical flourishes – images of literary works appear to fly out of Albert’s black-gloves hands and onto the screen intercut with interminable shots of an old-fashioned recording tape, but the tale she tells fails to fascinate after the first half hour when it becomes mired in endless detail as revelation jossles revelation.

If you are interested in the American fame dream or cult of celebrity this may well appeal but otherwise leave well alone. MT

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LONDON | FULL PROGRAMME

Homo sapiens (2016) | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2016

Director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Documentary | Austria | 94 Min.

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s sci-fi documentary HOMO SAPIENS imagines a world slowly won back from the human race by nature. Tackling topical themes of human fragility it silently explores what it means to be human in an age where humanity has wreaked so much damage on the earth and yet is precariously poised to self destruct. By way of stark visuals depicting abandoned churches, ravaged wastelands and buildings overgrown by nature’s inexorable grip. In this chilling exploration of man’s decline, Geyrhalter poses the inevitable question – What will remain of our lives after we’re gone.

Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit in the name of ‘civilisation’ gradually disappear. Now abandoned and in varying stages of decay, these urban spaces are reclaimed by nature after emerging from it so long ago.

HOMO SAPIENS is Sci-fact; contempo and post-apocalytic but no human being actually appears in this paean to people. Geyrhalter uses fixed shots to convey this desolate landscapes, buildings, schools and government installations in far flung reaches of South America, Japan and deserted corners of Europe. He never attempts to explain or offer reasons for for their disuse or give any hope that they will be rebuilt or refurbished. This is the end of the line and the tone is morose and unsettling but also positive future for the animal kingdom. The documentary is silent save for Peter Kutin’s soundscape of windtorn and echoing remnants of civilisation where Nature finally holds sway. MT

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 1-9 July 2016 | BERLINALE REVIEW | 11 – 21 FEBRUARY 2016

Waves | Fale (2016) | Karlovy Vary Film Festival 1 – 9 July 2016

Dir: Grzegorz Zariczny;

Cast: Anna Kesek, Katazyna Kopec, Tomasz Schimscheiner, Jolanta Olzewska, Edyta Torhan

Drama | Poland 2016 | 71 min

Grzegorz Zariczny revives contemporary Polish cinema with this feature debut WAVES which draws on his experience as a documentarian and is based on the experiences of one of the lead actors. In its brevity and non-polemic style, WAVES has something in common with the early work of  Krzysztof Kieslowski who also started his career in documentaries, producing through the Munk Studio, as Zariczny has done.

Teenagers Ania (Kesek) and Kasia (Kopec) dream of being successful hairdressers and are apprenticed in a salon run by the bitter, disillusioned Mrs Szefowa (Torhan), who is also an unpleasant boss. To be fair, Ania has no natural talent, and despite her friend Kasia’s encouragement, she tries to blame her distant mother and alcoholic father (Schimscheiner) for her ineptitude in her chosen career. Kasia’s parents are loving in comparison and she is close to her mother. Ania hopes for the best when her mother announces a reunion, getting the family together for a dinner.

There are some strong performances here but this resonant slice of social realism is really brought to life by DoP Weronica Bilska whose evocative camerawork brilliantly evokes the grim post-industrial cityscape of Krakow’s Nova Huta district; the former industrial hub of this great Southern city now lies empty and neglected, the streets lined with shabby housing and high rise blocks. But strangely enough Ania’s father, a painter and decorator, has managed to cobble together a decent modern flat with furniture that Ania despises: “it’s too new and too clean” she tells Kasia, who, in turn, starts sleeping over more and more often, preferring it to the run-down hovel she lives in with her parents.

Zariczny pictures this corner of modern Poland almost on its knees; the old are nostalgic for the Stalinist past (which was no better than the present) and frozen in a static grip of negativity, whilst the young are disenchanted. What emerges is a country that has failed to reinvigorate its previously thriving industry, with the talented and ambitious seeking their fortunes abroad or in the large cities. AS

WAVES has its WORLD PREMIERE at KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL 1-9 JULY 2016

Santa Sangre (1989) |

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Starring: Bianca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison,  Adan Jodorowsky

115mins    Cult drama

Jodorowsky’s 1989 film SANTA SANGRE or ‘Holy Blood’ finally managed a long-overdue re-release in 2012, having been tied up in litigation for many years. Jodorowsky’s two sons play the aptly named lead ‘Fenix Adulte’ at different ages.

Filmed in Mexico City’s ‘Estudios Churubusco Azteca’ studios, the story plays out in flashback, opening in a mental institution, where we first meet a deeply unhinged Fenix, portrayed very convincingly by the older Axel Jodorowsky.  As may be expected, this is far from what one might consider a mainstream film. Jodorowsky was a student of mime in Paris under Marceau and also spent time working in a circus and both of these experiences are drawn on heavily in Santa Sangre.

Santa

Accordingly, the piece is highly theatrical in nature, with classically heightened performances; there is no attempt here to rein anything in for the camera. This is Theatre of the Absurd, exploring core Absurdist themes, with religion and symbolism plastered unapologetically all over it.  But underpinning all of this and what gives it both its heart and longevity, lies a story for and of the outsider; from caged animals to clowns, painted ladies and dwarves to deaf mutes, prostitutes to the physically and mentally disabled, cult followers to the deranged, all of life’s outcasts and perceived misfits.

Here, they are all embraced unflinchingly and without judgment, brought together under that other collective of outsiders; ‘the performers’, to form a skein of society that is so seldom seen in film unless for novelty value, that yet can be, even from the depths transformed by hope and the redemptive hand of love.

Some moments may feel they have gone beyond the edge of theatrical to the point of ridiculous and yet there remains a deep, troubling, visceral experience watching this film, containing as it does so many powerful, disturbing ideas and indeed, performances. It is truly the actors art on display here.

For many, Jodorowsky’s masterpiece over and above his more famous 1973 film The Holy Mountain. If you like your tales of revenge best served up bloody and graphic, catch this seminal cult opus at a cinema of iniquity somewhere near you.

Screening during EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2016 on July 2nd as part of the MACABRE MASONIC MASCARADE | OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY 

 

Native (2015) | East End Film Festival 2016

Director.: Daniel Fitzsimmons

Cast: Rupert Graves, Ellen Kendrick, Leanne Best

85min | Sci-Fi | UK

First time director and co-writer Daniel Fitzsimmons’ debut is a low budget Sci-fi  his hand where two Aliens arrive to conquer Earth. But somehow neither the design nor the cliché-ridden script is very convincing.

Cane (Graves) and Eva (Kendrick) hurtle towards our planet in a spaceship packed with deadly viruses intended to kill off mankind. But the lovesick Cane is over-emotional and pining for the loss of his partner Awan (Best) on their mother planet whence a Big Brother like metallic Voice issues order to the co-pilots while Cane tunes into Beethoven’s Fifth, driven to despair and a suicide attempt, hanging himself from a noose and rescued by Eva and the last moment. If this all sounds rather unimaginative – it is. The main problem with NATIVE is the dialogue – for no apparent reason, it’s in Italian – it also seems clumsy and in short hand: When the two are eating food from a plastic tube, in a brief break from arguing, Cane asks Eva “Do you like the food?, she answers brusquely “Whether I like it or not – this question is irrelevant”.  The metallic Voice is equally to the point, advising Eva to “sedate and restrain.” Cane. Later, Eva screams at Cane “Do not touch me!”, whilst he answers “I want to feel somebody”. When Cane hangs himself, he is still under the influence of Big Brother’s Voice “This is the rational solution” he tells himself. But the Voice can be soothing too, telling Eva “I will be with you, when you need me”. Eva is remorseless about Awan too: “She is dead, disposed off, we should not speak about the dead”. When Cane is “turning emotional”, Eva puts him in a contraption rasembling an electric chair. Which brings us to the production design that utterly fails to recreate an environment worthy of a species so superior. The set-up is not much more than an arcade playground, where coloured lights are in playful interaction.

Nick Gillespie and Billy J. Jackson try their best to inject appropriate atmosphere with their cinematographer, but only manage to create second-hand images – which –  like the narrative, are a regurgitation of everything that has gone before in this underrated genre: Fitzsimmons is not so much a victim of his mini-budget, but also his lack of creative imagination. AS

THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 23 JUNE – 3 JULY 2016

Abluka | Frenzy (2015) |

Writer|Director: Emin Alper

Cast: Mehmet Ozgur, Berkay Ates, Tülin Özen, Ozan Akbaba

Drama  Turkish with subtitles

Mehmet Ozgur played the central role in writer|director Emin Alper’s stunning debut Beyond the Hill. Here he is again as the eldest brother in a family struggling to survive political violence in a dystopian Istanbul. Menacing by the same brooding tone of his first feature, FRENZY (Abluka) is a study in paranoia that transport the threat experienced in the mountains of Beyond the Hill‘s Karaman, to an urban setting in the capital.  Here the authorities here are losing control, and to achieve a semblance of order, Kadir and his brother Ahmet (Berkey Ates) are working to establish a reasonable living environment by clearing away undesirable elements: stray dogs are mercilessly shot and rubbish is collected and disposed of on a daily basis. But despite these methods of civil control, disorder rears its ugly head.

As in all Turkish films, the family is crucial to the storyline: and the family is usually divisive in some way. Here, the violent city environment – nightly bomb blasts from ‘terrorism’ and an aggressive police presence, are having a de-stabilising effect on Kadir’s relationship with Ahmet. Ahmet’s wife has left with their children. The middle brother Ali has disappeared. Kadir has served time in prison and is now working out his parol in a community-based rubbish clearance project which includes ‘bomb’ disposal. The stray dogs appear as a metaphor for the universal theme immigration. As a clever corollary to this, when Ahmet discovers an injured dog in his street, he takes him in but treats him badly.

Ahmet is clearly at odds with Kadir and resents his constant visits which turn into menacing intrusions with Kadir practically banging down the door and ringing his ‘phone incessantly. Ahmet retreats into himself as an act of defiance and fear. The two are clearly not communicating: another modern predicament that is skillfully woven in the storyline. Kadir’s boss (Mufit Mayacan)  starts to question his overly diligent report-writing (Mufit Kayacan). The projection here is evident. But in the absence of any real threats or tangible facts in this febrile and suspicious environment, one starts to tire of the enigmatic thriller and its suberb but deafening electronic score (Cevdet Erek also scored SIVAS). That said, this is a well-crafted affair set both on the widescreen and in intimate domestic scenes that successful evokes how daily paranoia can seep into the fabric of our everyday lives threaten our ability to communicate successfully and healthily. Alper has built a menacing thriller that conveys this paranoia with dramatic affect. While it has it downsides, he is a director worth following. MT

JURY PRIZE WINNER | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Notes on Blindness (2016) | EAST END Film Fest 2016

Dir.: Peter Middleton, James Spinney; Cast: Dan Renton Skinner, Simone Kirby; UK 2016, 87 min.

First time directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney have used the technique of Clio Barnard’s The Arbor for a moving portrait of the writer and theologian John Hull (1935-2015), who went blind in 1983, just before the birth of his son Thomas.

The filmmakers use the voices of John and Marilyn Hull, lip-synchronising part of the audiotapes John Hull recorded between 1983-1986 in trying to come to terms with his blindness. Dan Renton Skinner and Simone Kirby play the central roles.

John Hull tried to cope with his blindness in a professional way: he needed to understand his condition to be able to combat it – as an academic, his approach was well planned. But his cognitive approach turned out to be limited. When trying to excavate his inner world of blindness and ‘translate’ it into a sort of visual memory he soon found obstacles and limits. Whilst he was losing his purely visual memories increasingly, his retention of memories of photographs was much stronger. But as a man of faith, there was also a much wider perspective: John Hull admits freely, to “have been angry with God at times”.

Only when he accepted his blindness “as a gift from God”, a gift he never asked for, he started to make real progress in trying to make the best of this unwanted condition. The directors show his return home to Australia as a really grim episode where he got totally lost in the unknown vastness of the continent. His wife Marilyn was afraid “John would enter a world, where she could not follow him anymore.” Luckily, after his return to England, he adjusted more to his condition in the private and professional world as a lecturer, even though we hear his colleague’s voices questioning his chances of survival in the university.

Gerry Floyd’s conjures up a hazy, brownish and often diffuse visual terrain where rain plays a major role falling in slow motion on the couple’s’ house – all over the audio recorder. And John Hull feels the rain as a visual connection to his ‘old’, visual life. The photographs, shot with vintage lenses, which turn out to be so important for John, are photographed in macro shots, giving them a snapshot quality of years bygone. Needless to say, in a project concerning blindness the sound structure (created by Joakim Sandström) plays a major role. The sound ‘images’ reaching John Hull roll in like big waves, often feel threatening. Sound elements of the in-house rain are a small masterpiece in themselves.

The directors have developed a shorter version of the same title from 2014 into this feature length format, and it is very well worth it: aesthetically original, and sometimes daring in its intellectual approach, Notes on Blindness is an unique experiment. AS

UK RELEASE 1 JULY 2016

God’s Acre (2015) | East End Film Fest 23 June – 3 July 2016

Writer|Director: J.P. Davidson.

Cast: Matthew Jure, Isgerour Elfa Gunnarsdottir, Debra Baker

80min | Psycho Drama | UK

In J P Davidson’s cinematic low budget mood piece, an amateur property developer Malcolm (Matthew Jure) owes his childhood friend Sonny (Richard Pepple) a chunk of money – £6000 to be precise. So all he needs to do is renovate his dilapidated London flat and release some capital on the resulting sale. Simple really. But his life has spiralled out of control and debt and alcoholism have overtaken his mind and started to play tricks on him, particularly when he starts to imagine a secret wall in his property.

In a triumph of style of substance, GOD’s ACRE is shot in shades of grungy gunmetal with a stealthy soundtrack from debut composer Christopher Campbell. Davidson’s film looks superb and feels unsettling at it explores the nooks and crannies of a man’s home and then the inner sanctum of his claustrophobic mind as he glides aimlessly through a former existence that no longer works in the scheme of things. Enter the nurse, his noctural neighbour whose down to earthiness is the polar opposite of Malcolm’s instability and this could be the start of something interesting. GOD’s ACRE feels like an extended short: long on atmosphere but short of a really gripping narrative. Not only is Malcolm vapid as a central character, but he is also unappealing. In short, he is a cypher who drinks a great deal, rants and wanders around in this plotless and rather pointless psychological drama. MT

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 23 June – 3 July 2016

 

 

Il Solengo (2015) | Open City Doc Fest 2016

Directors: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis

With: Ercole Colnago, Bruno di Giovanni, Ugo Farnetti, Giovanni Morichelli, Orso Petrini

70min | Documentary | Italy Argentino

Drawing comparisons with Michelangelo Frammartino’s story of reclusiveness, Le Quattro Volte, IL SOLENGO approaches its subject from the other extreme in exploring community values from the perspective of a group of old men, (in local dialect a ‘solengo’ is a boar chased from its herd) who ruminate over the local hermit Mario de Marcello who grew up with them in nearby Pratolongo, on the banks of the river Mignone, Italy.

Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis’s exquisitely framed paean to rural life and slow cooking follows these local men, all in their late eighties, enjoying a peaceful existence together drinking in a hunting lodge where we first meet them waxing lyrical in increasingly florid recollections of Mario’s secretive past and blighted childhood which began in prison where his mother gave birth to him after killing his father with a hoe (“his mother gave the evil eye, she was a witch”). Commenting on loner Mario’s standoffish attitude, they then reveal their own xenophobia by vehemently forbidding outsiders from joining their local hunt for wild boar. This is a quietly pleasing and darkly amusing film that very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Spending their days making cheese and slow-cooked stews, these men unite in reminiscing over their joint past where 1929 and the early 1930s looms large in their collective memory as a difficult time in Italy: “if you didn’t grow beans, you didn’t eat”, and clearly this attachment to the land has shaped their community where ‘tit for tat’ self-regulation has always obviated the need for police intervention. Mario grew up a loner ostracized from the local men, he went on to experience another quiet tragedy which is revealed in the surprisingly ghostly disembodied third act of this impressive documentary that makes great use of the densely scrubby surrounding countryside in the foothills of the Alps.

Occasionally the camera catches sight of a bearded Mario wearing a red baseball cap, slowly moving through the undergrowth to Vittorio Giampietro’s sinister oboe score. At one point a snake slithers out of a crack in the caves where Mario purportedly lives underlining the dangers of the enigmatically hostile woodland undergrowth. Myths and legends seem to flourish in this remote Italian corner, passed down by old to young and where women are frequently alluded to but mysteriously absent. One old man says: “I like my freedom – home is where I sleep, but it’s full of problems”. MT

The Great Wall (2015) | Open City Doc Fest 2016

Director: Tadhg O’Sullivan | Documentary | ROI 2015 | 74 min.

Very much an essay film, THE GREAT WALL is the second feature documentary of Tadhg O’Sullivan (Yximalloo), is a lament on boarders and divisions featuring a (part) reading of Franz Kafka’s short story ‘The Great Wall of China” in its original German, the latter underscoring the conceptual character of the work.

The Great Wall is also a baffling experience, in a positive way, it feels a little like the first Chris Marker films: somehow the different levels seem to not compliment each other totally, but encourage the audience to de-code them. It is perhaps helpful to quote O’Sullivan himself who explains his intentions and his conceptual approach which did not start with the short story, “architecture can be a tool for articulating power. I used Kafka as a prism, as a lens, to look at the subject.” The result is sometimes comes over as a film shot by Aliens on a visit to this planet, who trying to figure out what is going on. The enigmatic nature of The Great Wall is its main strength, like a good poem, it would gain from a second revisit.

Starting with a Kafka quote: “A Cage went in search of a Bird”, the Czech’s writer’s story about the rather unorganised building of the Great Wall, and its reflections on power structures, features overpowering images of borders starting with the only land boarder between Africa and Europe, the old Spanish enclave of Melilla where a three meter high wall with barbed fence is supposed to keep Africans out; even though we see so-called fence jumpers trying to gain illegal access to the continent. During the narration a score of Electronic music often drowns out our thoughts subliminally reminding us of the purpose of the Chinese Wall: to keep the Southern ‘savages’ out, whose frightening images are shown to children, when they misbehave.

Then the film translocates to Athens where police and demonstrators clash violently, before huge office blocks in the cities of London and Brussels dwarf all humans, reducing them to swarming ants. Bach lightens the tone, but soon we are back with the Electronic onslaught and images of boarder installations, frightening and at the same time alien. Kafka’s short story tells us not to question the authorities; their imperfect wall is a reflection on themselves.AS

SCREENING DURING OPEN CITY DOC FESTIVAL UNTIL 26 JUNE 2016

Mallory (2015) | Open City Doc Festival 2016

Director: Writer-Director: Helena Trestikova

97min | Documentary | Czech Republic

Veteran Czech documentarian Helena Trestikova (Katka) delivers up a grim but often poignant slice of observational social realism that follows the life of a drug addict who valiantly tries to turn her life around after becoming a single mum.

Over the course of this gruelling story, with its scant chinks of positivity in an otherwise bleak Prague, Mallory – the heroin heroine – reveals in the opening scene, grittily set from a high-rise block, that she only wants: “to feel like a woman” and share her life with a man.  And therein lies her main problem. Whenever Mallory has a boyfriend she appears strong, positive and in control, but afterwards things fall apart. These men are initially hailed as saviours – and she has three relationships during filming – which start well but seem to unravel to expose serious character flaws for all concerned. It seems that poor Mallory is a ‘bad picker’ but we never get to the bottom of why, and no background is ever given of her father’s influence on her life, although her mother appears a shadowy but delightfully warm figure, in a brief early scene. And tellingly Mallory claims to have fallen into drug abuse as “a form of protest to my parents”. A pivotal meeting on the Charles Bridge with Czech actor Jiri Bartoska who is also president of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (in which this won the top documentary award) purportedly gave Mallory a financial handout which helped her turn things around. Trestikova adopts an non-judgemental approach to cleverly tease out Mallory’s personality, her pain and suffering as she attempts to make a better life for herself and her son, who really seems to be the making of her.

Mallory is seen living in a car with her then boyfriend, and has placed her loving little son in an institution. It later emerges he would rather “punch the teacher, than listen” exposes more latent flaws. Again and again, Mallory remains bloodied but unbowed, not always likeable but certainly ready to show her vulnerability with mordant dark humour as she struggles to find work and housing in a system mired down with red tape. The affectionate boyfriend never leaves her side but appears to have a serious drinking problem, as does her son’s father Ballin, who later meets a sticky end.

This is an impressively crafted and edited piece of filmmaking that serves as much as a character study as a glimpse of Czech lowlife, taut with unexpectedly tense moments that often hint at a tragic denouement. MT

OPEN CITY DOC FESTIVAL | 21 – 26 JUNE 2016

 

 

 

Depth Two (2016) | Dubina dva

Director: Ognjen Glanovic | Documentary | Serbia/France, 2016, 80 minutes

The serene waters of the River Danube pictured in Serbian filmmaker Ognjen Glanovic’s unremitingly grim DEPTH TWO hide a terrible secret: they have swallowed up the lives of 53 refugees fleeing across the Romanian border. But these are no ordinary refugees; they are victims of ethnic cleansing from the Kosovan town of Suva Reka who met their deaths in a pizzeria in 1999 at the hands of Serbian soldiers. And they were transported some distance from the Serbian capital Belgrade on the orders of Serbian authorities with the utmost secrecy being taken to ensure all evidence was hidden.

Made on a shoestring budget, and none the worse for it, Glanovic’s camera surveys this vast and desolate landscape to convey a faceless, bloodless, and ominous image of devastation while a monotone often droning narration bears witness to the killings that the Serbian government tried to conceal. Grimly poetic images of endless ghostly plastic bags trapped in tree branches are juxtaposed with a ghoulish stream of bullet-strewn clothing and personal effects that are the only surviving remnants of the dead apart from some improvised burial grounds. No faces just facts: a stark reminder of a tragic and brutal past.

After premiering his documentary at Berlinale Forum in 2016, Glanovic intends to film a dramatic reconstruction of the events, once the finance is in place. But somehow this faceless tribute feels all the more potent and effective forcing the viewer to imagine the horror. MT

BERLIN REVIEW | NOW SCREENING AT OPEN CITY DOC FEST \ 21 -26 JUNE 2016

24 Weeks (2016) | Berlinale Competition 2016 | Edinburgh Film Festival

Cast: Julia Jentsch, Bjarne Maedel, Johanna Gastdorf, Emilia Pieske Director: Anne Zohra Berrached
Screenwriter: Anne Zohra Berrached, Carl Gerbe

Down’s Syndrome is a heart-breaking condition for any parent. But 24 WEEKS brings nothing new in a stultifying storyline which explores the aftermath when a German couple discover their unborn child has even more serious complications than this. Anne Zohra Berrached’s script plods through the tragedy in the most direct way possible despite a strong and committed performance from Julia Jentsch, who plays the stand-up comic in domestic drama that won her a Silver Bear at Berlinale 2016.

Already the parents of a young daughter (Emilia Pieske), Astrid and partner and manager Markus (Bjarne Maedel) until live in an attractive house near Leipzig and have ample support from Astrid’s chain-smoking mother (Johanna Gastdorf). But things become more serious when it emerges their baby also has a heart condition that indicate a possible need to terminate the pregnancy. Mustering all her professional skills to see the humour here is some feat for Astrid and this is made more difficult by Berrached’s seemingly perfect characterisation of the couple up to their tragic discovery leading to mind-numbingly boring scenarios in the strip lit clinic that often make it feel like a docudrama.

Jentsch’s acting skills are stretched to the limit in part that offers little intensity but a great deal of close-up camerawork requiring her to look distraught and strung out for most of the running time. Maedel does not have an easy time either as an insipid and rather hapless sidekick of a partner. Attempts to conjure up poetic elements with Astrid floating in a dreamlike state underwater with her baby in utero feel forced and unconvincing here in what could have been an opportunity to offer something meaningful. MT

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 15 -26 JUNE 2016

BERLINALE REVIEW

Open City Doc Fest (2016) |London | 21 – 25 June

Open City Documentary Festival is back in London from 21 – 26 June 2016 bringing 26 UK premieres to Picturehouse Central, Hackney Picturehouse, Crouch End Picturehouse, Regent Street Cinema, ICA, Bertha Dochouse and JW3. During six days the festival will screen over 60 films plus programmes of short films, special events, a programme of industry masterclasses, talks, networking drinks and parties.

The 6 day festival opens with  THE GREAT WALL – Tadgh O’Sullivan’s exploration of how we keep the hordes of would be migrants and refugees from ‘swamping’ our wealthy and secure societies? We don’t like to think about the answer: we build walls. Alongside O’Sullivan’s troubled images we hear Kafka’s short story, The Great Wall of China – an inspired juxtaposition.

This year’s Closing Night Film is  DEPTH  2 Ongjen Glavonic’s salient reminder of  Milošević’s regime in what had been Yugoslavia. Glavonić uses voiceover victim testimony from the ICTY trials over a series of tableaux of the Serbian countryside. The effect of this audio is incredibly powerful – as the documentary thriller unveils its terrible tale.

A pioneer of the line drawn between documentary, anthropology ethnomusicology and visual/arts performance, Vincent Moon is a singular figure in the European cultural landscape. He will be premiering a live audio-visual performance which explores the art of ritual and a tenth year anniversary of his pioneering web series ‘The Take Away Shows’.

The Ross Brothers are the festival’s other special guests: American brothers Bill and Turner Ross’s work is some of the most exciting work to emerge from America and yet has had very little attention in the UK. OCDF will be showing their American Trilogy and the brothers will be giving a masterclass.

GRAND JURY AWARD

For the film that exemplifies an author in control of their subject matter, craft and story. Matching matching content and form in a powerful and persuasive fashion:

Another Year: Shengzhe Zhu / 2016 / China / 181′

Depth Two: Ognjen Glavonić / 2016 / Serbia/France / 80′

Mallory: Helena Třeštíková / 2015 / Czech Republic / 97′

EMERGING INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER AWARD

IL SOLENGO copyIl Solengo: Alessio Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis / 2015 / Argentina/Italy / 70′ (left)
In Limbo: Antoine Viviani / 2015 / France / 84′
The Prison in 12 Landscapes: Brett Story / 2015 / Canada/UK / 84′
Roundabout in My Head: Hassan Ferhani / 2015 / Algeria / 100′

OPEN CITY DOC FEST 21-26 JUNE 2016 | TICKETS HERE 

 

A Serious Game (2016) Netflix

Director: Pernilla August

114min Drama  Sweden

Pernilla August fails to convey the passion of her unrequited lovers in this Swedish answer to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

Adapted by Lone Scherfig from the 1912 novel by Hjalmar Soderberg, A SERIOUS GAME is another costume melodrama exploring the potent chemistry of sexual desire and longing in a story of sexual obsession. The couple in question, Arvid Stjarnblom (Sverrir Gudnason) and Lydia Stille (Karin Franz Korlof), never quite captivate our attention throughout this initially steamy bodice-ripper but August’s efforts are to laudable in her second feature.

Arvid is a young writer and proofreader for Stockholm’s main newspaper when he meets the daughter of one of Sweden’s most noted landscape painters, Anders Stille (Goran Ragnerstam): “I painted a completely blue canvas once, it’s in the National Gallery”.

This is the third screen adaptation of the story that follows the amorous exploits of starstruck lovers whose enduring ardour for each other is fated never to end in marriage, de-stabilising and upsetting everyone in their wake. Initially engaging, it eventually becomes tedious (along with its monotonous score) but offers a fascinating snapshot of early 20th century life in Swedish publishing and literary circles.

The couple first set eyes on each other at Lydia’s father’s summer cabin on an island near Stockholm. Lydia offering her beau one of her father’s paintings inscribed with the words: “Away. I long to get away.” Sadly Papa is to die leaving her without an inheritance and, without any means of supporting herself Lydia is forced to marry the wealthy, older Roslin (Sven Nordin). The lovers meet again years later when they are both married parents: Arvid has settled for an attractive and wealthy blond (gracefully played by Liv Moines).

This rather drably photographed romantic drama then goes backward and forward as the two make each other, and everyone else, unhappy with their illicit affair; hot-headed Lydia doesn’t quite think things through, deciding to leave her husband to return to the cabin and a rather passive Arvid, who shilly shallys all the way home. With neither character convincing beyond their vapid victim status, the narrative slowly unravels to a disappointing conclusion.

The more interesting characters here are seriously underwritten: Michael Nyqvist, as the charismatic newspaper publisher and Mikkel Boe Folsgaard (A Royal Affair) as the much maligned Lidner, the paper’s froeign correspondent, who Lydia truculently casts aside.

A SERIOUS GAME is indeed serious and rather depressing, the only fire coming from a initial spark of sexual ardour rapidly extinguished by a narrative whose central characters fails to exude any appeal for the audience. They can be forgiven, in part, for being young and aimless, but youth alone does not make for exciting viewing. MT

NETFLIX | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE FEBRUARY 2016

Where You’re Meant to Be (2016) | Sheffield Doc Fest 2016

Dir.: Paul Fegan: Documentary with Aidan Moffat & Sheila Stewart; UK 2015, 75 min.

First time director Paul Fegan’s documentary chronicles the short encounter of two Scottish independent musicians: Aidan Moffat, frontman of Arab Strap and Sheila Stewart (1937-2014), Scotland’s most popular folk ballad singer who was born in the horse barn of a Traveller’s family and went on to performed for the Pope and US President Gerald Ford.

Moffat narrates the film and is clearly very taken with Stewart, and perhaps even overawed. But when they travel together through the hilly Scottish countryside, Stewart driving, an earnest dispute ensues: while Stewart insists in leaving the traditional ballads intact, Moffat wants to re-interpret the songs to reflect more modern times. As it turns out, Moffat has misinterpreted a line in the song ‘Where you’re meant to be’, not realising that the phrase “my ship’s in the harbour”, actually means that the person quoted is ready to die.

Although Stewart was selected by her uncle to learn all the Traveller ballads by heart, at the time she remembers regretting not being able to play outside with her friends. And at her last public performance, singing the song who gave the film its title in Glasgow’s ‘Barrowland’, Moffat has the grace to admit his lack of knowledge to the assembled crowd, even though he insists on rewriting many Stewart songs, which are in the public domain, transplanting them into a more comfortable urban environment.

Although Fegan makes a good job of portraying the rather prickly relationship between Moffat and Stewart, the documentary suffers from too much additional padding: the Loch Ness monster is called upon to vote “Yes” the Scottish referendum, and a gang of ancient Scottish knights fight the English in mock battles. Somehow the eccentric Scottish travelogue deflects from the central musical element here.

Sheila Stewart MBE is the last in a long line of ‘troubadours’ who kept alive the memories of their rootless, often persecuted people, and somehow she deserves a better farewell than this rowdy concoction. The raunchy punchlines and Moffat’s near pathological urge to see something comical in any given situation often side-tracks the seriousness of Stewart’s material, and the suffering of her people. DoP Julian Schwartz visuals are impressive in showing the husky darkness of the Scottish nights that make a atmospheric background to the music. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JUNE 2016 | Also screening at SHEFFIELD DOC FEST ON 12 JUNE

Mile End (2015) | East End Film Festival 23 June – 3 July 2016

Director: Gahame Higgins

Alex Humes, Mark Arnold, Heidi Agerhom Baile

110mi | Thriller | UK

MILE END is another British film that loves to hates the Bankers (who offer them funding them through the EIS scheme); with a selection of nauseously unattractive characters who appear aimless and forlorn in their lives, bickering and purporting to help each other amid the twinking skyscrapers of gloomy old Docklands – yet slowly through all this dispondency a tense thriller starts to make its way to the surface in Grahame Higgins’ fourth feature that won him an award in the New York Independent film festival this year.

When Paul (Alex Humes) is made redundant at his publishing job, he believes running may be the answer to help him mull through his life and find a way forward with his girlfriend Kate (Heidi Agerholm Balle). He comes across American John (Mark Arnold) out jogging one day, the slightly older grey fox is suave and assured and comes across as a mentor. As they slowly get to know one another, John appears resentful of the other City types they pass on their daily jog through the wharves and waterways, and while John offers advice and business ideas, his comments on Paul’s personal relationships feel ominously judgemental and distinctly anti-capitalist for a soi-disant City guru. Then Paul’s friend (Valmike Rampersad) mysteriously gets killed while out jogging and Paul begins to question John’s ulterior motives.

Creaky performances (particularly from an irritatingly insipid Alex Humes) and some ropey dialogue don’t do Higgins’ drama any favours, but Anna Valdez-Hank’s pristine camerawork, Ed Scolding’s subtle atmospheric score and the enigmatic character called John (well-played by Mark Arnold) keep things ticking over tensely during the film’s 101 minute running time. MILE END is a thought-provoking thriller whose style and atmosphere overcome form and substance in s fragmentary narrative leading to an open-ended conclusion. Many may find MILE END unsatisfying, but if running is your thing, this is worth a watch.  MT 

MILE END IS SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JUNE – 3 JULY 2016 

Dead Slow Ahead (2015) | East End Film Festival 23 June – 3 July 2016

Writer|Director: Mauro Herce   Writer Manuel Munoz Rivas

74min | Docudrama | Spain | France

Dead Slow Ahead joins a growing subgenre of marine docudramas along with Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Leviathan, Axel Koenzen’s sinister Deadweight and Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s Transatlantique that all take place on on commercial shipping vessels – in this case, the ‘Fair Lady,”. The fascination of these films is how the quotidian takes on a surreal and otherworldly aspect, thousands of miles from home. The diurnal drudgery of months adrift in a lonely seascape is transformed into a realm of alien eeriness when captured by Mauro Herce’s roving camera. Jose Manuel Berenguer’s sound crew creates a spacey soundscape aboard the ‘Fair Lady’.

Where Lucien Castaing Taylor’s Leviathan felt like a horror film for fish, Herce’s horror is a human experience,  homing in on unsettling skies and sinister ambient sounds of computer navigation conjuring up a menacing loneliness onboard the gigantic container ship that dwarfs its human crew on a journey into the unknown seas. Gone are lively ‘ahoys’ and spirited sailors songs of yesterday: today’s modern vessels echo, bleep and drone with the dissociative sounds of 21st century science.

As distant refineries illuminate the skylines with the toxic twinkle of their chemical haze, the vast decks of the vessel glimmer and glow under translucent skies. Below deck, the vacant corridors clank and jolt and the billowing bowels of the container compartments appear like chasms in a mammoth sea monster, swallowing up the inanimate human crew like ineffectual ants, their only humanity telegraphed by disembodied voices in a seaborne planet heading into the unknown. MT

Mauro Herce won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno Film Festival 2015 

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 23 JUNE – 3 JULY 2016

Other People (2016)

Writer/Director: Chris Kelly

Cast: Molly Shannon, Jesse Plemons, Bradley Whitford, June Squibb, Paul Dooley

90min | Comedy Drama | US

Molly Shannon and Jesse Plemons are the standouts in this comic but often uneven portrait of a family united by terminal illness. Chris Kelly’s directorial debut lays its cards on the table early on as Plemons’ gay writer David returns from New York to be with his mother in her final months in Sacramento, California. Undergoing chemo naturally brings out the worst physically and mentally for Joanne who is happily married to Norman (Bradley Whitford) a father who perversely refuses to accept his son’s sexuality. Sometimes the nature of Shannon’s suffering verges on embarrassing moments that fail to be funny and would be better off left in the dark. But Plemons and Shannon hold the comedy together as do her often hilarious parents played by June Squibb and Paul Dooley. The other characters are merely window-dressing in this often overfamiliar treatment of terminal illness, that follows in the footsteps of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in an approach that often lacks dignity.

The opening scene is vaguely comic in describing other peoples’ crass and often inappropriate handling of death and dread disease but whether this is a subject for comic treatment is debatable. From that momen the film flashes back to the previous year marking the bittersweet homecoming of 29 year old David who is suffering a break-up and a rejection in his writing career. Joanne decides to give up chemo after some fairly explicit scenes of trauma and the two become closer in their shared tragedy. At one point there is a crude dance scene from a gay kid (J J Totah from Glee) who is totally at home with his sexuality as compared to David who is painfully shy and withdrawn about his.

Kelly’s well-crafted debut is based on his own experiences and manages some moments of authernticity and poignance amid the horror of bodily meltdown that will resonate with anyone who has experienced a life-changing condition. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON | PROGRAMME HERE

 

 

Goat (2016)

Director: Andrew Neel  Writers: David Gordon Green et al

Cast: Virginia Gardner, Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer, Danny Flaherty, Jake Pickering, Austin Lyon

96min |  US | DRAMA

US director Andrew Neel’s men only testosterone-fuelled fraternity tale is, as you’d expect, long on bolshy male-bonding and short on characterisation. Rather more in the mould of The Riot Club than 22 Jump Street, it follows teenager Brad (Ben Schetzer) on the first year at Cincinnati’s Brookman College after a vicious mugging has left him under par and psychologically scarred during the summer vacation. Although his elder brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is there to watch over him this proves to be offer consolation once he arrives in the macho environment where he undergoes a violent initiation routine of hazing.

This film offers a trenchant and unflinching look at all-male environments where uncotrolled aggression and bullying go unchecked while posing as brotherhood and eventually reach outlandish proportions and tragic consequences. Although Neel makes us feel the blunt force of this relentless brutality he gives us little in the way of backstory or textural context to make us care about any of the individuals cooped up in a macho web of tribal warfare, based on Brad Land’s 2004 memoirs and scripted by David Gordon Green.

Ben Schnetzer gives a resonating performance as the young man determined not to let his masculinity crumble in the force of circumstances; his whole college persona and social life and seems to hang on a successful outcome in the initiation war. For many GOAT may prove almost unwatchable at times but Neel keeps the tension taut and the undertone lyrical with a few Latin phrases and occasional moments of introspection amid the stark realism and Ethan Palmer’s handheld camerawork in an around the Ohio countryside. Arjan Miranda’s atmospheric score punctuates the action in an arresting indie drama. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON | FULL PROGRAMME

 

Sundance London 2016

In June this year Robert Redford brings a selection of American independent narrative and documentary films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January this year. Although the winners have been picked up for distribution and will appear in the coming year, this should be a worthwhile film festival – best of all – it comes right to your doorstep in Central London. 

THE JT LEROY STORY  (Director / screenwriter: Jeff Feuerzeig) –The definitive look inside the mysterious case of 16-year-old literary sensation JT LeRoy – a creature so perfect for his time that if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him. Perhaps someone did? The strangest story about story ever told. (Documentary)

2498THE GREASY STRANGLER | International premiere

The Greasy Strangler (Director: Jim Hosking) – When Big Ronnie and his son Brayden meet lone female tourist Janet on Big Ronnie’s Disco Walking Tour—the best and only disco walking tour in the city—a fight for Janet’s heart erupts between father and son, and the infamous Greasy Strangler is unleashed.
Principal Cast: Michael St. Michaels, Sky Elobar, Elizabeth De Razzo, Gil Gex, Jesse Keen, Joe David Walters

GOAT – International premiereGoat copy
Goat (Director: Andrew Neel) – Reeling from a terrifying assault, a 19-yearold boy pledges his brother’s fraternity in an attempt to prove his manhood. What happens there, in the name of “brotherhood,” tests both the boys and their relationship in brutal ways.
Principal Cast: Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer, Virginia Gardner, Danny Flaherty, Austin Lyon

Indignation copyINDIGNATION – UK premiere
Indignation (Director / screenwriter: James Schamus) – It’s 1951, and among the new arrivals at Winesburg College in Ohio are the son of a kosher butcher from New Jersey and the beautiful, brilliant daughter of a prominent alum. For a brief moment, their lives converge in this emotionally soaring film based on the novel by Philip Roth.
Principal Cast: Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond, Danny Burstein, Ben Rosenfield

INTERVENTION | UK premiere

The Intervention (Director / screenwriter: Clea DuVall) – A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage.
Principal Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Clea DuVall, Natasha Lyonne, Ben Schwartz

Winner of the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Individual Performance (Melanie Lynskey)

LIFE ANIMATED \ International premiere

Life, Animated (Director / screenwriter: Roger Ross Williams) – Owen Suskind, an autistic boy who could not speak for years, slowly emerged from his isolation by immersing himself in Disney animated movies. Using these films as a roadmap, he reconnects with his loving family and the wider world in this emotional coming-of-age story. (Documentary)

Winner of the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary

MORRIS FROM AMERICA | UK premiere

Morris from America (Director / screenwriter: Chad Hartigan) – Thirteen-year-old Morris, a hip-hop loving American, moves to Heidelberg, Germany, with his father. In this completely foreign land, he falls in love with a local girl, befriends his German tutor-turned- confidant, and attempts to navigate the unique trials and tribulations of adolescence.
Principal Cast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, Lina Keller, Jakub Gierszał, Levin Henning

Won: Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic; U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Individual Performance (Craig Robinson)

other-peopleOTHER PEOPLE | UK premiere

Other People (Director / screenwriter: Chris Kelly) – A struggling comedy writer, fresh from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and younger sisters, David feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother worsens, he tries to convince everyone (including himself) he’s “doing okay.”
Principal Cast: Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, Zach Woods, June Squibb

TALLULAH | International premiere

Tallulah (Director / screenwriter: Sian Heder) – A rootless young woman takes a toddler from a wealthy, negligent mother and passes the baby off as her own in an effort to protect her. This decision connects and transforms the lives of three very different women.
Principal Cast: Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard, Evan Jonigkeit, Uzo Aduba

weiner-sundance-2016WEINER | International premiere TBC

Weiner (Directors / screenwriters: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) – With unrestricted access to Anthony Weiner’s New York City mayoral campaign, this film reveals the human story behind the scenes of a high-profile political scandal as it unfolds, and it offers an unfiltered look at how much today’s politics are driven by an appetite for spectacle. (Documentary)

Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary

WEINER-DOG | European premiere

Wiener-Dog (Director / screenwriter: Todd Solondz) – This film tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy.
Principal Cast: Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, Zosia Mamet

SUNDANCE LONDON 2 – 5 JUNE AT PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL

 

Pericles the Black (2016) | Un Certain Regard 2016

Director: Stefano Mordini

Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Marina Fois, Valentina Acca

104min | Thriller | Italy

Stefano Mordini’s noirish thriller has Riccardo Scamarcio as a hard-bitten hitman on the run from the Camorra in Belgium. Based on the ’90s novel by Giuseppe Ferrandino and adapted for the screen by Francesca Marciano this is the one of the best crime dramas showing in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year.

It probes the seething underworld of the ultra-violent Belgian branch of the Camorra where a low-life from the coalface of the organisation comes up against his boss and is forced to leave his Brussels home and flee to Calais to avoid death.

And nobody seethes like Bari-born Riccardo Scamarcio in a role that suits his brooding sensuality and superb acting chops – he switches from seedy serial killer to suave seducer in the flick of a bag of coins – his preferred method of coshing his victims. Narrated in a voice-over by Pericle (Scamarcio), who is under the control of Don Luigi Pizza (Gigio Morra) a small-time gangster who transferred his operation from Naples to Brussels in the aim of taking over pizzerias for as little as he can, Mordini’s film feels alienating and melancholy. Any resistance from the pizzeria owners leads to a bash over the head from Pericle. But when Don Luigi falls out with a local priest, Pericle – sent is punish him – finds he has a witness in the shape of a female camorra boss, Signorinella, and in order to cover up his attack on the priest he has to kill her.

In Scamarcio’s hands Pericle is a likeable rogue who is adept at avoiding danger and skilled at getting on with strangers. Homeless and friendless when he gets to Calais he charms a sales assistant (Marina Fois) into offering him bed and board in a slightly meaningless subplot. But soon it’s time to move on and meet his destiny as the tension builds for the cold-blooded finale. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY | UN CERTAIN REGARD

 

 

 

 

Ma’ Rosa (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016 | In Competition

Director/Writer: Brillante Mendoza

Cast: Jaclyn Jones, Julio Diaz | 110min | Drama | Philippines

The Filipino director Brillante Mendoza returns to the social unease of midtown Manila that was so flagrantly protrayed in his 2009 drama Kinatay as a world of police corruption, dissociative violence and hopelessness where ordinary people labour under the authority of the powers that be. Ma’Rosa (Jaclyn Jones) is a shopkeeper and mother of four with her husband Nestor (Julio Diaz) who also runs a sideline in drugs to make ends meet – although they hardly ever do – in this stark slice of social realism told in the style of a docu-drama.

Eventually the police arrive and arrest the couple demanding to know their substance supplier and to pay a heavy fine or go to prison as drug traffickers. Ma’Rosa is forced to go back to the drawing board and her kids out on the street to beg, steal or borrow the money to keep the voracious cops at bay. This is a desperate drama that plays out as a gritty study of resourcefulness and instinct for survival in the crowded streets of the capital as the kids come up with demoralising ways to save their parents with the knowledge that their only future is just more of the same.

Ma’Rosa is a lucid and well-crafted piece of cinema that nevertheless fails to engage with the hearts and minds of its characters, keeping us alienated but in no doubt as to their plight at the end of the day. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | IN COMPETITION

 

 

Julieta (2016)

Writer| Director: Pedro Almodovar     Stories: Alice Munro

Cast: Emma Suarez, Adrian Ugarte, Dario Grandinetti, Rossy de Palma

110min | Drama | Spain

JULIETA, which screens at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, is Almodovar’s fifth Palme D’Or hopeful since he started wooing the coveted trophy back in 1999 with All about My Mother; winning Best Director. Volver (2006) went on to garner Best Script and Best Actress; in 2009 Broken Embraces came away empty-handed from the competition;, in 2011 The Skin I Live In bagged him the Youth Award and his festival opener in 2004 was Bad Education.

His latest, and certainly his most ambitious film to date, is a peripatetic melodrama loosely based on three tales by Canadian Nobel prize winner Alice Munro about motherhood and loss suffered by its central character Julieta played by Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suarez – in youth and in middle age respectively. Men are merely sidekicks in this sorrowlful saga that pulls out all the stops in its Palme D’Or quest: referencing Almodovar’s highbrow cultural credentials : a sweeping orchestral score from Alberto Iglesias that vigorously drives the narrative forward, capable performances from an all-Spanish cast embracing stars and newcomers; atmospheric and unusual Spanish locations, tributes to Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith and even classic works of art from the Prado, amongst other flourishes. But the watchword here is melodrama: after the frivolity of I’m So Excited, JULIETA plays out like a Greek tragedy: its tortured heroine teaches Greek language and culture, falls spectacularly in love, gives birth to a cherished daughter and goes on to suffer tragic loss. But the often ambiguous narrative stumbles over plotholes and implausibilities, making so many demands on its audience that by the end one feels exhausted, overwhelmed and even perplexed. With the best of intentions, Almodovar has thrown all his tricks into the mix and come up with a meaty but passionless potboiler. That’s not to say JULIETA is a flop, but it feels rushed and urgent – despite its generous running time – rather than well-paced and satisfying. And Julieta is the only fleshed out character in a cast that is, for the most part, underwritten and one-dimensional, merely existing to serve its heroine.

The film takes the form of a story within a story that opens in contempo Madrid. Julieta is in her fifties and planning a move to Portugal with her partner Lorenzo, when a chance encounter with an old friend brings her surprise news of a recent meeting with her daughter Antia and her three children, whom she bumped into during the holidays. Only afterwards does it emerge that her only Antia, her only daughter, is no longer a part of Julieta’s life, having disappeared in her late teens. But once she discovers that Antia is still alive and aware that she herself lives in Madrid, Julieta is devastated. Canclling her plans to move to Portugal with Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti from Talk to Her), she moves back into the old flat where she raised Antia, in Madrid’s Barrio Gotico.

Closeted in Antia’s childhood home, she spills out her emotions in a desperate letter to her daughter, as the film’s narrative gradually fragments into flashbacks informing us of the past; the ’80s see a young Julieta with punkish hair and wacky earrings taking a romantic train journey that ends in torrid sex with a tousled-haired married fisherman called Xoan (Daniel Grau). As they make love a wild buck symbolically canters past their carriage in the swirling snow.

Some time later, in another of the film’s extraordinary coincidences, Julieta chances upon Xoan’s Belle Epoch seaside villa in Galicia when he just happens to be at his wife’s funeral. His hostile housekeeper (Rossy de Palma rocking a grey Afro wig) petulantly serves coffee but Xoan’s is overjoyed to welcome Julieta their daughter – cue more torrid sex. Ava (Inma Cuesta), another ex-lover who channels her unrequited love for Xoan into weird neolithic priapic figurines, becomes Antia’s confidante, while the contented couple raise their daughter by the stormy sea in scenes reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Marnie superbly captured in DoP Jean-Claude Larrieu’s luminous visuals.

A sejourn with Julieta’s parents in their country farm provides further family background but only to sadly inform us that her garden gnome-like father (Joaquin Notario) has taken up with a Moroccan peasant girl, while her mother shrivels away in a locked bedroom. Returning to the seaside, more tragedy awaits Julieta amidst heavy weather, echoing one of the film’s various leitmotifs.

Antia’s growing years are variously played by Ariadna Matin, Priscilla Delgado and Blanca Pares, but she never really gains depth as the character who, we are led to believe, has such a momumental impact on her emotionally broken mother. And In the final dénouement, Julieta appears shocked as a reaction to her own shattered ego  and narcissistic expectations, rather than as a result of a passionate and intense love for her only daughter. This leaves us feeling underwhelmed and rather irritated with her as on once again, the doting Lorenzo is wheeled into place with a tray of tea and sympathy for the self-pitying Julieta, who clutches on to him for self-serving supoort rather than in a re-awakening of love and passion. Ultimately JULIETA is a film that has been so indulged with cult references, stylistic embellishments and tributes that it often feels unwieldy and hollow overstaying its welcome despite a reasonable running time. That said, its certainly worth a watch for its Hitchcockian overtones. MT

 

 

Money Monster (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016

Director: Jodie Foster

Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell

98min | Thriller | US

There is no point in being serious about Jodie Foster’s latest film Money Monster which plays at Cannes – out of competition. It comes under the genre of ‘silly thriller’ and for its 98 minutes running time provides a blast of vacuous energy that will sell some popcorn and a few laughs.

Julia Roberts plays a stressed out TV producer who has to manage her frolicsome financial presenter: Lee Gates, played by George Clooney, as he delivers a TV show called Money Monster intended as a dumbed down commentary on the stock market trends. Fired by cheap charisma and wearing the sort of hat you might see on St Patrick’s Day he delivers the financial news as if he has kissed the blarney stone.

But the news he brings on the day in question refers to a company Lee hot-tipped as being worth investing in. This financial derivatives trading company has just recorded losses of $800 million and taken down the savings of the kind of people who trusted Lee’s glib advice, including a truck driver called Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) who appears on set holding Lee at gunpoint. Kyle wants as apology and forced Lee to wear a Semtex vest until he can get to the bottom of this Wall Street crisis.

Hardly the thriller to ruffle most peoples’ feathers this may delivers a few bolts of mild tension to the faint-hearted or infirm. In short, MONEY MONSTER delivers nothing new and does so in a crass way that feels as if it its slipped into the wrong decade where the far superior Broadcast News or even Margin Call were screening. Worse still, the film fails in its attempt to address or even challenge the financial system.

George Clooney brings solid star quality to Lee who ends up being a good guy and one of surprising integrity given his headwear and along with Julia Robert’s reliable turn as the authentic professional character. MONEY MONSTER is fun and throwaway and just the right film for a throwaway night out with popcorn. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | OUT OF COMPETITION | NATIONWIDE FROM 27 May

 

Paterson (2016) |

Writer/Director: Jim Jarmusch

Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani | Drama | US | 118min

Jim Jarmusch’s Palme d’Or Cannes competition entry could be described as ‘cuddly and serene’. PATERSON has Adam Driver as the eponymous New Jersey bus conductor who cherishes pretensions as a poet. The tone is upbeat, the pacing languid in a film that plays out as a meditation on untapped creative potential.

Unremarkably, Paterson lives an ordinary and cosseted existence in a town called Paterson with his pleasant Iranian-American wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and his daily duties involve walking his English bulldog, Marvin, and taking a leisurely beer at a bar while he shoots the breeze with the locals. Does he write those musings for the London Underground, one may ask? Potentially he might, for he treasures his notebook where he scribbles down lines of poignant poetry (they are, in fact, the work of the 73-year-old Oklahoma-born poet Ron Padgett.) but he quails away from publishing them as, for Paterson, these words are a private diary. Many secret writers often blog away on the internet all day with no conscious realisation that their words could potentially go viral, read by millions, but imagine they are tucking thoughts away in the ‘soi-disant’ anonymity of the web. In some ways Jarmusch has found another way of linking his narrative to contempo audiences through through this cosy tale that is influenced by 1950s pre-counterculture.

Jarmusch pictures Paterson and Laura’s life as idyllic and stress-free. Laura is a homemaker with artistic qualities that involve plastering the interior of their place in geometric patterns.The story follows the course of one week where events are slowly repeated in a pleasant clockwork routine in this simple linear narrative that mimics a well-scanned piece of poetry. A paean to a peaceful existence, this is a film that dwells in the ordinary and in the agreeable symmetry of a life well-lived but one that never pushes the boundaries. And in our rushed and aspirational society there is a great deal to be said for both. MT

PATERSON NOW ON RELEASE AT THE GATE CINEMA AND PICTUREHOUSES

REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 May 2016

Loving (2016) | Cannes Film Festival | Competition 2016

Writer/Director: Jeff Nichols

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga

121min | biopic drama | US

Hot on the heels of his mystery drama Midnight Special Jeff Nichols was back at Cannes Film Festival this year with a superbly crafted biopic of the interacial couple who rocked the headlines in 1950s Virginia for marrying against state laws.

Richard Perry Loving is played by a very white Joel Edgerton (his hair dyed blond) and Mildred Perry by the Irish Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga (Iona) in a classicly told linear narrative where Nichols rapidly skteches out the genesis of their early courtship, Mildred’s pregnancy and their subsequent nuptuals.  This is all, of course, against highly illegal and after spending a night in prison Mildred is bailed out by her father.

Nichols adopts a candid sombre approach to his re-telling as the couple are advised by their lawyer to leave the state for 25 years or risk further imprisonment. Images of close family and security are the keynotes in this painterly picture which makes atmospheric use of the lush surrounding scenery that glows with fifties wholesomeness and a regularly occuring leitmotif of a wheelbarrow full of cement leaves us replete with the cheesy earthyness of their worthy plight.  Many may muse over the perceived awfulness of having to move with your loved up spouse and growing pregnancy to a reasonable flat  in DC. But the fact remains that they are fighting a cause that feels unjust and inhuman.

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil Rights movement, the couple’s love story plays out as a convincing one – Edgerton plays Perry as mildly pugnacious and insular, Mildred the more visonary of the two, is a subtle turn for Negga which she plays with sunny dignity. A couple of clever young Jewish lawyers work hard for them ‘pro bono’ taking the case to the supreme court through thick and thin. Although the stakes are high, Nichols never gives an impression that they are villified or pressurised in any way as they move to a picturesque wooden house in the middle of wheat fields with their three growing children and Mildred plays the (outwardly) contented housewife. A little more strife and an undercurrent of pain and desperation would have served the story better as the course of justice is portrayed as pretty much of a breeze from start to finish -which clearly it was not – leaving little tension or moving moments in a drama totally devoid of any drama. A worthy and important biopic that fails to make us feel the couple’s undeniable pain. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

 

Un Homme et Une Femme (1966) | Cannes Film Festival Classics 2016

Dir.: Claude Lelouch; Cast: Anouk Aimee, Jean-Louis Trintignant

France 1966 | 102 min | drama

Claude Lelouch (*1937) has so far 59 credits as a director. But before and after Un Homme et une Femme, his sixth film, he has never accomplished an outstanding work; even the sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 years Later, was a disappointment.

Lelouch will be always measured against this seemingly one hit wonder – even though his oeuvre cannot be totally overlooked. All his life, he was the proxy for Hollywood films; the anti-thesis to the Nouvelle Vague and critics and filmmakers (with the exception of François Truffaut) in his own country never forgave him for this.

At a boarding school in Deauville, two parents, both widowed, meet: Anne Gauthier (Aimée), mother of seven year-old Françoise mourns the loss of her husband, a stuntman, who had a fatal accident on set. The racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc (Trintignant), whose son Antoine is abut the same age as Françoise, lost his wife when she committed suicide, after an accident at Le Mans left him in a coma. Both adults agree that their relationship is a friendship but they gradually lose their obsessions with their dead spouses, Anne after much hesitation, and, encouraged by their children find a way to reconcile their past with a future together.

Un Homme et Une Femme is that simple. Without frills and hardly any budget: after one month of pre-production; shot with only three weeks of principal photography followed by three weeks in the editing suite, Lelouch had to rely on the emotional impact of his leading couple, and, being his own DoP, his astonishing images: a mix of 8, 16 and 35 mm cameras, and an equally originally combination of black-and-white, colour and sepia-tinged colour grading. The result is a dazzling intimacy where the rowling camera translates the rollercoaster feelings of the lovers, against their will, into a spectacular obsessive romantic pictorial broadsheet. Carried by the music of Francis Lai, Un Homme et Une femme is the ultimate romantic obsession: images, like the one of the couple meeting in the station, are part of film’s potent chemistry and history.

But Lelouch’s masterpiece has still some detractors, mainly male ones, who call it – unjustly – kitsch. The lines between the genders are drawn: after a private screening for President De Gaulle and his wife Simone, she was left in tears, whilst the general wanted to know the breed of the dog on the beach. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016

The Dancer (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016 | Un Certain Regard

Wirter|Director: Stephanie Di Giusto

Cast: Soko, Gaspard Ulliel, Lily-Rose Depp, Francois Damiens, William Houston, Melanie Thierry

108min | Drama Biopic | France

THE DANCER is the story of Belle Epoque dancer Loie Fuller (1892-1928) who rose to fame at the Folies Bergères and became the protégé and rival of the more famous Isadora Duncan. The debut feature of filmmaker writer Stephanie Di Giusto, the film plays in the Un Certain Regard side-bar of the Cannes this year, more for its distinctively auteurish look and feel (as the strand suggests) than for the rigour of its narrative or performances. Don’t expect to find out more about either of these famous women as the focus here is on atmosphere, visual allure (dreamily lensed by Irreversible and Enter the Void’s Benöit Debie) and turn of the century styling and costumes.

Told as a linear narrative, it stars composer Soko – in the central role of Marie-Louise Fuller, who we first meet during a rodeo where he father Ruben (Denis Menochet) is a professional rider who is killed off early on in the proceedings. Fuller’s artistic leanings are illustrated in her sketch pad drawings and secretly rehearsals of Salome. She has a mane of dark hair but is stocky and rather gauche until, that is, she sets sail for her mother’s home in the Temperance Hostel for Women in Brooklyn and auditions for a part in a play, where she uses her ill-fitting skirt to her advantage during a sartorial mishap and ends up inventing her stock in trade – a strange swirling dance requiring metres of fabirc (not unlike that of the Whirling Dervishes). Yes, this dance catches on when she turns up at the Folies Bergères for audition, and snaffles none other than soigné French aristocrat Louis Dorsay (Gaspard Ulliel) who appears to be looking for a strong and emotionally unavailable woman, having just divorced his wife. And Louis Dorsay is a gift horse of the highest order who not only allows Loie the run of his fabulous villa and estate to rehearse her own team of dancers, but also appears to fall deeply in love and dotes on her every whim, despite their obvious physical incompatibility.

When Isadora Duncan arrives from San Francisco, in the shape of the comely but ultimately bland Lily Rose Depp, whose dancing scenes are deftly edited to make it look as if she’s dancing – it’s actually a stand-in. Things take a momentary turn for the worse, as Duncan appears to adore Loie to her face, but behind the scenes emerges as a manipulative minx with a few tricks up her tutu. Although Soko manages an affecting performance in the final scenes, THE DANCER is enjoyable while it lasts, but ultimately as forgettable as candyfloss. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12 -22 MAY 2016

 

 

 

 

Exile (2016) Cannes Film Festival 2016

Director: Rithy Panh

77min | Documentary | France

Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh is critically acclaimed for his documentaries that explore and focus on the aftermath of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. And he speaks with authoritaty: his family were expelled from Phnom Penh in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge. One after another, his father, mother, sisters and nephews died of starvation or exhaustion, as they were held in a remote labor camp in rural Cambodia.

His latest doc aptly entitled EXILE offers more footage from the past and pre-revolution Cambodia but nothing new to the present with the filmed imaginings of a solo man in exile eeking out his existence and going through the motions as he sombrely survives day to day in a pre-fab wooden hut, as he drinks rainwater and forages for insects roasted on an open flame. These are deftly intercut and invigorated with 35ml original footage of lively news cuttings and musical recordings of his beloved country during the ’60s and early ’70s, all illuminated by his initially poetic but ultimately tedious musings on a voiceover narrative. While his plight and suffering is noble and courageous, Panh’s fascinating archive footage is the only worthwhile takeaway here. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12-22 MAY 2016

 

 

Sieranevada (2016) | Cannes Competition 2016

Writer|Director: Cristi Puiu

Cast: Mimi Branescu, Mirela Apostu, Eugenia Bosanceanu, Ana Ciontea, Ilona Brezoianu

123min | Drama | Romania | France | Bosnia

Almost all of Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s films belong to slow cinema and a New Wave movement called meta cinema: and SIERANEVADA, his Palme D’Or hopeful here at the 69th Edition of Cannes Film Festival is no different. In a similar vein to The Death of Mr Lazarescu, this is a rich and rewarding drama that plays out as its protagonists take each moment as it comes during the lengthy pre-prandial preceedings. Intimate in scale yet far-reaching in its implications, the director’s fifth feature explores differing opinions during a family get together to commemorate the death of a patriarch (his father) which occurred the previous year. In Bucharest Lary (Branescu) is at the peak of his professional career as a neurologist,  just home from a business trip to deal with the assembled family and the arrival of the priest.

Lary’s mother sexagenarian Nasu Mirica (Dana Dogaru) invites the extended family to the small apartment which she shared with her late husband, Emil. The event starts with the usual smalltalk and bickering and the dialogue is sharp and dilatory, in common with other Romanian New Wave filmmakers such as Corneliu Porumboiu, Radu Jude and Razvan Radulescu (the latter also co-wrote Mr Lazarescu).

This is a meal that never gets started as the narrative grows more complex as a philandering husband (Sorin Medelini) arrives in a cloud of shame followed by Cami (Ilona Brezoianu) with a friend who is already drunk and ten or so members of the clan. Discussions run from the 9/11 conspiracy theories to Communism with Lary and Laura making us feel very much part of the scene thanks to cinematographer Barbu Balasoiu’s eye level camerawork that glides and darts from face to face and room to room of the crampted apartment as political, moral or religious views are tailored and compromised depending on which family group they belong to and has ultimately forged their identity from birth. It’s an occasion where Lary learn a great deal about himself and changing attitudes and perceptions of him from all concerned.

Amusing, complicated and opaque, SIERANEVADA develops Mr Lazarescu further but most of the characters and their backstories are not fully explored – despite its generous running time. Enjoyable though if you fancy a afternoon of Romanian cultural enlightenment in the company of one of the best Romanian New Wave directors currently on the scene. MT

 

La Quinzaine des Realisateurs| Directors’ Fortnight 2016 | Latest World Premieres

DivinesThe Directors’ Fortnight is a Cannes side-bar with a focus on auteur driven drama and documentary features that runs in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festival as an act of solidarity with striking workers.

logo_quinzaine_int_whiteThe Directors’ Fortnight showcases a programme of shorts and feature films and documentaries worldwide.

Divines (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere

Uda Benyamina comes to Cannes with her debut feature, a drama exploring themes of power and success through the story of a young girl who sets off on a religious pilgrimage but meets love along the way.

Dog Eat Dog (2016) | Crime Drama | US | 

Carved from a lifetime of experiences that runs the gamut from incarceration to liberation, Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog  is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by American crime writer Edward Bunker (Runaway Train) who also started a criminal career before making it big in the movies. This Ohio set action drama stars Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Matthew Cook as recidivists who need to hit one more jackpot before they retire.


Fais de beaux reves (c) Simone Martinetto 3Fai Bei Sogni | Sweet Dreams (2016) | Drama | France | Italy |World Premiere

Berenice Bejo (The Artist) and Valerio Mastandrea star in Marco Bellocchio’s latest drama  based on Massimo Gramellini’s 2012 Best Seller exploring a man’s emotional insecurity brought on by his mother’s early death. With award-winning cinematographer Daniele Cipri on board this promises to be a visual treat.

L’Economie du Couple (2016) | Drama | France Belgium | World Premiere

Joachim Lafosse (Our Children) returns to Cannes with this Brussels-set contempo drama that stars Berenice Bejo and Cedric Kahn as a separating couple with kids, forced to cohabit their beloved marital home due to financial difficulties.

Fiore (2016) | Flower | Drama | Italy | World Premiere

Daphne is in a juvenile detention centre, serving time for robbery, when she falls for another inmate Josh. Their love feeds on exchanged glances and snatched conversations in Claudio Giovannesi’s drama about forbidden love and a strength of feeling that threatens to violate the law.

SEQ 21, J4, Cours de natation Samir et Agathe

SEQ 21, J4, Cours de natation Samir et Agathe

The Aquatic Effect | L’Effet Aquatique (2016) | Drama | France | Iceland | World Premiere

The final feature of France Icelandic writer and documentarian Solveig Anspach (who sadly died of cancer in 2015). No stranger to Cannes, her film Stormy Weather was screened in the Un Certain Regard section in 2003, and she won the Piazza Grande Award at Locarno for Back Soon in 2008. The Aquatic Effect is a drama that has Samir Guesmi and Florence Loiret Caille.

La_Pazza_Gioia_04_(c)PAOLO CIRIELLILa Pazza Gioa | Like Crazy (2016) | Comedy | France | Italy| World Premiere 

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi joins Paolo Virzi for their second collaboration, a comedy, in which she plays mental patient who strikes up a friendship with a woman from a completely different background (Michaela Ramazzotti) while being treated in a Tuscan mental home during the Summer holidays (right).

Les Vies de Thérèse | Documentary | France | World Premiere 

Filmed here at her own request by director Sebastian Lifschitz, are the final days in the life of militant feministe, actress and lesbian Therese Clerc, who died in February 2016. She also took part in his 2012 documentary Les Invisibles, which explored the lives and difficulties of older lesbians and gays in French society.

Ma Vie de Courgette | My Life as a Courgette  (2016) | Animation | World Premiere 

Based on Gilles Paris’ book on the same name, this gorgeously animated family drama is scripted by Girlhood director Celine Sciamma and set in the French Alps.

MeanDreams_TheKissMean Dreams (2016) | Thriller | Canada | World Premiere

Canadian filmmaker Nathan Morlando (Gangster) makes his Cannes debut with a thriller set in Northern Ontario and starring Sophie Nelisse and Josh Wiggins.

Mercenaire photo 3Mercenaire (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere 

In his coming of age directorial debut, Sacha Wolff stars alongside newcomer Toki Pilioko, when they take off to play rugby in a big city on the other side of the World, and discover that manhood comes without compromises.

image1Neruda (2016) | Biopic Drama | Arg, Chile, Spain | World Premiere

Gael Garcia Bernal and Alfredo Castro again join forces with Pablo Larrain and his scripter Guillermo Calderon (No) in a biopic that explores the Nobel-prize winning poet’s time as a political fugitive in Chile during the 1940s.

Poesia_Sin_Fin_1_©Pascale Montandon_JodorowskPoesia sin Fin | Endless Poetry (2016) | Fantasy Drama | Chile | World Premiere

Chilean Maverick Alejandro Jodowovsky is back in Cannes with another fabulous family affair. Endless Poetry stars his sons Brontis and Adan and is filmed by multi-award winning DoP Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love).

Raman_Raghav_1Raman Raghav (2015) | Thriller | India | World Premiere

Vicky Kaushal was the star turn of last year’s Un Certain Regard romantic drama Massan. He returns to Cannes in Anurag Kashyap’s thriller that follows the exploits of the notorious 1960s Bombay serial killer Raman Raghav, played by Bollywood star Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Siddiqui also starred in Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) an epic drama charting the deadly inter-generational blood feuds that once took place in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

Risk_Film Still Julian Assange_Courtesy of Praxis FilmsRisk (2016) | Documentary | Germany | US 

Writer, director and activist Julian Assange has certainly captured the imagination of journalists and filmmakers with his political antics; Alex Gibney –We Steal Secrets – being one of them. Here he forms the subject of American filmmaker Laura Poitras’ latest documentary Risk that takes place in Britain (left).

DSC_7087

Tour de France (2016) | Drama | France | World Premiere

An unlikely friendship develops between an ageing art lover Serge (Gérard Depardieu) and young rapper Far’Hook, when they are forced together on a coastal journey from Northern France to Marseilles on the trail of 18th Century maritime painter Joseph Vernet, in this usual comedy drama from French director Rachid Djaidani.

Two Lovers and a Bear (2016) | Drama | Canada | World Premiere 

Kim Nguyen’s romantic drama has Dane DeHaan (Life) and Tatiana Maslany as lovers who form a spiritual bond in the remote town of Nunavut, in the Canadian North Pole (below left).

TLB_Still_17_credit_photo_max_filmsWolf and  Sheep (2016) | Drama | Denmark | World Premiere

With a cast of newcomers, Shahbanoo Sadat tells a tale about a mountain farming community in northern Cashmire and their belief in a legendary wolf with the soul of a woman.

LA QUINZAINE | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT | TAKES PLACE DURING THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12 – 22 MAY 2016 

 

69th Cannes Film Festival 2016 – preview

Banniere_horizontale_jaune

 

 

 

The 69th Cannes Film Festival presents its most ambitious and diverse selection yet with a Jury presided by Australian Director George Miller (Mad Max); Arnaud DESPLECHIN (Director, Writer – France); Kirsten DUNST; Valeria GOLINO; Mads MIKKELSEN; László NEMES (Director); Vanessa PARADIS; Katayoon SHAHABI (Producer – Iran); Donald SUTHERLAND (Actor – Canada).

Woody Allen’s glitzy festival opener CAFE SOCIETY, starring Kristen Stewart, hits the Croisette on May 11 for a ten day competition line-up with other Hollywood regulars such as Steven Spielberg with his screen version of Roald Dahl’s The BFG (out of competion), Sean Penn with THE LAST FACE starring Charlize Theron and George Clooney in Jodie Foster’s financial thriller MONEY MONSTER.

The American auteurs will also be there to celebrate: Jim Jarmusch with a double bill of GIMME DANGER, an in-depth music biopic with Iggy Pop and PATERSON starring an eclectic pairing of Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Driver and Jeff Nichols with his interracial drama LOVING, based on a polemical legal case that rocked America in the ’50s.

90Palme D’Or Veterans, Ken Loach, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year, will be back to cut through the glamour of the Croisette with some stark British social realism in I, DANIEL BLAKE and the Dardennes Brothers with THE UNKNOWN GIRL about a patient who refuses live-saving surgery and the doctor who sets out to investigate why.

Almodóvar’s JULIETA (right) has already opened in Spain to mixed reviews. His most ambitious film to date travels round Spain to tell a tale Hickcockian tale of motherhood and loss adapted from three interrelated short stories by Canadian author Alice Munro from her collection Runaway.

This year Britain has not one but two films in competition: Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank) brings AMERICAN HONEY, that follows a group of teenage workers across America starring Shia LaBoeuf and newcomer Sasha Lane.

In 2014 Xavier Dolan transfixed male audiences with his award-winning saga of sons and mothers: Mommy. Never to be left out of the fun, the 27-year old Canadian maverick is back with two of France’s most happening stars Marion Cotillard and Lea Seydoux in a film that sounds as exciting as his track record: IT’S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD

louteFrance is the best represented country but their well-known directors are inventively exploring different genres this year: Bruno Dumont brings an old-fashioned Normandy-set seaside comedy starring Juliette Binoche and Fabrice Luchini MA LOUTE, (left) in contrast to his usual menacing dramas. Alain Guiraudie, who shocked and delighted with his gay thriller The Stranger by the Lake, this year brings a more mainstream drama RESTER VERTICAL. After Cannes 2014 success with Clouds of Sils Maria, Kristen Stewart also leads in arthouse filmmaker Olivier Assayas’ PERSONAL SHOPPER: a ghost story set in Paris – offering her two goes on the Red Carpet. Marion Cotillard also stars in Nicole Garcia’s literary screen adaptation MAL DE PIERRES, which has echoes of the classic Madame Bovary and follows a wilful married woman who falls for another man. Let’s see if she can add a twist of magic to this regular plotline.

Paul Verhoeven is a director best known for Basic Instinct and Showgirls. His latest drama ELLE stars the doyenne of Cannes Isabelle Huppert in a drama whose plotline sounds not dissimilar to Catherine Breillat’s 2013 film Abuse of Weakness but her co-star here is Christophe Lambert of Highlander fame.

neonDanish director Nicolas Winding Refn last dipped his toe in the Riviera rave-up with the spectacular Only God Forgives in 2013. The fabulous thriller starred Kristen Scott Thomas in a standout role but the film had a mixed reception. He’s back with THE NEON DEMON about a model who arrives in LA and discovers vampire and cannibals at play in the city’s fashion world.

The Romanians will there in force with Cristi Puiu’s family saga SIERANAVADA and Palme D’Or winner Cristian Mungiu brings another family-themed drama entitled BACALAUREAT. Germany is also back after a long break on the Croisette, this year in competition with Maren Ade’s intriguingly entitled TONI ERDMANN, that concerns a troubled father and daughter reunion.

Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook has reimagined Sarah Waters’ popular Victorian novel Fingersmith into modern day Korea in HANDMAIDEN

Philippino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza once rocked the Croisette with his thriller Kinatay which never got a release in Britain, possibly due to its shocking violence. Last year he was awarded Special Mention by the Ecumenical Jury for his sensitive portrayal of Philippino suffering for his feature Taklub. This year he’s back with with MA’ ROSA a drama in Tagalog. At last but not least, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho, best known for his drama Neighbouring Sounds, brings another drama about flat life to Cannes: AQUARIUS is the story of critic and last remaining resident of an Art Deco building acquired by the developers. Determined not to leave until her death, sounds like this is going to be an intriguing and tense study about who we are and where we belong in time. MT

THE 69TH CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 11 – 22 MAY 2016 

Identification Marks: None (1965) Mubi

Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Jerzy Skolimowski, Elzbieta Czyzweska, Tadeusz Minc, Andrzej Zarnecki, Jacek Szczek | 73min | Drama | Poland

Jerzy Skolimowski’s debut sparked off two sequels (Walkover and Hands Up!); he also plays the leading role of an aimless college dropout kicking through the final traces of freedom before being drafted into the army for military service. Ever the outsider, rather like his compatriot Polanski, Skolimowski explores the motives of his recalcitrant character Andrzej Leszczye who is living with his wife but keeping his options open with a series of other women, hanging around Lódz with his dog (who has contracted rabies, and has to be put down) before jumping on train with his other friends who have been conscripted to the army.

Only 23 at the time, the young filmmaker flexes his artistic muscles with tricks and creative flourishes honed during his final days at Lódz, and the result is here in pristine black and white. Well-made and beautifully edited by one-time feature editor Halina Szalinska, Identification Marks has a lively unstructured score by Krzysztof Sadowski and captures the footloose ennui of Poland’s postwar generation, pictured to perfection in this carefree chronicle of this final day of youth epitomising the Polish New Wave. Skolimowski incorporates some of the footage shot during film school, using stock provided and the skills of his college contemporaries at Lódz. Now, nearly sixty years later his latest EO is running for an Oscar. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Hands Up! (1981) | Rece do Gory | Kinoteka 2016

Director.: Jerzy Sklolimowski

Cast: Jerzy Skolimowski, Joanna Szczerbic, Adam Hanuszkiewicz, Bogumi Kobiela; Poland

76min | 1967/1981 | Poland

Skolimowski shot the last part of his trilogy featuring the anti-Stalinist hero, Andrzej Lesczczy, in 1967. The completed film was withheld by the censors but was finally released in 1981 when he returned to Poland to screen a new version with a prologue of 25 minutes, showcasing his more recent artistic activities.

In 1980 Skolimowski played German photographer Hoffmann in the Volker Schloendorff film Circle of Deceit. Set in Lebanese capital of Beirut, it shows the widespread devastation of the country, but also features the filmmaking process where he discusses with Schloendorff the modus operandi of a German photographer in a war torn country. There are clips from pro-Solidarnosc demonstrations that took place in London and an exhibition of Skolimowski’s paintings in a gallery there. Images of Speaker’s Corner and gloomy shots of contemporary Warsaw round up this prologue that feels like a contempo newsreel of the era.

The original version of Rece Do Gory features the former medical students, now adults, travelling in a sealed-up railway compartment. Andrzej (‘Zastava’) (Skolimowski) is now working as a vet, the hero of Identification Marks: None and Walkover is seemingly taking drugs with his friends Joanna (‘Alfa’) (Szczerbic), Adam (‘Romeo’) (Hanuszkiewicz) and ‘Wartburg’ (Kobiela). But it turns out that they are only knocking back placebos and calling each other by car names; very appropriate for the director of The Departure. Whilst the anti-Stalinist parodies are biting, Skolimowski goes further back in history, lamenting the fact that the train the medics are travelling in could well have been used by the Nazis, deporting Polish Jews into the death camps. Penderecki’s mournful music reminds that Polish history is never far from tragedy. This is underlined at the end when the actors of the original film appear on the screen in the 1981 version – minus Bogumi Kobiela, who died, only 38, in a car crash in 1969.

Whilst it is difficult to imagine how the original version of Rece Do Gory might have looked, the prologue gives us an idea how Skolimowski would have developed as a filmmaker if he would have been allowed to work in Poland. Both parts of the new version are permeated by an overbearing feeling of sadness that connects the past and present states of humanity as a whole: there is little optimism, just different forms of melancholia. AS

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

Europa, Europa (1990) Mubi

Dir.: Agnieszka Holland | Cast: Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, Andre Wilms, Delphine Forest; Germany, France, Poland | 112 min | Drama | Germany France Poland

Polish director Agnieszka Holland follows her mentor Andrzej Wajda from Poland to France for this true story of Solomon Perel. Based on his memoirs, it focuses on his extraordinary escape from Nazis Germany and his successful time in the Hitler Youth.

Young Solomon (‘Solly’) (Hofschneider) loses his sister on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah at the Kristall Nacht Pogrom. After the family emigrates to Poland, Solomon flees with his brother to the USSR at the outbreak of the War, but the siblings are separated. In the USSR he fetches up in an orphanage falling in love with the attractive teacher Inna (Delphine Forest). After the Nazi army overruns his village, he burns his identity papers and calls himself Joseph Peters, claiming to be of German blood. The German soldiers take to him, and use him as a translator. In this capacity he helps to interrogate Yakov Dzhugashvilli, Stalin’s son. He witnesses the atrocities of the Germans against the Russian population, but has to stay quiet, since he is now the mascot of his division, under the nickname of ‘Jupp’ given by his protector Hauptmann Kellermann (Wilms). The soldiers deem that ‘Jupp’ should have a good education in Germany, where he joins the Hitler Youth Academy – but not before being seduced by a middle-aged Nazi functionary, Rosemary, who climaxes with an ecstatic “Heil Hitler”.

At the Elite School, ‘Jupp’ then falls for Leni, a member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädchen“ (the female equivalent of the Hitler Jugend). After a particularly vicious anti-Jewish outburst, Jupp abandons Leni, who soon falls pregnant by Jupp’s best friend Gerd. Leni’s mother, well aware that Jupp is Jewish, does not give him away. When the Russians occupy Germany, Jupp is saved by his brother Isaac, as the Russians (rightly) do not believe that a Jew could be a member of the Hitler Youth. Finally Solomon Perel emigrates to Palestine, where he does not have to hide his Jewish identity any more – he can be Solly again..

Jacek Petrycki’s visuals underline the epic narrative with long panning shots and panoramic views of the fighting scenes; the images often reminiscent of Soviet realism. Hofschneider is utterly believable as the naïve boy who has to fight throughout the whole film to keep his circumcised penis from view. Holland directs with great sensibility, struggling to control the rather sensationalist plot. This is not her fault: most feature films about the Holocaust are by nature melodramatic but this should never submerge the tragic events. Often unavoidably cliché-ridden, Europa Europa, is a good example of why – after Lanzman’s Shoah – feature films, how ever well meant, rarely offer new information on the crimes against humanity, and very often detract from the real events by unintended trivialisation. AS

NOW ON MUBI UK

A Woman Alone | Kobieta Samotna (1981) | Kinoteka 2021

Director: Agnieszka Holland  Writers: Agnieszka Holland, Maciej Karpinski | Cast: Maria Chwalibog, Boguslaw Linda, Pawel Witczak, Danuta Balicka-Satanowska | 92min | Drama | Poland

The gruelling life of a single mother is the subject of Agnieszka Holland’s humanist but harrowing slice of ’80s social realism. Irena (Maria Chwalibóg|Mother Joan of the Angels) shares her bed and bathwater with her little son Bob (Pawel Witczak) in a small rented room in Wroclaw. The landlord regularly switches off their electricity supply, babies cry endlessly next door and her job as a postal worker is physically overwhelming. To make matters worse, she is forced to care for and support her sick and mean-fisted aunt who lives nearby. So much for communism.

Intimate in scale but far-reaching in its implications, this heartbreaking domestic drama touchingly depicts the close ties of family and the devoutness of religious feelings in a small community; but above all the hopeless desperation of a woman who has no joy, warmth or affection in a miserable existence where she feels neither respected nor valued. The stress of her meaningless life eventually leads her to the town hall where she makes an emotional appeal for better conditions and housing, but is sent packing by the authorities.

Agnieszka Holland shot this sharply critical feature on a hand-held camera shortly before making Angry Harvest. As a woman she is able to empathise with the female need to express feelings of alienation and loneliness in a world where outside emotional demands submerge her central character’s wellbeing.  Holland ellicits a poignantly discrete performance from Maria Chwalibóg, who shows how the interest and support of a masculine presence allows her eventually to tolerate her situation and care for her dependents. This support comes in the shape of a disabled younger man, Jacek. Although she is not attracted physically to Jacek (an unglamorous but award-winning role played sensitively here by Boguslaw Linda), she befriends him, disarmed by his desperatation to show her love and just to be with her. The two develop a relationship of sorts that leads them to a brief moment of happiness until they realise tragically this is also a point of no return. MT

KINOTEKA 2021 

 

The Anatomy of Evil | Anatomia Zla (2015) | Kinoteka 2016

Director |Writer.: Jacek Bromski

Cast: Krisztof Stroinski, Marcin Kowalczyk, Michalina Olszanska

117min | Poland 2015 | Action Thriller

In his latest action thriller, Jacek Bromski (One Way Ticket to the Moon) paints a grim portrait of contemporary Poland. After the fall the of authoritarian Stalinist regime, which wanted to control all aspects of life in the country, Capitalism has brought liberation – but over the years, a new elite has developed – as it did during Communism – and those selected few live a rarified existence simply because of their financial means, connected to a global network of incredible wealth.

Professional killer Karol Lulek (Stroinski), has been released from prison on parole but is asked by his former boss, now the Attorney General, to do the classic ‘one last job’ for the authorities  who put him away in the first place. This involves collecting 100 000 Dollar and a new passport before he kills the Head of the Central investigation Bureau – who has become an obstacle in a multi-million deal involving American money.

Lulek reluctantly agrees but finds out that his sight is since impaired, making it impossible for him to competently undertake the mission. Instead, he finds a surrogate, the young sniper Stasiek (Kowalczyk) hounded down by a local journalist after he mistakenly killed an innocent citizen in Afghanistan. Lulek retrieves his hidden cash from a hut in the countryside, killing the woman who guarded his belongings. He then murders the journalist, hoping to get an emotional hold on Stasiek for his loyalty and trouble. Stasiek meanwhile, falls for a prostitute Halina (Olszanska) who works in a luxury hotel whence he plans to shoots the CBS boss, while he visits his Opera-singing mistress in the adjoining hotel. Naturally, the plan goes awry with disastrous consequences.

Bromski’s contempo Poland is a divided society where community and solidarity have given way to crass materialism, ‘get rich quick’ schemes and deteriorating human relationships. Values have deteriorated and led to indifference in a society ruled by invisible forces and subdued palette steel grey and brown; from the harshly lit scenes in the luxury hotel to the soulless streets where everything seems to be for sale. Lulek and Stasiek are grasping victims and perpetrators at the same time: each man for himself. Krzysztof Stoinski gives an award-winning performance as Stasiek: his naïve love for Halina giving him humanity and purpose. Bromski masterful direction concentrates on the interaction and motives of the characters; avoiding sensationalism. A sober and subtlely-nuanced study of a country fighting for a new identity. AS

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7 – 27 APRIL 2016

Durak (The Fool) 2014 | New East Cinema Series

The Barbican is delighted to present New East Cinema, a new bi-monthly film series accompanied by ScreenTalks, which begin in April 2016. The series is a collaboration between the Barbican and Calvert 22 Foundation, and is curated by The New Social, a cultural collective bringing contemporary cinema from Eastern Europe and beyond to London. It looks across the wide expanse of land that stretches from Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries and the Balkans, through to Russia and Central Asia to uncover the most thought-provoking, daring and vibrant cinema coming from today’s ‘New East’. The series begins with a screening of Yury Bykov’s hard-hitting portrait of contemporary Russia, The Fool (Durak).

Director/writer: Yury Bykov
Cast: Artem Bystrov, Natalia Surkova, Yury Tsurilo, Boris Nevzorov

Russia Drama 116mins

As recently suggested by Andrei Zvyagintsev’s barnstormingly brilliant LEVIATHAN, contemporary artistic renditions of Russia and its current socio-political landscape are perhaps all the better for being so ludicrously overblown. Yury Bykov’s DURAK (THE FOOL) is another hysterical snapshot of a decrepit state, as allegorised by a nine-story apartment block that’s on the verge of wholesale collapse due to four decades of administrative neglect. Dedicated to Alexei Balabanov, who died during last year’s Cannes Film Festival (where Bykov’s second feature THE MAJOR was competing in Critic’s Week), DURAK received much applause from a capacity audience this week at Locarno Film Festival, where it received its international premiere.

Humble plumber Dima Nikitin (Artem Bystrov) lives with his parents, wife and son in a cramped apartment. When he is called one evening to another block of flats in a district across town, his otherwise routine inspection of a burst pipe reveals an ominously sized crack in an interior bearing wall. Rushing to check the exterior, he notices two fissures going up the side of the dilapidated dwelling, and, after some quick bedtime arithmetic, reckons that due to its height and the degree to which it is tilting, the building is likely to fall down at any moment. Though the night’s late for ordinary folk, it’s very young for the town’s top brass, who are midway through celebrating the housing chief’s 50th birthday when Dima shows up to warn them of the impending disaster.

Bykov’s fanciful tale, of a lowly repairman taking on the local authorities on behalf of a community of disenfranchised drunks and their long-suffering wives, begins in a grippingly hyperreal fashion, making no qualms about the devastated and devastating domestic plight of the disparate working community at its centre. The long, choreographed take with which the film begins—in which an alcoholic’s daily rant to his wife and daughter escalates into horrible violence—lends a believable brutality that’s only magnified by the defeat with which the wife, tending to her bruised and swollen mouth, decides not to file charges on account that her husband needs to attend work the next day in order to secure a monthly bonus.

On the bottom rungs, volatility is never too far away. Even Dima’s situ is far from harmonious, as evinced by an amusingly claustrophobic dinner scene that boils over when his worrisome mother picks one trivial quibble with her husband too many. Though she’s quick to call Dima’s dad a fool, it’s her son who emerges as the film’s eponymous would-be hero, an honest working man who dares to address the insurmountable undertaking of saving and bettering the lives of those belonging to his own hapless class—a mission undone by communal indifference as well as in-fighting at the top.

In Russia, perhaps, absurdity is the only truth. Though on a storytelling level very little of this remains plausible, Dima’s Sisyphean task is cued by a smaller, perhaps forced metaphor early on, in which he and his dad repeatedly mend a broken bench outside their building. DURAK’s hyperrealism proves unsustainable, bleeding in the course of its proceedings into a routine symbolism. In some ways, things unfold like a more cynical update of HIGH NOON (1951)—in which Gary Cooper tried in vain to rally a town together against oncoming villains. Elsewhere, the gangsterism eventually displayed by the politicians is anticipated when Dima, perhaps channelling Robert De Niro in THE GODFATHER PART II (1974), assures two fellow plumbers that he’ll talk with the bigwigs tomorrow…

Though Dima is far from a card-carrying communist, we’re clearly meant to interpret the class consciousness he shows vague signs of as a doomed affair: if he’s not shot by the local government, he might just be beaten to death by those he’s trying to save. Such portrayals are not unproblematic, of course, but neither are they wholly inaccurate: organising any oppressed group of people in a struggle against their own circumstances is often a complicated matter. Still, Bykov’s depiction of a stunted, squalor-ridden community too frequently lacks compassion: indeed, like its self-preserving politicians, the film itself shuns these people to the margins for large amounts of its time—and having them all take a frantic, crazy-sounding Dima on his word might be one narrative convenience too far. MICHAEL PATTISON

THE FOOL WON BEST ACTOR AT LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2014 

Barbican Cinema, Barbican Centre
The New Social presents New East Cinema:
The Fool (Durak) + ScreenTalk
Wed 27 April 6:30pm, Cinema 2
barbican.org.uk/film 
Box Office 0845 120 7527

 

Deep End (1970) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown, Karl Michael Vogler, Diana Dors, Christopher Sandford

88min | Drama | UK/Germany 1970

Jerzy Skolimowski left Poland after his 1966 film Barrier to direct three German co-productions: The Departure, The Adventures of Gerard and the rather quaint Deep End which was set in London but was mostly shot in Munich, Germany.

In this prescient view of  ‘modern’ London, Skolimowski explores the burgeoning power of youth in contrast to age through a mishmash of interconnecting sexual and emotional encounters. Mike (Moulder-Brown), a naive and fresh-faced public school-leaver takes a job in the local public baths. He falls for his colleague Susan (a gamine Jane Asher), who is already involved with an obnoxious fiancé (Sanford) and her old teacher (Vogler), who seduced her when she was underage. Meanwhile, Mike is being harassed by a busty blond client (Dors) who fantasises about George Best while she molests him. When Susan loses a diamond ring given to her by her fiancé, Mike’s hormones are in overdrive as he tries to help her find it and their putative romance has a messy ending.

The Sixties are over in DEEP END and London is anything but swinging: the sleet grey streets a symbol for a down-trodden capital. Despite this, Skolimowski’s dialogue feels fresh and authentic and the detail spot on: Jane Asher rocks white lace-up boots and a yellow plastic midi mac and Moulder Brown, a sports jacket and white sneakers (he cleans the bath with ‘Vim’). Existential angst dominates these characters, each bleaker than the other but the tone is chipper rather than downbeat, often accompanied by the musical strains of The Can and Cat Stevens.

Mistreated by her teacher, Susan uses her fiancé to get even with her next love interest; she is a classic ‘victim turned abused’. Mike is very much the naïve bystander and the work environment alien to him; he is also a victim and, in the end, an abuser out of control. Susan’s teacher and her fiancé are both insecure, preying on Susan and her co-dependence. Diana Dors’ client is a throwback to an era (nearly half a century ago) where many people had no bathroom and were forced to wash in the public baths. Her obsession with football is also significant: long before the sport became a middle class hobby, football and its heroes represented a way out for the working classes, compensating for their dreary life: A visit to the match was a live chance to worship their heroes. Sex Education posters state: “What if a Man could get pregnant” underlining the emotional alienation between the sexes, despite the advent of sexual liberation and the Pill, DEEP END is still marooned in a world Of Victorian values, quite the opposite of the rosy vision of the ‘swinging sixties’, Jane Asher carries the film, a figure of feminine vulnerability fighting her corner in a sea of emotional turmoil that ends in surprising tragedy. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 -28 APRIL 2016

 

People With No Tomorrow (1921) | Ludzie bez jutra | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Aleksander Hertz   Writer: Stanislaw Jerzy Kozlowski

Cast: Józef Węgrzyn, Halina Bruczówna, Pavel Owerlio, Iza Kozlowska

Drama | Silent | Poland

On the morning of 1 July 1890 the acclaimed Polish actress Maria Wisnowska was found shot dead in her Warsaw apartment. Her killer was a Russian hussar seven years her junior named Alexander Barteniew, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years of hard labour and exile to Siberia. At the old Powazki cemetery in Warsaw a large monument in white marble was erected to Miss Wisnowska, and when Barteniew later returned destitute to the city he would reputedly be seen laying flowers and weeping over her monument before he eventually died in a Warsaw poorhouse in 1932.

The murder – and the revelations about Wisnowska’s love life that emerged during the trial that followed – were later fictionalised by, among others, Ivan Bunin in his 1925 novella The Case of Lieutenant Yelagin, Stanislaw Antoni Wotowski in Maria in the Bonds of a Tragic Love Affair (1928) and by Wladyslaw Terlecki as A Black Romance (1974). Inevitably there was also a film version: Ludzie bez jutra – the title of which translates literally as People With No Tomorrow – subtitled A Tragedy in Five Acts.

The film was directed by Aleksander Hertz (1879-1928), an important figure in Polish silent cinema who has been described as ‘the father of the Polish Film” and whose name appears in reference books and all the histories but whose films – along with Polish silent films in general – are as rare as total eclipses. People With No Future largely dropped out of film history along with most of Hertz’s other films until an incomplete tinted print was discovered in Germany’s Bundesarchiv in 2003; to be unveiled in Warsaw last December and in London, with a live musical accompaniment, at the Regent Street Cinema as part of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2016.

IMG_2167Although completed in 1919, the sensitive subject of a notorious and destructive relationship between a Russian soldier and a famous Polish woman (their two countries were actually at war between February 1919 and March 1921), resulted in two years of censorship delays, including changes to the title (it was also known as At the Time of the Czars and as The Barteniew Affair) and to the names of the central characters. The premiere was postponed twice before it eventually opened in November 1921 when, not surprisingly, it proved popular. The still reproduced here of actors Józef Węgrzyn and Iza Kozlowska as Barteniew and his fiancée contemplating Wisnowska’s monument, is possibly a publicity picture – and certainly didn’t appear in the print shown at Regent Street – but shows that the film was originally overtly about Wisnowska. In the film as it now exists, the two ill-fated leads are now named Lola Wirska and Alfred Runicz, but the film is vague about the period (it seems to be set before the Russian revolution, but a document is seen bearing the date 1919) – and the surviving version screened at Regent Street ends very abruptly!

Viewed after an absence of nearly a hundred years, People With No Tomorrow plays as a plush, very attractively tinted, if rather stilted soap opera in which Halina Bruczówna as diva Lola Wirska sashays through various elegant interiors – and some handsome contemporary Warsaw locations – in a variety of outfits that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Dallas. Wicked Lola doesn’t let the fact that she already has a fiancé interfere with her “weakness for jewelry” lavished upon her by the various male admirers in her wake, whose ranks are swelled by the dashingly-uniformed but unstable Alfred, who also has a fiancée. Alfred in this version of events spends a lot of his time kissing the hand of the object of his obsession but seldom seems to get much further, and after he is challenged to a duel by Lola’s indignant fiancé, his descent is swift. The film throws in a female Iago in the form of Helena Sulima as rival diva Helena Horska (probably based on Wisnowska’s real-life rival Jadwiga Czaki) whose intriguing against Wirska includes engineering the compromising letter that seals her doom. RICHARD CHATTEN.

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

The Devil | Diabel (1972) | Kinoteka 2016

Director|Writer: Andrzej Zulawski

Cast: Leszek Teleszynski, Wojciech Pszniak, Malgorzata Braunek

Poland 1972, 119 min.

Banned by the Stalinest censors, who saw a hidden critique of life in contemporary Poland in Zulawski’s second feature, he left his homeland to shoot L’Important: C’est d’Aimer with Romy Schneider in France before going back again for On the Silver Globe, a production that was blighted by the authorities who refused to allow him to finish the fSci-fi outing. In the end, a 146 minutes version was premiered in 1988.

DIABEL is set in 1793 during the Prussian invasion of Poland. Jacub (Teleszynski) lives in a religious prison asylum, having trying to assassinate The King. A mysterious man, clad in black (the Devil played by Wojciech Pszoniak), leads him to freedom but in the process starts making unreasonable demands on Jacub, who suffers from paranoid illusions; seeing life as a feverish dream where he is forced to save his country and family. Not surprisingly, he has had a dysfunctional relationship with his relatives. Returning home, he learns that his father has just died – committing suicide after raping his daughter, who apparently had gone insane. Jacub claims to have had sex (as a child) with his mother, who now works as a prostitute nearby. Meanwhile, his sister is living with his half brother and his bride (Braunek) who is pregnant by Jacub’s best friend. This together with his paranoid state, causes him to go on a rampage of gory killings, accompanied by a nun.

The film feels like Hamlet directed by Wes Anderson; the characters are all deranged and their insanity manifests at some point during the narrative. And Jacub does not see his father’s ghost, as he is living a phantasy nightmare where the boundaries between reality and dream are fluid. His reaction to all this is to kill violently. Andrzej Jaroszewiecz (who was also behind the camera for the abandoned On the Silver Globe) creates this crazed landscape with stunning intensity and a lucid palette that illuminates every gory murder scene in a different way. Whilst the narrative is enigmatic, to say the least, the overall impression is extraordinarily evocative.

Melodramatic performances perfectly fit this bizarre plot: whilst not making sense in a logical way, the weirdness gradually develops an inner stringency – the longer Jacub’s mad reign goes on, the more we tend to see the world through his warped perspective. DIABEL is not a great film, but a very exciting experimental one. AS

KINOTEKA RUNS UNTIL 28 APRIL AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON

Barrier (1966) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast: Jan Nowicki, Joanna Szczerbic, Taddeus Lomnicki

Poland 1966, 84 min.

After finishing BARRIER in 1966, Skolimowski left Poland to shoot the German co-production The Departure with Jean-Pierre Leaud. He returned to his homeland in 1967 to finish his Andrzej Leszezyce trilogy (that started with Identifying Marks and Walkover) with Hands Up, banned shortly after the director locked the final edit. Skolimowski returned to Poland in 1981 and showed Hands Up with a new prologue of 25 minutes. On the surface, the hero of BARRIER seems to have much in common with Andrzej but the comedy drama is aesthetically very different; the dream scenes here are very much reminiscent of early Buñuel – without being as cruel as the Spaniard.

The opening shot is symbolic: we see a half-naked male figure leaning forward on a table, trying to get to a matchbox about 80 cm below him. The man in question tries to gobble up the matchbox with his mouth, then has to get back into his original position, without falling flat on his face. What seems like a scene from a South American torture film, is a student’s prank: The future doctors are trying to find a winner for the petty cash they have collected during the year: the first one to be successful in the matchbox endeavour will get the whole stash. The students chanting in Latin makes everything even more sinister.

Skolimowski was not allowed to play the male lead role like he did in Identifying Marks and Walkover. Jan Nowicki replaced him as the medical student, a dreamer who loves jazz and girls – anything but his studies. “I have sold myself to the state for a scholarship”, he exclaims with humorous self-criticism. In his dreams, society appears as an altered state: not totally different from reality, but with a childlike eye for perfect solutions to ordinary questions. But the horror of the first scene returns and while the students in their dormitory stride along the white corridors, we hear terrible screaming. Suspecting the worst, it soon emerges that there is a dental practice next door to the Hall of Residence. When our hero meets a girl (Szczerbic) working as a tram conductor, two worlds collide: she is hyper realistic and sees life as a scheme where progress is made in little steps. But both have one philosophy in common: their contempt for the older generation (rather like in Deep End), stuck in the past – giving the film its title. Again, Jazz and poetry underline the mosaic narrative: “In this cynical and un-idealistic generation romantic impulses manifest themselves”.

But there is no romanticism, however bitter or twisted – the polemic is too fierce and the surrealism is sometimes so absurd if seems as if Skolimowski wants to escape from an unbearable situation. DoP Jan Laskowski (Night Train), creates dark, sinister images of life in a cul-de-sac contrasting sharply with the bland images of everyday life. BARRIER is Skolimowski’s most complex and abstract work so far. AS

KINOTEKA 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

Demon (2015) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Marcin Wrona  Screenwriters: Marcin Wrona, Pawel Maslona

Cast: Itay Tiran, Tomasz Schuchardt, Andrzej Grabowski, Adam Woronowicz, Wlodzimierz Press, Tomasz Zietek, Katarzyna Gniewkowska, Agnieszka Zulewska

92min | Horror | Poland/Israel

Director Marcin Wrona’s tragic suicide haunts this atmospheric tale of possession that opens with a suitably forboding original score from vintage Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki as a ghostly dawn comes to a bucolic village south of Warsaw. It seems a fitting tribute that the film went on to win Best Horror Feature at Austin’s Fantastic Fest

Despite this unsettling start, the mood soon brightens with the arrival of Piotr who has come to marry his girlfriend Zaneta whose rambling family property is the setting for the celebrations and their future home. Clearly the two are madly in love but preparations take a sinister turn when Piotr discovers a some human remains while digging foundations for a swimming pool in the overgrown gardens. Piotr soon forgets about his ghoulish discovery as friends arrive and the wedding gets off to a boyant start; but clearly something is wrong. The tone lurches from heightened melodrama to seething dread as Piotr undergoes some kind of physical transformation involving fits and nosebleeds. Itay Tiran gives an extrordinary physical performance as the bridegroom; writhing, gesticulating and quivering like a man possessed – and clearly he is. But Piotr’s break-dancing histrionics feels like a mere side-show to the high guests’ already hysterical partying enhanced by heavy vodka drinking (a very Polish wedding), dancing and singing to the gypsy-style band. He is only taken seriously when he passes out after an ‘epileptic’ fit.  Naturally, Zaneta’s father (Andrzej Grabowski) has his worst fears confirmed – he was always suspicious of his daughter marrying a foreigner – ordering the wedding to continue, not wanting to upset or compromise Zaneta’s day. It soon emerges she is not the only bride at the wedding.

DEMON is an effecting mood piece; a great example of how music, lighting and subtle camerawork can be used effectively in the horror genre. Wrona’s script has a solid premise: that spirits from past lives can come back to haunt and meddle with the status quo. The feeling of tension and unease is dramatically heightened by Penderecki’s fantastic score which together with some breathtaking visuals from cinematographer Pawel Fils, convey a surreal, otherworldly quality to the narrative until eventually lines blur between reality and the supernatural to create a compelling fantasy ghost story rooted in the present. MT

KINOTEKA LONDON | 7 April – 28 April 2016

 

Strange Heaven (2015)

Director: Dariusz Gajewski

Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Bartlomiej Topa, Barbara Kubiak

107min | Drama | Poland Sweden

Dariusz Gajewski’s STRANGE HEAVEN (Obce niebo) delicately tackles the thorny themes of the nanny state and immigration. Agnieszka Grochowska and Batłomej Topa play Basia and Marek, a Polish couple who havee to Sweden with their nine-year-old daughter Ula (Barbara Kubiak). Following very much in the footsteps of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt it works on an emotional level where basic human rights and dignity  (in the real sense of the word) are taken over by the most extreme form of political correctness, masquerading as the law, ignores the needs, wellbeing and wishes of both parent and child.

Ursula is having trouble adjusting to her new school and language (Polish to Swedish is a tall order) and has even been given a new nickname “Ula”. Basia and Marek are also finding life tough in a new country and their relationship is clearly under pressure. A social worker (Ewa Fröling) with time on her hands questions Ula and has come to the conclusion that the girl would be better off with foster parents, forcing her parents into the invidious and painful task of trying to get their daughter back from the vice-like grip of the almost passive aggressive legal system in Sweden.

STRANGE HEAVEN makes for gripping viewing but of the kind that will have your stomach in knots as you work through your own feelings about Health and Safety and the loss of normal social interaction in today’s world. It may appear as if the premise is absurb and far-fetched yet Gajewski is tapping into a growing malaise in our public authorities and welfare system that often beggars belief albeit with a narrative that occasionally overplays its hand to underline the seriousness and implications of where, as a society we are heading. Ism also very perceptive in here in delving into relationships and showing how the dynamics of a healthy family (with often rambunctious ways of resolving and alleviating conflict could easily manifest as unhealthy to the outside world, heaven forbid the beady over-protective domain of the average social workers who are either covering their own backs or ‘learning lessons’.

Grochowska and Topa are a convincing couple, their volatility and harsh words dissolving into loving embraces or laughter (perfectly illustrated in an early scene where Grochowska literally bursts out laughing behind the social worker). As their tragedy dawns on them they are authentic. Topa calmly analytical, while Grochowska indignance in completely understandable, winning her Best Actress at this year’s Gydnia Festival. And Barbara Kubiak – is just right as a little girl who is well-mannered and, like most kids, surprisingly flexible, settling down in her new home and mustering the language – much to the anguish and distress of her parents who are naturally less fluent, at this stage. STRANGE HEAVEN may occasionally veer on the melodramatic but it’s a moving and intense film that resonates for a long time afterwards. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 2016 | 7 APRIL

These Daughters of Mine (2015) | Kinoteka 2016

Writer| Director: Kinga Debska

Cast: Agata Kulesza, Gabriela Muskala, Marian Dziedziel, Malgorzata Niermirska

88min | Drama | Poland

Agata Kulesza (Ida)  is the star turn of this Warsaw set family drama that never feels downbeat despite its tragic subject matter. She plays Marta, the middle-aged daughter of a woman who suffers a stroke, in the opening scenes, and is admitted to hospital with a touch and go chance of survival. At odds with her sister Kasia (Gabriela Muskala) who initially falls apart, she also has to contend with their overbearing father (Marian Dziedziel) who is not a well man himself.

There’s a faint whiff of humour to Kinga Debska’s graciously crafted dirrectorial debut that gravitates towards the more endearing aspects of ageing parents and hospital life. And luckily Marta never takes herself or her family ailments too seriously. And this ironic treatment lightens the more serious issues that arise when the father, recuperating from an emergency brain operation, becomes obstreperous and difficult to handle, escaping from his hospital ward, not far from his comotose wife, to buy alcohol.

Clearly Debska has experience of family bereavement and she brings this insight and subtlety to a film that never trivialises the difficult business of survival and the mental anguish for all concerned as family dynamics shift in surprising and ultimately deeply moving ways. Both the sisters have their unique coping mechanisms, Marta, the most outwardly robust and irreverent (not dissimilar to her character in Ida), debates with the doctors and smokes dope when the going gets tough. Kasia is more flighty and sensitive – passive aggressive even – praying in church and calling her mother soppy names, much to Marta’s disdain.

Andrzej Wojciechowski’s cinematography makes this family portrait all the more enjoyable with its softly bleached aesthetic and occasional widescreen visuals of the capital and surrounding countryside that take a welcome break from the hospital routine in an impressive drama that clearly marks Debska as a talent in the making. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 – 28 APRIL 2016  

 

Goodbye, See you Tomorrow (1960) | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Janusz Morgenstern Writer: Zbigniew Cybulski

Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Teresa Tuszynska, Grzyna Muszyynska, Barbara Baranowska, Wlodzimierz Bielicki

88min  | Drama  | Poland

Infectiously light-hearted and expertly-crafted New Wave ‘Dolce Vita’ drama Goodbye, See you Tomorrow embraces the best elements of Polish New Wave cinema including its burgeoning talent: a breezy score by Krzysztof Komeda; pristine visuals of DoP Jan Laskowski, and a dazzling cast including Roman Polanski and Zbigniew Cybulski who also co-wrote the script (the two other writers: Bogumil Kobiela and Wilhelm Mach, along with Komeda would all die tragically by the end of the decade). Perhaps more than anything else, the film epitomises the restless optimism, tinged with doubt, of the younger generation after the war.

Boy – in the shape of Zbigniew Cybulski – meets girl (Teresa Tuszynska), the gamine daughter of a French diplomat. She taunts and teases him in the bars and streets of Gdansk and the beaches of Sopot. They walk, talk, debate politics and laugh during their carefree, free-wheeling flirtation that never really gets off the ground, but paints a buoyant black and white picture of the era. Fun and light-hearted Goodbye, See you Tomorrow captures a moment in time where Polish filmmaking talent flourishes and everything seems possible. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 7 APRIL – 28 APRIL 2016 

Provincial Actors | AKTORZY PROWINCJONALNI |Kinoteka 2016

KTORZY PROWINCJONALNI (PROVINCIAL ACTORS, 1978) is Agnieszka Holland’s debut film. Set in a small town in contemporary Poland, a Warsaw filmmaker (Burski) comes to direct a small touring theatre troupe in Wyspianski’s ‘Liberation’, a patriotic Polish classic. The main actor, Krzystzof, wants to make a name for himself, and tries to influence Burski to stick religiously to the text. But Burski has other ideas: he wants to changimagee the play into a sensational avant-garde version, cutting the text down to the bone. Krzystzof fights the director all the way, but after the premiere, he gives in, making peace with Burski, to save his career. But his marriage to Anka, a puppeteer, is on the rocks. Anka leaves her husband. She too, has come to realise through experience, that advancement in Polish society comes with a loss of innocence.

Whilst Holland’s actors as not particularly sympathetic – and usual gossip about which actress beds the  director; the gay outsider and an alcoholic – society is blamed as much as the individual. Anka is shown as an idealistic dreamer who still reads Heidegger, and is ridiculed by her husband. Krzysztof starts using great words like “homeland, human fate and freedom” from the play, to make himself look more intellectual than  the rest of the cast, but he is only too ready to fall in with Burski’s interpretation. A personal crisis causes him to run to Anna (whom he had just condemned as naïve), at heart he is a little boy who really wants to go back to the safety of his mother. Contrary to some western perception, PROVINCIAL ACTORS, which won the ‘FIPRESCI’ prize in Cannes, is not a thesis film, Holland declaring “I don’t know how far I have been successful, but in my debut I was less concerned with showing the mechanism of manipulation, and more with presenting human fate, in all its embroilment and entanglement. That is, I tried to highlight the existential aspect rather than a journalistic one. I didn’t want a film with a thesis, though I have sometimes been accused of this”. Although Well-acted and masterfully crafted, this is a great introduction to Poland’s first significant female filmmaker. AS

KINOTEKA 7-28 April 2016

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015) | BFI FLARE 2016

Director.: Stephen Cone

Cast: Cole Doman, Pat Healey, Elizabeth Laidlaw, Nina Ganet, Melanie Neilan, Daniel Kyri, Joe Keery, Patrick Andreas

87min | Drama | USA

Stephen Cone made his name with multi-awarded breakout drama The Wise Kids. Still only 35, his 7th feature is a coming-out story that revolves around a family swimming pool party in upmarket Chicago where the aponymous Henry is celebrating his 17th birthday.

In this die-hard Christian community, Henry’s parents and the huge majority of guests and friends are born again Christians, their lives guided by (often ostentatious) thankfulness to the Lord – or so it seems. We meet Henry (Doman) for the first time on the eve of his birthday, in bed with his best friend Gabe (Keery). The boys masturbate, Gabe enthusiastically enumerating the sexual high points if he could seduce the class-beauty – but it soon becomes clear that Henry’s sex object is lying next to him. The next day’s birthday party starts off on a dull note; the adults gossiping about goings-on in the church, where Henry’s father Bob (Healy) is a pastor. But the tempo soon changes when stunning beauty Christine (Neilan) arrives, the boys hanging on her every word, and it’s clearly not Gospel. Meanwhile, Henry’s sister Autumn (Ganet), is still coming to terms with the big wide world outside the God-fearing community, after her first year at college – she is also angry with her boyfriend who had somehow talked her into losing her virginity. Then there is Henry’s friend Ricky (Andreas) who had “got aroused under the showers when seeing the bodies of his mates”. He later tried to commit suicide, and at Henry’s party he locks himself in the bathroom and disfigures his face with a razor. Finally, it emerges that Henry’s parents also have a skeleton in the cupboard: his mother Kat (Laidlaw) had an affair with a popular church leader (now dead) his widow Bob in reminiscing about his ‘great character’. Although Bob has forgiven Kat, she wants to move on, but being the sole family member in on her son’s sexual orientation, she asks her husband to give Henry his blessing.

In this rambunctious drama Cone impressively captures Henry’s hypocritical family background, but tries to involve too so many sub-narratives that Henry’s story submerges below the water line. What floats on the surface is his shyness, verging on blandness, and it’s never clear whether Doman, choses to plays him meek and mild or whether he truly is an emotionless cypher. While everyone else is rising to the bait, Henry seems un-engaged, almost distant. Cinematographer Jason Chiu echoes this mood with some insipid visuals, bringing a suitably voyeuristic feel to the underwater scenes. While empathetic to Henry’s feelings, Cone never really delves into wider implications of the issue, preferring to sketch out a story involving a series of social stereotypes. At such HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY works better as a treatise on life in a devoutly Christian community, than as an involving drama of sexual awakening. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE | UNTIL 27 MARCH 2016

 

Welcome to the House (2015) BFI Flare 2016

Director: Barbara Hammer | Documentary | 79min | US

Barbara Hammer creates an expressionistic portrait of the fascinating early 20th century American poet Elizabeth Bishop, exploring her love life and her outstanding contribution to the literary life of the era (1911-79) through black and white photos, dreamlike collages and an atmospherically eerie and evocative score. Selective talking heads offer informative and enchanting impressions of their charismatic friend and collaborator who was given to peripatetic wanderings to exotic places where she could give full reign to her lesbian lifestyle during ’30s prohibition.

This is a sensuous and often mesmerizing piece of filmmaking and Ms. Hammer, no stranger to the lesbian subject matter, embellishes her largely experimental documentry with charmingly suggestive incantations often accompanying readings of Bishop’s poetry and verses, some of which are impressively avantgarde: “I’m so hot to trot; I’m so hot to trot”.

Early on in Bishop’s life, it also emerges that her mother was committed to an institution leaving her to the care of grandparents in Nova Scotia where her eccentric (for the era) love life involved affairs with women of all ages from her college tutor to her classmates.

Spending many years in Brazil, she lived a bohemian and often toxic lifestyle near Petrópolis with successful architect Lota de Macedo Soares, on her modernist estate. Here Bishop became an alcoholic and Soares eventually committed suicide with an overdose. Later, at Harvard, Bishop eventually managed to relax into her sexuality, and expressed it through suggestive clothing and louche behaviour with her friends – fellow poets Kathleen Spivack and John Ashbery – in the privacy of her home where she played ping-pong in tight leather trousers.

But the most fascinating revelations come courtesy of her Brazilian housekeeper who paints a vivid and vehement picture of one of America’s most imaginative literary doyennes. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE UNTIL 27 MARCH 2016

 

Women He’s Undressed (2016)

Dir: Gillian Armstrong | Doc 95’

Gillian Armstrong is no newcomer to exploring the lives of fascinating but lesser-known, niche designers: her biopic on Florence Broadhurst – another Australian designer (famous for her exquisite hand-printed wallpaper), and her ongoing documentary experiment with three Australian teenagers (now grown women) such as Smokes and Lollies, Fourteen’s Good and Eighteen’s Better, have received critical acclaim.

Her latest, a documentary WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED is as much a portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s as it is an exploration of the life of Oscar winning Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly. WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED plays out as part theatrical chamber piece, making good use of its stylish archival material,  photographs and interviews with well known talking heads sharing pithy and gossipy insights.

There are some stylishly imagined scenes performed by actors (Deborah Kennedy plays Florence Kelly and Lara Cox, Ginger Rogers) that take the lid off the fashion side of Hollywood film industry, giving the documentary an entertaining dramatic twist. Despite being largely unknown in his own country, we learn that Orry-Kelly was a prodigious talent who dressed stars in over 280 films during his lifetime including such legends as Baby Face, Casablanca, Some Like it Hot and 42nd Street. He literally  transformed actresses like Barbara Stanwyck (in The Lady Gambles) and Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca) creating a range of iconic costumes and stylish rigouts.

Clearly Orry-Kelly was gay, yet little emerges here of the costumier’s private life despite his candid efforts to be true to his ideals and authentic to the last: after marrying Randolph Scott, unlike many Hollywood characters, he made no attempt to cover up his sexuality by marrying a woman (unlike Cary Grant, Rock Hudson and so many others). Although not exhaustive, this is a watchable and welcome insight into Orry-Kelly’s life nonetheless. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

 

Girls Lost (2015) |Pojkarna | BFI Flare 2016

Director.: Alexandra-Therese Keining

Cast: Tuva Jagell, Louise Nyvall, Wilma Holmen, Mandus Berg

106min | Sweden | Fantasy Drama.

GIRLS LOST is Swedish writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining (Kiss Me) screen adaptation of Jessica Schliefauer’s prize-winning novel about three teenage girls who escape constant bullying at school courtesy of a magic drink. Keining uses slick ’80s retro styling and ‘CSI’ type computer graphics to portray the body-transfer scenes which are underpinned by a complex narrative exploring the true nature of sexual orientation.

In a macho school environment, three angst-ridden teenagers Kim (Jagell), Momo (Nyvall) and Bella (Holmen) cling together in a climate of sexual bullying from the boys, and a total lack of protection from their blasé teachers. One evening, Bella finds a mysterious seed that quickly sprouts a flower. After a night of fancy-dress partying (with masks straight out of Eyes Wide Shut), the trio imbibe the flower’s sap in a trance-like gender switching sequence where male actors take over their roles. Bella and Momo experience a boost of confidence when they morph back into their female identities during the daytime, but Kim is happier when she’s a boy. When the ‘male’ trio get invited to a football game Kim meets Tony (Berg), a tough guy from a nearby the estate. The two of them go on a burglary spree; Kim falling for Tony, whose harsh persona belies uncertainty about his own sexual orientation. Emboldened by the magic elixir, the girls seem better equipped to fight off male aggression at school: Kim is the only one addicted to the sap and Momo discovers her feelings for the male Kim, but the sap cannot last forever.

What starts as an adolescent-bonding movie soon develops into a serious discourse about the finer points of sexual orientation.  Kim is much more at home in male body than a female one. At the same time, he is drawn to boys, and rejects the female Momo, who has fallen in love with his male identity. What looked like at first as semi-lesbian trio, turns out into something entirely different: The female Momo is clearly attracted to boys (but not the one of the macho-variety she encounters at school), Bella is extremely shy and reticent, and has yet to discover her sexual identity, whilst the male Kim is prone to the male violence his female Alter-Ego hated so much. A big question mark hangs over female Kim’s future.

Keining’s direction is faultless but her script and particularly her dialogue is often trite and over-didactic. That said, GIRLS LOST is a daring and original fantasy drama made watchable by the visual impact of Ragna Jorming’s stunning cinematography. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2016

Sworn Virgin (2015) | BFI Flare 2016

Director: Laura Bispuri   Writer: Elviria Dones

Cast: Alba Ruhrwacher, Flonja Kodheli, Lars Eidinger, Emily Ferratello, Luan Jaha

90mins  Italy/Albania  Drama

‘Swearing Virginity’ is an ancient practice that still exists today in remote areas of Albania. Young women sacrifice their physical and emotional freedom in order to enjoy the privileges and rights only accorded to men, who enjoy complete independence and command the respect of the womenfolk in their community .

In Laura Bispuri’s sensitive feature debut, the sworn virgin in question is Hana Doda, played convincingly here by well-known Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher (Best Actress at Venice last year for HUNGRY HEARTS). As ‘Mark’ Doda, she eventually decides to leave her mountain home and seek refuge and a new life with her sister Lila (Flonja Kodheli) in Italy, after spending a decade of deprivation in a mountain village.

In Milan life feels very different for ‘Mark’, as she gradually adjusts to the modern world and a future of freedom, while constantly revisiting her painful past, seen in flashback. Feeling awkward and alienated by these new surroundings, it is never full explained why she continues to use her male name and dress as a man after arrival in their home. Teenage niece (Emily Ferratello) realises that things are not normal, despite her mother’s protestations to the contrary, and appears understandably hostile and questioning. Lila’s husband also seems to treat ‘Mark’ with a certain degree of frostiness, particularly when he sees the sisters experimenting with a new bra. It is only when she meets a life guard (Lars Eidinger) at the local swimming pool that Hana’s female longings start to awaken and her femininity blossoms.

Laura Bispuri adopts a less is more approach to her slow-burning narrative: dialogue is minimal, both in Italian and Albanian, and a stark steely blue aesthetic lends an aura of sombre frigidity to the narrative, keeping the tension simmering while details slowly emerge as the film unspools. SWORN VIRGIN is Based on a novel by Albanian writer Elvira Dones, the medieval practice stills survives today in backward mountain areas where brides are taken fully veiled by their husbands so they are unable to find their way back home. A bullet is included in their dowry by the bride’s father, just in case they fail to please their intended spouses. MT

Now SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FESTIVAL until 27 MARCH 2016

ERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015 – ALL OUR COVERAGE IN UNDER BERLINALE 2015

 

Three Farmers and a Son (2016) | Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film, Graz | 8-13 March 2016

imageDirector: Sigmund Steiner | Austria | Documentary | 72 min

Sigmund Steiner is the son of a farmer — and he wants us all to know it. Barely a moment into his feature-length debut THREE FARMERS AND A SON, he tells us in a quiet, reflective voice-over of his father’s trade and of his own bemusement at the longstanding notion that, for a farmer, tending to one’s land takes priority over one’s family. In the hope of coming to a better understanding of what is to him such a disconcerting idea, Steiner turns an inquisitive and attentive eye to the separate toils of three autonomous agricultural workers. Receiving its world premiere at the Diagonale, Austria’s national film festival held each year in Graz, Steiner’s finely poised essay-doc is a triptych of intimate portraits on the one hand, and a richly rendered landscape film on the other.

We establish each of Steiner’s three protagonists through a series of observational scenes. Matthias tends to a field of potatoes, shrugging a philosophical lament at his own son Dominik’s apathetic view of agriculture (Dominik shuffles next to him, hands in pockets, while double-chinned Matthias points to the flat expanse of earth behind them with his thumb). Fellow farmer Martin fells spruce trees: mammoth trunks land with dull thuds on a forest floor. Herbert, meanwhile, stands over a lamb as if its pending slaughter is a sacrifice to the heavens more than a routine task of economic necessity. “Thank you,” he calmly mutters seconds before shooting a bolt gun into the animal’s skull and slicing its throat. (Just another authentic slaughter scene on the arthouse circuit, but at least Steiner gets that inevitability out of the way early.)

Steiner intersperses such scenes with more contemplative, postcard vistas (sunrays cutting through clouds, the outlines of treed hills intersecting one another). All three farmers also give their time as interviewees, answering the filmmaker’s questions about their work, the extent to which it continues family customs and their concerns over what happens next, in the hands of an increasingly indifferent younger generation. Herbert in particular is nothing if not grateful for the down-through-the-generations traditions he’s had passed onto him, and dedicates himself to the task with an almost religious commitment. In one touching scene, we see him topless, silver-stubbled and sweaty-browed from the midday sun (head causing shadows on his own chest), as he reminisces about his own dad and about the one shared father-son moment that he remembers.

Born in the Upper Styrian town of Judenburg in 1978, Steiner studied under Wolfgang Glück and Michael Haneke at the Vienna Film Academy, and counts fiction shorts as well as experimental non-fiction in his wide-ranging portfolio. The steady framing of this impressively visual documentary most recalls his work as the cinematographer of Barbara Kaufmann’s shorts, such as 23 WINDOWS TO THE COURTYARD (2011). Like that 25-minute citywide ode to quieter, semi-private pockets of Vienna, THREE FARMERS evokes a vivid, even dramatic sense of place through shifts in natural light and a sensitivity to local sound. Look out for sun-kissed flies buzzing aglow against soil-brown pastures in one late-afternoon shot.

THREE FARMERS’ German-language title is HOLZ ERDE FLEISCH — literal translation, “Wood Earth Meat.” Bare necessities abound: it’s all earthen browns and olive greens here. Shooting in CinemaScope, Steiner demonstrates a sharp instinct for composition throughout: the opening image, of three distant (and distinct) hills at dusk, neatly cues the narrative’s tripartite structure. Later, silhouette figures on a horizon foregrounded by an avocado-coloured baize help reflect the filmmaker’s obvious appreciation for such earth-bound, year-round labour and for the topographical character of the space that defines such ritualistic patterns: its tones, its timbres, its colours. Indeed, but for the opening voice-over, one might have guessed from this evidence that Steiner was, in fact, the son of a painter. MICHAEL PATTISON

REVIEWED AT DIAGONALE | Festival of Austrian Film| March 8–13, 2016, Graz, Austria

Copenhagen Architectural Film Festival 2016 |10 – 20 March 2016

CAFx_mailbanner_2016COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURAL FILM FESTIVAL is back for its third year. From 10-20 March 2016, Denmark is host to the biggest architecture film festival in the world, taking place in three cities: Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg.

Amongst a selection of well-known classics and recent releases, the festival will be screening some lesser known treats:

01_IL-CAPO-STILL-600x400FOUR SHORT FILMS on Architecture, landscape and film history:

Yuri Ancarani’s work at the Venice Biennale IL CAPO plays with the extraction of marble as a kind of theatrical choreography. In SLEEPING DISTRICT Tinne Zenner creates a cinematic correspondence with moody images while John Skoogs latest work SHADOWLAND goes on excavation in Hollywood’s topography. Eva Kolcze uncover the architectural brutalism and binds its concrete buildings with 16mm film materiality of ALL THAT IS SOLID.

Il CAPO | YURI Ancarani | 2010 | 15 min.
SLEEPING DISTRICT | Tinne ZENNER | 2014 | 11 min.
SHADOWLAND | JOHN SKOOG | 2014 | 15 min.
ALL THAT IS SOLID | EVA KOLCZE | 2014 | 16 min.

TELOS_ProdStill_01-600x400TELOS: THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF EUGENE TSSUI (2014) 

Can architecture be a piece of nature? Meet an limitless resistance architect.

EUGENE TSUI is a radical visionary. Among his projects are The Ultima Tower, a proposal for a three-kilometer high skyscraper in the shape of an inverted spinning top and room for a million residents. Tsui indtænker its highly speculative architecture in great cosmetic mo-ecological contexts where as a contemporary surrealist inspired by natural forms. In trying to build a more sustainable architecture, which he calls ‘biological design’. Kyung Lee directs, writes and films this amusing biography of an eccentric and visionary architect.

ad35d36b53f48aac538e5cc67a8180cb-600x400ANNABELLE SELDORFF, ODILE DECQ, FARSHID MOUSSAVI, KATHRYN GUSTAFSON AND MARIANNE MCKENNA. Five different architects with only their gender in common. Does female architecture have defining feature and how is distinguished from that designed by men. A series of shorts about architecture’s sexual peculiarities – or lack thereof.

The display is introduced by architect and associate professor at KADK, Merete Ahnfeldt-Mollerup who b.la. will put the film in relation to architectural education, where more and more women are trained and equalizes the subject’s gender imbalance inside .

BUNGALOW (2002) 84min

Starring Trine Dyrholm, who has just won a Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlinale 2016, BUNGALOW is  Ulrich Kohler’s psychogeographical exploration of alienated mid-European youth seen through the eyes of a German soldier who goes AWOL one summer during hostilities.

CONCRETELOVEBOHMFAMILY-CMYK-1-600x400

CONCRETE LOVE  Recorded over several years, a documentary exploring the life of the 95-year-old winner of the Pritzker Prize, Gottfried Böhm and his architecture obsessed family. Filmed by his son and architect Paul Böhm, who will lead a Q&A after the screening.

Grand Theatre, Wednesday. 03.09 pm. 19:00 (opening film)

Grand Theatre, Friday. 03.11 pm. 16:40

Cinematheque, Wednesday. 3.16 pm. 21:15

COUNTING (2015)

Jem Cohen takes his camera on an whimsical tour of an urban voyage in this essay film which offers an amusing voyeuristic take on the street life in 15 towns from New York City, Istanbul, Moscow, Cairo and Porto to London.

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000)

Another urban symphony that examines, through a drama of interconnecting characters, human vulnerability and our basic need for companionship and connection in the increasingly-alienating urban communities we inhabit.  Roy Andersson writes and directs. MT

FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

Kes (1969) | Sadfest 2017

Dir: Ken Loach | Cast: David Bradley, Brian Glover, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland

110min | UK | Drama

Ken Loach’s family drama KES is social realism at its best. The essence of all things English conflate in a raw and passionate picture of sixties South Yorkshire where a wiry young boy called Billy Casper (played by David Bradley, a newcomer chosen from hundreds of boys) fights a humble underdog status strengthened by his devotion in training a wild kestrel found in the woods. KES has a luminous honesty that shines out in vivid colours and heart-breaking truth. This is really how the sixties used to be and Loach brings it all to life, just as you and I remember it: the brutal discipline at school, the respect but covert recalcitrance we felt for adults (seen in the giggling outburst following by welling tears during the caning scene). When Mrs Casper(Lynne Perrie) is talking to her friends in the pub, her naturalistic performance crackles with quiet despair. Loach coaxes utterly brilliant performances from his newcomers that puts even his hastily flung together agitprop I, Daniel Blake, in the shade. This is a film that zings with emotion, and is the spryness of real life.

Based on Barry Hines’ book A Kestrel for a Knave, this bluray restoration brings out all the vibrancy of the original as the English landscape looks more luminous as Billy masters the patient art of falconry while Colin Welland’s encouraging teacher looks on in quiet fascination (he had spend a week teaching to gain empathy with the boys). Brian Glover (who actually worked at Broadway Grammer) is comical as a the football teacher who insists on winning every move. Freddie Fletcher plays Billy’s elder brother as a a bristling bully. A film that feels prescient of a dark future that came from a decent place. MT

SADFEST 3-5 MARCH | GENESIS CINEMA

KES IS OUT ON DUAL FORMAT DVD/BLURAY FROM 7 NOVEMBER COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA LABEL

Per Amor Vostro (2015) | Anna | CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WEEKEND

Direct0r: Giuseppe M. Gaudino

Cast: Valeria Golino, Massimiliano Gallo, Adriano Giannini, Elisabetta Mirra, Daria d’Isanto, Eduardo Cro

109 min | Italy France | Drama

Director and co-writer Giuseppe M. Gaudino (Round the Moon between Earth and Sea) delivers a typically Italian tale of woe and a sensitive character piece for Valeria Golino, one of Italy’s best loved actresses. Anna is a mother of three, a martyr to her family who is clearly depressed. Overloading the already confusing narrative with various subplots, Gaudino chooses a mannered style which oscillates between moody black and white images and colourful phantasy sequences, leaving Golino to struggle with her subtly nuanced performance amid a fog of artistic experimentation.

In Naples, Anna is in her forties and lives with her teenage children Santina (Mirra), Cinzia (D’Isanto) and Arturo (Cro), the latter being deaf, and her violent out of work husband Gigi (Gallo), a failed singer, whose has previously led his family to near ruin. But a criminal streak run throughout the whole family: Anna served time in a  juvenile prison to cover up for an adult relative, who would have had to spent ten years behind bars. Now working in a TV studio, she writes dialogue prompts for the amateurish cast of a TV soap opera that stars another Italian favourite Adriano Giannini (as Michele). In a brief spell of euphoria the two become lovers but gradually black clouds drift in (literally and metaphorically) when a friend, whom she replaced at work, is murdered. But that’s not all: her family is again plunged into financial trauma affecting the lives of her neighbours.

Valeria Golino moves elegantly through this drama with impressive grace and serenity despite her purported mental instability and Matteo Cocco’s appalling black and white images and freeze frames which lend and air of artificiality to the whole undertaking: they lack any crispness because they have been probably shot originally in colour. In an attempt to evoke feelings of helplessness, her bus becomes flooded with water. Other artful gimmicks include clouds of ink which gather whenever Anna looks out of her window into the Bay of Naples. Obviously, Gaudino is trying to convey Anna’s mental illness in these symbolic sequences but the results are often overbearing and provide no real insight into her troubled mind. An often repeated kitsch-colour scene shows her as an angelic child, having to ‘fly’ from her window down to the yard on a secured rope. But despite her unhappiness she feels a responsibility to her kids, despite Santina’s turning against her on the grounds of her lack of enterprise in acquiesing to her difficult past.  Valeria Golino won the Silver Lion for Best Actress at last year’s Venice Film Festival for her portrayal. She is the only reason to watch this over-ambitious, but flawed drama. And, of course, Adriano Giannini who is superb as the quintessential Latin Lover, with his raffish charm and come to bed eyes. AS

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 10 – 14 MARCH 2016 |

I Am Sun Mu (2015) | Human Rights Watch Festival 2016

Director: Adam Sjoberg  Director of photography: Adam Sjoberg

80min | Documentary | Sweden 

A documentary that offers food for thought for cineastes keen on Eastern politics or artistic expression.

Sun Mu lives is from North Korea where it’s impossible to send a letter to the South. His work as a contemporary artist is not recognised in his birthplace so he has defected to the South where he hopes his spirited and cheerful style of political pop art will help to build bridges and unite his divided country.

Although he exhibits Internationally Sun Mu (which means no boundaries) never reveals his face or true name in Adam Sjoberg’s upbeat and vital documentary than serves as an appealing picture postcard to the region as much as an exposé on the artist’s life, his family and collaborators.

Sun Mu honed his craft for the Kim regime but now his social realist oeuvre is cleverly skewed to lampoon the dictatorship for all the world to see, without being remotely offensive. Sjoberg’s documentary joins the artist in the run up to an important solo retrospective in the Yuan Art Museum Beijing. The project isn’t without its risks and dangers that soon emerge as the film unspools. Sun Mu is the first North Korean artist to show in China without supervision from Pyongyang. Museum curator Liang Kegang – an artist who famously auctioned a jar of French air as a comment on China’s notorious pollution levels – takes this on board with the observation: “maybe being an artist is the only way to feel a little freedom in China”.

A vein of unsettling menace threads through this ostensibly vibrant story enlivened by Sjorberg’s strikingly appealing images. The director also finds himself in the thick of the action, making the story as colourful politically as it is visually, but always upbeat and positive There are also some delicately rendered animations to enjoy courtesy of Ryan Wehner and an atmospheric occasional score from Joel P West who composed the music for Short Term 12 and Grandma. MT

SCREENING DURING THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL 9-18 MARCH 2016

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Human Rights Watch Film Festival | 9-18 March 2016

The HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL is 20 in Britain! From 9-18 March Barbican, British Museum, Curzon Soho, Picturehouse Central, Ritzy Picturehouse

 will be screening a variety of powerful and poignant films that explore the most urgent human rights issues facing the world today from censorship; freedom of expression; the migration and refugee crisis and children and women’s rights.

The Opening Night film on Thursday 10 March at the Curzon Soho is the UK premiere of HOOLIGAN SPARROW which highlights the cost of defending human rights in China today. The Closing Night film on 18 March at Picturehouse Central is Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Academy Award nominated debut drama MUSTANG, the story of five rebellious sisters growing up in Turkey who suddenly find their family home transformed into a prison, their schoolwork replaced by compulsory household chores and their futures dominated by arranged marriages.

07-zvizdan-luka-autoThree films, and a special programme event, highlight migration and the refugee crisis this year. Andreas Koefoed’s AT HOME IN THE WORLD  intimately portrays ordinary children in extraordinary circumstances as they await the outcomes of their asylum claims at a Red Cross school in Denmark. George Kurian’s  THE CROSSING gives a first-hand account of the perilous journey of a group of Syrian refugees and their struggle to keep their sense of identity and purpose once they get to Europe, and Jonas Carpignano’s drama MEDITERRANEA charts the struggle of two Burkinabe brothers who cross deserts and oceans to pursue a better life only to face racism in a small town in Italy.

2 minutes for SyriaIn a panel discussion, Giles Duley, Kim Longinotto and Chiraf Kiwan will explore the notion of A RIGHT TO THE IMAGE that protects the dignity of subjects, as well as the integrity of the journalists, filmmakers, photographers, and researchers who work in these situations.

Complex ethical issues are also revealed in two documentaries. In JERUSALEM the director Danae Elon moves her young family from New York to her hometown of Jerusalem and intimately captures the experiences and endless questions of two of her young boys as they confront the reality around them. In SONITA (winner of Sundance 2016 Grand Jury Prize for Documentary and World Cinema Audience Award for Documentary) the filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami documents and ultimately alters the course of the life of the feisty Afghan teenager Sonita, who despite living as a refugee in Iran, where female singers are banned from singing solo, as well as her family’s plans to sell her for $9,000 as a teenage bride, remains determined to become a famous rapper.

SunMuPaintingsAnother artist as agitator is profiled in Adam Sjöberg’s colourful documentary I AM SUN MU, which delves into the life and work of the anonymous North Korean artist who defected to the south and worked under a defiant alias meaning “no boundaries” to criticise the repressive regime of Kim Jong-un. Offered a solo exhibition in China, Sun Mu prepares his show undercover, risking freedom and safety to expose the truth through art.

In Richard Todd’s FRACKMAN the Australian accidental anti-fracking activist Dayne Pratzsky takes on international gas companies in an effort to halt industrial-scale fracking in the state of Queensland. In his transformation from pig-shooter to global activist, he brings together a peculiar alliance of farmers, activists and political conservatives who unite behind him in protest.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL | 9 – 18 MARCH 2016 | LONDON | WORLDWIDE 2016

 

 

Stranger (2015) | Asia House Film Festival 2016

Writer|Director: Ermek Tursunov

Mikhail Karpov, Roza Kharyrullina, Erzhan Nurymbet

Drama | Kazakhstan |

STRANGER is Kazakhstan’s Oscar hopeful, a sweeping historical and folkloric parable that sees a fearless outlaw retreating to the hills during the country’s Soviet occupation. Set to a lively mix of folk and electronic music, STRANGER is also strong on visual impact but Murat Aliyev’s magnificent widescreen cinematography of the country’s snowbound mountains and sun-baked scenery cannot sustain the film’s lack of momentum or narrative vigour and its rather vapid, underwritten central characters remain unconvincing.

In a similar vein to Turkish director Reha Erdem’s 2013 feature JîN, that followed the exploits of a young Kurdish  guerilla (Deniz Hasguler), Kazakh writer and director Yermek Tursunov explores the travails of a resistance warrior Ilyas (Yerzhan Nurymbet) who decamps from his childhood village after losing his parents during the 1930s Soviet hostilities, and settles for a precarious, nomadic and spiritual life in a mountain retreat where his only companions are the local animals and wildlife. But Ilyas is gradually to fall from grace for refusing to join the cause at the outbreak of the Second World War.

This is a worthy and watchable portrayal of a slice of Kazakhstan’s past. That said, the historical background of STRANGER is quite patchy. It appears that Kazakhstan was traditionally home to nomadic tribes who had lived under their own traditions and mores for centuries until the Russian Empire claimed the territory at the turn of the 20th century and subsumed it into the Soviet Union during the 1920s. During Stalinist collectivization in the late 1920s and 30s, the Kazakh’s nomadic life was threatened as farms were forced into collectives to provide food for the burgeoning industrial cities of the motherland, resulting in the death from poverty and starvation of millions of locals. Dissidents deported from Russia, fetched up in the region where they lived also lived a bleak and rootless existence, as seen in the character of Roza Khairullina. But the main fault with STRANGER is a our lack of empathy for any of these characters who appear so faceless and sketchily drawn that by the final showdown we couldn’t care tuppence for any of them. MT

SCREENING DURING ASIA HOUSE FILM FESTIVAL | STRANGER IS KAZAKSTAN’S 2016 OSCAR HOPEFUL

Asia House Festival | 22 February – 14 March 2016 | London

ASIA HOUSE FILM FESTIVAL takes place from 22 February to 5 March showcasing the latest from Japan, China, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Afghanistan. The highlight this year is STRANGER (Zhat), Kazakhstan’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Academy Awards. A beautifully shot outdoors epic set in 1930s Kazakhstan, the film charts one man’s search for freedom set against the historical backdrop of the country’s darkest years. Tursunov and the film’s producer, Kanat Torebay, will host a Q&A session following the screening.

Other films to watch out for include the European premiere of Tursunov’s latest film LITTLE BROTHER (Kenzhe). A sleek, contemporary hitman thriller that pictures the future of Kazakhstan through the eyes of two siblings. Tursunov will participate in a director Q&A after this screening.

Also of interest is the Chinese workplace drama FACTORY BOSS, an engrossing depiction of the ‘Made in China’ hallmark, delving deep into the country’s manufacturing culture from the perspectives of the workers and the executive suite. The film’s lead actor, Yao Anlian, won the Best Actor Award at the 2014 Montréal Film Festival.

8A last but not least, Japanese director Shunji Iwai’s latest is the THE CASE OF HANA AND ALICE  (Regent Street Cinema on 27 February). A gently comedic prequel to Iwai’s 2004 live-action film Hana and Alice, it’s shot in an innovative anime style using real actors and sets. Other films to be screened include THE MONK (2011) , MINA WALKING (2015), 40 DAYS OF SILENCE (2014) and the documentary STATE OF PLAY (2013).

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ASIA HOUSE FILM FESTIVAL | FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME 

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NUNCA VAS A ESTAR (YOU’LL NEVER BE ALONE) | Teddy Award |Berlinale 2016

Director: Alex Anwandter; Cast: Sergio Hernandez, Andrew Bergsted, Gabriela Hernandez, Jaime Leiva; Chile 2016, 82 min.

A tribute to Daniel Zamudio, a Chilean gay man who was brutally murdered in 2012 by neo-Nazis, musician Alex Andwandter’s directorial debut is a tight and claustrophobic study in grief, loneliness and betrayal.

It follows Pablo (Bergsted) a young man still living with his father Juan (S. Hernandez), who manages a mannequin factory. The two have little in common and a poor emotional rapport since Pablo “showed a limp wrist”, indicating a lack of manliness in a society dominated by macho-values and masculine role models.

Whilst his father works long hours, Pablo takes ballet lessons and hangs out with his longterm friend Felix (Leiva) and Lucy (G. Hernandez), who has a crush on him. When Pablo and Lucy are chased by two homophobic young men, who, with the help of Felix, corner Pablo and beat him so severely, that he falls into a coma his father is naturally distraught, but worse is to follow: due to a glitch the health insurance is declared partly invalid. Then an old “friend of the family” admits she asked Felix and the men who beat Pablo up, “to be nice to the gay man, because he is different from you”. Juan loses it and confronts Felix, who denies any wrong doing. Juan, having raised Pablo single-handedly from a boy, can’t take any more. Having been lonely for most his life – after his much younger wife left him – he  decides he has to change his cautious way of life.

Far from being an over-excited melodrama, YOU’ll NEVER BE ALONE is a concise, ruminative and claustrophobic study in grief, betrayal and loneliness. Darkness (literally and contents wise) dominates: in a world of semi-daekness, and all the interiors feel oppressively, particularly the ghostly shop window mannequins factory, which seems to be underground. Juan has retreated into an inner world; his house is neglected, and Pablo’s room, is more like a prison cell. The hospital corridors, where Juan meets a helpful nurse, are more like a morgue than a place for the living. DOP Matias Illanes captures at atmosphere of tension which plays like the endgame of a relentless chess match where the players are slowly and tortuously extinguished. Sergio Hernandez carries himself like an old fashioned hero from a ’40s film noir: beaten already, before the first blows rain down on his son. This harrowing, mournful and forlorn debut is relentless and leaves the audience heartbroken. Far from being an melodramatic meltdown, YOU’LL NEVER BE ALONE  is ruminative and dark in tone and texture, locked down in a world of negativity and isolation. AS

BERLINALE RUNS 11 -21 FEBRUARY 2016 | FORUM SECTION | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Invention (2015) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Mark Lewis

78min | Documentary | Canada

With INVENTION Mark Lewis creates a visual masterpiece of the built environment. Moving silently and stealthily through urban landscapes, his voyeuristic camera pictures architecture from every angle, sometimes in reverse, sometimes from above from Hitchcock’s famous God’s eye perspective. His wide-angle lens glides round the structures exploring and exposing elevations and staircases, planes and surfaces, light and darkness, spiralling round and panning into hidden corners in this intoxicating exposé of the places where we work, play and walk.  This is cinema at its most visually exhilarating; psychogeography in full swing.

In his visual anthology Toronto-based visual artist Mark Lewis takes us on a whirling tour of cityscapes moving effortlessly through Paris, Sao Paulo and Toronto. From famous corners of the Louvre Museum to the modernist buildings of Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil and Mies van der Rohe in Canada, INVENTION offers a whirling tour of cityscapes. Lewis eschews a formal narrative or any sound in this calm and contemplative take on the buildings we inhabit, the squares where we meet and the spaces where we congregate. A paean to our physical environment, INVENTION shows how our built environment can effect the way we think, work, live and relate just as crucially as the weather.

INVENTION is an exhilarating experimental work, a contemporary take of Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, inviting us to explore and contemplate the world we live in while we’re not there and from a purely visual stance along the lines of Heinz Emigholz’s Parabeton only much better: it’s a cinematic journey through space and form. MT

REVIEWED DURING BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 

Des nouvelles de la planète Mars (News from planet Mars) | Berlinale | Out of Competition

Director: Dominik Moll (Lemming, Harry, He’s Here to Help)

Cast:  François Damiens, Vincent Macaigne, Veerle Baetens, Jeanne Guittet, Tom Rivoire

France | Belgian | Drama | World premiere – Out of competiton

When Francois Damiens floats in from Space to his comfortable flat in Brussels, we immediately warm to his laid-back character: a philosophical, divorced dad and the star turn of Dominik Moll’s latest (but not weirdest) comedy feature.

As Philippe Mars he makes the best of his tedious life fathering two insolent kids and ocassionally watching his anchorwoman ex wife on the television. Good-natured in the extreme he’s the sort of guy who picks up the dogpoo left by wayward pooches and makes light of it. And when his work colleague accidentally chops his ear off with a meat cleaver, he’s also the sort who lets this colleague overstay his welcome in the spare room, after he breaks out of his mental hospital on the auspices of feeling uncomfortable amongst the other weirdos. But gradually it takes this sort of psychotic psychopath to bring Mars to his senses and say goodbye to his mediocre existence and realise: there’s more to life than this.

Sharply scripted by co-writer Gilles Marchand to highlight today’s more irritating aspects, this surreal and seriously hilarious Belgian French affair will go down well with audiences everywhere. Some poetic realist touches (his dead mum and dad are often beamed up in miniature, offering warm parental advice), and dream sequences where he floats in a spacesuit  add to upbeat absurdity of it all and show that Mars’ life is spiralling seriously out of control, as he rapidly becomes a doormat to all and sundry; including his sister and his unwelcome guest’s new girlfriend Chloe (Baetens), an animal activist who joins in the rampant abuse of his kindness.

Practically everyone in his Mars’ life has personality disorders, but Mars just tolerates them all good-naturedly, allowing them to exploit him at every turn: his precocious daughter Sarah (Jeanne Guittet) tells him to ‘get a life’, his son Gregoire (Tom Rivoire) turns vegetarian and barely congratulates him on his 49th birthday, his sister drops her dog off against his wishes and his boss (Julien Sibre) knows Philippe asks him to share his office with troubled misfit Jerome (Vincent Macaigne/Eden), which leads to the ear incident (he carries the meat cleaver to ‘calm him’ but clearly this fails to work.). And as a final indignity he’s forced to pussyfoot around the courting couple of Peta-style activists in his own home. But when these animal lovers announce they are planning to blow up a nearby poultry-processing plant, Mars puts his foot down.

Moll’s dramady soon descends into a delicious dark comedy with cartoonish moments as the entire crew, including the downstairs neighbour (who used to be Valerie Giscard d’Estaing’s chauffeur), head off to boycott the new factory. NEWS FROM THE PLANET MARS is a cheery crowd-pleaser loud that is all about a decent man retrieving his rightful place as head of his family. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 February 2016 | follow our coverage under BERLINALE 2016

Smrt u Sarajevu / Death in Sarajevo (2016) Bergamo Film Meeting

imageDir: Danis Tanović | ‘Cast: Jacques Weber, Snežana Vidović, Izudin Bajrović, Vedrana Seksan, Muhamed Hadžović, Faketa Salihbegović-Avdagić, Edin Avdagić | Drama | France / Bosnia Herzegovina, 85’

In DEATH IN SARAJEVO Danis Tanovic returns to his roots to pick the festering scab of Bosnia’s bloody past with a film that will have little appeal to those beyond its boundaries, unless devotees of Balkan history.

Punchy and to the point, the Oscar winning director wastes no time in getting down and dirty with a rather dusty and dog-eared snapshot of history taking place on the centenary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, the death that catapulted Europe into the First World War. In a ‘luxury’ debt-ridden hotel, built for the 1984 Olympics but now looking rather tired and hasbeen, the manager Omer (Izudin Bajrovic) is avidly preparing for a VIP dinner. Always on the move, his efficient head receptionist Lamija (Jennifer Lopez-a-like Snezana Vidovic) is strutting around in high heels making sure everything goes to plan, while downstairs her rotund mother Hatidza (Faketa Salihbegovic-Avdagic) rouses colleagues into strike action over unpaid wages.

Loosely adapted from Hotel Europe, a play by Bernard-Henri Levy that was recently performed in Sarajevo by Jacques Weber, the man himself returns as a version of himself, to address the assembled dignitaries. On his arrival, Omer assures the Frenchman of the hotel’s gold plated credentials and illustrious former guests such as Bill Clinton and Angelina Jolie, before the French retires to polish up his oratory. The hotel’s less public areas also harbour a collection of brutal Bosnian gangsters, who are doing their drug-related stuff in basement corridors while upstairs Omer tries to maintain a brave face on impending doom. On a rooftop location, Robert Paxton-style news reporter Vedrana (Vedrana Seksan) is debating Sarajevo’s war-torn history with a Serb nationalist (Muhamed Hadzovic) who oddly has the same name as Ferdinand’s assassion, Gavrilo Princip, but is infact a distant relative. Naturally, Princip was a divisive figure in Bosnian politics and Vedrana lays into the young Serb in a vituperative onslaught. He too is bitter and the pair wrangle, making their scenes together feel like a preachy lecture where sparks fly but attempts to clarify history remain mired in anger and reproach.

Despite the director’s best efforts, this potential noir thriller feels overly didactic, lacking the subtle nuance that could have made it the slow-burning psychological thriller suggested by its edgy posterwork. All the elements are there: intrigue, gangsters, suggestive locations and a sexually predatory lead, but it lacks the dramatic torque to make it really gripping and suspenseful. In the event, it feels tediously confusing rather than satisfyingly complex, seeking to raise a gritty debate without bringing anything new to the table. If you hoped for clarification – none is offered; if you hoped for entertainment – you get a punch on the nose. DEATH IN SARAJEVO entices us to a party but the bouncers send us briskly home. MT

BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2022 | EUROPE, NOW DENIS TANOVIC SPOTLIGHT

Brothers of the Night (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director|Writer: Patric Chiha, With: Ebba Sinzinger, Vincent Lucassen | Documentary | 88min | Austria 

Brothers of the Night are just that. In an underworld, against the backdrop of the Danube and Vienna’s skyline, these sultry little leather-clad pixies come from Roma origins in Bulgaria to try their luck and make a fast buck as bisexual prostitutes with over-inflated opinions of themselves and their sexual allure but gathering strength, comfort and a sense of community from their close brotherhood, far away from home. Cigarettes and mobile phones are their props as they coyly toy with the camera in Patric Chiha’s contempo snapshot of the Austrian capital’s underbelly.

Lacking a formal the documentary simply meanders through the various stories of these Bulgarian adventurists who arrive in Vienna in search of ‘normal’ work dreaming of a city paved with gold. But it doesn’t take them long before they realise that there’s easy money to be made in the sex trade and so they quickly slip into a life of nocturnal seduction, selling their bodies to all sorts without a qualm; ‘doing business’ with straight men, gays and the transgender brigade, in a bid to support their kids back home and wives they often no longer love. Klemens Hufnagl’s opening wide angle shots of the Danube give way to more exotic and vibrantly filmed intimate interior scenes where the boys talk candidly to the camera and to each other, recounting their sexual adventures with a certain sense of pride as they trade and exchange tips on how best to leverage their sexual favours and make money ‘between the sheets.’ An eclectic soundtrack of ethnic and classical music elevates this spicy insight into Vienna’s Roma community, but offers little more than mild titillation for the LGBT crowd . MT

BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT PREMIERES AT BERLINALE 2016 | PANORAMA DOKUMENTE STRAND

 

Young Wrestlers (2016) | Berlinale 2016

YOUNG WRESTLERS (GENC PEHLIVANLAR)

Director: Mete Gümürhan, Documentary; Netherlands/Turkey 2016, 89 min.

Dutch/Turkish director Mete Gümürhan uncovers the disciplined world of young wrestlers between the ages of seven and twelve, housed in a training school where most of them dream of success in Turkey’s Number One sport.

And this is no ordinary sport: the players douse themselves in olive oil – and children also take part in their own tournaments running alongside those of the adults. Apart from their rigorous training sessions, in and out of doors, the weighing procedures take most of the film’s 89 minute running time. Again and again, the boys face criticism either for eating too much (“no more coke and crisps”), or too little (“You have to eat two plates full from now on”.) In the morning, before school, the boys go to the mosque where they are reminded of their religious duties. The coaches are harsh: a boy of around ten is told “childhood is over”. Discouraged from showing pain the boys even fight with dislocation injuries. In the classroom, at RE, they are again reminded not to be weak, not to show their frailties. But on occasional visits, their parents underscore these spartan qualities. “You will have to become a man”, one mother tells her son. But one boy rebels, he is homesick and threatens to the throw himself out of the window. When the coach refuses to let him go, he argues cleverly “I will lose on purpose and then you will let me go”. The film ends on a rather downbeat note: five boys have been selected to fight in a tournament in a provincial capital, but only one of them is victorious. The losers are very self-critical, even naming friends who would have done better.

The doc is impressively shot by cinematographer Andre Jager, also working on his debut feature. Mete Gümürhan’s approach is non-judgemental and detached; audiences can form their own opinions of this unusual sport. YOUNG WRESTLERS is a study in how organised sport, competitiveness, religious rigor and rather outdated male values go together in forming a successful sportsperson and athlete. The gruelling training exercises, interesting only for hardcore fans of the sport, detract from the psychological warfare the boys are exposed to. This is an impressive documentary and an illuminating study of the national game that will appeal to sporty kids and teenagers but little appeal to mainstream audiences. AS

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

 

Deadweight (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Axel Koenzen  Writers: Axel Koenzen, Boris Doran, Horst Markgrave

Cast: Tommi Korpela, Ema Vetean, Manuelito Acido, Archie Alemania, Jeanne Balibar, Frank Lammers

78min Finland | Drama 

Axel Koenzen’s debut feature sets sail on the high seas where a Finnish Master steers his cargo vessel into the stormy waters of a crisis.

This realist drama has echoes of two recent marine-based films: Fidelio: Alice’s Journey and Mauro Herce’s documentary Dead Slow Ahead bringing us bang up to date with the harsh realities of life in the commercial shipping industry where time is the essence when meeting cargo delivery deadlines. Tommi Korpela plays the poker-faced captain in this paradoxically straightforward set of events that slowly draws us under its spell. Koentzen has also cast revered French arthouse actor Jeanne Balibar as a medical officer who joins the ship to investigate an accident at sea whose ripples will have increasingly far-reaching ettects in this voyage from Savannah (US) to Rotterdam.

We first meet the hooded Ahti Ikonen as he slinks into view and lingers suspiciously before boarding the vessel, in a scene that cast aspersions on the nature of his intentions. But he soon takes professional charge and we are swept into the daily rigours of life on board: the intricacies of machinery, stock-checking and general workings of this vast vessel. The predominantly Filipino crew are keen to get home and are ready to do overtime to finance their growing family responsibilities. Relaxed; they chat, play draughts and watch TV but it soon emerges that there has been an accident during lashing the large containers on board. This is a task primarily reserved, under union rules, for trained dockers rather than crew, but to make up time and get the vessel to Rotterdam for her deadline, it appears that union rules have been flouted with crew members undertaking the onerous job with and that one of them has suffered a blow to his head. All this emerges in a matter of fact way and low key way and James (Manuelito Acido), the man in question, is calm and lucid but expresses an angry desire to rest. He is later found dead. Judging by his disgruntlement with his wife – expressed in idle conversation in the locker room – it’s assumed this is a suicide rather than an accident but Koentzen leaves it open.

Whether Ikonen is being coldly professional or merely ambivalent is a question that plays on our minds throughout this taught but alienating feature. James’ death will have serious consequences for Ikonen and his second officer Martinescu (Ema Vetean), who initially bear up stoically but are gradually haunted by regret during a boozy evening of karaoke with the other crew members.

Cinematographer Alexander Gheorghiu’s sparkling images play around creatively with some inventive touches including occasional blackouts which serve to further alienate us and ramp up the tension in this slightly unnerving yet remarkable debut. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | FORUM | BERLINALE 2016

 

Mahana | The Patriarch (2016) | Berlinale 2016 | In Competition

Director: Lee Tamahori  Writer: John Collee

Cast: Temuera Morrison, Akuhata Keefe, Nancy Brunning, Jim Moriaty, Regan Taylor, Maria Walker

90mins  | Drama | New Zealand

Lee Tamahori’s impressively-crafted Golden Bear hopeful is set in the lush landscapes of 1960s New Zealand. This tale of feuding sheep-farming families, the Mahanas and the Poatas, plays out like Little House on the Prairie meets the Maoris. As worthy as the hills, its theme of tribal justice, family honour and honest toil are as evergreen as the verdant forests of its east island location.

Based on the book by Witi Ihimaera, Once Were Warriors star Temuera Morrison leads the healthy-looking cast as Grandfather Mahana, a fierce bully who frightens everyone but his teenage grandson and heir in the pipeline, Simeon (Akahuta Keefe). The youngster, a keen film buff, must prove himself; and he will, and bring the two families together.

Scripted by John Collee, this is a drama entirely without drama or tension; a saga that rolls on smoothly to its unsurprisingly comfy conclusion; neither frightening the horses, nor delivering any tears of sadness on the way. There is a vaguely twisty plotline but nothing suspenceful or unsuitable for all the family to enjoy. Rather like caramel blancmange on a sunday afternoon, THE PATRIARCH is a film bathed in burnished goodness, extolling the virtues of decent family life until the narrative torpor eventually chugs home to its rightful and cosy climax with lines such as “she’s sixty, how can she be in love?” of Mrs Mahana who is married to Grandfather Mahana. THE PATRIARCH manages to peddle an agenda seeking racial equality while riding roughshod over the sensibilities of every woman over the age of thirty and some men too. A real Hallmark treat. MT

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY | ALL THE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Nakom (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: T.W. Pittman, Kelly Daniela Norris

Cast; Jacob Ayanaba, Grace Ayariga, Abdul Aziz; Ghana/USA, 90 min.

NAKOM is the first feature film from Ghana ever to screen in Berlinale and a very worthwhile contribution is it too. Co-director Pittman spent two years collaborating with the US Peace Corp in the village that gave the film its title.

Iddrisu (Ayanaba) is enjoying his medical studies in the big city: his work is promising and he is happy with his girlfriend. But then, out of the blue, he finds out his father has been killed in a motorcycle accident, and being the oldest son of the family, has to return home. A mountain of family debt emerges when going through his father’s affairs and the family farm is run down. Confronted by the old, traditional set-up, Iddrisu finds life at home very problematic. His uncle suggests toughly: ‘I can marry your mother and throw you out of the house, if I want to’. Iddrisu is appalled to see how young women are treated in the village; and he feels himself regressing: he is a newcomer, who is out of touch. Gender roles and a strict hierarchy mean that Iddrisu has to make a big decision.

NAKOM was a challenging film to make. The four month shooting was made extremely difficult for various reasons: firstly, the Kusaal language, spoken in Nakom, has no written equivalent. It meant that the co-producer had to work with the non-professional actors, relying the script orally. Also there was no electricity in the village, so the producers considered moving the set to the nearby town of Pusiga, but finally, the production remained in Nakom, using a generator, which had to be buried underground because of its noise. Casting was a problem due to the scarcity of local actors and the onset of the rainy season which meant that the narrative had to be shot in reverse when the landscape was lush and green.

Cinematographer Robert Geile creates a magnificent sense of the place: the serene, picturesque countryside provides refreshing contrast from the hustle and bustle of the city life, evoking a visual story of Iddrisu’s transit from the modern world to that of deep-seated traditions and old-fashioned customs. The spontaneity of the performances is infectious making NAKOM a fresh-feeling and absorbing testament to neo-real tradition. AS

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Boris Sans Beatrice (2016) | In Competition | Berlinale 2016

Director: Denis Côté

Cast: James Hyndman, Simone-Elise Girard, Denis Lavant, Isolda Dychauk, Bruce LaBruce

Drama | Canada 

In upmarket Montreal, Boris Malinovsky is a successful company director and an alpha male. Tall and striking, he struts around his lushly landscaped country house in hand-tailored suits – but something is wrong. His wife isn’t speaking to him: a valued politician in the Canadian government, she has retreated to a darkened room suffering from a mental problem. But Boris doesn’t realise: he is the problem.

Denis Côte’s foray into psychological drama is a stylishly photographed and peerlessly framed affair that gets to the heart of alpha manhood with clarity and aplomb. Telling its simple story in a series of slick tableaux, straightforward narrative is not over-talky or complicated by subplots; but it holds our attention on its macho anti-hero and his bare-faced arrogance, drawing us into the plot by the strength of its compelling visual power and a dynamite central performance from James Hyndman. But like Hitchcock, Denis Cote is masterfully in control of his film, the look and visuals worked out months in advance of filming.

While his wife is on leave, Boris is keeping himself company with a beautiful blond (Dounia Sichov plays Helga) and the bedroom services of his wife’s Russian carer (Isolda Dychauk) until he gets a strange message from a man who wishes to meet him, offering friendly advice. This stranger is none other than Denis Lavant who who appears out of the darkness, like a God from a Greed tragedy, warning him to play fair if he wants his wife back. Haunted by flashbacks of Béatrice (elegantly played by Simone-Elise Girard) in happier times together, Boris has an emotional crisis: but his massive ego won’t let him believe that he’s wrong or that his flagrant flirting is creating distance from his wife, his daughter and his mother. But this uber man isn’t all bad: strength and single-mindedness have helped him achieve success; he badly needs the women in his life and realises that to get the women he really needs back- he must change.

Côté collaborates with a predominently female team: Jessica Lee Gagné’s sparkling cinematography makes this a multi-textured visual feast and Louisa Schabas’ with production design offers a mesmerizing zen like feel to this absorbing character crisis. Combining satirical precision with some elegantly rendered mise en scenes, Côte takes a long look inside the mind of a man who is forced to admit that business success is not the only way to Nirvana. Gradually dismantling Boris’ character, Côté tells a tale of human redemption with acuity and panache. MT

BERLINALE 11 -21 FEBRUARY 2016 | FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

Muito Romantico (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Melissa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn | Cast: Melisa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn, Lilja Löffler

72min  Drama | Brazil| Germany

Melissa (Dullius) and Gustavo (Jahn) are sailing on a cargo ship in the South Seas, travelling from Brazil to Berlin, Germany, to start a new life. In Berlin, they visit flats in Wedding, Neukölln and Mitte, letting the audience know the exact rent and the payment for gas electricity. These data are the only realistic ones in this filmic collage that sees film and reality merging before a portal to the universe opens from which the main protagonists will merge with the cosmos.

Muito Romantico’s opening lines are quoted from a long text by the German transcendental writer Maria Luise Kaschnitz from 1963, titled “Wohin denn ich” (Where to for me) from 1963. Kaschnitz, who travelled widely with her archeologist husband, was a rarity in the post-war literature scene of the Federal Republic as her work was considered very “un-German” for the time, and had very much in common with the poetic realism of South America, where she spent a great deal of her life.

Melissa and Gustavo meet Veronica (Löffler) in Berlin for the first time having corresponded during their long voyage. As the couple get to know Berlin; Gustavo on a bicycle, Melissa, who gets lost, on foot, they related the changes that have taken place in the city since unification, mentioning a slogan which was painted in the ruins of the old ‘Anhalter Station’: “People who build bunkers, also build bombs”. But soon they disappear into each other losing interest in the city, and expressing their creativity in painting and decorating their flat. They come across a Japanese woman and a male painter, who asks Gustavo “to forget parties and alcohol, and concentrate on art”. Later Gustavo reads loud from a book, “declaring that the end of Romanticism has come, and people have to accept it”. A black cat sits on their bed, looking very aloof. The use of red is a motif that occurs throughout this dreamlike piece: in furnishings or objects: Gustavo suggests “all materials have memories”. Towards the end, the screen is totally black for a while, afterwards Melissa crawls through a hole in the wall into their bed. Images, reminding us of Rorschach tests appear, before the couple escapes into another world.

MUITO ROMANTICO is a poetic collage that deals with memory and space, history and art, longing and alienation; predominantly shot by DOP Viile Piippo on 16 mm or Super 8, with the number of frames per minute changing frequently, and a lighting which lends a surreal and very painterly feel. Symbolism is used but in a very playful way that adds to the enjoyment of this rather vague but unique and innovative experiment. AS

BERLINALE 11-21 FEBRUARY 2016 | MORE COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

 

Europe, She Loves (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Jan Gassmann | Documentary 100min | Switzerland, Germany

Jan Gassmann examines the success or failure of the European Union through the lives of four ordinary couples in their respective European cities

In Tallinin, Veronika and Harri make ends meet with their three children and pet dog. Whilst he is a car mechanic, she, a waitress, is supplementing their income as a dancer in a bar. The past makes their live difficult: Artur is Veronika’s son from a former relationship, and Harri has difficulties bonding with him, even though he makes an effort in the end. Harri too has a daughter and will meet the 13year old for the first time. The family spends a lot of time in front of the TV, the atmosphere is often strained, but it is not a lack of love, so much, as the harsh economic the circumstances surrounding them.

Karo and Juan have just met in Sevilla and their sex life is naturally active. But the first signs of jealousy emerge in an argument about his ex-girlfriend. Childless, they spent most of their time in bed, discussing plans to emigrate, which he rejects “because I love to be in Sevilla”. But the economic hardship might make him change his mind. Life for them is discussing, making love and enjoying the outdoor life in this romantic city.

Thessaloniki like the rest of Greece is in turmoil; teetering on open civil war. After a murder committed by the fascist ‘Golden Dawn’, massive demonstrations call for revolution. Penny, and her much older boyfriend Nicolas are constantly arguing: she wants to leave the country with him, whilst he wants to stay. Even the cat, Evita, is used as an object of strife: when Nicolas feeds her gourmet food, Penny explodes, because she believes the cat is getting to fat. Penny also accuses her partner of seeing his ex. But it all boils down once again to economics: she is a waitress, he delivers pizza. The outcome of the emigration debate, one feels, will make or break their relationship.

In Dublin Siobhan and Terry live very much like a retro-couple of the Sixties: drugs and music dominate their life, their lovemaking is often affected by their drug habit. They seem surprisingly happy, treating their cat like a baby and forgiving each other’s transgressions with regularity. Tending their vegetable garden on their roof, where the washing is drying: this is bohemia! Unlike the others, they do everything together, even feeling sick after another drug binge. The most content of the four, though interestingly the poorest. These two have closed the door on reality and the future, living on borrowed bliss in world of their own.

All these couples are interesting in their own right, but Gassmann destroys the narrative momentum by cutting from one to the other, a structural technique that simply doesn’t work in this context. And do we really want to see other couples making love at length in a documentary? These extended sessions simply feel like voyeurism and add nothing to what is otherwise a thoughtful and insightful study AS

BERLINALE 11 – 21 FEBRUARY 2016 | COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2016

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The First, the Last (2016) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Bouli Lammers

Cast: Bouli Lanners, Albert Dupontel, Michael Lonsdale, Suzanne Clement, Philippe Rebbot

97min  Drama  Belgium

Under glowering skies in Flanders, two hired bounty hunters, Gilou (Bouli Lanners) and Cochise (Albert Dupontel) set off into a wintry widescreen wilderness on a ‘secret mission’ to track down a mobile phone containg some kind of explosive. More madcap Western, than gritty thriller Bouli Lanners’ fourth feature sets off as a miserable, monosyllabic mission that meanders into gloomy backwaters at the arse-end of progress somehow find redemption through its crisis-ridden yet humane craziness as the argumentative duo brush up against a selection of weirdos and ne’dowells: a deranged young couple (who come imto possession of the mobile unaware of its significance) mendacious cleaners and a crippled carefaker and evangelist priest (a kindly Philippe Rebbot),make strange bedfellows in this cinematically spectacular outing where the tone is slightly tougue in cheek, and the dialogue as off the beaten track as its characters.

But their brazen attempt at being gangsters soon falls by the wayside as Gilou abandons the mission with a dicky heart and takes up refuge with the kindly, crippled caretaker (a suitable soulful Michael Lonsdale). Clara (Suzanne Clement) comes to the Cochise’s rescue offering him sparkling sexual chemistry and a shred of domestic normality in her farmhouse.  Meanwhile the deranged young couple also seek a safe berth with Clara, hotly pursued by another bunch of hoodlums who are also looking in for the phone. Esther (Aurore Broutin) and Willy (David Murgia). It emerges represent Adam and Eve

A metaphor for our loss of faith in society, in each other and with ourselves in general, The First, The Last is a dark and often doom laden affair suffused with welcome bone dry humour. Bouli Lammers finds the he answer in love: love for ouselves, for each other and for the world that we have been given. With the twanging score of original guitar music by Pascal Humbert, Bouli Lanners’ characters all experience their crisis-fuelled epiphanies in this God-forsaken landscape that somehow finds the light at the end of the tunnel reminding us that God is out there somewhere if we look hard enough and keep our sense of humour. MT

SCREENING DURING BERLINALE 2016 | PANORAMA SECTION

 

Rotterdam Film Festival | Award Winners 2016

796_392x221ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL kicked off on 27th January in the Dutch major shipping port. Of the 250 features on offer, over 100 were world or international premieres. We’d like to point you in the direction of some worth watching out for in the 10-day jamboree and the coming year. All the winners are here 

 5 OCTOBER Polish director and photographer Martin Kollár’s cinematography is the reason to see this impressive documentary debut. What unfolds in this silent story of a man preparing for life-changing surgery is an absolutely captivating journey across Europe shot with great verve, tenderness and humour. 5 OCTOBER features the director’s 52-year-old brother Ján in centre frame with a moving narration comprised only of postcards, mementos and the relentless count-down that rises up unimpeded from his journal. With a “flip of the coin” probability of surviving a necessary but very complicated surgery, Ján embarks on his own Easy Rider momento mori odyssey as we slowly discover what he’s running away from.

038_392x221ALBA is an extraordinary debut from Ecuadorian director Ana Cristina Barragan. Macarena Arias is the standout here as a pre-teenage girl who goes to live with her solitary father while her mother is in hospital. Barragan tackles themes of bullying, relationships and shyness as Alba (Arias) is forced to bear the humiliation of frequent nosebleeds and wearing a corset to straighten her crooked spine. With minimal dialogue, a tentative bond slowly develops between daughter and father as Alba blossoms cautiously. This strikingly mature and poignant debut comes from a country that until the beginning of this century had only made one film a year. Young leading actress Macarena Arias is one to keep an eye on. She manages to bring a rare intensity to this tender coming of age tale.

490_392x221BELLA E PERDUTA  A paean to Italy’s faded glory, this poetic imagined drama and essayist documentary is set in magical Carditello Palace, once owned by the Bourbon dynasty. The fictional clown Pulcinella comes across the real-life Tommaso, self-appointed guardian angel of the palace. Evokes the decaying splendour of Italy’s rich and magnetic past.

The Palace is in decay and has been stripped clean by plunderers. The local farmer Tommaso earned his nickname ‘Angel of Carditello’ by guarding the estate and restoring it out of his own pocket. Documentary maker Pietro Marcello saw here the start of a journey through the provinces of Italy in which he would examine the state of his country: stunningly beautiful yet in decay. But when Tommaso suddenly dies, this true-life fairytale comes to an abrupt end, pushing Marcello in a new direction. He introduces the crazy Pulcinella, a figure from 17th-century commedia dell’arte, anglicised as Punch. A journey that is smaller in scale yet greater in effect than the journey Marcello first wanted to make.

dejanSerbian director Bakur Bakuradze grew up in Georgia and studied in Russia. In BROTHER DEJAN He bases his central character loosely on the Bosnian-Serbian General Ratko Mladic, but sidesteps important issues of politics in order to explore those such as good and evil. Much more important in this sober and observing story is the question: Can a man like Stanic really start to understand in his last years of life? BROTHER DEJAN explores several months from the life of Dejan Stanic, a general wanted for war crimes during the Yugoslavian Civil War. At first managing to stay out of the hands of justice, he flees to neighbouring Slovenia with the help of his old compatriots, due to political changes. With his heavy beard and slovenly appearance, no one recognises Dejan Stanic as the one-time war hero/criminal. A simple excuse is enough for him to be able to move around an isolated mountain village in relative peace; he pretends to be an old friend of one of the inhabitants, Slavko, whom he supposedly met many years ago at a health resort. Slavko’s house is his last hiding place before Dejan finally leaves the country. The loneliness forces him to start thinking, for the very first time, about his own past.

21_NIGHTS_WITH_PATTI_hotpants21 NIGHTS WITH PATTIE is an intriguing title for a film that blends black comedy with fantasy and magic realism. Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu’s provocatively entitled Vingt et Une Nuits Avec Pattie certainly rolls off the tongue better in French, but this is a tricky tale to digest in any language, and after two longs hours and a final act that lets it all hang out, you may well come away wishing the brothers had left it at that: a boozy French drama with a touch of ‘Midsomer Murders’ and a dash of discretion.

Plunging into the bosky hillsides of Languedoc Rousillion, Caroline (Isabelle Carré) arrives at her mother’s bohemian retreat on a blazing hot August day. The two were not close in real life and her mother is now lying ‘in wake’ in the cool stone cottage, and Caroline must arrange her funeral. Despite this morbid event, the tone is light-hearted; almost jubilant and even more so when she meets Pattie (Karin Viard) the caretaker and best described as ‘une femme mûre’, who regales her with explicit tales of her recent sexual conquests with various local lads. Later on the corpse of her mother disappears, leading to a police investigation that drifts into a Savannah-style ghost story and an erotic awakening for the bewildered Parisienne.

11 minut 2 copyBest described as a suspense thriller, 11 MINUTES explores themes of fate and paranoia. Set in the sweeping urban spaces of contemporary Warsaw, it could also be entitled Crossover, dealing, as it does, with eleven minutes in the lives of a random bunch of characters whose lives collide in the centre of the capital. Wildly frenetic and octane-fuelled, the action unfurls chaotically with moments of surreal beauty and hard-edged passion. Invasion of privacy insinuates the narrative in the shape of security cameras, webcams and mobile phones which track the protagonists during this frenzied few minutes of precision filmmaking.

Thrilling, bewildering and at times quite exhausting to take in, Skolimowski’s dramatic storyline is not the most involving or satisfying of experiences. Like a vintage wine, this is a multi-layered tour de force whose infinite subtleties will emerge with each viewing. The mesmerising set-pieces are brilliantly crafted and certainly amongst the most extraordinary action sequences ever committed to film. The final moments are simply breath-taking and mark out Jerzy Skolimowski as a director who, after 50 years, is still quite clearly at the top of his game. MT

450_392x221Locarno FIPRESCI winner SUITE ARMORICAINE sees directori Pascale Breton returning to her birthplace in Rennes, Britanny where her main character Françoise (Valérie Dréville) intends to teach at the university. Evoking memories of her lively time as a student by clever use of flashbacks and archive footage, Breton lengthy narrative explores the relationship between Francoise and a student Ion (Kaou Langoët), who, for less nostalgic reasons, is there forget his troubled childhood. But teacher and student turn out to have more in common than expected. Stunningly set in the the heavily forested Breton landscape, Breton’s story switching between the two protagonists and it slowly becomes clear how much they are linked together. Key moments are shown twice, from the perspective of the teacher and of the student. This results in a personal and nostalgic story with avant-garde elements. A dreamy constellation in which Pascale Breton muses and reflects on the time when mobile phones had not yet been invented. MT

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 27 JANUARY UNTIL 7 FEBRUARY 2015

Sundance Film Festival | Prizes Announced

112263_still1_JamesFranco_SarahGadon__byAlexDukayThe first major international festival of the independent film world: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2016 has wrapped with another “great step forward for independent film,” according to the festival director John Cooper. For ten days in January the snow-bound hub of Park City, Utah screened 120 features, 98 of which are world premieres and include a romantic drama about Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date; a two hander about a drifter who befriends a dead body and the first film to focus on the women of Wall Street.

So what’s new trendwise in 2016? Well, according to director of programming Trevor Groth: Everyone’s understanding craft so much better. There’s a changing face to what a documentary is and what it can do in the end. People are experimenting in genre in really interesting ways, so festival-goers should expect a “wild range of tones and styles” in the World Cinema dramatic competition. “Independent filmmakers are doing what they’ve always done best: connecting the dots of human existence with a deeply charged emotional current.” We look at the ones that screened during this year’s festival and the PRIZE WINNERS to look out for in the coming months.  

US DRAMATIC COMPETITION winner THE BIRTH OF A NATION (US)

US DIRECTING AWARD DRAMATIC winner SWISS ARMY MAN (US)

US DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION winner WEINER

US DIRECTING AWARD DOCUMENTARY winner LIFE, ANIMATED (US)

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION winner SAND STORM (ISRAEL)

WORLD CINEMA DIRECTING AWARD DRAMATIC winner BELGICA (BELGIUM)

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION winner SONITA (IRAN)

WORLD CINEMA DIRECTING AWARD DOCUMENTARY winner ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (POLAND)

ALFRED P SLOAN FEATURE FILM PRIZE winner EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (MEXICO)

WORLD CINEMA AWARD FOR UNIQUE VISION AND DESIGN winner THE LURE (POLAND)

NEXT -AUDIENCE AWARD winner THE FIRST GIRL I LOVED  (cutting edge equivalent of Cannes “Un Certain Regard”)

W O R L D   P R E M I E R E S 

A showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year.

agnus copyAGNUS DEI / France, Poland (Director: Anne Fontaine, Screenwriters: Sabrina N. Karine, Alice Vial, Pascal Bonitzer) — 1945 Poland: Mathilde, a young French doctor, is on a mission to help World War II survivors. When a nun seeks her assistance in helping several pregnant nuns in hiding, who are unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancies, Mathilde becomes their only hope. Cast: Lou de Laâge, Agata Kulesza, Agata Buzek, Vincent Macaigne, Joanna Kulig, Katarzyna Dabrowska. World Premiere

16753-1-1100ALI AND NINO / United Kingdom (Director: Asif Kapadia, Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton) — Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other. Cast: Adam Bakri, Maria Valverde, Mandy Patinkin, Connie Nielsen, Riccardo Scamarcio, Homayoun Ershadi. World Premiere

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Ross) — Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a father devoted to raising his six kids with a rigorous physical and intellectual education is forced to leave his paradise and re-enter society, beginning a journey that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent. Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Frank Langella, George MacKay, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd. World Premiere

certain copyCERTAIN WOMEN / U.S.A. (Director: Kelly Reichardt, Screenwriter: Kelly Reichardt based on stories by Maile Meloy) — The lives of three woman intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail. Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone. World Premiere

COMPLETE UNKNOWN / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Marston, Screenwriters: Joshua Marston, Julian Sheppard) — When Tom and his wife host a dinner party to celebrate his birthday, one of their friends brings a date named Alice. Tom is convinced he knows her, but she’s going by a different name and a different biography—and she’s not acknowledging that she knows him. Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover. World Premiere

FRANK AND LOLA / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matthew Ross) — A psychosexual noir love story—set in Las Vegas and Paris—about love, obsession, sex, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately, the search for redemption. Cast: Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyqvist, Justin Long, Emmanuelle Devos, Rosanna Arquette. World Premiere

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CARING / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rob Burnett) — Having suffered a tragedy, Ben becomes a caregiver to earn money. His first client, Trevor, is a hilarious 18-year-old with muscular dystrophy. One paralyzed emotionally, one paralyzed physically, Ben and Trevor hit the road, finding hope, friendship, and Dot in this funny and touching inspirational tale. Cast: Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Ehle, Megan Ferguson, Frederick Weller. World Premiere. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

Hollars copy copyTHE HOLLARS / U.S.A. (Director: John Krasinski, Screenwriter: Jim Strouse) — Aspiring New York City artist John Hollar returns to his Middle America hometown on the eve of his mother’s brain surgery. Joined by his girlfriend, eight months pregnant with their first child, John is forced to navigate the crazy world he left behind. Cast: John Krasinski, Anna Kendrick, Margo Martindale, Richard Jenkins, Sharlto Copley, Charlie Day. World Premiere

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE / New Zealand (Director and screenwriter: Taika Waititi) — Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive in this heartwarming adventure comedy. Cast: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley. World Premiere

indig copyINDIGNATION / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: James Schamus) — It’s 1951, and among the new arrivals at Winesburg College in Ohio are the son of a kosher butcher from New Jersey and the beautiful, brilliant daughter of a prominent alum. For a brief moment, their lives converge in this emotionally soaring film based on the novel by Philip Roth. Cast: Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond, Danny Burstein, Ben Rosenfield. World Premiere

LITTLE MEN / U.S.A. (Director: Ira Sachs, Screenwriter: Mauricio Zacharias) — When 13-year-old Jake’s grandfather dies, his family moves back into their old Brooklyn home. There, Jake befriends Tony, whose single Chilean mother runs the shop downstairs. As their friendship deepens, however, their families are driven apart by a battle over rent, and the boys respond with a vow of silence. Cast: Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina Garcia, Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri. World Premiere

LoveandFriendship_still1_ChloeSevigny_KateBeckinsale__byBernardWalshLOVE AND FRIENDSHIP / Ireland, France, Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Whit Stillman) — From Jane Austen’s novella, the beautiful and cunning Lady Susan Vernon visits the estate of her in-laws to wait out colorful rumors of her dalliances and to find husbands for herself and her daughter. Two young men, handsome Reginald DeCourcy and wealthy Sir James Martin, severely complicate her plans. Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Emma Greenwell, Tom Bennett, Stephen Fry. World Premiere

manchester copyMANCHESTER BY THE SEA / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kenneth Lonergan) — After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised. Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler. World Premiere

MR PIG / Mexico (Director: Diego Luna, Screenwriters: Augusto Mendoza, Diego Luna) — On a mission to sell his last remaining prize hog and reunite with old friends, an aging farmer abandons his foreclosed farm and journeys to Mexico. After smuggling in the hog, his estranged daughter shows up, forcing them to face their past and embark on an adventurous road trip together. Cast: Danny Glover, Maya Rudolph, José María Yazpik, Joel Murray, Angélica Aragón, Gabriela Araujo. World Premiere

SING STREET / Ireland (Director and screenwriter: John Carney) — A boy growing up in Dublin during the ’80s escapes his strained family life and tough new school by starting a band to win the heart of a beautiful and mysterious girl. Cast: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Aidan Gillen, Mark McKenna. World Premiere

SophieandtheRisingSun_still2_JulianneNicholson_TakashiYamaguchi__byJacksonLeeDavisSOPHIE AND THE RISING SUN / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maggie Greenwald) — In a small Southern town in the autumn of 1941, Sophie’s lonely life is transformed when an Asian man arrives under mysterious circumstances. Their love affair becomes the lightning rod for long-buried conflicts that erupt in bigotry and violence with the outbreak of World War ll. Cast: Julianne Nicholson, Margo Martindale, Lorraine Toussaint, Takashi Yamaguchi, Diane Ladd, Joel Murray. World Premiere. SALT LAKE CITY GALA FILM

WIENER DOG / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Todd Solondz) — This film tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy. Cast: Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, Zosia Mamet. World Premiere

D O C U M E N T A R Y   P R E M I E R E S
Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries.

EAT THAT QUESTION—Frank Zappa in His Own Words / France, Germany (Director: Thorsten Schütte) — This entertaining encounter with the premier of sonic avant-garde is acidic, fun-poking, and full of rich and rare archival footage. This documentary bashes favorite Zappa targets and dashes a few myths about the man himself. World Premiere

FILM HAWK / U.S.A. (Directors: JJ Garvine, Tai Parquet) — Trace Bob Hawk’s early years as the young gay child of a Methodist minister to his current career as a consultant on some of the most influential independent films of our time. World Premiere

LOANDBEHOLDReveriesoftheConnectedWorld_headshot2_WernerHerzog_byNALO AND BEHOLD, Reveries of the Connected World / U.S.A. (Director: Werner Herzog) — Does the internet dream of itself? Explore the horizons of the connected world. World Premiere

MAPPLETHORPE – LOOK AT THE PICTURES / U.S.A. (Directors: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato) — This examination of Robert Mapplethorpe’s outrageous life is led by the artist himself, speaking with brutal honesty in a series of rediscovered interviews about his passions. Intimate revelations from friends, family, and lovers shed new light on this scandalous artist who ignited a culture war that still rages on. World Premiere

MAYA ANGELOU – AND STILL I RISE / U.S.A. (Directors: Bob Hercules, Rita Coburn Whack) — The remarkable story of Maya Angelou — iconic writer, poet, actress and activist whose life has intersected some of the most profound moments in recent American history. World Premiere

Michael copyMICHAEL JACKSON’S JOURNEY FROM MOTOWN TO OFF THE WALL / U.S.A. (Director: Spike Lee) — Catapulted by the success of his first major solo project, Off the Wall, Michael Jackson went from child star to King of Pop. This film explores the seminal album, with rare archival footage and interviews from those who were there and those whose lives its success and legacy impacted. World Premiere

NORMAN LEAR  – Just Another Version of You / U.S.A. (Directors: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady) — How did a poor Jewish kid from Connecticut bring us Archie Bunker and become one of the most successful television producers ever? Norman Lear brought provocative subjects like war, poverty, and prejudice into 120 million homes every week. He proved that social change was possible through an unlikely prism: laughter. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Nothing copyNOTHING LEFT UNSAID: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper / U.S.A. (Director: Liz Garbus) — Gloria Vanderbilt and her son Anderson Cooper each tell the story of their past and present, their loves and losses, and reveal how some family stories have the tendency to repeat themselves in the most unexpected ways. World Premiere

RESILIENCE / U.S.A. (Director: James Redford) — This film chronicles the birth of a new movement among pediatricians, therapists, educators, and communities using cutting-edge brain science to disrupt cycles of violence, addiction, and disease. These professionals help break the cycles of adversity by daring to talk about the effects of divorce, abuse, and neglect. World Premiere

RICHARD LINKLATER—dream is destiny / U.S.A. (Directors: Louis Black, Karen Bernstein) — This is an unconventional look at a fiercely independent style of filmmaking that arose in the 1990s from Austin, Texas, outside the studio system. The film blends rare archival footage with journals, exclusive interviews with Linklater on and off set, and clips from Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, and more. World Premiere

UNDER THE GUN / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig) — The Sandy Hook massacre was considered a watershed moment in the national debate on gun control, but the body count at the hands of gun violence has only increased. Through the lens of the victims’ families, as well as pro-gun advocates, we examine why our politicians have failed to act. World Premiere

UNLOCKING THE CAGE / U.S.A. (Directors: Chris Hegedus, Donn Alan Pennebaker) — Follow animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. By filing the first lawsuit of its kind, Wise seeks to transform a chimpanzee from a “thing” with no rights to a “person” with basic legal protection. World Premiere

U. S   . D R A M A T I C   C O M P E T I T I O N

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

AS YOU ARE (Director: Miles Joris­-Peyrafitte, Screenwriters: Miles Joris­-Peyrafitte, Madison Harrison) — The telling and retelling of a relationship between three teenagers as it traces the course of their friendship through a construction of disparate memories prompted by a police investigation. C​ast: Owen Campbell, Charlie Heaton, Amandla Stenberg, John Scurti, Scott Cohen, Mary Stuart Masterson.

BirthTHE BIRTH OF A NATION (Director and screenwriter: Nate Parker) — Set against the antebellum South, this story follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. After witnessing countless atrocities against fellow slaves, Nat devises a plan to lead his people to freedom. C​ast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr.

CHRISTINE (Director: Antonio Campos, Screenwriter: Craig Shilowich) — In 1974, a female TV news reporter aims for high standards in life and love in Sarasota, Fla. Missing her mark is not an option. This story is based on true events. C​ast: Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Maria Dizzia, Tracy Letts, J. Smith-­Cameron.

EquityEQUITY  (Director: Meera Menon, Screenwriter: Amy Fox) — A female investment banker, fighting to get a promotion at her competitive Wall Street firm, leads a controversial tech IPO in the post-­financial-­crisis world, where regulations are tight but pressure to bring in big money remains high. C​ast: Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner.​

THE FREE WORLD (Director and screenwriter: Jason Lew) — Following his release from a brutal stretch in prison for crimes he didn’t commit, Mo is struggling to adapt to life on the outside. When his world collides with Doris, a mysterious woman with a violent past, he decides to risk his newfound freedom to keep her in his life. C​ast: Boyd Holbrook, Elisabeth Moss, Octavia Spencer, Sung Kang, Waleed Zuaiter.

GOAT (Director: Andrew Neel, Screenwriters: David Gordon Green, Andrew Neel, Michael Roberts) — Reeling from a terrifying assault, a 19-­year-­old boy pledges his brother’s fraternity in an attempt to prove his manhood. What happens there, in the name of “brotherhood,” tests both the boys and their relationship in brutal ways. C​ast: Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer, Virginia Gardner, Danny Flaherty, Austin Lyon.

THE INTERVENTION (Director and screenwriter: Clea DuVall) — A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage. ​Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Clea DuVall, Natasha Lyonne, Ben Schwartz.

JOSHY(Director and screenwriter: Jeff Baena) — Josh treats what would have been his bachelor party as an opportunity to reconnect with his friends.​ Cast: Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, Nick Kroll, Brett Gelman, Jenny Slate.

Lovesong_still1_FerrisWheelLOVESONG  (Director: So Yong Kim, Screenwriters: So Yong Kim, Bradley Rust Gray) — Neglected by her husband, Sarah embarks on an impromptu road trip with her young daughter and her best friend, Mindy. Along the way, the dynamic between the two friends intensifies before circumstances force them apart. Years later, Sarah attempts to rebuild their intimate connection in the days before Mindy’s wedding.​ Cast: Jena Malone, Riley Keough, Brooklyn Decker, Amy Seimetz, Ryan Eggold, Rosanna Arquette.

MORRIS FROM AMERICA (U.S.-Germany / Director and screenwriter: Chad Hartigan) — Thirteen­-year-­old Morris, a hip­-hop-loving American, moves to Heidelberg, Germany, with his father. In this completely foreign land, he falls in love with a local girl, befriends his German tutor­-turned­-confidant, and attempts to navigate the unique trials and tribulations of adolescence. C​ast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, Lina Keller, Jakub Gierszal, Levin Henning.​

OTHER PEOPLE  (Director and screenwriter: Chris Kelly) — A struggling comedy writer, fresh from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and younger sisters, David feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother worsens, he tries to convince everyone (including himself) he’s “doing OK.” C​ast: Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, Zach Woods, June Squibb. (Day One film)

SouthsideWithYou_still7_TikaSumpter_ParkerSawyers__byPatScolaSOUTHSIDE WITH YOU  (Director and screenwriter: Richard Tanne) — A chronicle of the summer afternoon in 1989 when the future president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago’s South Side.​ Cast: Tika Sumpter, Parker Sawyers, Vanessa Bell Calloway.

SPA NIGHT  (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Ahn) — A young Korean-­American man works to reconcile his obligations to his struggling immigrant family with his burgeoning sexual desires in the underground world of gay hookups at Korean spas in Los Angeles.​ Cast: Joe Seo, Haerry Kim, Youn Ho Cho, Tae Song, Ho Young Chung, Linda Han.

SwissArmyMan_still1_PaulDano_DanielRadcliffe__byJoyceKimSWISS ARMY MAN (Directors and screenwriters: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan) — Hank, a hopeless man stranded in the wild, discovers a mysterious dead body. Together the two embark on an epic journey to get home. As Hank realizes the body is the key to his survival, this once­-suicidal man is forced to convince a dead body that life is worth living. ​Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.​

TALLULAH (Director and screenwriter: Sian Heder) — A rootless young woman takes a toddler from a wealthy, negligent mother and passes the baby off as her own in an effort to protect her. This decision connects and transforms the lives of three very different women. Cast: Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard, Evan Jonigkeit, Uzo Aduba.

16197-1-1100WHITE GIRL  (Director and screenwriter: Elizabeth Wood) — Summer, New York City: A college student goes to extremes to get her drug-dealer boyfriend out of jail. C​ast: Morgan Saylor, Brian “Sene” Marc, Justin Bartha, Chris Noth, India Menuez, Adrian Martinez.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

AUDRIE AND DAISY (Directors: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk) — After two high-school girls in different towns are sexually assaulted by boys they consider friends, online bullying leads each girl to attempt suicide. Tragically, one dies. Assault in the social media age is explored from the perspectives of the girls and boys involved, as well as their torn-­apart communities.

AUTHOR : The JT LeRoy Story” (Director: Jeff Feuerzeig) — As the definitive look inside the mysterious case of 16­-year-­old literary sensation JT LeRoy — a creature so perfect for his time that if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him — this is the strangest story about story ever told.

The Bad kidsTHE BAD KIDS (Directors: Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe) — At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-­risk students command of their own futures. This coming­-of­-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-­called “bad kids.”

GLEASON (Director: Clay Tweel) — At the age of 34, Steve Gleason, former NFL defensive back and New Orleans hero, was diagnosed with ALS. Doctors gave him two to five years to live. So that is what Steve chose to do: Live — both for his wife and newborn son and to help others with this disease.

HOLY HELL (Director: undisclosed) — Just out of college, a young filmmaker joins a loving, secretive, spiritual community led by a charismatic teacher in 1980s West Hollywood. Twenty years later, the group is shockingly torn apart. Told through hundreds of hours of accumulated footage, this is their story.

HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD  (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change​)” (Director: Josh Fox) — Do we have a chance to stop the most destructive consequences of climate change, or is it too late? Academy Award­-nominated director Josh Fox (“Gasland”)​ travels to 12 countries on six continents to explore what we have to let go of — and all of the things that climate can’t change.

JIM (Director: Brian Oakes) — The public execution of American conflict journalist James Foley captured the world’s attention, but he was more than just a man in an orange jumpsuit. Seen through the lens of his close childhood friend, “J​im” ​moves from adrenaline-­fueled front lines and devastated neighborhoods of Syria into the hands of ISIS.

Kate copyKATE PLAYS CHRISTINE  (Director: Robert Greene) — This psychological thriller follows actor Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a Florida television host who committed suicide on air in 1974. Christine’s tragic death was the inspiration for “N​etwork,” ​and the mysteries surrounding her final act haunt Kate and the production.

KIKI  (U.S.-Sweden / Director: Sara Jordeno) — Through a strikingly intimate and visually daring lens, “K​iki” o​ffers insight into a safe space created and governed by LGBTQ youths of color, who are demanding happiness and political power. A coming­-of-­age story about agency, resilience, and the transformative art form of voguing.

LIFE, ANIMATED (Director: Roger Ross Williams) — Owen Suskind, an autistic boy who could not speak for years, slowly emerged from his isolation by immersing himself in Disney animated movies. Using these films as a roadmap, he reconnects with his loving family and the wider world in this emotional coming-­of-­age story.

NEWTOWN  (Director: Kim A. Snyder) — After joining the ranks of a growing club no one wants to belong to, the people of Newtown, Conn., weave an intimate story of resilience. This film traces the aftermath of the worst mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history as the traumatized community finds a new sense of purpose.

Nuts copyNUTS! (Director: Penny Lane) left — The mostly true story of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire with his goat-­testicle impotence cure and a million-watt radio station. Animated re-enactments, interviews, archival footage, and one seriously unreliable narrator trace his rise from poverty to celebrity and influence in 1920s America.

SUITED ​(Director: Jason Benjamin) — Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn tailoring company, makes custom suits for a growing legion of gender­-nonconforming clients.

TRAPPED ​(Director: Dawn Porter) — American abortion clinics are in a fight for survival. Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws are increasingly being passed by states that maintain they ensure women’s safety and health, but as clinics continue to shut their doors, opponents believe the real purpose of these laws is to outlaw abortion.

UNCLE HOWARD”​ (U.S.-U.K. / Director: Aaron Brookner) ​— H​oward Brookner’s first film, “B​urroughs: The Movie,​”captured the cultural revolution of downtown New York City in the early ’80s. Twenty­-five years after his promising career was cut short by AIDS, his nephew sets out to discover Howard’s never-­before-­seen films to create a cinematic elegy about his childhood idol.

WEINER (Directors: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) — With unrestricted access to Anthony Weiner’s New York City mayoral campaign, this film reveals how a high-­profile political scandal unfolds behind the scenes, and it offers an unfiltered look at how much today’s politics are driven by an appetite for spectacle.​

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

The 12 films in this section are world premieres unless otherwise specified.

Belgica_still3_StefAerts_HlneDevos__byMenuetBELGICA right (Belgium-France-Netherlands / Director: Felix van Groeningen, Screenwriters: Felix van Groeningen, Arne Sierens) — In the midst of Belgium’s nightlife scene, two brothers start a bar and get swept up in its success. C​ast: Stef Aerts, Tom Vermeir, Charlotte Vandermeersch, Helene De Vos. (Day One film)

BETWEEN SEA AND LAND  (Colombia / Directors: Manolo Cruz, Carlos del Castillo, Screenwriter: Manolo Cruz) — Alberto, who suffers from an illness that binds him into a body that doesn’t obey him, lives with his loving mom, who dedicates her life to him. His sickness impedes him from achieving his greatest dream of knowing the sea, despite one being located just across the street. C​ast: Manolo Cruz, Vicky Hernandez, Viviana Serna, Jorge Cao, Mile Vergara, Javier Saenz.

BrahmanNaman_still1_ChaitanyaVarad_ShashankArora_TanmayDhanania_VaiswathShankar__byTizianaPuleioBRAHMAN NAHMAN (U.K.-India / Director: Q, Screenwriter: S. Ramachandran) — When Bangalore U.’s misfit quiz team manages to get into the national championships, they make an alcohol-­fueled, cross-­country journey to the competition, determined to defeat their arch­rivals from Calcutta while all desperately trying to lose their virginity. C​ast: Shashank Arora, Tanmay Dhanania, Chaitanya Varad, Vaiswath Shankar, Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy, Sid Mallya.

A GOOD WIFE  (Serbia-Bosnia-Croatia / Director: Mirjana Karanovic, Screenwriters: Mirjana Karanovic, Stevan Filipovic, Darko Lungulov) — When 50-­year-­old Milena finds out about the terrible past of her seemingly ideal husband, while simultaneously learning of her own cancer diagnosis, she begins an awakening from the suburban paradise she has been living in. C​ast: Mirjana Karanovic, Boris Isakovic, Jasna Djuricic, Bojan Navojec, Hristina Popovic, Ksenija Marinkovic.

HALAL LOVE (AND SEX)  (Lebanon-Germany-United Arab Emirates / Director and screenwriter: Assad Fouladkar) — Four tragic yet comic interconnected stories come together in this film, which follows devout Muslim men and women as they try to manage their love lives and desires without breaking any of their religion’s rules. Cast: Darine Hamze, Rodrigue Sleiman, Zeinab Khadra, Hussein Mokadem, Mirna Moukarzel, Ali Sammoury. (International premiere)

THE LURE (main photo)  (Poland / Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska, Screenwriter: Robert Bolesto) — Two mermaid sisters, who end up performing at a nightclub, face cruel and bloody choices when one of them falls in love with a beautiful young man. C​ast: Marta Mazurek, Michalina Olszanska, Jakub Gierszal, Kinga Preis, Andrzej Konopka, Zygmunt Malanowicz. (International premiere)

MaleJoyFemaleLove_still1_DaizhenYing_Nanyu__byYounianLiuMALE JOY, FEMALE LOVE  right  (China / Director and screenwriter: Yao Huang) — Portrays an unlimited cycle of love stories. C​ast: Nand Yu, Daizhen Ying, Xiaodong Guo, Yi Sun.

MAMMAL  (Ireland-Luxembourg-Netherlands / Director: Rebecca Daly, Screenwriters: Rebecca Daly, Glenn Montgomery) — After Margaret, a divorcee living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex­husband’s grieving rage. C​ast: Rachel Griffiths, Barry Keoghan, Michael McElhatton.

Mi Amiga copyMI AMIGA DEL PARQUE  (Argentina-Uruguay / Director: Ana Katz, Screenwriters: Ana Katz, Ines Bortagaray) — Running away from a bar without paying the bill is just the first adventure for Liz (mother to newborn Nicanor) and Rosa (supposed mother to newborn Clarisa). This budding friendship between nursing mothers starts with the promise of liberation but soon ends up being a dangerous business. C​ast: Julieta Zylberberg, Ana Katz, Maricel Alvarez, Mirella Pascual, Malena Figo, Daniel Hendler. (International premiere)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Chile / Director: Alejandro Fernandez, Screenwriters: Alejandro Fernandez, Jeronimo Rodriguez) — An upper-­class kid gets in trouble with the one percent.​ Cast: Agustin Silva, Alejandro Goic, Luis Gnecco, Paulina Garcia, Daniel Alcaino, Augusto Schuster.

SAND STORM  (Israel / Director and screenwriter: Elite Zexer) — When their entire lives are shattered, two Bedouin women struggle to change the unchangeable rules, each in her own individual way. C​ast: Lamis Ammar, Ruba Blal­Asfour, Hitham Omari, Khadija Alakel, Jalal Masrwa.

WILD  (Germany / Director and screenwriter: Nicolette Krebitz) — An anarchist young woman breaks the tacit contract with civilization and fearlessly decides on a life without hypocrisy or an obligatory safety net. C​ast: Lilith Stangenberg, Georg Friedrich.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

All these sleeplessThe 11 films in this section are world premieres unless otherwise specified. A 12th film will be announced in the weeks ahead.

ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (LEFT) (Poland / Director: Michal Marczak) — What does it mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Christopher and Michal push their experiences in life and love to the breaking point as they restlessly roam the streets of Warsaw in search for answers.​

A FLAG WITHOUT A COUNTRY  (Iraq / Director: Bahman Ghobadi) — This documentary follows the very separate paths of singer Helly Luv and pilot Nariman Anwar from Kurdistan, both in pursuit of progress, freedom, and solidarity. Both individuals are a source of strength to their society, which perpetually deals with the harsh conditions of life, war, and ISIS attacks. (N​orth American premiere)

Hooligan sparrow copyHOOLIGAN SPARROW – right (China-U.S. / Director: Nanfu Wang) — Traversing southern China, a group of activists led by Ye Haiyan, aka Hooligan Sparrow, protest a scandalous incident in which a school principal and a government official allegedly raped six students. Sparrow becomes an enemy of the state, but detentions, interrogations and evictions can’t stop her protest from going viral.

THE LAND OF THE ENLIGHTENED (Belgium / Director: Pieter-­Jan De Pue) — A group of Kuchi children in Afghanistan dig out old Soviet mines and sell the explosives to child workers in a lapis lazuli mine. When not dreaming of an Afghanistan after the American withdrawal, Gholam Nasir and his gang control the mountains where caravans are smuggling the blue gemstones.

THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT (U.K. / Directors: Robert Cannan, Ross Adam) — Following the collapse of their glamorous romance, a celebrity director and his actress ex-­wife are kidnapped by movie­-obsessed dictator Kim Jong-­il. Forced to make films in extraordinary circumstances, they get a second chance at love — but only one chance at escape.

PLAZA DE LA SOLEDAD (Mexico / Director: Maya Goded) — For more than 20 years, photographer Maya Goded has intimately documented the lives of a close community of prostitutes in Mexico City. With dignity and humor, these women now strive for a better life — and the possibility of true love.

THE SETTLERS (France-Canada-Israel-Germany / Director: Shimon Dotan) — The first film of its kind to offer a comprehensive view of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, “The Settlers” is a historical overview, geopolitical study, and intimate look at the people at the core of the most daunting challenge facing Israel and the international community today.

sky ladder - CaiGuoQiangTheManWhoFellToEarthWorkingTitle_still1_df__byHiroIharaS​KY LADDER: The Art of Cai Guo-­Qiang​” (Director: Kevin Macdonald) — Having reached the pinnacle of the global art world with his signature explosion events and gunpowder drawings, world-­famous Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo­-Qiang is still seeking more. We trace his rise from childhood in Mao’s China and his journey to attempt to realize his lifelong obsession, Sky Ladder. (Day One film)

SONITA (Germany-Iran-Switzerland / Director: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami) — If 18­year­old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she’d be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000. (North American premiere)

WE ARE X ​/ (U.K.-U.S.-Japan / Director: Stephen Kijak) — As glam rock’s most flamboyant survivors, X Japan ignited a musical revolution in Japan during the late ’80s with their melodic metal. Twenty years after their tragic dissolution, X Japan’s leader, Yoshiki, battles with physical and spiritual demons alongside prejudices of the West to bring their music to the world.

When Two WorldsWHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE right (Peru / Directors: Heidi Brandenburg, Mathew Orzel) — An indigenous leader resists the environmental ruin of Amazonian lands by big business. As he is forced into exile and faces 20 years in prison, his quest reveals conflicting visions that shape the fate of the Amazon and the climate future of our world. W​orld Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | UTAH 21 – 31 JANUARY 2015 |

The Lure | Corki dancingu (2016) | Kinoteka 17 March – 5 April

Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska  Writer: Roberto Bolesto

Cast: Marta Mazurek, Michalina Olszanska, Kinga Preis, Andrzej Konopka, Jacob Gierszal

Thriller | Poland

Agnieszka Smoczynska has made her name in Poland for a string of lively short films and her feature debut is no exception. Bursting onto the screen THE LURE is an all singing musical fairytale strictly for the grown-ups and set in a Warsaw nightclub where two mermaid sisters are washed up on dry land to experience life as sexy sirens in human form.

Based on a throwback to the Communist era when glamour clubs of the Polish capital staged burlesque style evenings – not unlike those that exist in London today – these ‘dancings’ (the title literally means ‘The Daughters of the Dancing”) have disappeared since the country joined the mainstream West, so this is pretty much a retro reverie rather a drama with real characters and a well-formed narrative arc.

Water babies Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden’s (Michalina Olszanska) first frolic on earth attracts the attention of the club’s manager (Zygmunt Malanowicz) who hires them as a star feature entitled “The Lure” and with their sylphlike figures, flowing locks and sensational singing voices they perform topless to the sounds of in-house band “The Family” headed by vocalist ‘mom’ (Kinga Preis) and her Bass Player (Jakub Gierszal) and Drummer (Andrzej Konopka).

Soon, the mermaids – who manage to suppress their natural carnivorous tendencies – have moved in with ‘the family’ in a small flat where romance is on the cards for the Bass Player and Silver, who hatches a drastic plan to make him fall in love with her. But before the narrative can really be meaningful, the film lurches off into full musical mode with a string of numbers performed in various venues, one being a shopping centre. This debacle adds just another layer of fantasy to an already ditzy drama embellished with impressive psychedelic flourishes and strobe lighting aplenty.

The cast are clearly onboard with Smoczynska’s artistic vision of her own childhood throwback to communism, but for most viewers outside Poland THE LURE remains a mildly entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying experience beyond its imaginative ‘music and lights’ set pieces and zany performances. MT

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH – 5 APRIL | 26 MARCH 17.30 REGENT STREET CINEMA

 

Babai | Father (2015)| Foreign Language Oscars 2016

Director|Wrtier: Visar Morina

Cast: Val Maloku, Astrit Kabashi, Adriana Matoshi, Enver Petrovci, Xhevdet Jashari

104min  Drama   Albania

Visar Morina’s debut feature BABAI has had a successful summer winning him Best Director at Karlovy Vary and three awards at Munich Film Festival. The rites of passage road movie, set in 1990s Kosovo and seen through the eyes of a young boy, is also Albania’s hopeful for the Foreign Language Oscars 2016. 10-year-old Nori (Val Maloku) is a likeable and strong-willed kid, who sets out to join his father in Germany, with high hopes of a better life.

Naive in the extreme and sombre in tone, BABAI is nevertheless an absorbing coming of age tale that feels fresh in capturing the zeitgeist of its 21st century migration theme, despite a rather lacklustre cast who sadly fail to engage our sympathy but sometimes provide zesty, local humour – as seen during a Kosovar wedding.

It’s clear from the opening scene that Nori is determined to go to Germany. Hiding inside the boot of a car that’s taking his father Gesim (Astrit Kabashi), to the Serbian border, it establishes early on the desperation of the immigrant trail and also the love of this boy for his kind father, who clearly finds it difficult to be harsh on his wife or his little son, but needs to give them a better life. Throwing himself in the path of a bus, Nori ends up in hospital but his father is undeterred, leaving him with close family.

The war in Kosovo has not yet happened but the journey across Europe is still illegal and dangerous. Young Nori shows some guts, stealing money from his uncle and then setting out alone, once he’s better, cadging a lift from Valentina (Adriana Matoshi), a woman also planning to join her husband in Germany. Despite best intentions, it soon emerges that they both have their eye to the main chance, as is often the case, rather than working as a team.

Morino’s only fault in BABAI is a tendency for repetition and didacticism in his narrative that does his protagonists no favours. Everyone has witnessed the difficulties for poor European countries, but empathy needs to be engaged not with a wagging finger but by building rich characterisation and evoking strong performances from the leads. Val Maloku gives a feisty turn as Nori doing his best with a rather underwritten part in a drama that offers little room for reflection; everything focusing on the anger and determination of the journey.

Matteo Cocco’s stark, handheld camera echos the bleakness, sometimes featuring documentary-style shots that aims to add  authenticity to the endeavour. But the ending comes a surprise that somehow feels unplanned and out of place, despite the considerable journey in getting there. MT

BABAI is ALBANIA’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE OSCAR ENTRY 2016 | REVIEWED AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Polish Masterpieces | Part II | Kinoteka 2015

Andre Simonoveisz looks at Polish Cinema in the 70s and 80s in the second part of our Kinoteka 2015 series curated by Scorses | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS | POLISH MASTERPIECES

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SANATORIUM POD KLEPSYDRA (THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM) 1973 | directed by Wojciech Haas nine years after The Saragossa Manuscript is even more playful and anarchic. Josef (Jan Nowocki) arrives in the sanatorium of the title, only to meet his father Jacob, who has died a while ago. Looking out of the window, he watches himself arriving earlier, but by very different means. When he meets his mother, who is just eight years old, Josef starts to comprehend that time is of different nature in this sanatorium. His life rolls along a different timetable, his innermost hopes and fearful nightmares mingle. Haas never tries to rationalise the narrative, and it seems only logic, that Josef will be a captured creature for the rest of his life. The film features the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo re-enacted by an army of clockwork manikins, as well villagers dressed as exotic birds – Josef is always the spectator, but since his inner time-clock is shot, he sees the narrative as a dream, he is travelling from event to event without him (or the audience) being aware how he got there. Josef’s loss of retrograde memory seems to be opening his brain for any events, however startling. Haas direction is flawless and the production design is stunning. HOURGLASS SANATORIUM is as exhausting as original, the avant-garde film of Polish cinema of its era.

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ILLUMINACJA (ILLUMINATION, 1972) is Krzysztof Zanussi’s most autobiographical film. At the beginning we listen to a tedious lecture by a professor, explaining the moment of ‘illumination’ when the brain sees the truth directly, thus make it possible for the person to attain wisdom. Cut to Frantizek Retman (Stanislaw Latallo), a physicist student at the university of Warsaw, whose vital statistics and cognitive prowess, are measured by a team of research scientists. Retman is drawn to this particular science, because he believes in universal laws und predictable phenomena. But his analytical and logical approach to live is tested, when he falls in love with a beautiful woman, but is rejected. Frantizek is obsessed with this loss, and (like the hero in Zanusssi’s “Camouflage”) takes to mountain climbing. He meets Agnieszka, with whom he falls in love, but who is already pregnant. She convinces Frantizek to marry her. They move into a mall apartment, where, to make ends meet, Frantizek volunteers for behavioural research. But he is overwhelmed by his responsibilities and interrupts his studies to find a full-time job. After a friend from the research clinic dies, Frantizek falls into a deep depression. It is not only his relationship with Agnieszka and the death of his friend, which lead to Frantizeks downfall. He looses his belief in physics as a ‘neutral’ science, when he argues with another student about the responsibility of scientists. Retman declares “that I am not responsible for the A-Bomb, because I did not participate in the research”. But the fellow student exposes Retman’s self delusion “But the inventors were physicists too”.

ILLUMINATION shows Zanussi at the height of his aesthetic brilliance: he has constructed ILLUMINATION like a kaleidoscope, where mosaics meet and form a new content. Like in one scene, when Retman interrupts his contemplation of the cosmos to have his palm read. His motive is very devious: he just wants to know how far off the palm reader is. Her answer, that Retman does not like himself; hits home, since it is anathema to Retman, who is very self satisfied. ILLUMINATION is an idiosyncratic and insightful contemplation on the relationships between science and art, precision and creativity, intellect and emotion – and a reflection on the human need for a personal balance of the above. For our full review

Jump_7 copy copySALTO (JUMP, 1972) is perhaps the most important film of Tadeusz Konwicki (1926-2015), best known as a novelist and script-writer of Mother Joan of the Angels. The film is set immediately after the end of WWII, when a young man (Zbienew Cybulski) – calling himself either Kowalski or Malinowski, later identified as Carol – jumps of a train and runs through the fields. For a moment one is not sure if this the sequel to Ashes and Diamonds, since Cybulski seems not to have changed, wearing the same sun glasses as in Wajda’s film and running wildly through the sparsely populated countryside. Finally he reaches a nameless town, where, so he claims, he has spent the war, in hiding. Nodbody seems to remember him, but then, nobody else seems to be very sure who they are themselves. Everyone’s identity is called into question – one starts to believe that they are all ghosts, which one character declares to be the truth. Carol makes the most outrageous claims, but always modifies his stories of the past when he is confronted with somebody who had witnessed the specific act. Carol claims that “he is chaste”, making himself out to beatific Christ-like figure. He even seems to cure two ill children, but the camera glides away at the last moment, so we miss the crucial death. Finally, the whole town is coming together at a dance celebration – the atmosphere reminds of Wajda’s Wesele (title image). The “Salto” dance, when all the town’s folk are locked together, is an affirmation of Polish identity, whilst the presence of a “chochol” (polish derogative for a Cossack soldier) might be a subtle hint of the political reality of the day.
The camerawork is fluid, graceful, the jump cuts between the scenes are disorientating, which gives the film a dreamlike flow. Finally, Cybulski jumping off the train at the beginning, seems now very disconcerting, since he was killed jumping on a train at a railway station in real life. AS

Austeria_4AUSTERIA (THE INN, 1983) is set in the Galician (now Polish) border with Russia in the first days of World War I. Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film of the novel of the same name by Julian Stryjkowki (who also co-wrote the script) is controversial because of its description of Jewish pacifism, which led to the slaughter by Russian soldiers, and its parallels to the Holocaust. AUSTERIA is symptomatic for the difficulties Polish filmmakers had after World II in dealing with the lack of Polish resistance to the Holocaust committed in their country, and the fact, that more than thousand Jews, many of them survivors of the concentration camps, were murdered after 1944 in Poland. In the film, a Jewish innkeeper Tag (Franciszek Pieczka) is trying to keep some sort of order during the first hectic days of the war. Austrian troops manning the border, are on the retreat, Hassidic Jews from an nearby village arrive, panic stricken. An Austrian baroness and her family seem to have nothing else to do than settling private scores; and a Hungarian hussar, who has lost contact with his regiment, is more interested in sexual escapades than finding his way back to his troops. A young Jewish village girl is killed, and the rituals of her funeral are causing difficulties. The Hassidic Jews discuss Talmudic questions, before being slaughtered by the advancing Russian soldiers in a nearby lake. Whilst the film is a realistic portrait of the chaos and viciousness of the emerging war, its underlying ideology that Jews were slaughtered because they did not put up resistance is apologetic – centuries of pogroms in Poland are proof of a violent anti-Semitism.

AKTORZY PROWINCJONALNI (PROVINCIAL ACTORS, 1978) is Agnieszka Holland’s debut film. Set in a small town in contemporary Poland, a Warsaw filmmaker (Burski) comes to direct a small touring theatre troupe in Wyspianski’s ‘Liberation’, a patriotic Polish classic. The main actor, Krzystzof, wants to make a name for himself, and tries to influence Burski to stick religiously to the text. But Burski has other ideas: he wants to change the play into a sensational avant-garde version, cutting the text down to the bone. Krzystzof fights the director all the way, but after the premiere, he gives in, making peace with Burski, to save his career. But his marriage to Anka, a puppeteer, is on the rocks. Anka leaves her husband. She too, has come to realise through experience,  that advancement in society comes with a loss of innocence. Whilst Holland’s actors as not particularly sympathetic – the usual gossip about which actress sleeps with the director, a gay outsider and an alcoholic – society is blamed as much as the individual. Anka is shown as an idealistic dreamer, who still reads Heidegger, and is ridiculed by her husband. Krzysztof starts using great words like “homeland, human fate and freedom” from the play, to make himself look different from the rest, but he is only too ready to fall in with Burski’s interpretation. His attempted suicide is just an act, he then runs to Anna (whom he had just condemned as naïve), like a little boy to his mother. Contrary to some western perception, PROVINCIAL ACTORS, which won the ‘FIPRESCI’ prize in Cannes, is not a thesis film, Holland declaring”I don’t know how far I have been successful, but in ‘Provincial Actors‘ I was less concerned with showing the mechanism of manipulation, and more with presenting human fate, in all its embroilment and entanglement. That is, I tried to highlight the existential aspect rather than a journalistic one. I didn’t want a film with a thesis, though I have sometimes been accused of this”.

Wedding copyWESELE (THE WEDDING, 1972) is one of Wajda’s most complex films. Based on a play by Stanislaw Wyspiansky written in 1900, THE WEDDING is an hallucination in the mist of the countryside, where guests at the party are visited by figures from Poland’s past. Set at a time when no Polish state existed, the groom, a journalist from Krakow, is a member of the intelligentsia, and marrying the daughter of a peasant. During the five-and-a-half minute opening-credit sequence, we follow the cortege with bride and groom going from the church through the countryside, with menacing soldiers lurking everywhere, to the house where the celebrations will be held. By now darkness has fallen and fog encloses everything. At the ceremony, the guests participate not so much in a party, but a comedy of manners, where everybody seems to chasing everybody else. Arguments ensue, and the free-for-all atmosphere degenerates into bitter fighting: the intelligentsia versus the peasantry; Poles against Jews; town’s people versus the rural population, the educated complain about the uneducated and, last but not least, women and men fight with great rancour. What follows are apparitions of Polish historical figures, who engage with the wedding guests in discussions about the way forward to Polish unity and statehood. Scenes from battles are replayed: the peasant army attacking the Russian troops in the successful battle of 1795, the same peasantry being slaughtered in the rebellion of 1846. None of the participating groups is shown in a favourable light: most of them prefer drink and day-dreaming to action, men seem to cheat permanently on their women, the artists are decadent and nobody seems to care much about the social inequalities. In the end, symbolically, the ghost of Wernyhora, an ancient Polish leader, presents the wedding party with a golden horn, to start the battle for independence. But soon, the horn is lost by the marching men outside, amidst the all-engulfing fog. A dreamlike journey through Polish history, told in poetic and expressionistic images, a picturesque yet nightmarish feast.

KINOTEKA 2015 | POLISH MASTERPIECES |MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS 8 APRIL – 29 MAY

 

Trapeze (1956)

12240110_1491485151181618_4247650772421919146_nDir.: Carol Reed

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Gina Lollobrigida, Katy Jurado;

USA 1956, 105 min.

Based on the novel The Killing Frost by Max Catto, TRAPEZE is one of Carol Reed’s meeker films although the scene direction is highly sophisticated and saw his re-uniting with his DOP of The Third Man, Robert Krasker. The circus romance was very much pulp material to start with, and has aged quite badly, into the bargain.

Trapeze artist Mike Ribble (Lancaster), who was one of only six men who completed the triple Salto, has been crippled since a fall, and works at the Circus Bouglione in Paris as a tent rigger. Enter the young American Tino Orsini (Curtis), who tries to talk Ribble into teaching him to do the famous triple. After Ribble agrees, getting himself fit to be part of the act, the trampoline artist Lola (Lollobrigida) is pushed to join the trapeze act by the owner of the circus, even though she is not very talented. Lola seems to fall for Tino, but it turns out, that she really loves Mike. This leads to a split between Mike and Tino, which threatens the lives of the trio whilst they train for Tino to perform the triple.

Beautifully shot in the famous Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, TRAPEZE‘s storyline is pure Mills & Boon. When Lola tells Mike that she loves him, but does not want to hurt Tino’s Ego, it raises some involuntarily laughter. Improbability rules, and the acting – apart from Lancaster, who, as a former circus artist, did most of the stunts himself -, is rather over-the-top. That said, Gina Lollobrigida is seductive and skillful, stealing many of the scenes from her co-stars who were at the top of their game.  Whilst a success at the box office, TRAPEZE‘s artistic merits are sadly lacking: you would never guess that TRAPEZE and The Third Man shared the the same director. AS

SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN IN CELEBRATION OF THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL | JANUARY 2016 

The Man Without a Past | VAILLA MENEISSYYTTA (2002)

imagesDir\Writer: Aki Kaurismaki:

Cast: Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Sakari Kuosmanen;

Finland/France/Germany 2002; 97 min.

Like many auteurs of his generation, Aki Kaurismaki is entirely self-taught. After a working life spent as a postman and film critics among other things, he turned his hand to film-making in the eighties and has been incredibly successful in his endeavour, producing his own films and distributing them through his own company Alphaville, and showing them at his arthouse cinemas in Finland. Often working with his elder brother Mika, they have shaped the face of Finnish cinema crafting one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since 1981.

In love with the past and of Finland’s lugubrious hard-drinking working classes, often down on their luck – anything post 1980 does not interest him visually, here he has created another anti-hero for THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, this time the director could not even bother to give him a name, in the credits he is just ‘M’.

M (his beloved Markku Peltola) arrives one Spring evening in Helsinki with a small suitcase. Resting on a park bench he nods off and is attacked by three young men, who leave him for dead. Coming round in a rain-soaked stupor, he gets some treatment and then stumbles out of hospital with retrograde amnesia and ends up on a container site, used by the homeless. Here he makes friends, and rents a container from Antilla (Kuosmanen), who does not actually own it but finds a way of exploiting those down on their luck. His ‘fierce’ dog Hannibal turns out to be a submissive female, and soon snuggles up with M on his bed. All this is shot through with Kaurismaki’s trademark blend of eccentric situational humour which is light on dialogue and heavy on innuendo.

M can’t remember a thing about his life but spots a couple of metal workers down near the port and gets a strange inkling that he was possibly a welder. Turning to the Samaritans for help, he falls in love with Irma (Outinen), who looks after him. He turns the Samaritan’s musicians into a swing band and after finding job as a welder, he gets caught up in a bank robbery and is locked in the vault with the bank teller. The involvement with the police leads to his identification: he was married, but his wife divorced him due to him gambling. When M travels back to his home town by train he finds her living in their former marital dwelling with a boyfriend, and M is only to relieved that he does not have to fight it out with his rival, returning back to Irma in Helsinki and eventual revenge.

Kaurismaki’s classic absurdist humour is an acquired taste and THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST is the one of best examples. When M cooks dinner for Irma in his container, she asks politely “Are you sure, I can’t help”, to which he answers dead-pan: “I think it’s ruined already”. And after an electrician has helped him connect the power line to his container, M asks how he could return the favour. The man answers matter of factly: “If you see me lying in the gutter face down, turn me on my back”. And finally, when locked in the vault with the teller by the robber, he asks her “Do you mind, if I smoke?”, her cool but enigmatic answer is “Does a tree mourn its fallen leaves?”.

Whilst Kaurismaki is best compared with Preston Sturges and his comedies of the 30s; his heroes like M, are like the actors Buster Keaton preferred, “they can’t raise their voice, their only reaction are furrowed brows”. DOP Timo Salminen, who shot nearly all of Kaurismaki’s films, shows Finland as a grim country of suicides, poverty, hunger and alcoholism and this is borne, according to the director “out of the change in society from a mainly agricultural country, to an industrialised society – many feel rootless and alienated in their own country where high rise blocks and unemployment kill the soul. ” This is a common thread that also runs through

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST won the Grand Prix at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Kati Outinen best actress. AS

REVIEWED DURING THE UCLSSEES SEASON AT THE BLOOMSBURY STUDIO W1 | OCTOBER – DECEMBER 2015 

7 Sami Stories | 4th Nordic Film Festival 2015

Seven young Sami directors, representing the culture of Lapland, directed the same film team in the Norwegian village of Kautokeino. Their short films all share an eerie quality, something not seen before. One might not identify this quality immediately, but all films have in common a spiritual awareness, a deep-seated reference to the past, unspoken enigmas and a dreamlike aspect. Featuring nightmares or poetic, lyrical day-dreams: seven very unique examples of a marginalised culture being very much alive.

SAMI BOGA, directed by Elle Sofe Henriksen, is the story of Mikkel, a teenage boy, who has the responsibility for he reindeer herd of his family, but whilst he is able to look after the animals, he has the most violent nightmares in his head. The snow driven landscape is more than a background: this young man is possessed by demons, possible from the past, and he is unable to distinguish between reality and his visions.

O.M.G. –OH, MAIGON GIRL by Marja Bal Nango features to bored teenage girls, Maigon and Anne-Sire, who attempt to go to a party in Sweden, but in the end walk home frustrated, after the young men they want to travel with, have turned out either violent or disinterested. Drinking Vademecum, an oral health care product, with a minimal alcoholic content, they fall out with each other, with the boys and with the whole world. They teeter at the brink of being victims of male violence and at the end, one is only too happy for them, when they walk home together: just not ready for the world they dream of. An often flippant, but very serious portrait of the pains of growing up.

LONG LIVE SAPMI directed by Per Josef Idivuoma is a slapstick comedy, which has its roots in ancient Sami history. Klemet is the hero, who fights foreigners, trying to occupy his country. But soon his attention is not so much focused on the foundation of the first Sami parliament, but a young woman, with whom he has wild sex in his tent. Always over-the-top, Long live Sapmi is a wild take on Sami independence and the importance of a good love life.

Majjen, the heroine in BURNING SUN by Elle Marja Eira, is wearing a special hat, a traditional Sami outfit, like all women in her village. But the Christian missionaries forbid the women to wear these particular hat, because it’s form reminds them of the horns of the devil. Up and down the country, the women are chased, and Majjen is warned by a woman firend to be careful. Nevertheless, she falls in the hands of the missionaries, and is taken away by boat. After a struggle, she chooses to drown, rather than give up her hat. With beautiful underwater image, Burning Sun, is a dark poetic parable, which portraits the fight for identity of the Sami women.

EDITH & ALJOSJA are the main protagonists in Ann Holmgren’s (happy) variation on Tristan and Isolde. The two live in different worlds: Edith in an old fashioned Sami tent, Aljosja in a modern house.They are separated by a river, the man seems able to walk on the water. But the woman has to swim trough the dangerous current, nearly drowning, before she reach Aljosha. This is a beautifully shot allegory on love conquering different cultural backgrounds, with a white halo settling at the end on the house of united couple.

AILE AND GRANDMOTHER by Silja Somby, is told like a fable story: Aile, a young girl has her first period, and is asked by her grandmother, why she did not tell her mother. But Aile is much closer to the old woman than her ‘modern’ mother. The grandmother, who cures illnesses with herbal remedies, talks about giving Aile her healing powers. When Aile finds her dead, she runs to her mother, who does not believe her, since the grandmother passed away long ago, when Aile was a baby. Simple, but not simplistic, Somby shows in a lyrical way, how traditions are passed on – even from the dead to the living.

THE AFFLCITED ANIMAL, directed by Egil Petersen is the most impressive contribution. It is the portrait of a dysfunctional family: Leif, the father, tries to deny the mental illness if his wife Agnes, who stays unresponsive in bed, whilst their young daughter Ida is very much aware of the fact that Leif wants a way out. When one of their dogs gets ill, Ida phones Eva, the vet, who has been Leif’s girl friend before he met Agnes. Seeing Eva, Leif wants to see her again the same evening, and lies to his daughter, but she is not fooled, with whom Leif is going to spend his evening with. Ida is a very delicate child: she sees her father searching for a way out, wanting him to stay on the one hand, but another part of her wants him to be happy with Eva. A dark, very complex relationship story, centred around a young girl whose desires split her in two. AS

SCREENING DURING THE 4TH NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | ON TOUR NATIONWIDE IN NOTTINGHAM | MANCHESTER | 

AS
****

Sumé: The Sound of the Revolution (2014) | 4th Nordic Film Festival 2015

Dir.: Inuk Sillis Hoegh

Documentary; Denmark/Norway 2014, 73 min.

Over 700 years ago the Inuit settled in Greenland but for the last quarter of a century their culture, that thrives on cooperation rather than the trademark firerce competition of the West, was fading suppressed by their Colonial masters in Denmark. Danish is the first language of the country, taught at school, and no professional career in Greenland is possible without it. And whilst there is an “Advisory Council” on the island, all decisions are made by the Danish parliament – and that still stands today today, even after Denmark granted Greenland a sort of home rule

It took a rock band called SUMÉ finally to ignite their revolutionary spirit back in 1972, performing for the first time in the Greenlandic language and led by singer and songwriter Mlik Hoegh and composer Per Berthelsen. Their first album “Sumé 73” – the cover showing the reproduction of a 19th century woodcut depicting a Danish trader killed by Inuit hunter – was so radical that even their young supporters were in awe of the music. The group met while studying in Copenhagen. The Sumémusicians felt, like many of their fellow citizens “that Denmark was getting rich on their backs.” Greenlandic cultural identity and lifestyle was slowly be replaced by the Danish way of life.

But many older politicians wanted to keep the status quo, and Sumé and its young followers used the Vietnam War and the Black Panther movement to connect to the protest movement in Europe. Their songs were rooted in the struggle in their homeland, like “Quillisat”, the name of a mining town which was abruptly evacuated: the Danish authorities had decided that the profit margin was not sufficient enough so all inhabitants were moved from their old-fashioned family homes into high-rise blocks far away. As predicted by many, the group split up in 1974 after he members returned to Greenland at the end of their studies, even though they were re-united in 1988, producing a forth album.

Sumé is not only a nostalgic trip into the past, the – by now rather aged – fans of the group give their opinion in interviews, and their tenor is clear: not much has changed in Greenland and the hope is for a new generation, bringing real independence to the country. Anyone watching the newsreel clips of Danish royalty in their court outfits visiting the Inuit, will agree to the mismatch: this is not a marriage of consent, but a convenient economical deal for Denmark. The spirited resistance of Suméé’s music lives on and is well integrated in this lively documentary about an ancient culture trying to free itself from it s colonial chains. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 4TH NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | ON  TOUR NATIONWIDE UNTIL JANUARY 2016 | NOTTINGHAM | MANCHESTER |

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The Idealist (2015) | Idealisten | 4th Nordic Film Festival 2015

Dir.: Christina Rosendahl

Cast: Peter Plaugborg, Arly Jover

Denmark 2015, 114 min.

THE IDEALIST is a docu-drama featuring the journalist Poul Brink (1953-2002) whose research between 1988 and 1995 uncovered a conspiracy involving one of the greatest political scandals in Danish history that still reverberates today.

Christina Rosendahl, known mostly for her documentaries such as Stargazer (2002), here reconstructs the events that started on January 21th 1968, when an American B-52 bomber crashed near Thule airbase in Greenland (which is still is more or less a Danish colony). Carrying four hydrogen bombs – only three were recovered – the accident disappeared from history. Twenty years later, the radio journalist Poul Brink (Plaugborg, In your Arms), working in Jutland, discovered that the majority of about 30 workers, who were used in the cleaning up operation “Project Crested Ice” after the Thule accident, had developed skin cancer, some of their children were born disabled. The workers, who underwent scans, all got letters from the Danish Health service, telling them that they were healthy.

It is here where Brink’s work starts by convincing the Health Service bureaucrats to come clean. But during his research of the Thule incident, Brink stumbles into revealing a much more potent scandal: Danish governments of the post WWII period, mostly led by Social Democrats, had opposed nuclear weapons. But in 1957, the than Prime Minister Jens-Otto Krag had signed a secret agreement with the US government, allowing them the use of their territory to ferry around nuclear weapons. Like true gentlemen, the US government helped to supress any information about the Thule incident, particularly since the Social Democratic government of JC Hansen faced a General Election – which they lost anyway – a few days later. During the seven years of his battle to have the government owe up, Brink usually got answers along the lines of “this happened under the Social Democrats” or “they were different times”. The journalist chases one of the US participants in the cover-up to his home in Texas, where the police remove him from the premises. Finally, he uncovers the secret document, but is threatened with a prison sentence by the Danish authorities, if he would reveal the document in full. After Brink resists, he lives one year under the shadow of this threat. The whereabouts of the missing hydrogen bomb is still an issue in Greenland,, fighting for full independence from Denmark – after all the bomb was 73 times more powerful than the one exploded over Hiroshima. And whilst the workers were compensated with 5000 GBP (!) each, the Danish government never apologised for the incident or its cover-up.

Rosendahl does not concentrate on Brink – apart from scenes showing him with his Spanish girlfriend Estibaliz Hernandez (Jover) and his son Kristian whom he alienates with his obsessive struggle for the truth – but uses him as a dieu-ex-machina who drives the story forward. Newsreel clips accompany this powerful docu-drama which champions a man possessed by finding the truth – an idealist who had believed in the honourable history of his country, only to be confronted by an insane level of secrecy and threats. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 4TH NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | THE FESTIVAL SHOWS NATIONWIDE UNTIL JANUARY 2016 | BRISTOL | GLASGOW | NOTTINGHAM

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Armi Alive | Armi elää! (2015)

Director: Jörn Donner | Cast: Minna Haapkylä, Laura Birn, Hannu Pekka, Robert Enkei | 84min | Biopic | Finland

Jörn Donner (1933-2020) is so far the only Finn to win an Oscar, for producing Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman’s film about two siblings in 1900s Sweden. Donner went on to make his swan song The Memory of Ingmar Bergman shortly before he died in 2020.

Armi Alive is a biopic drama about Armi Ratia, the elegant Finnish textile entrepreneur behind the iconic Marimekko brand. Donner’s focus here is on the most productive years of Armi’s career, her late thirties and forties, where she sets up and grows the fashion business that would become an international design brand during the 1950s and ’60s. Marimekko is still going strong today with its iconic designs that spoke to a postwar generation of women in Scandinavia.

@Nordic Art

Ratia is played by Minna Haapkylä as a stylish and driven and risk-taking creative force who is emotionally wrapped up in her and family but still has ample time for romance, and this side of her personality takes centre stage when she falls in love with an Englishman.

In his ‘play within a film’ Donner creates a very sophisticated visual aesthetic to match his stylish subject matter, giving the Marimekko depicted in his narrative a strong feeling of continuity that carries it forward to the present  day where is still feels as fresh and contemporary today as it did in those early ground-breaking years of Scandinavian design. At the same time, there’s a sense that Haapkylä is discovering the enigmatic character of the cutting edge designer “Maria” (the name of Armi’s character in the film) while  actually playing her in a highly individual performance. When asked what was special about Armi’s life, she declares ‘not much’. Yet she’s had an extraordinary time: losing three brothers during the war, and then twin children, and struggling against her husband’s traditional family and the banks for financing.

Back the 1950s when Armi’s created Marimekko she hoped it would epitomise a modern woman who was ‘free, natural and international’. “Uniforms for the intellectual” is how she describes her designs. Donner give her free reign showing her very much as an individual and maverick who somehow captured the imagination of a jaded population looking for new design ideas and inspiration and showing that Marimekko could be all things to all people, just as Armi Ratia intended. MT

 

 

Bjornoya | Bear Island (2014) Prime Video

Wri|Dir: Edda Grjotheim, Inge Wegge | 78min | Action Doc | Norway

A snowboarding and surfing trip to Bear Island in the Barents Sea seems like a foolhardy idea even by Norwegian standards, but highly entertaining as we soon discover.

The three cheerful brothers- Hakon, Markus and Inge (who looks surprisingly like Jesse Eisenberg) set off on their daredevil mission all kitted up to nines with cold weather gear and prepared for the elements.

A jaunty soundtrack accompanies the doc’s extraordinary live action sequences showing the guys to be fit, well-prepared and genial despite the seriously scary weather conditions. Getting on like a tent on fire, (they kindle a wood fire under canvas to light their stove) they even get up early one bone-numbing morning to swim naked in the sea.

Cinematically this provides some sublimely eerie images of perma cold conditions, floating mists – the only brightness coming from the brothers’ high tech suits. There are some inventive moments with the camera occasionally grazing the ground, split screen shots, time-lapses and slo-mo adding a comtemplative, dreamlike touch that contrasts well with the brothers’ high energy, feel good vibe. No sibling rivalry here.

The awe-inspiring remoteness of the freezing terrain is surprisingly devoid of animal life – an arctic fox scampers by foraging for food, and seal blubber slips onto the menu eventually to make things authentic, clearly not something the boys would have wished for with its nauseous taste of cod liver oil. On a more alarming level, they notice the constant stream of plastic floating towards the North Pole – one even tries some Sprite left in one of the sealed bottles.

Masochists, nature enthusiasts and extreme sports fans will love this arthouse doc that travels to the Northern tip of Europe. But body-boarding in the frost laden waters of the Barents sea feels so hostile and bleak that the trip takes on endurance test proportions – not only for the cast – who do their best with endlessly chipper commentary. That said, there is a naked beauty and a balletic rhythm to this documentary that marks the directors out to be a talented pair who will hopefully go on to produce more of this kind of ‘extreme sport in remote locations’ fare that’s entertaining when one can appreciate it from somewhere warmer. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO 

In Your Arms | I Dine Haeder (2015) | Nordic Film Festival 4 -13 December 2015

Dir.: Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom

Cast: Lisa Carlehed, Peter Plaugborg, Johanna Wokalek

Denmark 2015, 88 min.

French born writer/director Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom’s feature debut is an intense and emotional affair carried by a superb first performance from Lisa Carlehed as Maria, a nurse taking a patient from Copenhagen to Switzerland where he intends to undergo voluntary euthansia.

This could have been cringeworthy or mawkish but Shalstrom’s narrative takes a very rational approach to the topic of end-of-life care but also weaves in themes of patient/carer relationships. To start with neither Maria, in her mid-thirties, nor Niels (Plaugborg), her patient suffering from progressive MS, are in any way idolised – on the contrary, Niels is shown as a bitter, twisted and egocentric young man whose character traits were very obvious before he fell ill. His mother and brother are witness to this and Maria is also often the target of his aggressive, provocative and self-pitying behaviour.

Maria does not like herself; minor but self-inflicted injuries are the symptoms of her sex life which boarders on the masochistic. She needs to punish herself permanently in small ways and Niels obliges only too willingly. Even though his family and Maria are conscious of Niels’ nastiness, they do not want to help him make use of assisted-suicide in Switzerland, despite the approval of a panel of doctors. When Niels gets particularly unpleasant with Maria, she changes her mind and they set off for Switzerland. On a stop-over in Hamburg, where Niels insists on visiting a strip club on the Reeperbahn, Maria learns that he has a five year old son, his mother Julia (Wokalek) refusing to let him see his son. The final scenes in Switzerland are handled with great sensitivity and humanity.

IN YOUR ARMS is analytical, without being didactic. Sahlstrom’s characters are suffering in their different ways and there is no league-table for unhappiness here. Maria’s misery – she does not want to accept (never mind love) herself – is rooted in her lack of self-confidence, for which she over-compensates with being too nice to everyone – apart from herself. But her demons are spoiling her life and she can therefore identify with Niels, who wants to kill himself because he too is suffering from self-hate, unrelated to his illness. Two people, “unworthy” in their own eyes, are taking the journey to Switzerland and the outcome for Maria depends on her learning a lesson from Niels’ life, which was in a way wasted before the illness. Whilst Niels ruined his own life with his arrogance and egoism, Maria is his mirror image: she is on the way to ruin her own life by a self-inflicted loneliness which alienates her from everyone, even the patients she is helping.

DOP Brian Curt Petersen has chosen a documentary approach, avoiding clichés, particularly in the hospital scenes and in Switzerland. Carlehed and Plaugborg feed off each other, showing how much they need their “mirror”. Sahlstrom’s direction keeps a cool Brecht-like distance, without understating the emotional impact of this superb debut. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF THE NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | THE FESTIVAL STARTS IN LONDON ON 4 DECEMBER AND GOES NATIONWIDE UNTIL JANUARY 2016 | BRISTOL | GLASGOW | NOTTINGHAM

Liza, the Fox-Fairy | LIZA, A ROKATUNDER (2015) |

Dir.: Karoly Ujj Meszaros;

Cast: Monika Balsal, David Sakurai, Szbolcs Bede Fazekas

Hungary 2015, 94 min.

LIZA, THE FOX-FAIRY is one of the highest Hungarian budget features to be produced in recent years.  The debut of director and co-writer Karoly Ujj Meszaros, it was first developed at Cannes’ Cinefondation Atelier in 2010 and was finally released in Hungary this year, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea: the black, morbid humour may not translate very well outside Hungary, and the mixture of styles (the production design of Amelie combined with the narrative of a Tobe Hooper film) serves up many surprises, but could also be seen as over the top.

Nurse Liza (Balsal), is the long-term carer of Marta, the widow of a Japanese diplomat. She is obsessed with the ghost of the Japanese pop singer Tomy Tani (Sakurai), who appears to her inclusively in her dreams. On her 30th birthday she dreams that Tani murders Marta, and then goes on a killing spree, doing away with every person who falls in love with Liza. Naturally Liza becomes the main suspect in the investigation but inspector Zoltan Zaszlos’ (Fazekas) believes in her innocence. Liza gets through this traumatic experience by imagining that she has been transformed into a Fox-Fairy, a deadly demon from Japanese folklore.

Meszaros started life directing commercials in Japan and, in an interview, admits to being a big fan of Japanese culture: “Japanese culture is strange and unique. And in a way, some Japanese traditions are like some Hungarian ones. I also like Japanese pop music. I am especially fond of Asian Pop groups from the 160s and 1970s.”

While most of his compatriots are now making films in English, Meszaros opted to make the film in Hungarian. His success at the ‘Fantasponto’ Festival, where he won the ‘Grand Prix’, seems to contradict the rule that only English films have a chance of success. LIZA is very much in the vein of Gyorgy Palfi’s Taxiderma: the grotesqueness of the murders and the vivid primary colours of DOP Pete Szatmari evoke a dreamworld of horror and timeless weirdness; set in the 70s yet with all the trappings of neo-capitalism on show.

Monika Balsal is the main reason why LIZA works, in spite of its culture crashes and quotes that overload the narrative: her impressive turn as the innocent fairy-tale princess captures the audience’s imagination much more than the irritating cleverness and outlandishness of script and direction. AS

 

Dawn (2015) | Tallinn Black Nights Festival | 13 -29 November 2015

Director/Writer: Laila Pakalniņa

Cast: Vilis Daudziņš, Andris Keišs, Wiktor Zborowski

Latvia/Estonia/Poland | Drama/Comedy | 90 min

Folklore meets modernity in DAWN, a gorgeously choreographed glide through an old soviet propaganda tale of life on a collective farm under stalinism. It is the fifth fiction feature by Latvian auteur Laila Pakalniņa, whose work also includes some 20-odd documentaries and shorts. Debuting on the 97th anniversary of Latvia’s independence, with a knowingly cheeky nod to Vladimir Putin among its credited inspirations, this consistently assured and occasionally mesmerising work premiered in the main competition of this year’s Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn.

Known to run 15-20 km every morning, Pakalniņa announced the date of DAWN’s world-premiere while running the Tallinn Marathon in September, and the film itself sustains high levels of energy through a dynamic formal balance and an oddly infectious persistence. At once intimate and epic, this period tragedy, about a young boy named Janis (Antons Georgs Grauds) who informs on his anti-soviet father (Vilis Daudziņš) to the secret police and who incurs the vengeful wrath of his own family because of it, is also at times an idiosyncratic, joltingly complex comedy. Its rapidfire context demands our active participation to keep apace of events — one ostensibly nonsensical reference to someone “living with the polar bears” is an allusion to the mass deportations to Siberian that thousands of Latvians suffered under Stalin. The ways in which it eludes a full commitment to any particular tonal register — in-jokes, throwaway gags, formal experimentation — means that for foreign audiences at least, the film is an invigorating intellectual exercise more than an emotionally moving drama.

Nothing wrong with that especially: though it lists soviet filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Rzheshevsky (as well as ‘Our Childhood’) alongside Putin as its sources of stimulation, this monochrome film prompts valid comparisons to Alexei German’s recent swansong, HARD TO BE A GOD. Like that work, DAWN demonstrates a masterful command of complicated sequence shots from Pakalniņa and her Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staroń. Much of the action unfolds across multiple planes, as the camera pans lushly through cluttered sets designed in such a way as to create a vivid, believable chaos. The usual farmhouse cacophonies — floorboard creaks, flustered animals, crying babies and off-screen conversational arguments — give the work an impressively immersive quality, a kind of warming maximalism, which is deliberately undercut by intermittent moments of chilly absurdity, when our narrator breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly into Staroń’s camera.

DAWN opens with a close-up, of a tree-hugging snail foregrounded against the animated flap of a hen’s wings. In the background, we see children running through the frame, oblivious to the unperceivable drifts of time — and the political ramifications that cut through it. Throughout her film, Pakalniņa returns to this strategy, of juxtaposing between the abstract and the particular, between the plush pastures of the Latvian countryside and the almost microscopic detail of life within it. A bee lands on a human head of hair. We see a dead fly stuck to someone’s glass of water. A beautiful, birds-eye view of a dead boy in a field continues with the camera mechanically moving to earth, concluding with an extreme close-up of his vacant eyes. Like the giant star one villager is painting on the side of a building, it’s difficult to form a fuller picture of things, here — deliberately so. The central tragedy (“If a son betrays his father, kill him as a dog”) rests upon the twisted loyalties that form when an understandably impressionable boy takes a state’s insidious word as gospel. MICHAEL PATTISON

TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL | 13 -29 NOVEMBER 2015 | TALLINN ESTONIA

UK Film Festival | 25 – 28 November 2015 | LUX Awards

THE UK FILM FESTIVAL offers an innovative selection of feature films by established and up and coming directors, as well as cutting edge documentaries, and animation films. Films are screened to the public every evening at two central London venues. Many screenings will be followed by film-maker Q+A sessions, after which there will also be an opportunity for informal discussion with the film directors present.

Short film highlights in the Festival include Michael Lennox’s delightful drama BOOGALOO AND GRAHAM, which won a BAFTA for Best British Short Film earlier this year, and was also nominated for an Oscar; and the beautifully shot LEIDL by Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto, which won the Palm D’Or for Best Short Film at the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival.

The festival includes a Surprise Screening of a Roald Dahl story now adapted into a feature – the title of which is yet to be revealed. Judging the competition this year is the Oscar winning Director – Mat Kirkby.

On November 16 and 17 the LUX finalists are screening at the Barbican supported by the UK Film Festival. The LUX Prize finalists are:

The festival includes The LUX Film Prize Awards from three shortlisted candidates: MEDITERRANEA, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s MUSTANG, and Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s THE LESSON

MEDITERRANEA | Jonas Carpignano | Barbican 2 | 16 November 18.30

UROK (THE LESSON) | Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov | Barbican 2 | 17 November 18.30

MUSTANG | Deniz Gamze Ergüven | Barbican | 25th November |TBC

BFI Steven Street | Opening Event | 8:00 pm Surprise Screening of a Roald Dahl adaptation starring Dustin Hoffman, Judy Dench and James Corde

THE FULL UK FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAMME HERE

 

 

Sheffield Doc Fest Comes to London | 4-6 December 2015 |

A selection of documentaries that premiered at this year’s SHEFFIELD DOCFEST are screening at Bertha Dochouse next weekend Good Girl, Containment and Drone. Exploring contemporary themes of mental health, nuclear containment and the ethics of drone technology these illuminating docs each examine questions and ideas that lie at the heart of scientific thinking and showcase creativity and innovation in filmmaking.

GOOD GIRL (Dir. Solveig Melkeraaen/Norway 2014) Friday 4th December / 18:30

An acclaimed portrait of one woman’s descent into the darkness of mental health, Norwegian director Solveig Melkeraaen’s film Good Girl is nevertheless an often humorous and poetic response to her own condition. Taking the worst aspect of her illness – a compulsive, controlling anxiety – and puts it to good use, Melkeraaen creates an extraordinarily stylised docu-drama both heart-breaking and hopeful in equal measure. With unprecedented access to her treatment process and her loving family, Melkeraaen takes the audience on a journey through the devastating consequences of depression. The results leave us with an extremely raw but stylish autobiographical tale as deftly executed as any Michel Gondry movie.

DRONE (Dir: Tonje Hessen Schei/Denmark 2014)

Sunday 6th December / 18:30

The ultimate exposé, Tonje Hessen Schei’s film Drone is as gripping as a blockbuster and as terrifying as any newsreel. In an age of increasing demand for virtual reality content an all-too-real kind of soldier has been born, the so-called ‘Drone Warrior’. Revealing the deadly consequences of the post- 9/11 war on terror extent and spookily topical in its subject matter, Drone uncovers the perpetrators and victims on both sides of this deadly phenomenon, and asks potent questions about the legality, technology and morality of this thoroughly modern warfare.

SHEFFIELD DOC FEST COMES TO LONDON | 4 -6 DECEMBER 2015 | www.dochouse.org |

Black Mass (2015) Netflix

Dir: Scott Cooper | Cast: Johnny Depp, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Joel Edgerton, Corey Stoll, Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott | 122min  Crime Thriller  US

In Scott Cooper’s Boston gangland thriller Johnny Depp plays vicious psychopath Whitey Bulger who, like his English counterparts the Kray Brothers, was also very fond of his mother.

This is Scott Cooper’s first foray into the big time and he handles it competently – if not a little derivatively – largely due to a strong cast of talent in which Depp is the star turn. This is a saga of multiple murder, revenge and betrayal underpinned by a long-standing relationship between gangland boss Bulger and his childhood mate John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), who for many years leads the unsuccessful police investigation into the capture of the arch felon.

With scrappy nicotine-tinged hair, brownish teeth and an icy stare that embodies evil, Depp provides compelling viewing as the terrifying James “Whitey” Bulger, a criminal who menaced everyone who knew him around South Boston from the 1970s until 1994, when he went into hiding for nearly 16 years before finally being run to ground in California. In his weak defence, he claimed to be ‘in league’ with the Feds to rid Boston on the Italian mafia.

The action sequences are intercut with interview testimonials given by members of Bulger’s mob to provide a tightly-scripted and absorbing account of events and add superb structure to the storyline. It emerges that Bulger was a long-term criminal in ‘Southie’ (South Boston) and also served time in Alcatraz. His enemies, the Angiulo family of North Boston, are the reason the FBI, under the auspices of John Morris (David Harbour) and Connolly, eventually persuade Bulger to secretly team up against their mutual enemy and this provides Bulger with an opportunity to flex his muscles largely without interuption until Corey Stoll (a masterful Fred Wyshak) takes over as a federal prosecutor determined to nail Bulger, once and for all.

The ubiquitous but stalwart Benedict Cumberbatch finds his way into the storyline as Whitey’s brother Billy who happens to be Massachusetts’ most powerful state senator. There is also a brief cameo role for Dakota Johnson as his steely wife and mother to Whitey’s only child, a six-year-old boy who dies from an allergic reaction to an injection.

Cooper’s production looks slick and authentic with some excellent interior sequences as well as plenty of shootouts in the rainy streets of a seventies Boston provided by Masanobu Takayanagi’s well-crafted cinematography. In support roles, Adam Scott and Kevin Bacon are stern and long-suffering as federal agents in this war against an enemy which seems to come from all directions. But this is ultimately Depp’s film and he gives a commanding performance that is one of the most convincing of his career. A charismatic seventies score from Jerry Goldsmith or Bernard Hermann would have put some icing on this rather bland cake, but that is sadly too much to expect here. MT

| BLACK MASS IS NOW ON NETFLIX

Gaumont | The Birthplace of French Film | UK French Film Festival 2015

Nostalghia_Artificial_Eye_2This Autumn’s UK French Film Festival (nationwide until 13th December) brings into focus the powerhouse of French Cinema GAUMONT. Originally founded to produce articles for the photographic industry, Gaumont started making short films in 1897. As Leon Gaumont’s secretary, Alice Guy-Blache became the first female film director with her debut La Fée aux Choux in 1896, perhaps the first narrative film in the history of cinema.

Later she became the head of the Gaumont Film’s production company from 1896-1906, with the studios at La Villette in Paris 19th arondissement, at the time the largest studio in Europe. After Alice Guy-Blache went to Hollywood with her husband, Louis Feulliade became head of production at Gaumont. The company branched out to Britain, acquiring a cinema chain under the name Gaumont British, also producing early Hitchcock films, among them The Thirty Nine Steps (1935).

In 1937 film production stopped, due to Hollywood’s products swamping the French market. The production arm of the company was bought up in the same year by Havas, and renamed Société Nouvelle des Éstablissements Gaumont. Huge losses were made again between 1943 and 1947, but with the birth of Nouvelle Vague, the fortunes of the company changed again. Gaumont distributed one of the fore-runners of the Nouvelle Vague features, Robert Bresson’s Un Condamné à mort s’est echappé(1956). Later Gaumont would acquire the rights to the first two Chabrol films, Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins (1959). Rohmer (The Marquise of O), Godard’s (Histoire(s) du Cinéma) and Truffaut’s La Femme d’à Côté) were also in the Gaumont catalogue, together with Tarkovsky’s Nostalgie, Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and Fassbinder’s Querelle during its golden era

In celebration of this tribute, let’s have a look at some of Gaumont cult classic successes:

99742L’ASSASSIN HABITE AU 21  | THE MURDERER LIVES AT 21 

Dir.: Henry-George Clouzot; Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair; France 1942, 83 min.

Made during Gaumont’s loss-making period, this Noirish comedy thriller was a success with French audiences. Inspector Wencslas Vorobechnik (Fresnay) – Wens for short – is hunting a serial killer, Mr. Durand, who leaves a calling crad after his seemingly unconnected murders. Together with his girl friend Mila Milou (Delair), an aspiring actress, he chases the murderer down to a boarding house, were the number of suspects is large – everybody seems to have something to hide. After arresting the wrong person, Wens finally solves the case with the help of Mila.

Whilst Clouzot’s first film as a director might be classified as a text-book ‘who-done-it’ in the Agatha Christie mould, there are many typical moments of Clouzot’s misanthropic nature: whilst the hunt for the murderer is going on, the chief of police phones his assistant, and threatens him with the sack, if success is not imminent. The man’s reaction is to pick up the phone and threatens his underling with unemployment – and so on, until poor Wens, the last in the long row, gets his phone call. In another scene, Clouzot cleverly arranges the sequence involving a policeman lighting his cigarette, giving the effect of the prisoner inadvertently giving the ‘Hitler greeting’ with his arm. Clouzot’s humour is very black throughout here, showing early signs of his love for sadism.

img_3LE SILENCE DE LA MER | THE SILENCE OF THE SEA

Dir.: Jean-Pierre Melville; Cast: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stephane, Jean-Marie Robain; France 1949, 88 min.

Melville’s first film as a director, shot immediately after his release from the Resistance, is based on the novel by Jean Bruller, this being the first of three Melville films about the Resistance, followed by Leon, Morin, Prêtre and L’Armée des Ombres. LE SILENCE is a ‘chamber-piece’, set in the house which an unnamed Frenchman (Robain) and his niece (Stephane are forced to co-habit with a German officer, Von Ebbrenac (Vernon). The German officer, even though polite and obviously cultured, is cold-shouldered by the two French who treat him with an icy silence –after all, he is occupying their house as a member of the German army. The voice over cleverly echoes their feelings, known to the audience, whilst the German tries hard to break through to them with mounting pressure. LE SILENCE is a cold film, Henri Decae’s camera showing the trio like fish swimming round an aquarium: the b/w images create a claustrophobic prison for Von Ebbrenac, only duty on the Eastern Front can release him. A relentless, obsessive masterpiece.

The Big Blue picture4-hi-resLE GRAND BLEU

Dir.: Luc Besson; Cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jean Marc Barr, Jean Reno; France 1988, 168 min.

Besson wanted to break free of the excessive intellectualising in French cinema. LE GRAND BLEU was his escape bid – focusing on the visual quality of cinema, it showcased the advent of his ‘Cinema du Look’ approach. It explores the rivalry that overshadows the longtime frienship of two divers. Jacques Mayol (Barr) falls in love with the insurance broker Johana (Arquette), who follows him and Enzo Maiorca (Reno) to all their competitions. Co-written by Mayol (whose real life rivalry with Maiorca was actual, even though both survived), the story is told in vibrantly romantic images, the Sea being much more attractive than the Earth. But despite its magnificent visuals, LE GRAND BLEU is still only a variation on the ’Buddy-Movie’, where men’s friendship supercedes their relationships with women; the sea representing the emotional element. Ironically the film was the favourite Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic. AS

THE UK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES NATIONWIDE UNTIL 13 DECEMBER 2015

 

Summer of Sangaile (2015) | Seville European Film Festival 2015

Director/Writer: Alantė Kavaïtė

Cast: Julija Steponaityte, Asitė Diržiūtė

Drama | Lithuania/France/Holland | 88 min

The rapturous swoon of adolescent love is the primary focus of THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ, the fleeting portrait of a same-sex romantic fling between two teenage girls in rural Lithuania. Having premiered in Sundance, where it won Alantė Kavaïtė a Best Direction award in the World Cinema category, this easygoing, sensitively handled drama has already enjoyed deserved longevity on the festival circuit and screened in the ‘New Waves’ section of the 12th Seville European Film Festival.

As Lithuania’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ is refreshingly swift and cheery in comparison to the country’s more celebrated but openly pessimistic fare. And though it might lack the steadfast political preponderance of, say, a Sarūnas Bartaš picture, it’s a commendably audience-oriented feature that taps into an increasingly mainstream market longing for portrayals of gender and sexuality that veer beyond the routine and well-trodden—a market that already included Palme d’Or winner BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR and which is now fronted by Todd Haynes’s plushly designed Oscar contender CAROL.

The eponymous protagonist of THE SUMMER OF SANGAILĖ is a lanky, slightly withdrawn 17-year-old (played with adroit minimalism by Julija Steponaitytė) who’s staying with her parents at their chic-shack holiday villa. She first encounters infectiously convivial Auste (Asitė Diržiūtė) when the latter sells her a raffle ticket at a local airshow. Though she begins to hang out with her new pal, Sangailė’s initial interest is in one of Auste’s boy friends, though the time the two girls share alone gradually blossoms into a sexual draw. Approximating the exponential way in which love can engulf us, the film intensifies its scope: for long sequences here, every other character seems to fade away, as Sangailė and Auste indulge in gambolling fashion shows, sunkissed photography sessions and, inevitably, atmospherically lit lovemaking.

Kavaïtė, working on only her second feature—her first, ECOUTE LE TEMPS, was made more than seven years ago—is perhaps well positioned to frame Sangailė as an outsider, having herself lived in France for the last 17 years. Indeed, the writer-director does well to encapsulate the unpredictable ways in which chemistries form and attractions develop. Here, the characters’ needs shift according to a complex arrangement of circumstantial factors: intimacy, trust, confidence, feelings of alienation, and so on. Bored by parental pressure to decide upon a lifelong profession (she embarrasses her mam and dad by saying, when asked, that she wants to grow up to be a whore in front of their friends), Sangailė really wants to be a pilot, watching on with equal fascination and fear as propeller planes perform daredevil flips in the film’s opening credits sequence.

It’s a fitting metaphor. Not only does it establish at the outset that Sangailė has a passion specific enough to mark her as an atypical teen (and thus, an archetypal outsider in several ways), it also helps to characterise the topsy-turvy nature of teenage love. In this, the film is helped immeasurably by a swelling strings score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, an otherwise rousingly overdone soundtrack that here perfectly compliments Sangailė’s scorching spirals of self-discovery. MICHAEL PATTISON

THE 12TH SEVILLE EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 -14 NOVEMBER 2015 

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) | LKFF 2015

Directed by Kim Jee-Woon

Cast: Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-Sung Jung

South Korea | 139mins | Action Adventure Comedy

Kim Jee-Woon put all his experience into this rip-roaring ‘Oriental Western’ set in the 1940s Manchurian desert where lawlessness rules and many ethnic groups clash, three Korean men fatefully meet on a train.

Part tribute to Sergio Leone’s wide-angled masterpieces and part historical tribute to the Korean struggle for independence from Japan, it features brilliant set pieces, action scenes, comedy and great performances from Korea’s top acting talent-  it was also one of the most expensive movies in South Korean cinema history. The action unfurls in the vast plains of the East but should we call it an “Eastern”? It’s a style that has really caught on since 2008 and embodies the wacky humour and verve of the Korean spirit combined with Jee-Woon’s masterful technical expertise. The sheer dynamism of this film will blow you away – ridiculous fun!  Meredith Taylor ©

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2 -15 NOVEMBER  2015

Sunset on the Sarbin River (1967) | LKFF 2015

Director: Chung Chang Wha

Cast: Shin Young-Kyun, Kim Hye-Jung, Nam Goong Won, Yoon Il-Bong

12omin  Action Drama  Korea

Filmed in black and white, this ambitious if overlong pro-Korean anti-imperialist action drama blends humour, romance and brutality in the melancholy story of an earnest Korean student, his name japanised as Musumoto, who feels compelled to join the Japanese Imperial Army and do his bit for the War. Doing rather well, he is promoted to officer in charge and transferred to Burma where his platoon is visited by the famous  “teishintai” or ‘comfort’ women. On the way to the front the troops are betrayed to the guerillas of the new independence army by a solitary single mother with whom Musumoto reluctantly falls in love. But when her child is accidently killed during manoeuvres by troops under his command, her guerilla husband swears revenge on the hapless officer who, despite his valiant efforts, remains the miserable and thwarted Korean hero of the piece. Chung Chang Wha crafts an intelligent, emotional and perceptively humorous tribute to Korea’s fierce national pride at being subjected to Japanese Imperialism during the Second World War. MT

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2 -14 NOVEMBER 2015

Bili Khmary (1968) White Clouds | UCLSSEES Centenary

Director: Rolan Serhiienko

Cast: Iurii Dubroviv Iurii Nazarov

 65min   Drama  Ukraine

Rolan Serhiienko’s 1968 feature debut is a poetic realist drama that explores a tragic episode of Ukrainian history. Using experiential ethnography to record the effects of the interwar process of collectivization on a family of peasant farmers in Ukraine, this sixties recollection of a time of chaos, widescale suffering and death is a lyrical example of ‘post-memorial’ cinema and offers valuable testament of Stalinism and its effects on the Ukrainian rural population during the 1920s and 30s.

After the Great War, the Soviet Union needed to service the burgeoning nutritional needs of its growing industrial population and these relied heavily on Ukraine’s role as ‘bread basket’ to feed the Bolshevik workers. So, under a policy of forced consolidation, land was collected from the peasant farmers, who owned and farmed it, and redistributed it into Soviet collectives, which would then farm the land under Stalinist run cooperatives known as “kolkhozes”, where strict new laws ensured that grain was handed over to the State. Naturally this rapid process of change and loss caused severe social trauma to the peasant farmers, many of whom preferred to slaughter their animals and eat them, rather than give up their property to the Government.

Based on the recollection of one man, seen from childhood to adulthood, Serhiienko tracks the soulful and desperate experience cinematically, making great use of Ukraine’s panoramic scenery: vast farmlands of swaying corn, orchards, endless country roads and, of course, the magnificent cloudscapes by which his father was able to forecast the weather which was so vital to the liveliehood of crops and animals alike. Soulful, sombre and occasionally sinister in tone: the brief euphoria of contributing collectively to the growth of the nation was rapidly eclipsed by widespread desperation of what enforced strategy implied.

Mykhailo Bielikov’s restless camera hurtles down endless roads to a distant past recording carts and farm animals in motion across the countryside, occasionally looking up from the roadside at passers-by and frequently focusing on local peasants who recount their memories in intimate moments, such as a young woman called Vustia, who eventually breaks down in tears as she reads from her bible. One particularly harrowing scene records a grandmother who appears to be travelling in the passenger seat of a car. In close-up, she talks of her memory of the past and village people she knew back then. But there is an unsettling feel to this scene, almost as if the POV is absent or perhaps a ghost. As the grandmother remembers individual villagers, the narrator explains how they have all died tragically. In Bili Khmary, Serhiienko recalls the pre-birth of cinema photography and how it replaced the Deguerrotype; of Eadweard Muybridge and Juliet Margaret Cameron. Expressionist and impressionist, there is a sense of kinesis that feels both intimate and otherworldly in style.

 The past is often remembered with nostalgia as a time of fruitfulness, fecundity and abundance: long summers; beautiful young people; marriages and births; seeding of crops and fruit particularly, watermelons. But the after being forced to give up their land, often violently and under protest – the memories are of freezing winters, aching limbs, gnawing hunger, tiredness and time poverty. “We have no bread, what shall we feed the children?”

BILI KHMARY is a fine example of ‘postmemorial work’ — Marianne Hirsch’s term to describe the attempt to reactivate intergenerational memorial structures. Screening for the first time ever with English subtitles, it was a remarkable insight into this generation of Ukrainian film-makers and their relationship with the past. Enchanting. MT

REVIEWED AS PART OF THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON’S SCHOOL OF SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES | BLOOMSBURY THEATRE IN CELEBRATION OF THEIR CENTENARY 1915 – 2015

Sunrise (2014)

Director: Partho Sen-Gupta

Cast: Adil Hussain, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Gulpaz Ansari, Komal Gupta

85min  Fantasy Thriller  India

Exploring the evergreen theme of child abduction and violence towards women, Partho Sen-Gupta’s  third feature SUNRISE is a noirish psychological thriller with a tour de force from Adil Hussain as a social services inspector wracked with guilt over his own daughter’s disappearance, as 60,000 children go missing in India every year.

This richly sepia-tinted arthouse mood piece relies on sound as much as lighting and atmosphere to evoke the feelings of anguish, longing and menace Adil feels as he trawls the rain-soaked streets of Mumbai. During his tireless investigation that visits a lap-dancing club and underage brothels in his search for little Aruna, he shifts between reality and fantasy, although the line between the two is as mysterious and muddled as the labyrinthine streets he searches in the course of his duty.

As Lakshman Joshi he is preoccupied with researching the case of a battered 16-year-old boy, Babu (Chinmay Kambli) and a little girl who has gone missing. Meanwhile his wife, Leela (Tannishtha Chatterjee), appears to be expecting another child and is deeply traumatised by their missing daughter. He soon comes across, 12-year-old Naina (Esha Amlani) and her protector Komal (Gulnaaz Ansari), who is confined to the club’s living quarters with other underage girlss. at one point he appears to be in the exotic dancing venue, having found his daughter, but this is clearly a dream sequence and he nervously awakes.

Spare on dialogue but long of soulful sighs and wailing, SUNRISE is embued with a vibrant palpable dramatic tension. It is a strangely magnetic, dreamlike drama deeply evoking India’s social problems with sumptuous cinematography and a standout turn from Hussain who holds it all together as a perplexed and bewildered man on the edge of desperation.  A delight for cineastes and the arthouse crowd.

REVIEWED DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Ode to My Father (2014) | Gukjesijang | LKFF 2015 2 -14 November

Dir.: J K Joun | Cast: Jeong-min Hwang, Yunjin Kim | South Korea 2014, 126 min.

A full-blooded epic, ODE TO MY FATHER spans over fifty years of Korean history. Full of overwhelming images from the chaos of the war; the danger of the mining, to the brutal war in Vietnam: all this is more enough for one film. Unfortunately, J K Joun too often drifts off into sentimentality, the action is tragic enough to impress without going over the top. Impressive performances and Byung-woo Lee’s powerful score save the drama offering a fascinating a overview of 20th Century Korean history from the personal perspective of one man.

We first meet our hero Yoon duk, as a boy in 1950 in North Korea, fleeing with his family from the Chinese army. An American warship takes some of the refugees, but during the chaotic scrambles to get on the ship, Yoon looses his sister Maksoon. His father tries to find the little girl, but is never seen again. The grown-up Yoon (Hwang) will mourn the loss of his sister for the rest of his life: he cannot overcome his guilt. The family settles in Busan, where they work for Yoon’s aunt Kkotbun in her grocery shop, which Yoon will inherit one day.

In West Germany in the Sixties, he works in a mine near Duisburg, just escaping an accident with his life, he falls in love with the South Korean nurse Youngj (Kim). The two marry and have children, but Yoon again goes abroad to fight against the Vietcong in the Vietnam War. A TV-show tries to re-unite families who lost each other during the turbulent Korean history, and Maksoon, who has been adopted by American parents, sees her family again, just before her mother dies. Yoon, who stubbornly does not want to sell his shop (which is being demolished to make space for a modern shopping centre), finally agrees to sell – for the first time in his adult life, he accepts defeat. AS

ODE TO MY FATHER IS THE GALA OPENING OF THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 2 -14 OCTOBER

 

Masquerade (2012) | UKFF 2015

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Director: Choo Chang-min   Screenwriter: Hwang Jo-yoon

Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Ryoo Seung-ryong, Han Hyo-joo, Kims In-kwon

Korea           Costume Drama                131 minutes

A Korean take on Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper, there may actually be more to it than meets the eye in this particular version as it is rumoured that something very like this actually happened in the 17th Century during the rule of Gwanghae, the 15th Joseon Dynasty king. So, an unoriginal story then, but that is all that’s at fault here for it’s one told so very well. Choo Chang-min’s film was loved by local audiences and critics alike; the political nature of the film certainly not lost on South Korean audiences and Masquerade stood for six weeks at the No.1 spot winning 15 of 22 prizes at the South Korean Oscar equivalent, the Daejong Film Awards.

For foreign audiences it is a beautiful, sumptuous, exotic affair and a Mention in Despatches must go out for both Production Designer Oh Heung-seok
 and as Costume Designer Kwon Yoo-jin. Likewise, performances are fine throughout, aided and abetted by a strong script with carefully and sensitively drawn characters for the more minor roles as much as the leads.

Choo Chang-min is proving himself a versatile director, having made melodrama comedy and drama in his previous films and what pulls this production above the common or garden Costume Epic is the generous infusion of humour throughout. Indeed, Masquerade sets out to be an Historical Drama but actually successfully manages to tie several genres: costume, comedy and drama- together to great effect.

Perfectly cast Lee Byung-hun is a massive star in South Korea and one of the few to make an impact in Hollywood; he is shortly to be appearing in Red 2, opposite Willis, Hopkins and Malkovich. Here, he must have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to puncture his own balloon playing the would-be king as well as the king and he does so with great timing and aplomb.

An unoriginal tale then, but I would challenge anyone to tell it better. MT

MASQUERADE is screening during the UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2 – 14 NOVEMBER 2015 t

Those People (2015) l UKJFF 2015 | 7 – 26 November

thosepeopleWriter|Director: Joey Kuhn

Cast: Jonathan Gordon, Jason Ralph, Haaz Sleiman, Britt Lower, Meghann Fahy

89min | Drama | US

Writer director Joey Kuhn’s impressive, if at times melodramatic, debut exudes the highly polished charisma of its educated, preppy Manhattanites. Well-groomed and articulate, they sip cocktails and Pinot Noir in sophisticated jazz bars on the Upper East Side, sing Gilbert & Sullivan songs and, at Rosh Hashanah, their schuls are full of white roses and beautifully-dressed women. Gay sensibilities are worn romantically on the hand-tailored sleeves of these debonair types who have names like Sebastian and Ursula, and they say things like: “You came out of the womb with a Masters in queer theory” – what ever that may be.

Jonathon Gordon plays Charlie, a painter completing his MFA, who is close to his wealthy school friend Sebastian (Jason Ralph)—so close, he even paints a large portrait of him, insinuating that relationship is more that purely platonic. Sebastian is obsessed with his financier father, a Wall Street criminal (“the most hated man in New York”) who is serving time in an open prison.

Neither is short of male admirers and although Charlie has feelings for Sebastian he soon attracts the attention of the more emotionally mature Lebanese concert pianist Tim (Hanz Sleiman) whose suspects Charlie’s emotional involvement with Sebastian and constantly quizzes and baits him: “does he play Chopin as well as I do”. The two grow close as they tumble through the early days (and seductive nights) of a classically-scored love affair. Their cleverly-lit embraces and highly romanticised sex scenes have an ethereal quality to them that focuses on kissing and pillowtalk rather than raw passion.

Sumptuously crafted, sensitive and contemplative, Kuhn’s narrative hints at the fear of intimacy amongst these young men haunted by the ghosts of their fathers. They have close women friends too who serve as a counterpoint to their emotional barometers, and provide interest for arthouse audiences, beyond just the LGBT crowd.

Performances feel genuine and heartfelt and Hanz Sleiman is particularly convincing in a softly-spoken role that is beautifully pitched and soulful. The storyline is slim and ultimately rather unsatisfying but well-scripted with some perky dialogue and Adam Crystal’s brilliantly evocative original score that elevates this into something special. Joey Kuhn is a young director worth watching. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 7 – 22 NOVEMBER | NATIONWIDE

 

Under Milk Wood (2015)

Writer| Director: Kevin Allen

Cast: Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church, Steffan Rhodri, Aneirin Hughes

87min   | Drama  | UK

When highly-coloured bits of plastic detritus bob along a fake sea bed in the opening titles to UNDER MILK WOOD you start to wonder if you’ve slipped into a screening of a Tellytubbies feature length drama. But the lilting Welsh voiceover is unmistakably the powerfully potent 1954 ‘play for voices’ by Dylan Thomas.

Kevin Allen’s ultimately pointless screen adaptation is a ghastly twee romp through a Welsh village. It is also the UK’s Foreign Language hopeful at the 2016 Academy Awards. And to top it all, it stars Charlotte Church (as the buxom Polly Garter). The whole point of this gorgeous play is to listen and imagine it, ringing out in richly evocative tones, as the lushness of its sumptuous imagery gradually unfolds in the subconscious to evoke a whimsical Welsh wonderland.

Take a paltry budget (hence the plastic) and some largely unknown actors (doing their best but cast simply through being Welsh) and you have a second rate production bristling with picture postcard lewdness that totally downgrades and denigrates one of Britain’s most wonderful and highly-regarded 20th century plays. What was Kevin Allen (Twin Town) thinking of?

The saving grace here is naturally the narration by Rhys Ifans, who can always carry a production with his exuberance and style. Starring as Captain Cat, one of the characters who dwells in the coastal village of Llareggub on whose musings the piece is based, he brings the drama to life with his sparky enthusiasm.

But the gently erotic immaginings of a Welsh seaside town become crude and tasteless under Allen’s direction. Instead of being the central focus and raison d’etre of Thomas’s creation, the velvety soft and sonorous sounds drift to the background as the dildo-shaped candles and bulging buttocks loom large. Shut your eyes if you want to enjoy this. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 30 OCTOBER 2015 | REVIEWED AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2015

 

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist (2015) | UKJFF 7 – 22 November 2015

Director: John Mitchell | Christina Zeidler

Cast: Carolyn Taylor, Diane Flacks, Grace Lynn Kung, Robin Duke, Raoul Bhaneja

90min  Drama  Canada

An upbeat sparky romcom about a Jewish woman looking for love in her 40s. Making great use of its downtown Toronto setting, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL MONOGAMIST has Diane Flacks as Elsie, an extremely likeable but restless soul at odds with her traditional mother and unsatisfied with her long-term relationship with Robin (Carolyn Taylor). But things don’t improve when she leaves Robin to pursue a new girlfriend (Grace Lynn Kung).  Elsie starts to realize that perhaps she has thrown away the love of her life.

Mitchell and Zeidler get the best out of a talented cast and a whipsmart script laced with some fine Jewish sarcasm that makes this observational comedy fun and entertaining, despite its minor flaws. Elsie eventually becomes the narrator in her hilarious  deteriorating situation where she acknowledges  the pain of moving on to find true love, with wit and wisecracking humour. What emerges is that love and relationships are the same irrespective of our sexual  orientation. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 -22 NOVEMBER 2015

Memories of Murder (2003) | Salinui Chueok | LKFF 2015 | 2-14 November

KCCUK-KFF-Press_backdrops copyDir.: Bong Joon-ho; Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim sang-gyeong); | Crime Drama | South Korea 2003 | 132 min.

Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer) constructs a terrifying drama around the unsolved mystery of South Korea’s first serial killer who raped and murdered ten women between 1986 and 1991 in Gyeong-gi, a provincial town south of Seoul. The victims were between thirteen and seventy-one years old; the murders remains unsolved.

Local cop Park (Kang-ho) tries to pin the murder on the local half-wit Baek, but when the more sophisticated officer Seo (Kim) arrives from Seoul, he finds another favourite suspect: a factory worker. Whilst the DNA data is sent to the United States, it is now Seo who snaps: he wants to kill the worker, and Park has great difficulty in stopping him. The two cops have learned to hate each other, and the hunt for the murderer is secondary to each of them: they simply want to be right. But the DNA results do not give any proof and the case remains unsolved. Park is seen at the end of the film looking into a small tunnel, where the second victim had been found. The only real ‘witness’ is a little girl who asks him what he is looking for. It emerges that she has seen another man a few weeks ago, looking into the same tunnel. Park, who is now a business man, tries in vain to get any identification from the girl: “he looked normal” is her answer.

MEMORIES OF MURDER is an absurdist variation of a cop movie. Far from being interested in solving the case, Park and Seo fight with each other, their brutality illustrating how the fine line between their own violent intent and that of the  man they are chasing. Park’s family life shows him to be a domestic tyrant and Seo, who tries to be sophisticated, is nothing but an insecure and fragile man. Original and haunting. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 2 -14 NOVEMBER

The Liar (2014) Geo-Jiu-Mal | LKFF 2015 | 2 -14 November

KCCUK-KFF-Press_backdrops copyDir.: Dong-myung Kim; Cast: Kim Kkobbi, Chun Sin-hwan; South Korea 2014, 95 min.

In this scathing critique of the effects of Korean materialism, Dong-myung Kim creates an often bizarre portrait of Ah Young (Kkobbi), a young beautician who is a compulsive liar and fantasist. Ah Young’s fiancé, Tae-ho (Sin-hwan), is very much in love with her but Ah dreams only of a world where luxury is hers by right rather than through the hard work necessary to achieve success. A profligate by nature, she steals luxury goods, invites her colleagues for meals she cannot really afford, and finally manages to gain fraudulent control of an expensive apartment.

In reality, her life is one one of comparative drudgery: sharing a small flat with her sister, who is often drunk, her violent husband makes her life a misery. Her mother, who abandoned the family, prefers her lover to her daughters and Ah’s father is missing, having run up a mountain of debt. But she treats the only person who loves her (Tae-ho) with contempt, even inventing a richer fiancé for her workmates, until one fateful night when her world implodes.

Kim Kkobbi is brilliant as the fragile Ah Young, she seems to swim through life in a dream, delicately evoked in DOP Sun-young Lee’s saturated pastel colour palette. Drifting alone in her fake world, Ah Young always looks the same, her bewildered eyes unable to trust reality, lost in an absurd and an empty universe of her own making, that gradually  threatens to engulf her. In chasing materialism she creates a world where reality seems, quite literally, beyond the pale. AS

SCREENING DURING THE LKFF 2015 | 2 -14 NOVEMBER 2015

Sherlock Holmes (1916) | LFF 2015

Director: Arthur Berthelet

Cast: William Gillette, Ernest Maupin, Marjorie Kay, Edward Fielding

108mins | Drama  | UK

Sherlock Holmes’ first film appearance was in Sherlock Holmes Baffled in 1900 and he has been a regular fixture on cinema screens ever since. In 1899 the American matinee idol William Gillette (1853-1937) had starred in a stage version of the great detective’s exploits written by himself with Conan Doyle’s approval with phenomenal success (he appeared worldwide in the role about 1,300 times) and virtually made a career of the role – as celebrated in his day as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett would later be – which he was still performing on stage as late as 1932. The play was very loosely reworked for Rathbone in 1939 as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Gillette himself made a film version for Charlie Chaplin’s company, Essanay, in 1916. Long tantalisingly thought lost, this precious record of Gillette’s performance was recently rediscovered at the Cinémathèque Française and nearly a hundred years after its original appearance lived again at this year’s London Film Festival.

Apparently a faithful adaptation of the original play, the film version negotiates the problem of making a silent version of a stage production by using the titles to describe the action and the motivations of the characters (often before you actually see them for yourself) rather than simply transcribing the dialogue; much of which is left to lipreaders to decipher. The film itself is watchable, but the story itself – concerning incriminating letters with a scowling Moriarty (Ernest Maupin) later brought in to liven up the proceedings – is uninvolving, and Gillette’s Holmes is given little opportunity to display the quick-wittedness and deductive genius that makes the literary Holmes so fascinating to this day. The conventions of the screen Holmes had not yet been firmly established by 1916, so to modern audiences anomalies include the marginal nature of Dr Watson’s role in the proceedings – as played by a genial Edward Fielding, (who resembles the late Guy Middleton), he disappears for most of the first two-thirds of the film after being introduced early on and seems less in awe of Holmes that is customary – and the suburban street with grass verges and trees purporting to be Holmes’ address (Watson lives elsewhere).

The feature film was still relatively new in 1916, but a hundred years on SHERLOCK HOLMES holds up satisfactorily. The action mostly takes place indoors, the camera very occasionally pans and tracks laterally to follow the action, but closeups are rare and the occasional use of interesting camera angles serves to remind one that most of the action is staged in medium shot as seen from a proscenium.The editing is pretty basic, and although a silent film there are no irises in or out. The most unusual stylistic ‘tic’ shown by director Arthur Berthelet is the use of swift dissolves to give us a closer look at moments of particular drama rather than straight cuts. The acting is pretty natural, and Gillette if anything underplays the part of Holmes. He was in his sixties by the time he made the film version and despite being deprived of his speaking voice certainly looks the part, strongly resembling a somewhat elderly Clive Brook (who himself took on the role on screen in 1932).

The version found in the Cinémathèque Française had been expanded in 1920 for release as a serial, so the running time above is unfortunately longer than it would have been in 1916. RICHARD CHATTEN

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

3000 Nights (2015) | LFF 2015

Director.: Mai Masri

Cast: Maisa Abd Elhadi, Abeer Haddad, Laura Hawa, Radia Adon;

103min. | drama | Palestine/France/Jordan/Lebanon/UAE/Qatar

Mai Masri’s debut feature is an imagined drama based on “one story of many” to come out of Neblus. It is a rather polemic prison saga that concerns a Palestinian teacher who is incarcerated in Neblus for 3000 nights, accused of helping a terrorist.

Layla (Elhadi) is arrested in the occupied West Bank by Israeli military police for giving a lift to a young man, who may – or not – have helped a terrorist attempt. Not taking the easy way out, she refuses to say that the young man forced his way with a knife into the car. In the segregated prison, Layla, is thrown at first into a cell with Israeli prisoners, who are load mouthed, aggressive and virulently anti-Islamic. Later, she is transferred to a cell with Palestinian women, who are the total opposite of their Israeli counterparts: pure heroines in the struggle for liberation. Layla, looking extremely composed and well-kempt throughout the whole film, soon finds out that she is pregnant. Later she gives birth to Nour, a baby-boy – shackled to the bed by arms and feet. Her son is taken away from her as a reprisal for helping a prison strike. The prison authorities, lead by the vile head warden (Abeer Haddad), try to bribe Layla (and others) to gain favours for spying on their fellow prisoners, but apart from one case the women remain stand fast. But events take a turn for the worse when a woman prisoner is shot dead by a guard.

Whilst nobody can deny the existence of political prisoners in Israel, 3000 Nights is extremely unhelpful in the ongoing conflict today, because it idealises all Palestinians and vilifies all Jews – apart from Layla’s lawyer. The film is set between 1980 and 1988, a time when Palestinian suicide bombers, often children, targeted bus stations and other public places in Israel. The head warden is an evil caricature, and the cry “they are gassing us” is just inflammatory, since tear gas is used. If one would argue on the lines of the filmmakers, one would ask them why they suddenly deviate from their usual holocaust-denials.

The covered and open war between Israel and Palestine is soon entering its seventh decade, and one would hope, that films like 3000 Nights, though well-crafted and performed,  would refrain from the simplistic hero/villain line – also used in Israeli cinema, when blond, blue-eyed Jews are attacked by dark skinned Islamic villains – but this does not give any side the right, to go on with the vilification of the “enemy”. AS

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

 

Fifty (2015) l LFF 2015

Director: Biyi Bandele

Cast: Nse Ikpe-Etim, Omoni Oboli, Ireti Doyle, Dakore Akande

With music from Femi Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Nneka and Waje

101min | Drama | Nigeria

FIFTY is Biyi Bandele’s follow-up to his screen adaptation of Half a Yellow Sun. Kicking off docu-drama style to create a fabulous sense of place on the widescreen, the camera sweeps in over Lagos’ boat-strewn harbour and the interior of a building where a religious gathering is taking place. Bandele uses this technique several times to and elevate what is essentially a rather soapy, intimate drama that revolves around a few critical days in the lives of four professional Nigerian women at the top of their careers; and there are no glass ceilings here for the super elite. Immaculately coiffed and couture clad, these female power-houses have a tight-knit support system of liveried domestic staff, work juniors and family. And although clearly well-educated, they are by no means soigné in their behaviour; kicking arse and barking orders in a way that would have staff in the UK scuttling off to industrial tribunals.

In short, this is the same upper class, glamorous society that Bandele elegantly portrayed in Half a Yellow Sun. Tola, Elizabeth, Maria and Kate are late fortysomething friends who are now taking stock of their lives in the upmarket areas of Ikoyi and Victoria Island in Lagos. Tola (Dakore Akande) is a reality TV star whose marriage to lawyer Kunle is under pressure. Elizabeth (Ireti Doyle) is a well-known fertility specialist whose penchant for younger men has estranged her from her grown-up up daughter. Forty-nine year-old Maria (Omoni Oboli) is newly pregnant from an affair with a married man and Nse Ikpe-Etim plays Kate who is battling a life-limiting illness that has turned her into a religious nutter.

What doesn’t work here is Bandele’s rather clunky dialogue: Do women really speak like this in Lagos, may be they do and we’re short-changing the Nigerian director. At one point Elizabeth says:”I’m going to give these little babies some tlc” referring to her breasts which are due for surgery. Her daughter tells her, radically “don’t ring again or I’ll block your number” yet days later the pair are civil again, albeit frostily until Elizabeth shouts: “You will respect me young lady, I am your mother” – the daughter looks at least 40. All very confrontational stuff but certainly not authentic-feeling or particularly sophisticated and this, combined with the rather trite incidental music, gives FIFTY a dated air of Desperate Housewives Lagos-style.

That said, this may attract audiences who follow the soaps and there are some entertaining moments despite the rather formulaic plotlines. Highlights include the dynamic aerial shots of the capital and original live music from Nigerian icons Femi Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Nneka and Waje. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 7-18 OCTOBER 2015

Desierto (2015) | LFF 2015

Director: Jonas Cuaron

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Alondra Hidalgo

94min |  Drama  | Mexico

Jonas Cuaron’s starkly magnificent but rather formulaic second feature shows that migrants can be just as aggressive as those whose borders they seek to cross. DESIERTO is a newsworthy arthouse piece that arrives just as the transmigration theme is bubbling up in every corner of the world. It’s a pity then that the narrative feels so reductive and deliberately provocative with so few surprises up its dusty sleeve. The young director’s last project was Year of the Nail but he recently co-wrote Gravity with his father Alfonso and this distinctly US indie-feeling drama has the same feel of otherworldly alienation to it: barbed-wire, dangerous snakes and thorny vegetation coalesce to create a setting that is both inhospitable and strangely alluring in its pared-down beauty. Damian Garcia’s visuals capture the laser-sharp luminescence of the clinical light levels that appear to cleanse any humane quality from the surface of its sterile landscape, not altogether dissimilar to that of Space.

Essentially a two-hander, DESIERTO stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sam, a disenchanted US loner who has a certain elegance about him suggestive of some recent fall from grace. In his well-equpped truck, he has resorted to patrolling the hostile expanses of the arid wilderness between the Mexican and US borders, armed with his rifle and his trusty dog ‘Tracker’, who is trained to kill.

The characters here are all disenfranchised and Cuaron makes no attempt to have us warm to any of them: they are merely ‘the hunter’ and ‘the hunted’ and eventually we know exactly what is going to happen. As a group of young Mexicans venture across the border terrain from a broken-down truck, Sam picks them off with his powerful rifle, one by one,  or they are savaged by Tracker, until only two remain: Garcia Bernal’s Moises and a young woman, Adela (Alondra Hidalgo). Moises has been across the border before, but why he has not stayed in the US is left in the ether, although he does have a young son in the US, who he hopes to join. But Sam is not the only hard-nosed character here: when Maria is wounded, Moises leaves her by the roadside to die, callously claiming that he has a greater right to survive because of his son.

As a pounding electronic score beats down there are some deftly choreographed action scenes as this cat and mouse affair plays out in the searing heat of this sun-baked rockface, Death Valley-style (this is actually Baja California). DESIERTO leaves us meditating on the epithet ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’. But is this always the case? Economically wealthy countries appeal to those from poorer ones, seemingly offering Nirvana, but disappointment often ensues. Often life is far tougher is tougher in way that migrants hadn’t bargained for: loneliness, social isolation and other danger scan make them question whether to return to the warmth of their families in their less affluent homes where the enemy is ‘outside’ rather than ‘in’. Jonas Cuaron DESIERTO  could stand is a metaphor for modern life: that it can be tough for different reasons, whichever side of the fence you inhabit. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

 

 

Retribution (2015)|El Nascondido | LFF 2015

Dir.: Dani de La Torre; Cast: Luis Tosar, Paula Del Rio, Marco Sanz, Elvira Minguez; Spain 2015, 100 min.

First time director Dani de La Torre has achieved a remarkable feat with this small, compact thriller: his main protagonists are all equally unlikeable, but far from losing interest, the audience grasps the underlying philosophical concept, which underpins an endless car chase directed by a voice on a mobile.

Set in contemporary La Coruna (Galicia), invest banker Carlos (Luis Tosar) sets off in his car to drive to work, accompanied by his two children Sara (Del Rio) and Marcos (Sanz) who he is dropping off at their school. But a voice on his mobile informs him that his car is carrying a bomb which will explode if he or his children leave the car. The caller wants ransom money from Carlos and the bank, in the region of half a million Euros. Carlos does not believe the caller, but is immediately convinced by the threat when the car of his two co-workers, parked next to him, who have been also been blackmailed, explodes – the shrapnel injuring Marcos, who is injured and needs to go to hospital. Trying to get in touch with his wife, Carlos learns, in an unexpected twist, that she is with the father of a friend “whom she met during the PTA meetings you never go to”.

RETRIBUTION has strong parallels with Locke, athough the action element is lacking in the British film. Carlos is a typical one-dimensional Spanish corporate character. At the start, he is totally univolved with his children, his mind totally occupied by work. Only the actions of the blackmailer remind Carlos of the existence of the two on the backseat. But the extortionist is equally guilty: he is not only ready to sacrifice two innocent children for his vendetta: he and his wife wanted to participate in making “easy” money. But the end, de la Torre shows that nothing much has changed: Carlos is replaced, but the bank is only too ready for a new strategy.

Tosar, in spite of his detached emotional attitude, gains our respect, if not our forgiveness for his lack of soul. The action scenes are impeccable, and it is refreshing to have a woman policeman in charge. Josu Inchaustegni’s images are crisp, but his main work is done inside the car where the changing fortunes of the chase can be read in the faces of the trio inside the vehicle. RETRIBUTION is a small gem, with de La Torre achieving something smart,sassy and well beyond the genre. AS

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

A Monster With a Thousand Heads (2015) | Venice Film Festival | LFF 2015

Director: Rodrigo Pla

Cast: Jana Raluy, Sebastian Aguirre Boeda and Hugo Albores.

75min   Thriller   Uruguay

Political revenge thriller: A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS is adapted from the novel by Laura Santullo,. Uruguayan writer-director Rodrigo Plá delivers a South American take on Joel Schumacher’s 1993 thriller Falling Down, but this time revenge is served up piping hot by a ‘femme fatale’, quite literally.

Payback time comes to a private medical care company when they fail to deliver the care paid for by Sonia, a middle class woman with a family in upmarket Montevideo. Clearly things have got out of hand in a country where men still hold sway despite advances in a highly evolved economy and infrastructure.  With the public services in disarray, those who can afford it have resorted to private medical cover, and Sonia is no different, but when the chips are down she discovers that the insurance company is unwilling to help. As in most South American countries, gun crime is prevalent and when she fails to get attention one morning for her sick husband, Sonia takes matters into her own hands.

Sober in tone, this is a fast-paced and tightly-scripted thriller whose slick camerawork and inventive framing make it a throughly enjoyable watch if not an occasionally bizarre one that nevertheless ensures laugh out loud moments – whether intentional or not – amidst those of shocking violence.

Jana Raluy gives a performance of low-level hysteria as a woman driven to extremes in a society that most of us will now identify with: mindless call centres; cheeky staff; functionaries who hide behind their screens and jobsworth merchants – not to mention high levels of corruption further up the system. If at first you don’t believe Sonia’s sheer nerve, by the end of this absorbing drama her frustration starts to feel plausible and even possible from you own perspective. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

 

Schneider vs Bax (2015) | LFF 2015

Director|Writer: Alex van Warmerdam

Cast: Tom Dewispelaere, Maria Kraakman, Alex van Warmerdam, Annet Malherbe, Gene Bervoets

96min | Comedy Thriller | Holland

Alex van Warmerdam is a multi-talented Dutch filmmaker: he stars, directs and writes the music here in his follow-up to Borgman, another darkly comic piece, that despite its solid credentials is destined to be niche fare, rather like its predecessor.

Here a hunky contract killer Schneider (Dewispelaere) and perfect husband in his spare time, is hired to kill a raddled writer (van Warmerdam) and ‘child murderer’ (or that’s what he is told) who lives in a white-washed wetlands cabin with a view to die for. This is Holland where life is much more loosely buttoned up than in the rest of Europe. But even here things don’t go according to plan, as they rarely do where van Warmerdam is concerned. .

Schneider’s boss, Mertens (Gene Bervoets) has another sleek residence and issues orders that the murder has to happen that morning at the latest. Meanwhile, Bax has to get rid of his (much younger) babe to accommodate a visit from his depressed daughter Francisca (Maria Kraakman), so his agenda is rather tricky that morning. He’s also an addict: “I have my coke and weed, you have your muesli!” he tells Francisca, when she arrives like a doom bird. And it doesn’t get easier. One way or another, wires get crossed and gradually the body count starts to mount.

With its black sense of humour and loaded social comment (a la Borgman) this is a thickly-plotted and tightly wound farce that unfolds in the ‘Fens’ of Holland. Apart from the tricky plotlines, too many characters spoil what is essentially a visual delight with its darkly-brewed humour, and milky-cream interior sets. It doesn’t feel as prickly or as pertinent as Borgman, but there is plenty to sit back and enjoy, not least the perfect choreography and Schneider’s perfect shots – from his gun that is. The real cinematographer is Tom Erisman who creates a stylish aesthetic with his perfectly framed shots amongst the reeds and the pared-down architecture. An enjoyable, if bewildering watch. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

Lamb (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Yared Zeleke

Cast: Rediat Amare, Kidist Siyum, Welela Assefa

94min  Drama   Ethiopia

In the verdant farmland of Bala region of Ethiopia, a lamb becomes the source of comfort for a small boy mourning the death of his mother and struggling to fit in with his new family, once his father leaves to work in Addis Ababa. Ephraim (Rediat Amare) clearly loves the animal but he realises that his family will slaughter ‘Chuni’ for the upcoming Feast of the Holy Cross and this adds a touch of melancholy to this exquisitely filmed, multilayered debut from Yared Zeleke.

Growing up himself in the urban slums of drought-ridden Ethiopia, Zeleke went on to study film in New York where he honed his craft before making this classically written ethnological film which will appeal to the arthouse crowd with its winning turn from endearing newcomer Amare and its fascinating insight into the tribal culture of Ethiopia.

The new family is not keen to take on another mouth to feed. Severe drought, like the one that took Ephraim’s mother, often blights the region and his aunt already has a poorly baby to look after. With a cousin Tsion (Kidist Siyum) who would rather read newspapers than find a husband, and his disciplinarian uncle Solomon (Surafel Teka) to contend with, Ephraim’s daily life is often miserable particularly when his cooking skills, passed on from his mother, are much stronger than his herding tactics, making him the butt of family jibes. His kindly grandmother holds sway in the household using a whip to exert her authority, so Ephraim looks for ways to join his father in Addis Ababa.

Jewish through his mother’s side of the family, Ephraim has a strong commercial sense and soon starts earning money making samosas to sell in the market, hoping to raise enough to afford the coach trip to the city, to save his pet and see his dad. Zeleke’s script cleverly balances dramatic tension that simmers below the surface as Chuni’s days are numbered forcing Ephraim to find ways to finance his escape. Tsion is an intelligent and feisty girl and Ephraim bonds with her when the pair find ways of keeping Chuni away from harm, securing him with a local Muslim shepherd girl for a few Burrs (the local currency). Thus Zeleke quietly paints a picture of religious harmony with Christians, Muslims and Jews living tolerantly together. The only strife for the Ethiopians comes from poverty and drought. Zeleke’s script mentions the lack of help from senior leaders, but this political strand is very much played down and is not central to the narrative. What makes the film especially enjoyable are Josée Deshaies’ (Saint Laurent) glorious visuals that tenderly and vibrantly depict the local customs and magnificent scenery.

Lamb could be part of the curriculum in junior schools, showing how kids in other countries manage with loneliness, isolation and trauma, even in the poorest communities. Lamb has echoes of Satyajit Ray’s classic: Pather Panchali (Pather’s Way), also about a boy who left his (Bengali) village to seek a better life in the city.

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 18 OCTOBER 2015

 

 

 

 

 

The Endless River (2015) | Competition | Venice Film Festival | LFF 2015

Writer | Director: Oliver Hermanus

Cast: Crystal-Donna Roberts, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Denise Newman

108min  Drama  South Africa

Oliver Hermanus is a white South African director whose debut Shirley Adams was an outstanding portrait of a mother in crisis. Denis Newman played that mother and she stars here again in his third feature and Venice 2015 hopeful THE ENDLESS RIVER.

The film could be described as “Cape Noir” with its shady characters underpinning a realist romantic drama that burns as slowly as a South African Braai. Creating a powerful sense of place with the wild and craggy Cape scenery, Hermanus delivers a seethingly suspenseful story, ignited by moments of fiery melodrama and injected with a crafty mix of racial and class tension and mistrust.

A hefty title sequence suggests 40s Hollywood in golden hued graphics where the characters are billed with dots leading to their names. This is accompanied by a bold opening ‘overture’ from Braam du Toit, whose unusual and atmospheric original score often sets the mood for each scene’s ambiance. In a sleepy community in Riviersonderend near Cape Town, we meet Mona (Denise Newman) at the home she shares with her daughter Tiny (Crystal-Donna Roberts) and son-in-law Percy was has been released from prison, in a classic opening sequence. Clearly Mona has reservations about Percy’s future and so does Tiny, although she is desperately in love.

In a farmstead nearby, Frenchman Gilles (Nicolas Duvauchelle|Polisse), is eating dinner with his wife and two young sons. Their meal takes place in silence suggesting an undercurrent of unease but Hermanus never elaborates on this and shortly after the wife and boys are savagely murdered in their home by three Black interlopers, possibly exercising a gangland initiation with their innocent victims being the French family. The attack sequence takes place in silence scored only by Braam de Toit’s ambient soundtrack screeching terror into the proceedings. The initiation theory is suggested to Gilles, when he meets the local police chief Groenewald (a brooding Darren Kelfkens) who is leading the  hapless murder inquiry. As happenstance would have it, Gilles has already come into contact with Tiny through her waitressing job in an diner he frequents and after the attack, and he drives past her in a dusty country road when she is coming home alone from a difficult evening quarrelling with Percy.

Hermanus builds a menacing sense of tension as the story becomes more complex and misunderstandings and recrimations follow in the wake of more violence. Structuring his narrative into three chapters feels slightly redundant and adds nothing to our understanding of the tightly-plotted affair that gradually centres on Gilles and Tiny as they are drawn closer together, their racial differences fading into the background as a more crucial strand develops.

Nicolas Duvauchelle generates considerable emotional depth as the strung-out and desperate family man but the standout performance comes from Crystal-Donna Roberts who is able to convey her thoughts through minute gestures and even the twitch of an eye-brow, bringing potent dramatic tension and authenticity to a film whose plot occasionally feels outlandish. With her considerable skill and Gilles’ head of emotion as a man who is clearly brought to his knees with grief, THE ENDLESS RIVER remains commandingly gripping from its early scenes to its powerfully enigmatic denouement. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 12 SEPTEMBER 2015

 

Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang (2014) | LFF 2015

Dir.: Walter Salles | Documentary | France/Brazil 2014, 98 min.

This is not a buddy movie: director Walter Salles follows his fellow filmmaker Jia Zhangke on a journey through a China in transition, revisiting many of Zhangke’s film locations, but always keeping a certain distance, however friendly. This is only logical: their respective filmmaking styles are to different for it to be any other way – Salles’ lyricism, his traditional approach, contrasts heavily with Jia’s abrasive humanitarian agitation, often filmed in short-hand.

When the couple starts their journey in Fenyang, the tone of the film is set. Jia bemoans the loss of the many karaoke bars which played such a central role in his debut feature Pickpocket (1997). But the bars have not been replaced, there are just a long line of boarded up shop windows. Before Jia visits his family in their new accommodation, he searches out his old quarters, and the many places where he grew up, which are now awaiting demolition. We learn from his mother that young Jia was fed “by hundred families”, the boy often left his home and ate at the dinner in his neighbours’ houses. His mother’s new flat has certainly many mod-coms – but the solidarity of the families, sharing their dark yards, is gone forever. Many of the locations from his films are also gone, or totally reduced like a wonderful old-fashioned theatre, from which only the stage remains – which Jia used in Platform (2000), a film about the fortunes of an amateur theatre group. It was here, that he first met his wife and muse, the actress Zhao Tao, who started her career as a ballet dancer. The newly built dam, which featured in Still Life (2006), which won the Golden Lion in Venice, is re-visited with all the villages and towns condemned to a life under-water.

Jia’s dissatisfaction with the “new’ China is obvious, particularly since his second-to-last film A Touch of Sin, has never been shown in China, even though the authorities claim that it has not been banned. Certainly, his new film Mountains May Depart (our Cannes Review for LFF), will not endear Jia more to the censors, since it neatly fits in with this documentary: a country in economic recession, and a puritanical government, always ready use the law. DOP Inti Brione looks at Fenyang with long, doleful takes, resting on the decay and finding alienation all over the place. Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang, is a sad journey through a country which has lost its identity and any form of cohesion. Brutal neo-capitalism meets abhorrent poverty and the government pretends that all this not happening, hiding behind a Stalinist past and its cult of personality – not that anybody should have any pity for Mao, now reduced and used: a puppet on a string who was only taken out when the government needed to celebrate an anniversary of some kind. There is not much to celebrate in the present. AS

SCREENING DURING LFF 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015 |

 

Sailing a Sinking Sea (2015) | LFF

Writer|Director: Olivia Wyatt

70min |  Documentary

In the Andaman Islands Olivia Wyatt delves deep below the turqouise waters to explore the nomadic Moken fishermen who live an idyllic but also dangerous existence surviving from the bounty in the nutrient rich seas. Basing their fragile existence on the belief that they have been cursed by an island queen, whose sister betrayed her by sleeping with her husband, this dreamy and meditative documentary is probably the most relaxing you’ll see this year.

Vibrant visuals and a soothingly somniferous score of lulling waves accompany the voiceover narration by the tribal leaders who present their culture and beliefs between bouts of deep diving for the fish they then sell to feed their families alive and their wives from straying. With this serene narrative that completely avoids the usual ‘talking heads’ Wyatt shows how these gentle people strive to save their community and be self-sufficient in a fight that very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world. MT

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

 

The Romantic Exiles (2015) | LFF 2015

Writer|Director: Jonas Trueba

Cast: Renata Antonante, Francesco Carril, Vahina Giocante, Luis E Pares, Vito Sanz, Sigfrid Monleon, Isabelle Stoffel

70min  Spain  Drama

Three Spanish guys embark on a trip to Paris in a camper van, just for the hell of it in this sunny arthouse gem. THE ROMANTIC EXILES is Jonas Trueba’s follow-up to his stylish The Wishful Thinkers that garnered awards in Malaga and the US.

Luis, Francesco and Vito are romantic dreamers who like nothing better than a good philosophical chin-wag about love and the meaning of life, over a few bottles of wine, in a Parisian courtyard somewhere off the Boulevard St Germain.

Loose and laid back, this is low-budget filmaking at its best. Trueba throws in Tulsa’s music to liven things up and the dialogue and acting is fresh and genuinely amusing as the trio amble through this leisurely journey, often meeting up with others to add flavour and spice to their witty, wise and often whimsical wine-fuelled dinners – like the one where one friend annouces her impending motherhood without a baby or father in sight. Sixties theatre founder, Jim Haynes, puts in an appearance, just for good measure.

Vito (Vito Sanz) is the driver and the most low-key of the trio, Vahina (Vahina Giocante) is his spirited girlfriend. Francesco (Francesco Carril) speaks fluent Italian most of the time with his friend Renata (Renata Antonante); Luis (Luis E. Pares), a film buff, would like to get back with his (girl) friend Isabelle (Isabelle Stoffel, who also appears in The Wishful Thinkers).

Pointless but often poignant: the tone here is light-hearted but the themes serious: work, friendship, the end of youth, adult responsibilities, and women having the upper hand. Colours are acid bright: rich coral, turquoise and emerald fizzles with vibrant April freshness. Several romance languages are spoken making it all feel very Mediterranean  – French, Italian, Spanish. References to 21st century art and literature make up a bohemian brew with a distinct feel of Eric Rohmer to it: you almost expect Louis Garrel to saunter onto the set complete with beret, and baguette under his arm. And at 70 minutes Trueba can get away with a lack of real narrative, as the discussions carry a certain charismatic enjoyment punctuated by trips in the van and the tuneful  score that is always major in key. MT

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Paula (2015) |LFF 2015

Director: Eugenio Canevari

Cast: Denise Labbate, Estefania Blaiotta, Bernardo Calabia

64min   Drama   Argentina

Eugenio Canevari creates an atmospheric mood piece that transcends the well-worn indie film theme of domestic service in South America’s contemporary affluent homes. In her screen debut, Denise Labatte plays the young maid of the title who is forced into an abortion by her callous ex-boyfriend Berna (Bernardo Calabia). As ever, in this Catholic household, the matriarch holds sway and Estefi (Estefania Blaiotta) focuses on herself than her three children and cleaner, refusing to offer any help.

Lounging poolside in a lush suburb of Buenos Aires, enjoying al fresco meals and managing their extensive estancias, Estefi is emblematic of today’s well-healed South American housewife whether in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay or Chile. Canevari allows his audience to engage and be present in his drama that relies on an impressionist style of exchanged glances, palpable atmosphere and pregnant pauses to convey and carry the narrative, rather than extensive dialogue, making this an enjoyable and easy-going film for cineastes and the arthouse crowd to enjoy, whatever language they speak. Canivari’s film epitomises the over-used but effective phrase: ‘less is more’ and Matias Castillo’s glorious visuals make great use of the sunny and verdant setting both around the house in Buenos Aires and further afield in the Pampas. Canevari disregards running time – just 64 minutes: He tells his story and doesn’t try to add unnecessary embellishment, showing a masterful confidence in both material and execution and making him a talent worth watching in the future.  Recommended.

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

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Beasts of No Nation (2015)| Venice Film Festival |LFF 2015

Director: Cary Fukunaga

Cast: Idris Elba, Ama K Abebrese, Abraham Attah

133min  War drama  US

Dir.: Cary Fukunaga;Cast: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Grace Nortey; USA 2015, 136 min.

Based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country.

Cary Fukunaga who has directed such diverse productions as Jane Eyre (2011) and True Detective (2014) turns his hand here to another literary work with this screen version of Uzodimna Iweala’s novel of the same name.

Set in a unspecified country in East Africa, it tells the harrowing story of young Agu (Attah) who is caught up in the harrowing civil war which ravages his country that not only destroys his childhood but traumatises him for life. We meet him first as a fun-loving boy who plays pranks on everybody particularly his older brother. Once a teacher, Agu’s father, now helps the Nigerian peacekeeping force acting as a buffer between the two warring fractions. Agu’s life seems complete, but one day, government forces overrun the village, killing Agu’s whole family apart from his mother who manages to escape to the capital. When soldiers kill his best friend, he wanders into the woods before being picked up by an army of rebels commanded by an pompous and violent warlord (Elba). In love with violence, the sadistic killler soon teaches Agu to kill and sexually abuses him whilst pretending to protect him as a surrogate father.

Shooting mostly outside in Ghana, Fukunaga paints an unredeeming picture of the inhumanity in this compelling and convincingly dramatised war movie that witnesses the corrupting of a young boy. This is not a war between ideological forces, but simply a fight between two gangster armies, fought without rules and killing the neutral population of the country in far greater number than the enemies. But after the victory of the rebel army, the same leaders become statesmen over night, doing away with their brutal elements like the colonel. Meanwhile, Agu phantasises about his mother again in the capital, before becoming violent on his ow accord. His voice-over tells us that he has lost faith in God, and that he will never play kids games again. Questioned by a young woman working for the UN, he feels like an old man, talking to a young girl.

Idris Elba gives a dynamite performance full of layered subtlety and charisma and Abraham Attah is simply astonishing as the boy. Fukunaga spares no gruesome details and Agu’s journey through hell is told without sentimentality from an observer’s point of view.The images of war and destruction are so realistic that occasionally one has to look away. Running at over two hours the length and a forced happy-end are the only elements that detract from this otherwise harrowing tour-de-force. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

Blood of My Blood (2015) | FIPRESCI Award | Venice Film Festival 2015 | LFF 2015

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Cast: Roberto Herlitzka, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Abla Rohrwacher, Lidiya Lubermann

106min | Historical | Drama Italy

Marco Bellocchio fuses the past and present in this inventive horror story that explores a 17th century witch trial and its relevance to a more lightweight contemporary story.

The medieval town of Bobbio, Emilia Romagna, has inspired story-telling for hundreds of years. It was the setting for Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose and Bellocchio’s debut Fists in the Pocket. With Blood of My Blood he returns to the abandoned Bobbio convent; a slightly humorous arthouse outing that will appeal to cineastes prepared to let their imaginations wander.

The first half of the narrative is a classic tale of Catholic crime and punishment. A young nun, Sister Benedetta (Lidiya Lieberman), has slept with a fellow priest who has taken his own life in remorse. With her hair cut severely short, she hangs upside down in a cloister room awaiting punishment. Meanwhile, his twin brother Federico Mai (Pier Giorgio Bellocchio) has arrived to extract the truth and a confession from the defiant Benedetta, so that his brother can have a decent burial in holy ground. Federico pretends to be his brother while Benedetta undergoes a series of tests to determine whether she is Satan’s daughter and, surviving the trials, she is walled up in the convent. In an entertaining vignette, Alba Rohrwacher and Federica Fracassi meanwhile play a delicate duo of virgin sisters who accommodate Federico in their home and later their bed.

Embued with a rich palette of vibrant hues by expert cinematographer Daniele Cipri (Vincere|It Was the Son) the first half of the film is the most enjoyable. In its more fluid second half, the narrative broadens out into a more satirical style that feels at bewildering, and quite frankly disappointing, such is the intrigue of the opening section. Still in Bobbio, we land with an unwelcome bump into the world of social media and the upwardly mobile where a Russian billionaire (Ivan Franek) turns up at the convent doors (in his red Ferrari, naturally) demanding to buy the place. Federico Mai is now the estate agent. It emerges that the convent is haunted by Count Basta (a masterful Roberto Hertlitzka), vampire with a penchant for cultural pursuits. Implications and infringements on Italy’s strict bylaws and pension systems are also involved in this prospective purchase. But the Count has connections with the powers that be and an amusing final segment sees him swing into action in this playful if not tonally strange story. Carlo Crivelli’s score and Scala & Kolacny’s choir music feel out of place in this piece that feels happier in the past that it does in the present. A sentiment that many Italians will be in agreement with. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

Blanka (2015) | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Kohki Hasei

Cast: Cydel Gabutero,  Peter Milari

75min  Drama   Tagalog | English

Manila is the setting for this charming indie gem which is the debut of Japanese director Kohki Hasei, selected from the Biennale College Cinema at Venice 2015. In a similar vein but on a more modest scale to Trash and Slumdog Millionaire, it is an upbeat and unsentimental tale of urban survival that follows a trio of spunky street kids struggling to make ends meet in the Philippino capital.

Seen through the eyes of Blanka, a feisty little girl who is determined to go it alone in a world where adults are always trying to intervene, she manages on petty thieving to eek out an existence and escape the clutches of the local brothel and Catholic orphanage. One day she meets blind busker Peter (Peter Milari), a kindly man who has her best interests at heart. Blanka finds her voice and soon the pair are recruited as the star turn in the local bar. At the same time, Blanka feels that something is missing in her life and that ‘something’ is a mother. Advertising around with a reward of 30,000 pesos for anyone who will take her in to their home she becomes the target for several unscrupulous characters, but is determined never to become a victim.

The gentle rhythm of this heartfelt story with its vibrant camerawork of Manila is not without moments of tension, humour and sadness, making it the perfect family film. Cydel Gabutero gives a sparky central performance as Blanka supported by Peter Milari and her two young accomplices who could easily go on to bigger things and so could this promising new director. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2 -12 SEPTEMBER 2015

Rabin, The Last Day (2015 | Competition | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Amos Gitai

Cast: Yaël Abercassis, Ischac Hiskiya, Rotem Keinem

153min | Israel/France |  Biopic

Yitzak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, was assassinated on the evening of 4th of November 1995 on King Square, Tel Aviv, after a rally for his peace policies. Amos Gitai’s sober docudrama tries to unravel events and draws far-reaching conclusions from repercussion of his assassination.

Strangely enough Rabin’s murder was caught by a cameraman who happened to witness this historical moment. The opening sequence with long overhead shots over King Square and jerky b/w images of the shooting give the film an intensive start; what follows are mainly re-staged scenes from the Shamgar commission which (under the leadership of Meir Shamgar, president of Israel’s Supreme Court) undertook the task of establishing the circumstances of the assassination. A third level shows the assassin, Tigal Amir (Yevet), preparing for his hideous crime, his interrogation in the immediate aftermath of the three fatal shots, as well as scenes from his right wing, fundamentalist environment.

These latter scenes are frightening featuring one of the the leaders of the movement declaring a ‘Din Rodef’ on Rabin -the equivalent of a Fatwa.  Leon Trotsky was the last person to receive this damnation. Amir is unrepentant, he smiles sardonically during his interrogation, feeling superior like most political offenders, who take refuge in martyr status and declaring Rabin a schizophrenic, who should be committed to a mental asylum – the projection here is axiomatic.

What emerges from the Shamgar hearings is unconscionable: there was no efficient security for the prime minister (or his entourage, including his successor Shimon Perez, who gives a sort of introduction to the film). Everyone could have access to him and hardly anyone was questioned by the police. Witnesses speak of a total chaos regarding police and security forces, the assassin was a few feet away from Rabin when he fired his shots.

Rabin, a soldier for more than 27 years, had signed the “Oslo Accord” with Arafat, which would have resulted in a separate, Palestinian state. For the orthodox and right-wing politicians, this was treacherous: in the month before the assassination, placards showed Rabin either in Nazi or PLO uniform and his efigy was burned. There was certainly a murderous atmosphere in Israel, reaching even the Knesset. As Gitai said in a press conference “the Oslo accord was a small window which occurred in ths conflict, Rabin’s death ended all hope, and his murderer was not the only one who knew that the peace process would be dead without him”. In 1996 Perez’ Labour Party lost the General Election to the right wing coalition.

To say that RABIN, THE LAST DAY is not a typical Gatai film, is praise indeed. The director has, for once, let the subject of this docu-drama dictate the narrative. There are no side-shows which usually spoil many Gitai films. Thanks also to the brilliant work of DOP Eric Gautier, this is a thorough research project, told with the neccessary detachment, but still evokes intense emotion. To say that Israel was never the same after this tragedy is an understatement: The orthodox underground from which Amir emerged to kill, is today only a small step away from forming the government. Theodor Herzl, Israel’s founding father, was an enlightened liberal who never envisaged a state run on the lines of backwardness and fundamentalism, but it now looks as if the Rabin murder might have only been the first step on the road to a dictatorial, medieval era in the 21st century. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 12 SEPTEMBER 2015

 

Underground Fragrance (2015) | Venice Film Festival 2015

Writer| Director: FengPei Song

Cast: Ying Ze, Luo Wenjie, Zhao Fuyu, Li Xiaohui, Lin Xiaochu

75min   Drama  | France | Taiwan | China

Stray Dogs co-collaborator FengPei Song returns to Venice with his directorial debut UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE which tells another delicately rendered story this time of young love that blossoms amongst the ruins of Beijing’s property boom.

Yong Le, a young migrant worker from the south, works salvaging furniture from abandoned houses to re-sell.  He lives in cramped conditions in Beijing’s Underground City, a labyrinthian former bomb shelter that serves as cheap housing for people looking for opportunities in the big city. But after a bad work accident leaves him temporarily blind, he has to use a rope to find his way around the dimly lit basement halls, until one night when he meets a girl at the other end of his rope. Xiao Yun, is a migrant too. A night-worker in a pole-dancing venue, she is desperately trying to find a more suitable work when a tentative relationship develops between her and Yong Lee, encouraging  her to hunt for a more respectable job. At ground level, Lao Jin has been struggling with his wife for 8 years to get a decent compensation deal from the authorities who want to demolish his house. His health is declining and his savings are evaporating. Desperate to move on, he’s counting on Yong Le to sell his furniture at a good price. These stories intermingle in the meltdown generated by the  the “Chinese Dream” when Southern country-dwellers who thronged to the Beijing metropolis during the last decade’s property boom.

Suffused with melancholy and broken dreams this is an enchanting urban story with convincingly sombre performances from its talented cast of largely newcomers. Often crowding people or machinery into his vibrantly-coloured static long takes FengPei generates a feeling of claustrophobia that echoes desperate emotional alienation and loneliness rather than oppression and there are sharp some bursts of humour: at one point Lao Jin sets off fireworks in the trees outside his house in an attempt to silence nesting owls. Nostalgia for the past and the longing for country life and traditional values are reflected in some tender scenes involving attachment to animals and religious customs and Jean-Christophe Onno’s atmospheric original score adds a lilting romantic feel throughout this charming debut.

PENGFEI (Beijing, 1982) was born into a family of Peking Opera performers in Beijing. Under the influence of his family, he developed a strong passion for the arts. He went to Paris to study film at Institute International de l’Image et du Son and majored in film directing. After seven years of living in Europe, he returned to China to work on this debut. He worked as Tsai Ming Liang’s a.d. for Face in 2009, The Diary of a Young Boy, and the short Walker in 2012. Pengfei raised finance for UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE – through various sources including the Cannes’ Atelier in 2012, the Production Award from TorinoFilmLab in 2011, and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab Cinereach Award in 2012. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 12 SEPTEMBER 2015 

Behemoth (2015) Beixi Moshuo | Competition | Venice Film Festival 2015

Director: Liang Zhao | Cast: Liang Zhao, Sylvie Blum Fabrice Rouaud | Doc| France | China

Herdsman and their families make way for machines of natural destruction in this poetic rumination on the industrial ravaging of Inner Mongolia.

The transformation of paradise into purgatory, with hell firmly in sight, gets imposing visual treatment in Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang’s Behemoth. This image-based hybrid of documentary and poetic allegory is a plaintive account of the rape of the earth by coal mining companies in the Inner Mongolian grasslands, and of the dehumanizing existence of local and Chinese migrant workers. Alternating between grimly beautiful passages and others that, frankly, are dull and dutiful, this is a rigorous exercise with something of a trance quality, which builds to a forceful payoff at the end.

Scheduled to air on French cultural network Arte in November, the film should travel from its Venice premiere to other festivals, while its elements of performance art interspersed with industrial horror might also work in museum spaces.

Zhao and his French co-writer (and producer) Sylvie Blum draw inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy, beginning with the image of a massive rock crater ruptured by explosions that send clouds of black coal dust billowing into the atmosphere. Zhao’s introductory voiceover explains that where once there was lush vegetation and mountain springs, now not even a blade of grass grows in these flattened valleys of gray.

Gorgeous pastoral sequences show sheep grazing; Zhao then widens that view to reveal the steady shrinkage of pastureland. Traditional rural workers are displaced, while more and more mountains are reduced to rubble, and prairies are buried beneath ash. Observing with unblinking indignation, his camera gazes down on a valley crawling with trucks, cranes and other machines that look like toys, belching out smoke. “The monster’s playthings” is how Zhao describes them in his intermittent narration, adopting a dreamy, ponderous tone that can get a bit precious.

At certain points you start to wonder how long we can continue looking at workers sifting or shoveling rocks. But then the focus shifts to stirring close-ups of their emotionless faces and black-rimmed eyes, every pore and line caked with coal dust, which Zhao descriptively calls “inky makeup.” He observes them scouring their skin to remove the grime before sitting down to a bowl of soup. In one especially expressive shot, a naked baby boy industriously scrapes away at the ground around him with a stick, as if programmed by instinct to prepare for his future. No commentary is required to note the juxtaposition of extremely basic living conditions against an industry generating huge profits.

In the film’s most strikingly cinematic section the screen turns to red as Zhao’s camera enters the nearby ironworks. The staggering heat and intensity of the furnaces is palpable, and the baked faces of workers stream with sweat as the cacophonous noise of the machinery gives way to deafened silence when they exit on breaks. Zhao’s words perhaps overstate the theme of a living hell fueled by greed, but there’s nothing prosaic about the inferno-esque images.

The most unsettling passages of Behemoth show the heavy toll of this life on the alarming number of workers battling lung disease, denied aid by both their industrial overlords and their government. And the film moves toward a conclusion of grave lyricism in which Zhao reveals the paradox of all this human drudgery and environmental violation helping to create pristine but empty clusters of apartment towers in urban satellite centers. The destruction of a natural paradise has yielded luxury graveyards, transformed into “ghost cities” by the burst development bubble.

Shot over a two-year period, Zhao’s film makes lucid points about the dire consequences of relentless energy and fuel consumption. Like the narration, some touches are self-consciously arty — a naked figure in fetal position seen repeatedly in places where grassland meets scorched earth; the screen broken into prismatic fragments that suggest an industrial cathedral; a literal mirror held up to show our collective responsibility. But even if those elements seem too studied, the subtle impact of this contemplative documentary can’t be denied.

 

Fire (2014) El Incendio | Cambridge Film Festival 2015

Director: Juan Schnitman

Cast: Juan Barberini, Pilar Gamboa

89min   Drama   Argentina

Juan Schnitman’s promising debut explores the mounting tension of a dynamite day in the lives of a  young Buenos Aires couple as they prepare to complete the purchase of their new home.

Lucia (Pilar Gamboa) and her partner Marcelo (Juan Barberini) have a sparky relationship, to say the least. But things turn even feistier as they prepare to take the important step of becoming property owners in the Argentinian capital. In a quiet moment as face the day, they realise that this is also an important moment in their relationship. But their morning reverie quickly erupts into a loving tussle that turns into fight as tension mounts in preparation to take their hard earned cash to a man called Paglieri. As it turns out their anticipation is for nothing as the date is delayed; fraying their nerves even further.

Gamboa and Barberini give superb performances as a couple whose emotions are never far from the surface. Whether this is due to their unique chemistry or issues that have unwittingly come to the fore from their past experiences and childhood, is never properly explored although clearly both have emotional issues. Lucia has a better background than Marcelo does, and the heavily tattooed macho male is well aware of this but why he keeps a gun concealed is questionable. During her tearful therapy session, Lucia admits to “drifting away from her family” and even feeling Marcelo hates her.

Later we witness a febrile exchange between Marcelo and a local mother who accuses him of abusing a pupil in the school where he works; but again this thread is sadly not developed serving as another symptom of the histrionic tensions that resonate throughout a drama that fails to gives its audience a break from the high octane tone to re-group. Despite committed performances from the couple, this and a weak script are really the main pitfalls of Schnitman’s tensile debut. And although there are some powerful moments particularly in the final scenes, the pair and their insurmountable problems are a little too overwrought to make this feel enjoyable or worth the trouble. MT

SCREENING DURING THE CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL 3 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Cruel (2015) | Cambridge Film Festival | 3 – 13 September 2015

Dir.: Eric Cherrière

Cast: Jean-Jacques Lelté, Magalie Moreau, Maurice Poli, Yves Alfonso, Olivia Kerverdo, Hans Meyer

France 2014, 108 min.

Do we really need another horror film about serial killing?: Too many sensational, violent and simply mediocre efforts have been flashed across the screen. But crime novelist Eric Cherrière’s debut CRUEL is different: not only has his film none of the attributes listed above, he has singlehandedly created a psychological portrait of a psychotic killer, which does not only throw light on the mental illness, but does this by allowing the audience to imagine, in images and words, how the process of killing can become a banal and rather ordinary activity for the murderer.

In Toulouse, Pierre Tardieu, is a casual worker of about forty. In the opening scenes he kidnaps the estate agent Sylvie Destruelle (Kerverdo), and incarcerates her in the cellar where his grandfather, ironically, used to hide Jews from the Gestapo. Pierre’s conversation with his victim is ordinary, he is not excited at all, in fact, his behaviour seems totally relaxed. He is detached (one of the symptoms of this form of schizophrenia), even when murdering his victim, commenting on his act of violence as if he were describing a banal household task. It becomes immediately clear that this is not Pierre’s first murder. Pierre roams like a lone wolf, experiencing life through a glass bubble: he is inside, looking out. Everything seems to dwarf him: the airplanes in the aircraft hangar which he has to clean, the huge conveyor belts in the quarry, where he is a nigh watchman. Pierre is absolutely rootless, the only emotional relationship he has is with father Gabriel (Poli), who is suffering from Alzheimers and cannot speak. Pierre, in a role-reversal, reads him ‘Treasure Island’ as a bedtime story.

After his random murders have reached double figures – Pierre has his own set of rules to ensure his killings stay undetected – he suddenly explodes with real rage, not only killing the intended victim, a groom, but all the members of the stag party. He later rationalises this as “giving the dumb police a helping hand” by leaving behind the cut up ID cards of all his victims. But the real reason for the slaughter is that Pierre “wants to amount to something”. He started the killing spree out of an inner emptiness. His main fixation is a last summer holiday with his parents in a Spanish village, where he dreamt of becoming a hero where he grew up  and “marry Mama, to become a father too”. Soon afterwards his mother was killed in a car accident. Since then Pierre keeps a diary in old-fashioned notebooks which he buys at “the librarian” (Meyer), an old friend of his father’s. Pierre’s life has been split into two: the real self (the child) looks for redemption in the world of childhood, the ‘false’ self (the murderous killer) compensates with violence against strangers (“never kill a person you know” is one of his rules) for his empty, emotionally undeveloped life as an adult. It is via the ”librarian” who introduces Pierre shortly before his death to Laure (Moreau) now a woman. Pierre remembers listening to her playing the piano when she was a child. In a final twist, Laure’s fiancée was Pierre’s first victim, chosen, like the other ones at random. Laure suggests a holiday in Spain, along the lines of the one he is fixated on with his parents. He takes with him one of the last notebooks with devastating results.

Jean-Hughes Lelté is utterly convincing and mesmerising as the killer, and the way he stumbles through an adult world, he can not grasp, is frightening. We see this reduced world through his eyes, and everyone apart from his father, are merely cyphers. Even though Pierre has a first sexual relationship with Laure, his childhood Ego is still the much stronger pull. Doomed, he lives out his phantasies to the end. Stunning camerawork and set pieces are provided by Mathias Touzeris and Olivier Cussac’s original score cleverly evokes the romantic lure of the past and the menace of the present.

Cruel is a stunning portrait of mental illness, dramatised as in a fictional way, but very close to reality. AS

SCREENING DURING THE CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL 3 -13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Why Me (2015) | Cambridge Film Festival 2015

Writer|Director: Tudor Giurgiu

Cast: Emilian Oprea, Mihai Constantin, Andreea Vasile

125min  Romanian  Political Thriller

Romanian director Tudor Giurgiu crafts a caustic Kafkaesque thriller based on a true case of political and police corruption.

Romanian new wave drama WHY ME is Tudor Giurgiu’s third fiction feature and a no holds barred exposé of Romanian state criminal prosecutor Cristian Panait (29), who was found dead in suspicious circumstances in 2002 after he took a fearless stand to uphold the truth in a case the high-profile corruption battle that still resonates for those involved and affected. Whether it will have appeal for general audiences is questionable but this offers absorbing entertainment for keen cineastes or the Eastern European arthouse crowd.

Serving as an allegory for Post Communist Romania, WHY ME has all the trappings of a grown-up crime thriller. Slick production values and Giurgiu’s masterful direction elicits a dynamite performance from the dashingly dour Emilian Oprea in the lead as Cristian Panait (here called Panduru). As a university lecturer and leading light in the criminal prosecution service, his strict moral code does not extend to his sexual relationships: he enjoys a high octane feisty chemisty with his girlfriend Dora (Andreea Vasile) while hotly pursuing the charms of his female students. At only 29, he is put forward to handle a thorny corruption case against Bogdan Leca (Alin Florea), another prosecutor involved in smuggling charges against prominent political figures in post Soviet Romania. Although Panduru initially leaps at the opportunity to handle the case, he becomes less keen when he suspects the authorities of using him as a pawn. But his life downsirals into paranoia after backing out of the Leca case and soon he feels unable to trust even his own doting mother, with tragic consequences.

To some extent WHY ME is semi- autobiogrpahical for Giurgiu, who ia Romania’s best known director, both at home and abroad. He was also the main proponent of Romania’s BBC equivalent before resigning under political pressure. Not for the feint-hearted, the film is hard-hitting and heavyweight with some emotional scenes but very few glimpses of the usual dry Romanian sense of humour.

Through suberb widescreen cinematography WHY ME offers some opportunities to see Bucharest and the surrounding  scenery and local architecture as well as the smoke-filled corridors of government power where Panait fought to expose corruption. Eventually, possibly through his efforts, Romania disbanded its secret forces in a widescale crack-down on  corrupt politicians. Worthwhile and intelligent. MT

CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 3 SEPTEMBER UNTIL 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

 

One Floor Below | Cannes 2015 | Un Certain Regard | SARAJEVO FF 2015

Director: Radu Muntean

Cast: Ionat Bora, Liviu Cheloiu, Calin Chirila, Teodor Corban

93min Romanian  Drama

Sandu Patrescu, the middle-aged anti-hero of Radu Muntean’s Un Certain Regard hopeful, ONE FLOOR BELOW, has a reason to be tight-lipped and dour. He grew up during the sinister communist regime of Romanian dictator, Ceausescu.

Living with his wife and geeky son in the faced glory of an Art Nouveau building in a leafy suburb of Bucharest, he walks his golden retriever Jerry in the local park, enjoys a close and lovingly respectful relationship with his mother and runs a successful car hire business. In this middle-class, Sandu keeps himself to himself so when he overhears raised voices and salacious goings on from the flat below, he guiltily decides to draw a veil over the proceedings but and tells the Police nothing when they arrive to investigate a woman’s death downstairs in the block of flats.

Muntean’s meta drama is exquisitely framed but rather sinister in tone as its slow-burning narrative gradually ignites into a flaming finale in the third act; always playing its sombre secrets close to its chest.

It turns out that his neighbour Dima (Iulian Postelnicu) who lives with his wife in the flat below, has been having sex with the dead woman. And when an ambulance arrives to remove the bodybag from her ground floor home, it emerges this was not just an accident.  So when Dima asks Patrascu to help him change the title and deed of his car, his focus sharpens on this suspicious young man, who seems over-gracious and quite cocky his wife and son.

There is a great deal of watching and waiting in this tense and protracted psychodrama, but Sandu’s uneasiness gradually starts to permeates each calm and well-composed frame. Mundean’s minimalist new wave drama takes a Zen approach to crime-investigaton that will appeal to arthouse enthusiasts but may not suit those looking for a faster-paced thriller. This is a story that is more about the journey than the destination. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 – 24 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 22 AUGUST 2015

The Treasure (2015) Camoara | Sarajevo Film Festival 2015

Writer|Director: Corneliu Porumbiou

Cast: Radu Banzaru, Dan Chiriac, Liulia Ciochina, Corneliu Cozmel

91min  Drama  Romania

THE TREASURE is Corneliu Porumbiou’s follow-up to meta cinema title When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism and the second Romanian feature in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year. The neighbourly camaraderie of his lead characters contrasts strongly with Radu Muntean’s urban denizens of One Floor Below was share a savage mistrust for each other that borders on animosity. CAMOARA is a simple upbeat parable which explores post communist society in Teleoman County to the West of Bucharest near the Polish border. Simply framed in medium to long shots, this new wave meta film wears its heart on its sleeve and the usual dark and deadpan Romania humour runs through its feelgood narrative.

When Costi’s neighbour Lica comes round to ask him for a loan of 800 euros, you imagine that he’ll be shown the door. But Costi is not unsympathetic when he hears about the family fortune that is apparently buried under his mother’s country home and discusses the proposition seriously with his wife, when Lica offers a 50 percent share of the hidden treasure in return for some upfront cash. Raising the money through his own family, Costi then sets off with Lica, having also secured the services of a metal detector – which requires another lump of his savings. Armed with the digging equipment the trio then set off to is mother’s property to dig for this improbably crock of gold. Phrases such as ‘a fool and his money constantly’ spring to mind while watch in disbelief, not only at Costi’s gullible naivety but also at the total trust these neighbours place in each other. This is a delightfully heartwarming tale and our scepticism and judgemental attitude about the outcome of the story speaks volumes about the state of our own society and the people we’ve become. An arthouse gem. MT

THE TREASURE IS SCREENING AT SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL | 14 – 22 August

REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES 2015

Jack (2015) | Locarno Film Festival 2015

Director: Elisabeth Scharang

Austria Drama 95mins

Leopards changing or not changing spots is a good starting point for JACK. An anti-thriller that subtly asks whether a killer is born or made, it received its world-premiere at the 68th edition of Locarno Film Festival, whose fitting avatar—a speckled golden feline—prowls across the screen before each film. The second feature by Austrian director Elisabeth Scharang is a curious fictionalisation of the life of Johann ‘Jack’ Unterweger (Johannes Krisch), who rose to short-lived fame as a poet and writer in 1990s Vienna, having been released from a 15-year prison stint for murdering a woman in 1974—only to be convicted for more than ten additional murders thereafter, before killing himself in 1994.

Scharang is more vague than the history books as to whether Unterweger did indeed start murdering again after his release—and the real thrust of the film’s final third has to do with how far we can take the protagonist at his word, having never really been allowed in to begin with. In 2008, John Malkovich portrayed him on the stage. Krisch, who looks like Robert Carlyle playing Willem Dafoe, depicts him as an impenetrably and vulnerably confident soul (naked foetal positions abound), in line with Unterweger’s own psychiatric diagnosis with narcissistic personality disorder not long before his 1994 conviction.

It’s not until the final on-screen text that Scharang reveals her real-life inspiration, however, which makes the film itself all the more intriguing. With a catchy soundtrack by Austrian alt-rock band Naked Lunch serving to distance us from a position from which we might otherwise discern the eponymous character’s intentions, JACK—not unlike the protagonist—keeps its cards close to its chest. It’s never really made clear what the film’s overriding purpose, its dramatic premise, actually is. That’s a strength rather than a weakness here, forcing us not merely to invest in the central character but to question whether or not we want to, or indeed should.

It’s a clever approach, given the film’s theme of rehabilitation and the institutional and social structures that propagate or deny it. For many, Jack has paid for the callous murder of a woman one wintry night a decade and a half previously, and his release from prison concludes a process that heals by means of punishment—i.e., serving time (“time is running, but my time stands still”). But at the mere hint that Jack is responsible for other murders (in Prague, Los Angeles, Dornbirn), all bar a few of his associates abandon him.

This is, more than anything else, a cool treatise on the ways in which a media circus can extract capital from a convict at the same time as enabling his continued criminalisation. Long before Jack is suspected of killing again, we see publishers, sales agents and publicists happily promoting his entry into that fickle trajectory called fame (“I’ll be famous,” he tells his lover after sex. “I’ll get to the top”). Celebrity demands content like a leech does blood: when sales figures for his book aren’t quite as high as expected, Jack is pressured into investigative journalism, forced back into his old world of pimps and prostitutes so that he can file front-line missives.

Scharang and cinematographer Jörg Widmer light this latter milieu with the same superficial sheen as those parasitic offices of the publishing world, suggesting the two have more than a mere resemblance. Rather disturbingly, in fact, the director suggests that the entire punishment/retribution debate, as perpetuated by the media at least, is a charade. In an early scene, we see Jack in an open-air prison space, standing in front of a visibly fake backdrop of painted forestry. Real freedom, it implies, is a sham. MICHAEL PATTISON

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 15 AUGUST 2015 

No Home Movie (2015) | Locarno Film Festival

Director: Chantal Akerman

Belgium/France​ Documentary ​115mins

As its title suggests, NO HOME MOVIE is a chronicle of displacement. Chantal Akerman’s latest documentary is an immensely personal portrait of her mother, Natalia ‘Nelly’ Akerman, who died aged 86 in April last year. Born in Poland, like the filmmaker’s father, Nelly fled to Belgium in 1938, only to be sent to Auschwitz; surviving, she lived in Brussels thereafter. Shooting this diaristic dispatch over the course of several months, Akerman captures the mundane details of her mother’s existence, whether through Skype conversations or within her actual home, while incorporating footage of her own travels through a barren Israeli landscape.

It’s in this latter terrain that the film opens, with a lengthy take of a single tree being persistently battered by a ceaseless wind. The next shot is of the much greener and more tranquil grounds of a park, and the one after that is of the small garden that Nelly’s apartment overlooks. Akerman frames her mother’s home from unlikely angles, drawing attention to the fact that her film is a construction, and making a point, with half-obscured compositions, of its voyeuristic edge, as if to question the efficacy and even morality of such an intrusive concept.

Filming a Skype conversation that she conducts from Oklahoma, Akerman remarks, “I want to show there is no distance in the world.” Her mother is touched: “You always have such ideas.” When inside the apartment itself, the filmmaker leaves the camera running from a tabletop or a chair, evidently not fussed when it comes to polished compositions; her white-balances and exposure levels fluctuate like those in an amateur film. The title is a pun: in cinematic terms this is a dull film, not just in its unvarnished digital textures but also in its emphasis upon the domestic quotidian.

What kind of insights does Akerman glean, or expect to glean, from her mother’s life? Given her reluctance to talk of her time at Auschwitz, very little can be gathered of her imprisonment by the Nazis—which gives the more unremarkable anecdotes a doubly revelatory edge. During one scene in which mother and daughter eat lunch, one topic covered is whether or not the latter can cook well. These exchanges are the sum of their relationship. As the film progresses, less conversation takes place; Nelly’s declining health, and her worsening dementia, become evident.

Akerman mentioned in a recent interview that she probably wouldn’t have been able to make the film had she known it was to be a completed narrative from the off. Given the nature of its production, she could hardly have foreseen the way in which her mother’s physical and mental frailty grew—and so NO HOME MOVIE is frequently marred by an arbitrary structure and long sequences in which the filmmaker simply contemplates the seemingly empty apartment. Its poignant premise notwithstanding, this is a dreary film to sit through.

Given the filmmaker’s reputation and legacy (it’s some 40 years since she made her rigidly structured JEANNE DIELMAN in 1975), one can only assume that we’re to take the directorial credit here as a sign of inherent value. Experimentation and self-indulgence are two of art’s defining features, of course, but the success of the experiment depends at some point on the ‘self’ being indulged. It’s probable that making this film was a cathartic and challenging process for Akerman, and apparently she’s edited her final cut from 40 hours of footage. But when we’re asked to sit through a film-schoolishly juvenile and frankly tedious ‘scene’ in which she films her own shadow on a pond, we have to ask if the process is being valued at the expense of the product. MICHAEL PATTISON

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 5 -15 AUGUST 2015

New Horizons Film Festival Wroclaw | Poland | 23 July – 3 August 2015 | WINNERS

New Horizons Festival is one of Poland’s major international film events and a place for daring, unconventional film that push cinematic boundaries with films from Europe and beyond. Taking place in Wroclaw Poland each year with a competition programme comprising auteurish World cinema, a strand for Art cinema and the latest in Polish avantgarde film and cult classics. This year a retrospective on Tadeusz Konwicki will celebrate his life of the groundbreaking director, who died last month in Warsaw, at the age of 88.

The main competition line-up comprised premieres and titles selected from previous festival:

Arabian Nights Trilogy (Cannes); Goodnight Mommy (Venice); H (various); Heaven Knows What (various); Lucifer (Tribeca); Ming of Harlem; Twenty One Storeys in the Air; Necktie Youth

Grand Prix Best Film – LUCIFER 
Special Mention – THE PROJECT OF THE CENTURY
Audience Award – GOODNIGHT MOMMY – review below

Goodnight_Mommy_3

Director: Veronika Franz/Severin Fiala Producer: Ulrich Seidl

Cast: Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz, Susanne Wuest

99min Austria (German with subtitles)

The Austrians are very good at taking ordinary life and turning into horror at Venice this year. In the same vein as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), Ulrich Seidl’s (Im Keller) wife and collaborator, Veronika Franz, makes her debut with a vicious and expertly-crafted arthouse piece, set in a slick modern house buried in the Austrian countryside.

In the heat of summer, nine-year-old Elias is enjoying the school hols with his twin brother Lukas. They appear normal boys: swimming, exploring the woods, and keeping giant cockroaches as pets. But in the pristine lakeside home, their TV exec mother has made some draconian changes. Recovering from facial surgery and bandaged up literally like a ‘mummy’, she has banned all friends from visiting the house while her recuperation takes place in total privacy. Nothing wrong with that, but the boys misinterpret her behaviour as a sinister sign and start to wonder whether this is really their mother. The more they question her for re-assurance, the more fractious and distant she becomes. Reacting against her instinctively, they become convinced that she is not their mother but a strange intruder, and decide to take control of the situation.

Franz and Fiala create an atmosphere of mounting suspense with clever editing, minimal dialogue and the use of innocent images that appear more sinister and unsettling when taken out of context. Martin Gschlacht’s cinematography switches between lush landscapes, sterile interiors and suggestive modern art to inculcate a sense of bewilderment and unease. Susanne Wuest is perfectly cast as the icy, skeletal blond matriarch with menace and the innocent boys transformed into everyday psychopaths due to the lack of early maternal love or support, bring to mind those terrible kids from The Shining, The Innocents even Cronenburg’s The Brood. A very clever film which contrasts images of revulsion with those of serene beauty. MT

Special Tribute | TADEUSZ KONWICKI

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JAK DALEKO STAD, JAK BLISKO (HOW FAR, HOW NEAR)

Dir.: Tadeusz Konwicki | Cast: Andrzej Lapacki, Gustaw Holoubek, Maja Komorowska | Poland 1972 | 95 min.

With his films The Last Days of Summer and Jump, Konwicki tries to re-create the life of his anti-hero Andrzej (Lapacki), going forward, but mainly backwards through his life. Before the opening credits, we see a man falling, surrounded by collages, reminding us a little of Vertigo’s pre-credit artwork. Andrzej has come to rserach, whilst his best friend Maks (Holoubek) committed suicide, but soon his search spins totally out of control and Andrzej is moving into his past. He again meets his ex-wife Musia (Komorowska), and other women he slept with. Trying to warn his friend to stay away, so as not to be killed, Andrzej finally has to face his darkest secret: the murder of a man. In a similar vein to Wojciech Has’ The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973), time is not linear, Andrzej literally falls into different time spheres, often trying to make sense out of the situation by himself and in this way examining his motives which are not particularly altruistic.

Konwicki always stood by the autobiographical context of his novels and films: “I write books and make films about myself. In other words, I describe myself in a conditional mode, past, perfect or future tense. I create situations in which I behaved or could have behaved or wish, that I had behaved in a certain way.” (Retrospective Tadeusz Konwicki at the Wroclaw International Film Festival, July/August 2015). AS

15TH NEW HORIZONS | WROCLAW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 23 JULY – 3 AUGUST 2015

 

 

52 Tuesdays (2013)

Director: Sophie Hyde

Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Mario Spate, Beau Travis Williams, Imogen Archer, Sam Althuizen

120min  Australia  Drama

Newcomer Tilda Cobham-Hervey gives a dynamite performance as sixteen-year-old teenager, Billie, in Sophie Hyde’s fresh and frisky drama about female sexuality. Just as Billie is ready to discover boys, her divorced mother (Del Herbert-Jane) has decided to become James, in a challenging transformation that will take a year. To make things easier, Billie goes to live with her father Tom (Beau Travis Williams) but this change of circumstances leaves a gaping hole in Billie’s emotional life, just when she needs her close female role model the most: they shared everything and James’ promise to spend every Tuesday with her offers little comfort. Tom is in a new relationship and offers little help or support as a dad.

Sophie Hyde is best known for her documentaries and here she makes use of that experience with docu-drama style that takes the form of a video diary through which Billie records her emotional journey. In order to retain a feeling of authenticity, filming took place chronologically over the period of the year during which James’ amazing transformation (with incipient to full beard) provides fascinating food for thought as well as engaging factual information about female-male transition. But it’s Billie’s emotional state that really strikes the most meaningful chord as we witness the fragile mother-daughter dynamic slowly degenerate. James’ focus on his own burgeoning sexual desires leave little room for his focus as a ‘mother’: it’s a big leap of faith to expect Billie to suddenly understand an adult male’s issues when she herself is undergoing so much disorientating change from being a little girl to a woman, with hardly any guidance.

52 TUESDAYS asks the evergreen and universal question: do we have a duty of care to our kids when they really need us most, or is our own happiness of primary importance in best equipping us to provide this valuable emotional succour. Obviously it’s a question without an answer, and Sophie Hyde’s observational style offers a non-judgemental snapshot. As Billie, Hervey-Cobham is tender, endearing and vulnerable as she manages her life as cheerfully and as intelligently as possible in challenging circumstances. Sadly Del Herbert Jane as James, much as we want to understand him, never really convinces us or engages our sympathies in his own transformational journey. MT

52 TUESDAYS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 AUGUST 2015.

 

Of Girls and Horses (2014) | DVD release

Writer| Director: Monika Treut

Cast: Ceci Chuh, Alissa Wilms, Vanida Karun

82min. Drama. German

Troubled teenager Alex is sent as an intern to a German horse ranch, in the hope that the space will give her time to think and sort herself out. At first the wildly remote location away from her friends seems like a nightmare but gradually, as her instructor Nina teaches her to train the horses, she starts to enjoy the fresh air and peace in the company of beautiful animals especially when Kathy arrives. Treut  teases out natural performances from all three girls in this sumptuously filmed drama that has just enough tension below the surface to pique our interest in the simple but seductive storyline. MT

NOW ON DVD

Venice Days | Giornate degli Autori | 2 – 12 September 2015

Venice Film Festival has its own version of Cannes Film Festival: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, called GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI – VENICE DAYS. Independently run, parallel to the main programme, it all happens just down the road in the grounds of a lush villa overlooking the famous beach where Dirk Bogarde starred in Visconti’s melancholy masterpiece Death in Venice.

El Nascondido - RetributionWith a jury headed by French director, Laurent Cantet, this year’s official selection comprises new works from well-known talent including Chile’s Matias Bize and Italy’s Vincenzo Marra, along with emerging names such as Poland’s Piotr Chrzan and India’s Ruchika Oberoi. Agnes Varda will also be there with her short film Les Tres Boutons which is part of designer Miucci Prada’s strand  ‘The Miu Miu Women’s Tales.’

The Daughter

VENICE DAYS opens with Spanish filmmaker Dani de la Torre’s debut thriller EL DESCONICIDOS (RETRIBUTION) (above) and closes with Jindabyne actor and theatre director Simon Stone’s debut drama THE DAUGHTER. which stars Geoffrey Rush and is losely based on Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck.

KlezmerWe’re particularly looking forward to the WORLD PREMIERES of Polish wartime drama KLESMER (left) from Piotr Chrzan and Stray Dogs scripter Song Peng Fei’s directorial debut UNDERGROUND FRAGRANCE (below) which follows a similar vein to the 2013 outing which won Grand Special Jury Prize at Venice 2013. High on our list is also Vincenzo Marra’s fourth feature LA PRIMA LUCE which brings Riccardo Scamarcio back to the Lido again starring an Italian lawyer in search of his son lost in Chile.

Underground FragranceCarlo Saura’s documentary ARGENTINA showcasing the country’s national pastime, compliments his series on dance that includes; Fados, Blood Wedding and Carmen. The 83-year-old director is taking a break to come to the Lido from filming Renzo Piano: an Architect for Santander, to screen next year. Britain will be represented in a special event by Grant Gee and his latest film INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES, based on Orhan Pamuk’s book The Museum of Innocence.

GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI | VENICE DAYeptember 2-12.

 

Car Park (2015) Parkoló | European Film Festival Palic 2015 | July 18 -24

Dir.: Bemnce Miklauzic

Cast: Ferenc Lengyel, Tibor Szervét, Lia Pokorny, Kálmán Somody, Zoltán Rajkal

Hungary 2014, 92 min.

Bemnce Miklauzic’s surrealist drama CAR PARK is a brilliant portrait of today’s Hungary: aggressive males dominate, status is everything and the crass materialism of the capitalist order brings out the worst in nearly everyone.

Miklauzic (CHILDREN OF THE GREEN DRAGON) has set his film mainly in a car park, hemmed in by houses on all sides. Légiós (Lengyel), the owner of the lot, has a traumatic past which he keeps alientated from everyone. Even his closest friend and assistant Attila (Rajkal) does not know what happened to him, or if Legios really served in the foreign legion. Legios’ main interest is keeping some young fledglings – nestled above a billboard – safe from the marauding neighbourhood cat.

One day, Imre, a transit entrepreneur and typical “Budapest Suit”, appears in his 1968 Ford Mustang. He asks for the only roofed parking space, which Legios denies him. Later we learn that Legios buries the bodies of the birds here. Legios and Imre take great delight in jossling for superiority. When Imre installs CCTV in Légiós’ caravan and watches from his penthouse office overlooking the car park, Legios gets his own back by sleeping with Ildiko (Pokorny), the wife of Edgar, a corrupt policeman, who has been sacked. Whilst Attila listens to the boiling cooking pot, and translates the noises into Morse-code, we learn that Imre has a kidney disease, which makes him impotent; his wife wanting a divorce, which her husband fights with his usual intransigence. When Imre shows Edgar the incriminating video of his wife and Légiós, and has a poster installed on the billboard, which gives away Légiós’Ó traumatic past, he sets up a duel to the death – something both men wanted all along.

CAR PARK would be worthy of Buñuel; Miklauzic shows human cruelty with great imagination. His sense of perversity is particularly evident in the surprise ending. The ensemble acting is very convincing, and the director uses the seemingly limited space of the car park to great effect. Shades of Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW enhance this absurd tragedy of isolation, mental and physical violence, greed and male death wish – attributes, which unfortunately manifested themselves under very different political regimes during the last century in Hungary. AS

SCREENING AT PALIC | SERBIA | EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL 18 -24 JULY 2015

Ivy (2015) | East End Film Festival | Best Feature

Dir.: Tolga Karaçelik

Cast: Osman Alkas, Kadir Cermik, Nadir Saribacak, Ozgur Emre Yildirim, Hakan Karsak, Seyithan Ozturk

Turkey 2015,104 min Thriller | Horror

Tolga Karacelik (Toll Booth) seems to tell a straight story about a mutiny on a vessel stranded off the Egyptian coast, when suddenly and unexpectedly he changes gear and genre, leaving the audience as stranded as the crew.

Captain Beybaba (Alkas), aloof and usually locked in his room, has little to choose from when he hires two new crew members: Cenk (Saribacak) and Alper (Yildirim) are both dope heads, but they will have to do, since the rest of the crew has not been paid for months. But the situation gets worse when Beybaba learns that the owner has been declared bankrupt, which means that if they pull into port, the ship and cargo would be impounded, and no wages paid. Beybaba, ankering a few hundred metres away from the shore, decides to stay on the ship with five men, the minimum number of crew, and wait for the situation to be resolved so that he and the men get their wages.

Apart from the two newcomers (who are running away from both the gang members and the police) the crew consists of Ismail (Cermik), the captain’s deputy, who tries to fulfil all orders with relish; the young cook Nadir (Karsak) and a nameless Kurdish hulk who says little (Ozturk). After over a month, and no prospect of wages, Cenk, a weasel of a man, finds it easy to stir up a revolt. Whilst Nadir is caught in the middle, Ismail has great difficulties keeping Cenk and Alper under control, ably assisted by the Kurd, whose size alone is threat enough for Cenk. But then, the big man disappears without a trace, even though some crew members admit to seeing his shadow. So it’s time for Cenk, who like Alper, is suffering from withdrawal symptoms, to force open the medicine cabinet. But somehow a curse has befallen the crew.

DOP Gokhan Tiryaki (who photographed Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s One Upon a Time in Anatolia), choses the usual Turkish  widescreen mode to underline the eeriness of the situation which echoes The Day of the Triffids. Karacelik leaves it open as to whether the crew are hallucinating for rest of the drama, but explanations are irrelevant: what happens is really horrific, particularly after the stark realism if the first 80 minutes. A haunting original soundtrack by Ahmet Kenan Bilgic and a very strong cast helps to make IVY into one of the few films were the fear factor is really tangible – made all the more horrific because of its suddenness. AS

IVy won the best feature at this year’s EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 1 – 12 JULY 2015

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Karlovy Vary International Film Festival | 3 – 11 July 2015 | Winners

The 50th Anniversary of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival takes place at the Spa Town, just a stone’s throw from the Czech capital Prague. This year’s Crystal Globe was won by a charming American feature film BOB AND THE TREES where the main character, logger and rap fan Bob Tarasuk, plays himself. US citizen Tarasuk, hails from Czech stock: his grandmother was Czech and grandfather Ukrainian. 238-home-care

Czech films included in the Competition included some great performances: Alena Mihulová received the Best Actress Award for her portrayal of a dedicated nurse in Slávek Horák’s debut HOME CARE (right) and Kryštof Hádek received the Best Actor Award as the problematic younger brother in the drama THE SNAKE BROTHERS directed by Jan Prušinovský.

938-antoniaThe Special Jury Prize was awarded to Austrian director Peter Brunner for  THOSE WHO FALL HAVE WINGS, (below right), a drama on coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Kosovan Visar Morina received the Best Director Award for his film BABAI, a story about a small boy setting off on a journey to find his father. The jury also awarded two Special Mentions to animated biography THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, directed by Anca Damian, and the drama ANTONIA, (right) a tragic story of Italy’s most famous female poet .

The prize for the best film of the East of the West Competition was awarded to social drama THE WEDNESDAY CHILD by the Hungarian director Lili Horváth, a tale of a young girl who wants to secure better circumstances for her child than she had. A Special Mention was awarded to Romanian film The World Is Mine.

606-those-who-fall-have-wingsThe Grand Prix for Best Documentary Film went to Helena Třeštíková for her latest long-term documentary MALLORY. The jury also awarded a Special Mention to Austrian film The Father Tapes. The prize for the best documentary film up to 30 minutes in length was awarded to WHITE DEATH, a story of a Chilean military company trapped in the snow told using a variety of formats and animation techniques. The Special Mention in this category was granted to WOMEN IN SINK, a visit to an Israeli beauty salon. The Forum of Independents Award went to American transgender comedy TANGERINE, shot by director Sean Baker on an iPhone 5.

red_spider_photoHIGHLIGHTS

Seven World premieres and six international premieres competed including HEIL Dietrich Bruggemann’s satire centred on neo-Nazis, which sounds quite different from his sombre 2014 Berlinale outing Stations of the Cross. Polish director Marcin Koszalka’s debut THE RED SPIDER (left) created plenty of buzz – it’s a psychological thriller inspired by true events from the Fifties, where we’re encouraged to see things from the killer’s perspective.  GOLD COAST (main pic) is a Danish drama about a young maverick who embarks on a journey to the Danish Colonies to set up a coffee plantation. BABAI is a rites of passage road drama from Kosovar filmmaker Visar Morina. ANTONIA explores the tragic life of poet, Antonia Pozzi, Italy’s greatest female poet.

 

song-of-songsThere is a distinctly Eastern flavour to the features from the two female filmmakers in Competition. Another title that has been getting some good reviews is Eva Neymann’s tender and touching  SONG OF SONGS: images of the lost world of the Jewish Shtetl at the turn of the 20th Century is seen through the eyes of two teenage lovers (right), and Anca Damian’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN explores a mujahedin fighter’s adventures during the Afghanistan wars.

There were seven screen debuts in the Competition line-up – the winner THE SOUND OF TREES, is Canadian filmmaker François Peloquin’s coming of age feature debut set in the Québec landscape (main pic).

FORUM OF INDEPENDENTS

Brazilian director Ives Rosenfeld’S world premiere of HOPEFULS (Aspirantes), takes light-hearted look at the world of football through the eyes of a young man and his girlfriend. And Kim Ki-duk’s latest offering STOP is a bizarre drama centring on a couple who are gradually descending into meltdown in the aftermath radiation sickness caused by Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor.

DOCUMENTARY STRAND

202-i-am-belfastThe Documentary Films strand included the international premiere of ‘poetic and moving’ I AM BELFAST, from English director Mark Cousins who reveals the history of Belfast through the ancient eyes of an 10,000 year old woman. The score is composed by David Holmes.

At finally, it takes an English woman, Cosima Spender, to make a film about the Sienese Palio, an ancient and daring horse race that takes place annually in the Florentine city. PALIO’s editor, Valerio Bonelli, was the editor of award-winning titles: Philomena, Hannibal Rising and Gladiator and the documentary won a prize at Tribeca earlier this year (below).513-palio

KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 3 -11 JULY 2015 | KARLOVY VARY | CZECH REPUBLIC

Line of Credit (2014) |Kreditis Limiti

Director: Salomé Alexi

Cast: Nino Kadradse, Salome Alexi, Koka Tagonidze,

90min  Comedy Drama  Georgia

Georgian filmmaker Salome Alexi’s LINE OF CREDIT is a finely-tuned and delicately rendered comedy teetering on the brink of tragedy to paint a tense yet elegant picture of a well-to-woman family forced into debt in penny-pinching post Soviet Georgia.

Purple-tinted pastel visuals and careful mid-distance framing echo Miss Violence but this is lighter in tone lacking the glowering menace of Avranas’ outing , despite its serious undertones. A predominantly female affair, it sets off with a large family gathering to celebrate an elderly woman’s birthday in the faded grandeur of the upmarket apartment she shares with her middle-aged daughter Nino and her husband in Tbilisi. It emerges that Nino had pawned her mother’s wedding ring to pay for the party. Close friend Lili (Alexi) reveals, in a discrete post prandial tête a tête, the need for an operation but can’t afford the medical cost but there is a crafty way round this involving her joining a drug programme. Meanwhile the aristocratic Nino (Nino Kadradse) and her mother are quietly selling off the family porcelain to cover expenses.

Graceful and soignée, Nino keeps up her appearances while constantly scrimping and saving to run her small cafe in a quiet corner of the bustling capital. Enlivened by occasional bursts of local music, this intimate domestic drama depicts a close knit community that cares for each other in frequent encounters and conspiratorial chats but the debt-ridden duos invariably focus on money matters and will resonate with art house audiences experiencing the need to tighten their belts. Alexi’s well-crafted and watchable debut gradually builds towards a shocking climax and by the end we feel thoroughy au fait with contempo middle class Tbilisi and its subtle yet far-reaching political undercurrents. MT

LINE OF CREDIT is screening during East End Film Festival on 9 July 2015

How to Lose Jobs and Alienate Girlfriends (2015) | East End Film Festival

Dir.: Tom Meadmore

Cast: Tony Jackson, Amanda Medica, Thomas Meadmore

Australia 2014, 73 min.

Back in 2008, Australian film editor Thomas Meadmore wanted to direct his own film. He chose his boss, TV director Tony Jackson, and his girlfriend Amanda Medica as subjects, since both were aspiring singers/musicians. As it turned out, his efforts did affect him professionally and personally, and, as the title suggest, not for the best.

The Melbourne set documentary might not be an aesthetic masterpiece and first timer Meadmore certainly knew very little  about himself or his subjects, not to mention his total lack of empathy, but his honesty somehow saves this rugged undertaking. Whilst it soon becomes clear that Meadmore’s filmmaking skills are not much above your average home movie maker, he is obviously oblivious of his failings, and instead attacks both Jackson and his girl friend Amanda, telling his boss that he lacks talent as a singer and is far too old at the age of forty to start a career as musician. He then accuses Amanda of a lacking motivation, even though she has to earn her living as a waitress on top of her music career.

Meadmore’s arrogance is as surprising, as his lack of awareness: he is shocked that Thomas and Amanda resent him and it’s hardly surprising that the two split up fairly early on in the proceedings. Interviews with Jackson’s ex-wife, and conversations with his sister again show Meadmore as an overreaching self-starter with strong opinions, but few skills as a filmmaker and even less as an human being.

Meadmore comes over as control freak and manipulator, who has little going for himself, apart from his brutal honesty, which is underlined in the credits, when How to lose Jobs & Alienate Your Girlfriends is called a selfie/film. It is, alas, very much the first. In spite of himself, Meadmore somehow manages some scathing humour, but overall this is just an exercise in self-glorification, aspiring filmmakers can safely use the film as a model of how not proceed. AS

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2015 | 1 – 12 July 2015

Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of our Parents (2015) | East End Film Festival 2015

Director: Stina Werenfels Writer: Boris Treyer| Stina Werenfels

Cast: Victoria Schulz, Jenny Schily, Lars Eidinger, Urs Jucker

90min   Drama   Austria/Switzerland

Stina Werenfels first came to Berlinale in 2006 with a powerful debut GOING PRIVATE. DORA marks her return with a morally challenging and visually appealing drama that probes some sensitive issues for the family of a disabled young woman in contemporary Switzerland.

In Zurich, a happily married couple in their early forties are parents to Dora (newcomer Victoria Schulz), a mentally retarded but attractive 18 year-old. Kristin (Jenny Schily) and Felix (Urs Jucker) have raised her with complete devotion but Dora is now an adult and certainly old enough to realise that she cannot interrupt her parent’s love-making by climbing into their bed. The problem is that Dora is still being treated like a child because her brain has not developed at the same time as her body and so she lacks the behavioural changes that normally follow puberty and adolescence.

The decision to stop taking her medication has had the added complication of making Dora completely sexually uninhibited. And this is both shocking and bewildering for her parents, and particularly her mother. Jenny Schily gives a convincing turn as Kristin, a loving woman who is deeply uncomfortable with her daughter’s burgeoning sexual prowess that appears not to know any shame (she comments on her father’s erect penis calling it ‘a front bum willy’ after surprising them in the throes of passion).

After an incident in a public lavatory, where Dora consents to a brutal rape by a stranger, she then embarks on a regular sex life with the man in question, much to the alarm and disappointment of her open-minded yet, understandably worried parents.  All this is delicately and almost dreamily photographed by Lukas Strebel’s pleasingly soft-focused lens, a style that softens and blunts the emotionally traumatic nature of the subject matter

Atlantic (2015) | East End Film Festival | 1-12 July 2015

Dir.: Jan-Willem Ewijk

Cast: Fettah Lamara, Thekla Reuten, Mohamed Majd, Jan-Willem Ewijk,Wisal Hatimi

Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/Morocco/France, 95 min.

Some films are likeable because they stand alone and do not fall in any category or genre, or attempt to reach out to a certain target audience. In dreams, we cannot figure everything out, but can be nevertheless enthralled.

Fettah (Lamara), a young man in his early thirties, lives in a poor fishing village in Morocco where he helps his father on the boat in winter and works as a guide for the European surfers in summer.  A dreamer, Fettah wants everything he cannot obtain. There is his grief for his mother, who drowned when he was seven. Then there is Wisal, a young girl in the village who wants to marry him but Fettah again wants what he can’t have: Alexandra (Reuten) who is already spoken for by Jan (Ewijk). The pair are staying in Fettah’s house during the summer and he becomes infatuated with Alexandra who has his mother’s eyes. After the couple leave, Fettah sets on his surf board to journey across the ocean, not so much in search of Alexandra (he doesn’t even have her address), but to get away from all the poverty. He soon discovers that he is just another emigrant, trying to get to Europe.

The all-present voice over, whispering, accompanies Fettah on his 180 mile journey across the ocean. Flashbacks help to put connect the real characters to the voice-over, which seems to draw Fettah more and more into himself, the further he gets away from Morocco . The hypnotic voiceover is accompanied by to sumptuous visuals – a mixture of wildness poetic languidness – from DoP Jasper Wolf. Fettah’s loneliness is occasionally relieved by fishermen, sharing sardines with him, but nobody can help him when his equipment starts to fail.

The simple storyline allows the audience to become lost in the images and Piet Swert’s score, making this a transcendental journey with a starting point, but no concrete goal – but then dreams often have no proper endings. ATLANTIC sometimes sails very close to pretentiousness, but the harsh environment is always there to remind us of the ever-present danger. Fettah’s identity, perhaps as unknown to him as to us, is best put in words that also describe the whole film: a wandering spirit in love with the sea and dreams, reality taking second place to something only to be felt: An absolute original.AS

 

Elephant’s Dream (2014) | East End Film Festival 1 – 12 July 2015

Dir.: Kristof Bilsen

Documentary; Belgium DR Congo 2014, 72 min.

Kristof Bilsen’s first full-length documentary is a poetic and languid portrait of civil service workers in Kinshasa (DRC), the third biggest city in Africa. After decades of post-colonial strife and civil wars the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) has somehow come to a grinding halt. In the capital Kinshasa we witness members of the essential services fighting a losing war against an all-prevalent apathy. Henrietta works for the post office, a huge building, which seems very empty. Staff are faced to with long delays in wage payment; they are behind by more than a year and when the pay finally appears employees are lucky to get ten per cent of their monthly income.

One employee, Henrietta, tries to come to terms with sub-standard living condition, and the non-existing public transport which means miles of walking just to get to work. Finally, the deputy prime minister re-opens the post office, computers are installed – Henrietta is learning fast – and everyone is optimistic. A few weeks later, we meet Henrietta again, she is in charge of her local post office, but no customers appear.

Simon and Van Nzai are two old friends, working for the railway station. But we don’t actually see a train until the very last scene, and the two men are bored and conspiring against each other. Nzai tries to get early retirement, because his eye sight is failing him during the night shifts (so he claims), whilst Simon tries to repair an old, clapped out car, to make some money as a taxi driver. Finally, there is Lt. Kasunga and his firemen form the Central unit in Kinshasa. Kasunga knows very well that a huge city like Kinshasa needs six district stations and a central station, and his small unit is hardly able to cope. When a house is on fire, the men are helpless: the water pressure is much too low, and we see the flames destroying everything. It is ironic, but not surprising, that the building of the Central station was itself destroyed by fire two years ago, after an accident with a stove. Colonial attitudes have survived: Simon tells us that the black bosses repress the workers in the same way as the colonial masters, and independent thinking, never mind critique, is not opportune, if one wants to keep their job.

Bilsen, who is also the DOP, shows a cosmos of slow motion, where everybody seems to stay still, food is rare and basic, and equipment seems to be from the 19th century; boots, like the ones of the fire brigade are second hand from Canada. Hope (and faith in the case of Christian, Henrietta) are still alive, but passivity nevertheless gets the upper hand. Without being judgemental, Bilsen is showing us a life of just survival, but in spite of this, the images are sensitive, lyrical and very touching. AS

The film’s UK premier will play on Saturday 4th July as part of the East End Film Festival: www.genesiscinema.co.uk/films/events/eeff-elephants-dream-uk-premiere-sat-4th-july/

 

Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in PyongYang (2015)

Director: Colin Offland

With Dennis Rodman

93min  Sport documentary  US

The North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un is not the only unusual character in Colin Offland’s debut feature documentary: Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in PyongYang. The NBA veteran, Dennis Rodman, has some issues which come to the forefront as he forges a bizarre friendship with the dictator based on their mutual love of basketball. But diplomacy is not the word that springs to mind here when the Rodman decides to stage “the most controversial sporting event the world has never seen”.  Given to bouts of sobbing, shouting incoherently and drinking heavily, Rodman explains, in an emotional statement ”poolside” in his native Miami, how he aims to improve relations between the US and the estranged Asian Nation. So having received an invitation from Kim to improve on the performance given by the Harlem Globetrotters in 2013, Rodman jumps at the opportunity to visit with his own team buddies for a match with North Korea’s National team, to celebrate Kim’s birthday on January 8th 2014.

Rodman’s first surprise out of the bag is securing funding from the Irish bookmakers Paddy Power, who step in with finance to send the team to PyongYang.  But one wonders, given Rodman’s incendiary personality, if he really is the man to pull off a diplomatic engagement with such a volatile political regime, let along the dictator himself. Well fire certainly meets fire and that’s all part of the fun of this extraordinary story with its unexpected twists and turns. Most of the excitement lies in the contrast between the hulking figure of Rodman with his facial piercings and gargantuan hands swinging from muscly arms and the diminutive Kim who is briefly glimpsed smiling gleefully, next to his wife, during the final match ceremony on Rodman’s return visit.

The other reason to see this curiously absurd documentary is to get a glimpse of what North Korea actually looks like. Shot on the wide lens, what emerges here are vast open boulevards flanked by palatial buildings set in panoramic snowy scenery under electric blue skies. PyongYang itself makes Las Vegas look like a toy town; and those who’ve visited Vegas will appreciate the extraordinary distances from one hotel to another.

Clearly, the fact that Kim has recently had his uncle put to death and North Korea’s Human Rights record doesn’t square well with US diplomacy, sparking major controversy with the folks back home in America. But pouting like a petulant child, Rodman, now in his early fifties, insists naively “I’m not trying to be a politician. I’m not trying to be a world leader – It’s all about sports.”

In this fast-moving and well-edited film, Offland obtains remarkable footage of the events and, most hilarious of all, the celebration dinner in the presence of Kim, where Rodman finally loses it, despite the careful diplomatic groundwork prepared by his highly professional NBA colleagues, one of whom dissolves in tears in the aftermath. As politely smiling North Korean waitresses and diplomats look on wincingly, Dennis rants and raves like an enormous gorilla in designer sportswear. Talk about upping the ante: It’s unlikely Kim Jong-un expected such a showcase showdown in his own backyard. MT

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 1 -12 JULY 2015

Prophet’s Prey (2015) | Edinburgh Film Festival 2015

Director: Amy Berg

With Jon Krakauer and Sam Brower and Nick Cave

90min  Documentary  Biography

Religious cults also provide rich pickings for film documentaries. And accomplished documentarian Amy Berg’s study of the cult leader and serial child abuser, Warren Jeffs, is no exception: although you wish she could have delved a little deeper into the personalities and psychology of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). PROPHET’S PREY, although well-crafted and riveting doesn’t reveal more than has already been documented across the media.

By way of background, the FLDS are a splinter sect of the Mormons and were outlawed when they refused to give up polygamy. Based on research by investigator Sam Brower and the bestseller of investigative journalist Jon Krakauer ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’, Berg’s documentary chronicles how cult leader, mega-polygamist and pasty-faced preacher, Warren Jeffs, by process of mind control and indoctrination, gradually took over this extremist religious movement from his position as Principal at the Salt Lake City high school, Alta Academy. What emerges here is not his desire for sex with multiple partners (of both sexes), but more his megalomania and need to manipulate and dominate, which started with his own family members, including his sister. In short, what Jeffs really got off on was the ability to reduce his fellow humans to pure minions under his over-arching superiority, both mental and physical. In effect, he was the deity that his adherents worshipped and obeyed.

Through the talking heads of Krakauer, the intellectual, and Brower the doer; Berg shows how the two played a major part in Jeffs’ arrest and capture, at the height of his power. The FDLS is a highly secret organisation that intimidates women and children and, operating with CCTV at every corner of the community, questions and eliminates any outside who strays into their open compounds, nestling in ‘some of the best real estate between Utah and Arizona. Gaining huge financial leverage over his community by forcing the families to pool their resources and entrust his with the spoils, their leader Jeffs gains complete dominion while they become, in effect, complete prisoners, in a regime of absolute power. Cowering under Jeff’s control, the women are reduced to an almost catatonic state of submissiveness as they roam around in family groups, dressed in 19th century attire (long Laura Ashley-style dresses) topped off with ornate hairdos. Watching the footage recorded by Krakauer, from the safety of his SUV, is really quite eerie and unsettling.

In his calm but controlling monotone voice, Jeffs prophesies doom to his flock if they deviate from his control. When the World didn’t end in 1999, as he had predicted, and his followers failed to be beamed up to Heaven, Jeffs claims it was because they had been unworthy. In this way, he has answer for everything. Members of his family who have managed to escape shed light on the community, by relating their shocking experiences to camera, but it still feels that Berg is merely scratching the surface of this dreadful human tragedy. Through their investigations, Krakauer and Bower manage to get Jeffs on the FBI’s Most Wanted List leading to his eventual arrest in Nevada.

Berg’s collaborators Scott Stevenson and Brendan Walsh assemble a fascinating array of pictures and news footage that enliven this spooky and quite nauseating saga, Nick Cave occasionally narrates and provides the film’s atmospheric original score. MT

SCREENING AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 JUNE 2015

 

Last Days in the Desert (2015) | Edinburgh Film Festival 2015

Director: Rodrigo Garcia

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ciaran Hinds, Tye Sheridan, Ayelet Zurer

98min   Historical Drama

“Forty days and forty nights, thou wast fasting in the wild; Forty days and Forty nights Tempted and yet undefiled”.

Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeszki takes what could have been just another addition to the Jesus and father|son sub-genres and transforms it into something ethereal and luminous in Colombian writer|director Rodrigo Garcia’s LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT.

The message of the Lenten parable can be interpreted in many ways, here Ewan McGregor is cast as a strongly self-critical but sympathetic Jesus, whose ‘shadow’ torments him as Lucifer (a mirror image often sharing the same frame) or a metaphor for evil. As ‘Yashuya’ nears Jerusalem at the end of his time of meditation in the arid wilderness (actually California’s Anza-Borrego Desert), Jesus confronts a final test when he meets a family in crisis: an anxious father (Ciaran Hinds); a frustrated son (Tye Sheridan) and a wife (Ayelet Zurer) who is slowly wasting away from an incurable disease.

Solemn in tone, Rodrigo Garcia’s serene and contemplative film is high-minded, as you might expect from the subject matter. It is also full of riddles, ambiguous dialogue and mysterious mirror images of Jesus’s shadow who persistently taunts and tempts him in his final days before the crucifixion. There is even a wicked crone who asks him for water but then reveals her true identity.

A stone mason, Hinds is attempting to build his son a home on the edge of a precipice (with a view to die for, perfectly captured by Lubeszki’s visuals that reflect each subtle nuance of light from dawn ’til dusk), but his son is keen to explore the World beyond this dry desert and engages eagerly with his new found holy mentor on their trips to the watering hole. Slow-paced but strangely mesmerising, the narrative builds towards an unexpected twist which generates surprising tension, and the performances, particularly those of Tye Sheridan and McGregor are illuminating and thoughtful.

As the ‘Jesus oeuvre’ goes, McGregor feels like a more sardonic version of Pasolini’s newcomer Enrique Irazoqui in The Gospel According to Matthew – what he lacks in Irazoqui’s purity and vulnerability he makes up for in his constant self-reflection and self-criticism which reduces him to a humble figure. As a meditation of the powers of good and evil, THE LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT is reflective and edifying. There are no acts of God or parting waters but there are some understated moments of surrealism and the quiet contemplativeness of the piece offers food for thought if not Manna from Heaven. MT

SCREENING DURING THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 JUNE 2015.

Len and Company (2015) | Edinburgh Film Festival 17 – 28 June 2015

Director: Tim Godsall     Script: Tim Godsall, Katharine Knight

Cast: Rhys Ifans, Jack Kilmer, Juno Temple

USA/Canada Drama 105mins

Montreal-born Tom Godsall brings together a veteran and a newcomer by way of a rising star in his debut feature LEN AND COMPANY, in which Rhys Ifans plays crabby superstar music producer Len, who wearily retreats to his country home in Upstate New York followed by his aspiring and retiring rockstar son Max (Jack Kilmer) and his newest award-winning collaborator Zoe (Juno Temple). Commendable primarily for allowing a limited performer like Ifans to play to his strengths, this curious and mostly understated drama world-premieres at the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival.

From the moment we first set eyes on Len, whose comical grouchiness offsets the otherwise cheery tempo of Ian Dury’s ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick,’ we infer the story to come: stubbornly irritable old hand retires for some peace and quiet, only for the weak foundations of his idyll to be uprooted by unwelcome if belatedly appreciated visitors. If the particulars aren’t entirely precise, the general gist is there: it’s not long before Len’s son Max shows up, complete with inoffensively bland hairdo and a secret desire to have his dad listen to a new demo he’s made with some pals. Max finds it difficult to connect with his dad; the latter even responds to the mention of a Liverpool football match with a curt dismissal. It’s only when Zoe, the outwardly feisty but vulnerable popstar with whom Len has just made a hit record, also shows up that Len’s paternal and professional laziness are finally confronted.

For the most part (though it has its pitfalls, the most risible of which involves a final act visit from one of Zoe’s admirers) Godsall’s script, co-written with Katharine Knight, unfolds by way of casual segues rather than dramatic standoffs—unexpectedly so, perhaps, given the director’s success making TV commercials. André Pienaar’s consistently unshowy autumnal cinematography, meanwhile, helps to further subdue any would-be melodrama. The emphasis here is more on those unspoken wishes, the ones that gnaw away from within. Whatever kind of resolution is on the cards, here, it’s to be embodied by Ifans’s trademark raised eyebrow—and little more.

It’s a giant in-joke by now that any film character would find Ifans remotely appealing, and details about Len’s own artistic success here are suitably scant. Worn out by his own lifestyle and barely ready to admit to anything resembling regrets, Len prefers to sit around watching old episodes of The Sweeney and Blackadder on DVD. Likewise, Ifans keeps things relatively low-key, delivering lines like “she was an underfed coyote, poor thing” and “cheeky fucking cunt bastard” with a functional rather than expressive register. It’s a clever casting choice, all told: opposite Kilmer (Val’s son) and Temple, Ifans cuts an effectively exhausted figure, as much bemused as anyone by his own longevity. MICHAEL PATTISON

PREMIERING AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 – 28 JUNE 2015

Therapy for a Vampire | Der Vampir auf der Couch (2014) | Edinburgh Film Festival

Writer|Director: David Rühm

Cast Tobias Moretti, Jeanette Hain, Cornelia Ivancan, Dominic Oley, Kark Fischer

87min  Gothic Horror   Austria

Austrian auteur David Ruhm adds a stylish and witty contribution to the blood-bloated canon of the Vampire genre here with a Freudian-themed thirties pastiche THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE.

In his Viennese consulting rooms in 1911, Dr Sigmund Freud (Karl Fischer) is conducting an early experiment using Art Therapy to explore his patients’ dreams. Naturally, given the title, one of his most illustrious patients is experiencing some challenging ‘issues’. Count Geza von Közsnöm (Tobias Moretti) is suffering from a generalised ennui: having lived for thousands of years, he’s simply tired of life and the sex with his wife, the strikingly sultry Gräffin Elsa (Jeanette Hain) has simply lost its bite. He is also haunted by the premature death, centuries earlier, of his true love, Nabila.  When he sees a portrait of a woman painted by Viktor (Dominic Oley), Freud’s inhouse artist, he is struck by a mysterious ‘deja-vu’ between the subject of the painting, Lucy (Viktor’s girlfriend played by Cornelia Ivancan), and his own long lost lover.

Back in their bijoux castle in the wooded suburbs of Vienna, Count Geza enthuses over Viktor’s artistic skills to the emotionally needy and narcissistic Graffin Elsa, who is having serious problems with her image. Unable to see herself in a mirror, she implores Count to commission Viktor to paint her portrait.

Rühm has crafted two very appealing vampires here, who are not only stylish and drôle but also have lost none of their dark weirdness, in echoes of Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive, although this is a far more stylised drama. Drinking blood from transfusions they are able to define the exact profile of their victims – young Virgin, aged Diabetic – and so on – without the inconvenience and mess of blood spurts and uncontrollable haemorrhaging on their beautifully hand-tailored attire. They are endowed with all the traditional Vampire capabilities of bestial transformation, they quail away from crosses, garlic and wooden stakes but they also embody the more playful attributes of irony and self-parody as seen in The Munsters. But it is their obsession with counting objects that is their final downfall.

Beautifully-crafted and sumptuously staged, the success of Rühm’s Gothic horror piece lies in this combination of sinister weirdness and seriously dark humour, and there are some unexpected quirky laugh out loud moments that make this really entertaining. And although it never fully explores the Freudian premise, it pays homage to the legendary therapist in its themes of unrequited love, vanity and sexual obsession. Performances are consistently good: the two female leads are far from pliant, adding a foxy feminist streak to their Gothic horror credentials. Viktor is sensitive and appealing and Count Geza sneeringly wicked and elegantly masculine.  MT

THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE | EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 – 28 JUNE 2015

Cop Car (2015) | Edinburgh 2015

Director: Jon Watts

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Shea Wigham, Camryn Manheim, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Welford

90min  US Drama

The big sky country of Colorado provides some magnificent widescreen potential for this rather twisty tale that starts as a gentle indie drama but soon enters thriller territory when two kids on a rural ramble innocently playing cops and robbers end up in serious trouble.

Jon Watts cruises ahead confidently with a plausible if outlandish plotline for this coming of age road movie that keeps us guessing for most of its journey. But the joy ride soon unspools into an adult gunslinger between two unlikeable characters – Kevin Bacon’s dodgy redneck sherriff and the bad guy he was trying to turn in – with the kids playing the victims in a cop chase whose origins remain a mystery from start to finish.

The two 10-year-olds – newcomers in question, Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford), discover an empty cop car during their make meander across the open fields – Travis is the sparky daring one and Harrison the more reserved of the two. Daring each other to touch the car, they end up inside and then driving off in a moment of exhilarating danger – sirens blaring and lights flashing – and unknown to them – a perp in the boot.

The car belongs to sherrif Mitch Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) who we then see, in flashback, dragging a body from the boot and then dumping it in an empty pit. When Kretzer returns, the boys have already left and are eventually seen snaking along the highway by a woman travelling in the opposite direction (Camryn Manheim).

Watts and his co-writer stick in the realms of superficial ‘boys own’ territory without scoping out the kids backstories or that of the sherriff and his victims, who all turn in superb performances. COP CAR imagines proceedings from a kids’ point of view: fearless and out to have fun – and to hell with the consequences. There is a sinister undercurrent as the boys – quite literally – take a back seat, but this lack of more ample characterisation throws the emphasis onto Bacon’s fairly routine sherriff and his bloodied baddie who we neither know about, and care about even less. A missed opportunity but a ripping yarn nevertheless. MT

SCREENING DURING EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 17 -28 JUNE 2015

Every Secret Thing (2014) | Edinburgh Film Festival 17 -28 June 2015

Director: Amy Berg,  Writer: Nicole Holofcener

Cast: Diane Lane, Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Banks, Danielle MacDonald, Nate Parker

99min  Psychodrama | Mystery | US

Oscar-nominated Amy Berg brings her documentary expertise (West of Memphis | Deliver Us From Evil ) to bear in this feature debut that makes an interesting pairing with her documentary Prophet’s Prey, also screening at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, touching on similar issues. Although initially challenged by its fractured narrative style that takes place in two different time lines, the overtly sombre-toned psychological drama, based on  Laura Lippman’s best-seller, goes on to exert a relentlessly unsettling grip throughout its 93 minute running time.

This is largely down to four good female performances from Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane, Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald). Ronnie and Alice, (played as adults by Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald, respectively) are suspected of kidnapping two mixed-race kids in separate incidents a decade apart. We join the story as an investigation into the latest disappearance is taking place in contempo New York state. And gradually we discover more about the initial crime which resulted in the young girls being incarcerated for 10 years until they emerge as women in their late teens. Told through flashbacks with mock newspaper footage and news bulletins, the original murder is relayed from the perspective of the young girls, as the real story only emerges in the final stages of the movie.

Skilful edits require intense concentration as we bring our instincts to the forefront. In analysing the characters of the girls and their families,  we become involved in determining the upshot of a story of female disturbance and deception that is open to so many different possibilities, twists and turns. Berg casts aspersions at a dreadful early childhood for both Alice and Ronnie but the circumstances surrounding their start in life, that lead them to become, in effect, psychopaths, is shrouded in mystery. Even at the finale, there is no way of knowing exactly who initiated the kidnapping or who committed the murder although it is possible to make an educated guess based on our own experience and intuitions. There is also the element of false memory that makes this a very exciting and engaging drama, particularly from a feminine perspective.

Themes of parenting, bullying, dating, adoption, the break-down on the family unit and its affects on female relationships, not to mention issues of re-integration into the community, are all carefully woven into the storyline and seen from each different female’s perspective with Rob Hardy’s stunning cinematography which incorporates inventive camera angles and a haunting original score from Robin Coudert (Populaire).

Diane Lane is superb as a single mother who appears to be grappling with a difficult daughter who she is also in competition with, as a female. Dakota Fanning is mesmerising, particularly in one scene where she attains almost horror status as a outwardly vulnerable but clearly cunning individual. But Danielle MacDonald gives the most frightening turn as a narcissistic fantasist with body image issues. And last, but not least, Elizabeth Banks plays an awarded woman detective tasked with investigating the case and bringing her own psychological insight into this nest of vipers. You will have a field day. MT

EVERY SECRET THING screens at EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 -28 JUNE 2015.

The Chambermaid Lynn (2014) MUBI

Director: Ingo Haeb | Cast: Vicky Krieps, Lena Lauzemis, Steffen Muenster | 90min   Germany   Drama

Vicky Krieps strikes just the right note in Ingo Haeb’s rather trite chamber piece based on a novel by Markus Orths.

The doomed relationship with her dull manager and boyfriend (Steffen Muenster) at a the chintzy hotel where they both work has exposed an obsessive compulsive streak in her fastidious behaviour as cleaner and chambermaid which she clearly enjoys.

The monotonous work routine and listening to French classic movies on her computer soothes Lynn’s anxiety. She tolerated a certain amount of stress from her prying elderly mother who lives far away in an another humdrum existence.

Cheerful in a vacuous way, Lynn offers her ex sexual favours – which he continues to accept – and even though the relationship is over she appears neither disappointed nor turned on by this one-sided routine which provides another evasion from her daily chores.

There are echoes of Amelie in both the tone and characterisation of The Chambermaid’s rather facile approach which belies some serious and even creepy psychological undertones.

Occasionally Lynn has taken to trying on guests’ clothing, riffling through their cubboards and sliding under their hotel beds in anticipation of what might happen when they return to the room. An expected S&M routine experienced under one particular bed brings her into contact with a masculine-faced dominatrix Chiara (Lena Lauzemis) who Lynn decides to try out on her own terms, with surprising consequences and although she doesn’t quite fit the submissive role, Lynn clearly enjoys being controlled and punished in bed and Chiara brings this out into the open in several paid encounters which prove therapeutic for Lynn’s wellbeing.

The Chambermaid was shot by French cinematographer Sophie Maintigneux, who cut her teeth on Eric Rohmer’s classic Le Rayon Vert. Coupled with an atmospheric score from Jakob Ilja, This is watchable but lightweight in comparison to more fully-fledged LGBT titles such as The Duke of Burgundy and Blue is the Warmest Colour, although its delicate psychology is perfectly fleshed out by Krieps’ subtle performance. MT

Edinburgh Film Festival | 17 – 28 June 2015

imageThe Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is the same age as CANNES Film Festival and this year celebrates its 69th Edition with 24 World Premieres.

This year’s stars on the Tartan Carpet of Scotland’s capital city will be Malcolm McDowell, there to present his latest film BEREAVE and Ewan McGregor with his new drama LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT.

Hot tickets are for Asif Kapadia’s brilliant biopic AMY and LOVE & MERCY which explores the Beach Boys Legend Brian Walker. Another reason to head North is for Berlinale breakout hit 45 YEARS, starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay and competing in the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature.

10 - Iona dancing at the ceilidh copyMICHAEL POWELL AWARD FOR BEST BRITISH FEATURE

Other premieres hopefulls for the Award are Welsh-set drama BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS with Tom Cullen, Joseph Bull; Luke Seomore’s BLOOD CELLS about a farmer’s son and his nomadic lifestyle and Simon Pummell’s complex sci-fi thriller BRAND NEW-UJake Gavin’s HECTOR stars Peter Mullan as an affable homeless man; Martin Radich’s NORFOLK, is a haunting and atmospheric film starring Denis Ménochet; Steven Nesbit’s Romeo and Juliet style drama NORTH v SOUTH has Greta Scacchi, Steven Berkoff and Bernard Hill; BAFTA-Scotland award-winner Colin Kennedy makes his feature debut SWUNG; Jane Linfoot’s powerful psychological drama THE INCIDENT, starring Ruta Gedmintas and Tom Hughes as a young couple whose comfortable life is disrupted when a troubled teenage girls enters their life and Ludwig and Paul Shammasian’s THE PYRAMID TEXTS starring James Cosmo. And last but not least, Helen Walsh’s first feature as writer/director, THE VIOLATORS, follows two young girls from radically different backgrounds who meet and set off on a course which has profound implications all round.

THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON, Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut will open the Festival and IONA, Scott Graham’s striking family drama has been chosen as the Closing Night Gala. These British dramas are also in contention for the Michael Powell Award.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION

StanfordPrisonExperiment_still1_BrettDavern_TyeSheridan__byJasShelton_2014-11-26_11-39-11AMWorld Premiere LEN AND COMPANY from Tim Godsall; Rick Famuyiwa’s coming of age tale for the post hip-hop generation DOPE; Oliver Hirschbiegel’s tense World War II drama 13 MINUTES; I STAY WITH YOU by Artemio Narro; and Niki Karimi’s enthralling drama NIGHT SHIFT. Marielle Heller’s THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL stars rising actress Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård; Doze Niu Chen-Zer’s PARADISE IN SERVICE is a non-judgemental portrait of life in a military-run Taiwanese brothel; YOU’RE UGLY TOO, an engaging drama from Irish director Mark Noonan; Ole Giæver and Marte Vold’s OUT OF NATURE is set in the great Norwegian outdoors; 600 MILES, a moody crime thriller from Mexican director Gabriel Ripstein starring Tim Roth, who recently entranced the Cannes crowd with his tour de force as a care-worker in Chronic; Sundance outing THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (pictured) examining a psychology professor’s experiment gone wrong, and MANSON FAMILY VACATION, a boldly original look at family relationships from J Davis, round off the International Feature Film Competition.

DOCUMENTARY STRAND

OC766838_P3001_186220-copy-610x250PROPHET’S PREY from Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg, looking at the megalomaniacal leader of a fundamentalist church; Tiller Russell’s gripping PRECINCT SEVEN FIVE examining police corruption out of control; Marah Strauch’s vertiginous tribute to founding father of BASE jumping Carl Boenish SUNSHINE SUPERMAN and the World Premiere of WHEN ELEPHANTS FIGHT, an eye-opening spotlight on Britain’s ties to the illicit trade in Congolese conflict minerals, directed by Michael Ramsdell. Included in the line-up are Crystal Moselle’s Sundance sensation THE WOLFPACK, documenting an extraordinary family of film lovers who rarely leave their Manhattan home;  Ilinca Calugareanu’s CHUCK NORRIS vs COMMUNISM, which charts an opportunistic hustler creating a videotheque resistance in the face of 1980s Romanian communism; Damon Gameau’s devastating look at our everyday inadvertent sugar intake in THAT SUGAR FILM; and DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON by Douglas Tirola. Rounding out the Documentaries, including those announced previously, are David Nicholas Wilkinson’s enthralling journey into the origins of cinema THE FIRST FILM; a delve into the delights of sherry in José Luis López-Linares’ SHERRY & THE MYSTERY OF PALO CORTADO; Paul Goodwin’s entertaining look at the British sci-fi comic institution FUTURE SHOCK! THE STORY OF 2000AD; a love song to the rip-off Turkish pop cinema of the 60’s and 70’s REMAKE, REMIX, RIP-OFF directed by Cem Kaya; an insight into the Bedouin traditions of camel pageants and auctions, with one woman breaking taboos in NEARBY SKY by Nujoom Alghanem; THE IRON MINISTRY’s (pictured) engrossing portrait of China’s railways by JP Sniadecki; Mark Cousins’ documentary with premiered at last year’s Venice: 6 DESIRES: DH LAWRENCE AND SARDINIA in which he explores a journey through Sardinia where Lawrence travelled with his wife in 1921,

AUDIENCE AWARD

UMW 1 copyEIFF will also host the World Premiere of the English-language version of UNDER MILK WOOD from Kevin Allen, a beautiful film adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ iconic classic starring Rhys Ifans and Charlotte Church. Other Audience Award nominees include Jon Watts’ thrilling COP CAR starring Kevin Bacon who plays a sheriff with plenty to hide and Patrick Brice’s smart and funny sex comedy THE OVERNIGHT starring Jason Schwartzman and Taylor Schilling; DESERT DANCER starring Reece Ritchie and Freida Pinto in the truly inspirational story of choreographer Afshin Ghaffarian; the World Premiere of actress Talulah Riley’s debut as writer/director, SCOTTISH MUSSEL; David Blair’s supernatural thriller THE MESSENGER and Isabel Coixet’s LEARNING TO DRIVE starring Patricia Clarkson and Sir Ben Kingsley.

The American Dreams strand looks at the very best new works from American independent cinema and showcases an exciting and varied group of films. Highlights include Gina Prince-Bythewood’s enthralling musical melodrama BEYOND THE LIGHTS starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Minnie Driver and Danny Glover and the UK Premiere of FRANNY starring Dakota Fanning, Theo James and featuring a powerhouse performance from Richard Gere as a billionaire philanthropist.

DIRECTORS’ SHOWCASE

She_s_Funny_That_Way_4Worth a watch are David Gordon Green’s tale of loneliness and longing, MANGLEHORN, with Al Pacino and Holly Hunter;  Peter Bogdanovitch’s SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY (pictured), plus Masaharu Take’s award-winning story of a young Japanese woman who morphs into a boxer in 100 YEN LOVE and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s quirky offbeat romantic comedy LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM.

NIGHT MOVES  a journey into the dark, thrilling and chilling side of cinema is guaranteed to delight horror fans with a selection of edge-of-your-seat cinematic gems. Feature films include multi-award winning director Bruce McDonald’s horrifying tale of evil trick-or-treaters, HELLIONS; Corin Hardy’s brilliantly terrifying debut feature THE HALLOW which screens in partnership with Scotland’s award-winning Horror festival, Dead by Dawn; Hungarian director Károly Ujj Meszáros’ fantasy film LIZA, THE FOX-FAIRY, and the World Premiere of British director Justin Trefgarne’s NARCOPOLIS starring Elliot Cowan as a troubled cop.

FOCUS ON MEXICO, in partnership with the Year of Mexico in the UK, showcases some of the very best in Mexican cinema including new feature films, classics and a short film programme, with a total of 13 feature films screening at the Festival. These include the European Premiere of Gabriela Dominguez Ruvalcaba’s fascinating documentary THE DANCE OF THE MEMORY; a sexually-charged, grown up study of infidelity, discontent and regeneration in Ernesto Contreras’ THE OBSCURE SPRING; and THE BEGINNING OF TIME by Bernardo Arellano which looks at ageing and survival during economic and social unrest in Mexico. A selection of Classic Mexican films will also screen as part of the Focus, including Roberto Gavaldón’s supernatural drama MACARIO (1960), the first Mexican film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Carlos Enrique Taboada’s POISON FOR THE FAIRIES, an unusual gothic tale of witchcraft, told from a child’s point of view.

CULT CLASSIC STRAND

54 copyCLASSICS offers Mark Christopher’s belated director’s cut release of his cult disco film, 54: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT; (pictured) a remastered version of Carol Reed’s classic film THE THIRD MAN starring Orson Welles, and a screening of Joseph Sargent’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE.

So,to round up, the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival opens with the World Premiere of Robert Carlyle’s Glasgow-set THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON starring Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson and Ray Winstone, and the Closing Gala is the World Premiere of Scott Graham’s IONA starring Ruth Negga (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D), Douglas Henshall (Shetland), Tom Brooke (The Boat That Rocked), Michelle Duncan (Atonement), Ben Gallagher and Sorcha Groundsell. MT

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 17 – 28 JUNE 2015

The Iron Ministry (2014)

OC767176_P3001_186265 copy
Dir: J.P. Sniadecki | China/USA Documentary 82mins

You could be forgiven for thinking there’s a projection fault at the start of THE IRON MINISTRY, as brooding, bassy railyard hums meld over an appreciably sustained stretch of black screen, with the high-pitched screeches of trains coming to a halt. The resulting landscape, though evoked entirely through sound, is vividly panoramic—so it comes as something of a surprise when the first images proper of the film appear to be so disorientingly and claustrophobically abstract. J.P. Sniadecki’s latest documentary is a typically immersive work, and receives its world premiere this week in the 67th Locarno Film Festival’s International Competition.

With works like DEMOLITION (2008), THE YELLOW BANK (2010) and PEOPLE’S PARK (2012), Sniadecki had already proven himself to be a key member of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab. Though his co-directed documentary FOREIGN PARTS (2010) focused on an area of Queens, New York, the director’s body of work is growing into a committed and often compelling portrait of contemporary China, as witnessed and experienced by at a ground level perspective. The latest addition to this ongoing project was shot over the course of three years (2011-13) on the country’s vast rail network, soon to be the largest in the world.

THE IRON MINISTRY begins with the finer details—close-ups of rubber inter-carriage gangways, cigarette butts, raw slabs of beef and mutton—before allowing its many characters to emerge fleetingly from the chaos. Chaos is about right: overstuffed with families, workers, students and migrants, these passenger trains are a microcosm of human activity. Sniadecki’s camera negotiates its way through the carriages surveying what it can, proceeding at knee-height and at head-height, panning left and right to take in the crowd. Sometimes, it stops in the vestibules to absorb a conversation between smokers, or between two women in a Bechdel-passing chat about low wages, longer hours and rising prices.

On a sleeper train, one young lad ironic beyond his years welcomes everyone aboard from his top bunk, claiming that explosives are welcome and that, because it’s a civil train, pissing and shitting is encouraged. Extending limbs and heads out of the window, he quips, can help passengers contribute to China’s population control measures. On another train, the filming crew is prevented from entering a visibly less populated first-class carriage. Not long after, we hear the surreal diegetic sound of an instrumental rendition of the TITANIC theme tune mingling with the cacophonously ubiquitous drones of the train itself rattling along.

This music—presumably coincidental—is uncanny. Though the class divisions in James Cameron’s 1997 crowd-pleasing epic may have been milked for dramatic purpose, they remain militantly upheld across the world, not least of all in China, the mammoth embodiment of transglobal exploitation. Indeed, watching this film makes the flashily fanciful allegories of Bong Joon-ho’s SNOWPIERCER look decidedly less fantastical than they first seemed. The future is already here.

So, what of it? What, indeed, do we make of the many complaints, anxieties, desires and dreams expressed here, by the young and by the old, by the shoeshines and other quick-buck hopefuls? While Sniadecki’s access-all-areas approach is commendable, the anything-goes feel seems to be a matter of editorial indiscipline rather than of premeditation. One always feels that a documentary of this ilk could be three hours long or three minutes long, and the variation in canvas size wouldn’t impact our overall understanding of the content therein. It’s one thing to gain access to a social snapshot like this, but—just as a zoomed-in shot of the passing landscape outside suggests China is a patchwork quilt that denies easy comprehension—at a certain point, one must ask to what extent the artist is intervening upon matters.

At a stretch, one could argue that merely presenting recorded material is not necessarily the same as creating a picture from it. Though Sniadecki in this sense is a stronger artist than Wang Bing, his evident talent and previous achievements suggest that now might be the time to go beyond an ethnographical account and make something truly ambitious, hitting and more explicitly probing. MICHAEL PATTISON

NOW ON ICARUS FILMS 

 

Open City Doc Fest 16 – 21 June 2015

London best-loved documentary festival is back for a 5th year taking place 16 – 21 June at various venues across London including the newly opened Regent Street Cinema, Curzon Bloomsbury, JW3 and Picturehouse Central. This year the festival shines a spotlight on the golden age of Croatian cinema and there are films from China and a timely tribute to WWII.

1407411925_film_still_3The opening gala is Sam Klemke’s TIME MACHINE (Bloomsbury Theatre, Tue 16 June, 18.30), a unique and strange self-portrait of his life over 35 years, directed by Matthew Bate (Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure), followed by the opening night party at the Horse Hospital (20.30 onwards). The closing gala is THE CLOSER WE GET (Regents Street Cinema, Sun 22 June, 18.00) directed by Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope, following Karen’s own family story, in the aftermath of her mother’s devastating stroke.

Well known for his pedalo movie SWANDOWN, artist filmmaker and juror Andrew Kotting’s latest film BY OUR SELVES is English poet John Clare’s four day wander from Epping Forest to Northamptonshire starring Toby Jones. THE REUNION (2013) follows infamous Swedish artist Anna Odell as she confronts her childhood bullies in a revenge fantasy – both films, courtesy of Soda Pictures.

img_0219Other UK filmmaker highlights include Chloe Ruthven’s latest JUNGLE SISTERS (Thu 18 June, 20.30, Regent Street Cinema), a thought-provoking tale of two village girls as they take to the working world. The theme of psychogeography is explored in with ESTATE, A REVERIE (Wed 17 June 19.30, The Horse Hospital) which tracks the passing of the Haggerston Estate (1936 – 2014) in Hackney, and the utopian promise of social housing it offered and A SMART PORTRAIT OF LONDON (Wed 17 June, 19.00, Hackney Attic) asks how Londoners can shape their city using technology and lo-fi human interventions.

cechanok_3Animal and human behaviour features on screen with CECHANOK (Thur 18 June, 19.30, Deptford Cinema), which looks at the fascinating world of Arabic falconry, while Marc Schmidt’s THE CHIMPANZEE (Fri 19 June, 20.45, Bertha DocHouse) looks at the daily lives of Chimpanzees in a Dutch rescue centre.

And now to Croatia: In Focus highlights work from a new generation of Croatian documentary filmmakers, NAKED ISLAND (2014) (Wed 17 June, 20:45, JW3) an investigation into the disappearance of a man and the people brought together by a political prison in ex- Yugoslavia known as the island of broken souls.

OC766838_P3001_186220 copyA spotlight on China features THE IRON MINISTRY (Sun 21 June, Time tbc, ICA) from award-winning American filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki looks at China’s railways over a period of three years; STRANDED IN CANTON (Wed 17 June, 20.30, Regent Street Cinema) follows Lebrun, a new player in the burgening Chinese-African trade route; BEIJING ANTS (Fri 19 June, 18.15, Regent Street Cinema) follows filmmaker Ryuji Otsuka as they search for a new flat in one of the most expensive cities in the world; ON THE RIM OF THE SKY (Sat 21 June, 15.30, Picturehouse Central) looks at the outsider versus the insider set in the Sichuan province; and

And with 60th Anniversary of WWII, films looking at narratives of war will feature OF MEN AND WAR (Sat 20 June, 14.30, Picturehouse Central), a 2014 Cannes favourite centered around the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict and the veterans struggling with PTSD at home in the US; INVASION (Sun 21 June, 15.30 Bertha Dochouse) looks at a recreation of the 1989 Invasion of Panama; and THE CREATION OF MEANING (Sun 21 June, 15.00, Regent Street Cinema), follows a shepherd born in the wake of war in the breathtaking Tuscan Alps.

The Price We Pay (2015) | Open City Doc Fest |

Dir.: Harold Cooks

Documentary; Canada/France/UK/US 2014, 93 min.

At least the UK can claim to be trailblazing in one very important field of world-wide economy: the first tax haven was created after the end of WWII in the City of London, when the government granted the City control of unregulated trading of US Dollars. In the 1980, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas followed, and the end result is that at the end of 2010 between 10% and 15% of the world’s wealth – or $ 32 trillion – is tucked away in offshore tax heavens.

Harold Cooks (Surviving Progress) has interviewed the major participants, based on the book “La Crise Fiscale qui Vent” by Brigitte Alepin, who co-wrote the script with the director. During the last decade this fiscal inequality has seen the demise of the middle classes: growing tax demands from governments, and less income plus fewer employment choices, have brought the class, who once seemed to be the pillar of the capitalist society, to its knees. Because tax avoiding is easy – for multi-nationals – and in most cases perfectly legal. Let’s take Apple, who is working from Silicon Valley in California. The US company contributes only a third of its profits in taxes to the well-being of its citizen: two thirds of their turnover is not taxed, thanks to a “double Irish” arrangement with the Republic of Ireland. Google and Amazon are two of the other most well known offenders: they use this Shell-company system to ferry the money from account to account with impunity due to the tax authorities of individual countries, who are cheated out of billions in unpaid taxes.

And when the representatives of the accused companies face the music of parliamentarians on both sides of the Atlantic, the elected MPs are well aware of their helplessness: calling the dealings of the Multinationals “immoral” as one British MP did, is the acknowledgement of the status quo.

Strangely enough, three of the richest men in the world; Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros, have called for a “Robin Hood Tax” on stock trading. But again, this is hardly workable, because the governments are competing with each other for the goodwill (and employment program) of the big companies: if one country should go it alone in taxing the richest companies, there might be enough contenders who will allow their financial institutions not to enforce the tax.

Whilst THE PRICE WE PAY is content-wise impeccable, the constant onslaught of data is occasionally undecipherable, and the permanent talking heads (who are on top of it very badly lit) make the experience much more of an ordeal than an enlightenment – which is a shame, since we are all victims of these tax-avoiding schemes. Worthy but un-engaging. AS

SCREENING DURING OPEN CITY DOC FEST 16 – 20 June 2015

Marilyn Monroe: Victim or Manipulator?

Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes_3 Marilyn Monroe’s success in the Hollywood firmament was built on a ruthless control of her own image: and whilst the myth would suggest that the Studio controlled her success, it was Marilyn herself  who ultimately called the shots. And there were always enough men around to help achieve her aims. When she finally collapsed under the burden of stardom, she had successfully fashioned her profile for her own profit and that of the studios.

First of all, there was the Russian born Johnny Hyde (1895-1950), vice-president of William Morris’ West Coast office. In spite of being 31 years older than Marilyn, he wanted to marry her, and left his wife. He negotiated Monroe’s contract with 20th Century Fox, which lead to her having small, but noticeable roles in All About Eve and Asphalt Jungle. In the first one, she plays a dim-witted actress, seemingly wiling to sleep with anybody who would be of use to her. For five years Monroe would play roles which were just a variation on this theme. But, much more importantly, Hyde arranged for a portrait of her in ”Photoplay”. By this time, she had already been on the cover of both “Look” and “Life’ magazine. But her “Photoplay’ profile played up her vulnerability and loneliness and, of course, underlined her troubled past. Crucially, it stressed her lack of female confidantes, an important point, since female audiences were still not sold on Miss Marilyn Monroe. In confessing her need for female friendship and solidarity, Monroe made a direct appeal: “There’s a thing called society that you have to enter into, and society is run but women. Until now, I’ve never known one thing about typical ‘feminine activities’”.

River_of_No_Return_2

In calling for the help of ‘her sisters’ Marilyn Monroe, and the studio, made a strong bid to change the male bias of her audience. Her self-confessed “vulnerability and innocence” helped this process on the way, films of the mid-fifites  like Niagara, Gentlemen prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire made her blossom into a fully fledged star.

In 1948 Monroe had posed naked for the photographer Tom Kelley for “Golden Dream” calendar. And these photos had been reprinted in other girlie calendars. When she was a star in the making, she offered appealing reasons for posing in the nude: “I was hungry”, “three weeks behind with the rent” and, “Kelley’s wife was present”. Obviously, the real money came from the reprint as a centre-fold in “Playboy”. But her ‘honesty’ was well-received and this clever attitude meant that her image did not suffer greatly.

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Her marriages to Joe DeMaggio and later Arthur Miller, were handled by her and the studios to maximum effect. Again, “Photoplay” was helpful in creating the image of Monroe after her marriage to the ex-baseball star: “At home their lives were as ordinary as any couple’s in Oklahoma. Monroe slips into an apron and begins opening cans and getting things ready for the big fellow’s dinner, which she cooks with her own hands”. Another magazine described her life style, as calling for “candlelight on bridge tables, budgets and dreaming of babies – simple, plain domesticity”. Monroe adding herself that “Joe doesn’t have to move a muscle. Treat a husband this way and he’ll enjoy you twice as much.” The reality looked different, during their honeymoon n Japan, Monroe left DiMaggio for Korea, where she appeared in ten shows for the serving GIs. A month later, Wilder let the public watch the famous “air vent” scene for The Seven Year Itch, and the enraged DiMaggio soon filed for a divorce.

Bus_Stop_2In 1953, Monroe rebelled against the studio, she did not want to appear in the dim song-and-dance film The Girl with Pink Tights. Suspended by Fox, Monroe with the assistance of Milton Green (1922-1985), a photographer and PR agent, formed her own company ‘Marilyn Monroe Productions’. Fox gave in, and Monroe returned with a better contract, and a fine role in Bus Stop (1956), for which she received the best reviews of her career. During this time she met the playwright Arthur Miller. The gossip industry soon invented the new Monroe. Turning up for the press conference for her new production company wearing a full length ermine coat, signified better than words how serious she was about her art and her new marriage. Real life again has been re-invented: Monroe and Arthur Miller split up even before the shooting of The Misfits (their common project) began, Miller meeting his new wife during the shoot.

The_Misfits_5Marilyn Monroe was adept at being her best PR agent and stylist, she played the press more often than the other way around. The “Saturday Evening Post” was perhaps best in projecting her persona: There was the ‘Sexpot” image of the early 50s, followed by “frightened Marilyn Monroe, after the publication of her childhood history and than the “new Marilyn Monroe”, the legend, a composed and studied performer”. Whilst the ‘Legend’ was draped in furs, and responsible for the ‘Monroeism’, the ‘Woman’ herself was still shy, hesitant, removed and terribly lonely. AS/MT

THE MARILYN MONROE SEASON RUNS AT THE BFI, LONDON | 1-30 JUNE 2015 

 

Dawn (Morgenroede) 2014 | Sci-fi Weekend 29 – 7 June 2015

Writer/Director: Anders Elsrud Hultgreen

Cast: Torstein Bjørklund, Ingar Helge Gimle

70min  Norway  Sci-fi Fantasy

Norwegian auteur Anders Elsrud Hultgreen found his way into filmmaking from a Fine Arts degree from Bergen University and brings this craftmanship to his feature debut DAWN, which he has directed, written and produced on a shoestring budget of £5000.

Set in an imagined future, DAWN is primarily a Sci-fi mood piece that developed from an intended short. With a two-handed cast, Hultgreen conjures up a strong sense of place in the rugged and desolate moonscape of Southern Iceland, where it was filmed and later selected for Reykjavik Film Festival and Bergen International Film Festival. The tale follows two survivors wandering vaguely in this hostile terrain, where a threadbare narrative focuses on their search for water, driven forward by a sinister and brooding tone that pervades the early scenes of ‘first light’ gradually becoming more doom-laden as the film draws to a slightly unsatisfactory finale in the full glare of high noon.

Nicolas Winding Refn’ Valhalla Rising comes to vaguely to mind as the younger of the two men, Rehab (Torstein Bjørklund) – and this is very much a tale of age versus youth – is pursued by an older man, Set (Ingar Helge Gimle), across the barren scenery. Bound by a daily ritual of drawing a circle in the sand and setting himself a frame between three silvery stones for prayer and protection, Rehab is completely shrouded from head to foot. In a nod to silent film, Bjørklund relies on the expressiveness in his eyes as the only indicator of his state of mind which ranges from fear to delirium. This is a slow-paced affair that occasionally drags, stretching the limits of its dramatic tension to near-breaking point, with no release from a pounding ambient score as the two search for aquatic Nirvana in the barren wilderness.

Landscape has always been a crucial feature of Norwegian films, and nowhere more so than in DAWN. Shot on the widescreen, Hultgreen has taken a wilderness and turned it into somewhere quite magical and alien with the help of titled angles, purple tinting, and inventive framing which has a pleasing sense of rhythm. For speakers of other languages, Norwegian has an ancient ring to it and these elements coalesce to create a sense of ‘otherworldliness’. The inclusion of a wrecked aircraft is the only thing that brings the piece into the context of the 20th century, slightly puncturing the mystical reverie. Clearly, Hultgreen has done his research and created an inventive piece of genuine Sci-fi with an impressively low budget, marking him out to be a  talent in the making. MT

DAWN SCREENED DURING SCI-FI WEEKEND AT THE BFI 29 MAY – 5 JUNE 2015

Carol (2015) | Best Actress | Cannes 2015 | LFF 2015

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler

Patricia Highsmith’s novels make striking thrillers: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley and The Two Faces of January have become screen classics. The eagerly-awaited CAROL, which premieres at Cannes, is a perfect screen adaptation of one of her more romantic stories. Two remarkable performances, by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, who picked up the Best Actress award, make CAROL particularly enjoyable. They play elegant fifties women caught in the seductive embrace of a lesbian relationship. Todd Haynes’ lush and leisurely adaptation of The Price of Salt, which was seen as rather daring at the time, now seems rather coy and kittenish, although Blanchett certainly wears the trousers in both her heterosexual marriage and an outré lesbian flutter. This is a luxuriously affair that unfolds rather tentatively during Christmas 1952 in a snowy New York heralding the Eisenhower era.

Phyllis Nagy’s clever screenplay clings close to the page while conjuring up the younger woman’s profession as photography rather than theatre set direction. It also retains the open, rather positive ending of Highsmith’s novel. The story opens in a New York department store (akin to Bloomingdales). Mara plays the young Therese Belivet who is meets Carol Aird –  a creamy, mink-wrapped Blanchett – buying Christmas presents for her little girl, Rindy. A perfect excuse for further contact is provided when Carol leaves her gloves on the counter, and later invites the gamine-like Therese to her turreted New Jersey home. But the two finally meet in town over eggs and martinis. A chemistry of sorts develops through the velvety visuals of Ed Lachman’s camerawork (he shot in 16ml and blew the images up to look like 35ml) and Haynes’ competent direction – they worked together on Mildred Pierce and Far From Heaven – so you get the picture.

Carol’s successful businessman husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), is seeking a divorce due to her previous affair with her childhood friend Abby (Sarah Paulson) but he still loves his wife and threatens to get custody of Rindy. But Carol’s mind is made up and she pursues Therese with masculine determination in a highly seductive role made all the more teasing in the rather languid pacing that takes in a multitude of changes in her gorgeous couture wardrobe (Sandy Powell excels in her designs). The two finally end up in a tastefully soft-focused, semi-nude embrace in Waterloo, Iowa, and Carol acknowledges the bathos of this location.

But their crime (and it was a crime in 1952) is captured on camera by a travelling ‘notions’ salesman and Carol swiftly extricates herself from the relationship. Blanchett plays her Carol as a woman of infinite breeding and stylish charm, occasionally looking down her nose but always with a witty grace. Mara is more cutely foxy with those exotic, piercing eyes. The delux experience is gift-wrapped in soigné sets and and an atmospheric period score from Carter Burwell. MT

Rooney Mara won Best Actress for her role at Cannes 2015 | The Golden Frog apAward for Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) at the prestigious Camerimage Awards 2015

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 -24 MAY 2015 | CAROL | IN COMPETITION | CANNES 2015

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The Lobster (2015) | Cannes 2015 Competition

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos  Writer: Efthymis Filippou

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Coleman, Lea Seydoux, John C Reilly, Ben Whishaw

118min  Sci-fi Drama   Greece

THE LOBSTER is a cold-edged, dystopian sci-fi thriller set in an imagined near-future where citizens must choose a mate or be transformed into the animal of their choice. This is Dogtooth director, Yorgos Lanthimos’ first film in English and the first with a starry international cast, who give the impression of being ‘honoured’ to be there playing ridiculous roles with a script rammed with sexually explicit dialogue along the lines of: “I dreamt you fucked me up the ass” and so forth.

Colin Farrell has even developed a massive paunch for his part as David, a deadpan dork who has recently been dumped by his wife and arrives at base camp, one of those ghastly conference-style hotels with “luxury” over-stuffed pillows and maroon-tiled bathrooms, with his brother, Bob, who is now a sheep dog.

Later it emerges that the place is run by smug provincial marrieds (an erudite Olivia Coleman and Garry Mountaine) who give them 45 days to partner up with fellow interns or succumbing to their bestial fate. David choses to be a lobster because he likes swimming and wants a long life. As these harried citizens begin their pressurised life, they acquire nicknames defined by idiosyncratic traits: Limping Man (Ben Whishaw); Lisping Man (John C Reilly) and, like online daters, they are forced to find common interests and similarities in the hope of hooking up, whereupon they get to share a double room and are then assigned ‘children’. “The heartless woman” has been so successful in her dating efforts that she has been given a hundred extra days of human existence.

This theatre of the absurd takes place in deadpan seriousness as leaden clouds scud by in a moss-covered landscape. David eventually lucks out on a date with ‘Heartless woman” and the two have dispassionate doggie-style sex while she is wearing her undies. But, true to form, she finds dating dissatisfaction with David, and quietly slaughters sheepdog, Bob, on the white-tiled bathroom.

While Hackney viewers will be desperate to acquire the DVD/blu for “cool” nights in, other audiences may find this film quite tedious and obdurate in its desperation to be obtuse. There is a saving grace in David’s meeting with “Shorted sighted woman” (Rachel Weisz) who is part of the ‘loner’ party wandering around in the local woods and lead by a love-averse Lea Seydoux. As the two gradually bond, their random meeting proves that love is truly blind and motivated by the fear of being alone or metaphorically ‘turned into an animal’ – a spell in an old peoples’ home is possibly the real life analogy Lanthimos is alluding to here. Striking out as a married couple in the city, they discover that life is not as perfect as they imagined it would be. The moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for.  MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 24 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

Sleeping Giant (2015) | Cannes 2015 | Semaine de la Critique

Director: Andrew Cividino

89min  Canadian Drama

Andrew Cividino lampoons and laments the male of the species in his piquant and delightfully-observed rites of passage debut feature, SLEEPING GIANT. Making great use of the magnificent ‘big country’ landscapes of his native Ontario, Cividino is another starlight trouper from the fabulous galaxy of contemporary Canadian filmmakers. This is a teen drama with surprisingly universal appeal that will appeal to the arthouse crowd of all age-groups.

Quietly incisive yet monumentally moving, SLEEPING GIANT explores the angst-ridden adolescent awakening of three teenage boys who joke and jossle together one sun-drenched summer in Lake Superior, that starts predictably bright but ends in a dark and frightening place. A razor-sharp script is matched with cutting-edge performances from newcomers Jackson Martin as Adam, Riley (Reece Moffett) and Nate (Nick Serine).

Adam is a thoughtful, intelligent boy with a face as pure as milk. Spending the summer with his parents in their luxurious lakeside cabin, he strikes up a friendship with hell-raiser cousins Riley and Nate that soon starts to challenge his perceptions of his parent’s marriage and his discrete upbringing. As they steadily bait him into joining them on shoplifting and drinking bouts, they also encourage him to abuse the trust of local girl, who Adam takes a liking to. Outwardly, it feels as if Adam is unable to rise to the challenge of these young male bullies but the perceptive Adam is slowly biding his time.

As the narrative unfurls amidst the impressive lakeside landscapes, an ominous score signals a sense shift in tone towards of unease in this unassuming coming of ager, which on the surface looks like any other glossy teen flick. And as the boys’ friendship deepens and they jockey for supremacy, so the cracks and resentments start to appear. Nate, in particularly, becomes more vituperative and vindictive as we get to know him, constantly provoking Adam’s masculinity and whilst Adam stays surprisingly calm, he is quietly formulating an informed impression of the situation. Clearly a budding psychopath, Nate masks his insecurity with typically violent outbursts where he hits a dead bird repeatedly with a stick and burns a mating beatle to death. All this is lushly observed in James Klopko’s inventive cinematography that brilliantly evokes the joy and excitement of teenage years in those long lost summers of our childhood.

But these boys are not the only ones playing fast and loose. It emerges that Adam’s father, a deliberately uncool David Disher, is also indulging in some naughty behaviour that could ruin his cosy family summer for good. And when Adam wises up to his father’s behaviour, a subtle inter-generational power-play is added to the sparky dynamic of this holiday crowd.

This is very much a film that focuses on how male selfishness and need for dominance effects the females in their entourage. SLEEPING GIANT develops from a upbeat character-driven piece to one with significant and sinister psychological punch where Cividino demonstrates a masterful control his material and cast in engaging drama that never outstays its welcome with a startling finale. MT

CRITICS’ WEEK IN CANNES FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 22 MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015

 

Standing Tall (2015) | Le Tête Haute | Cannes 2015

DIRECTOR: Emmanuelle Bercot, Benoît Magimel, Sara Forestier, Rod Paradot, Diane Rouxel, Aurore Broutin

120min  French   Drama

Actress and filmmaker, Emmanuelle Bercot, delivers a thorny and morally complex dramady to open Cannes Film Festival 2015. STANDING TALL has touches of the Dardenne Brothers about it and feels very much like their own slice of social realism, Kid on a Bike, that screened here three years ago.

The boy at the centre of the furore is Malony (Rod Paradot), a fatherless, provincial delinquent whose disadvantaged start in life has made him dependent on the French care system, despite the best efforts of his loving but irresponsible mother. Bercot’s story is in many ways schematic, all along, cleverly injecting sparks of humour and leaving us to make our own minds up about this angry boy, who most of the time feels lost and vulnerable. Bercot strives for empathy for her little anti-hero, but despite some cracking performances from the newcomer and his careworker, Benoît Magimel, (as M Le Vigan) you do come away feeling that this is a boy who “lucks out” in the end despite his shaky start in life that contributes to many vicious attempts to sabotage his helpers, friends and family and the best efforts the Judge in charge of his case – Catherine Deneuve is outstandingly regal here as a woman of moral integrity and professionalism.

This is a positive story that praises the care system in France, showing just how wonderfully dedicated and persevering its functionaries can be, and probably really are, although occasionally it does rather labour the point, outstaying its welcome with endless court episodes and social-worker interviews, that usually end in tears and vicious dust-ups. Although the first hour is full of loud anger and violence, a positive vibe starts to emerge in the second half bringing with it some forced tenderness and more filmic moments from Guillaume Schiffman’s (The Artist) creative camerawork, particularly of the gentle Normandy countryside, where Malony is sent on remand.

Here Malony meets Tess (Diane Rouxel) a girl who is to change his life; and despite a head-butting ‘courtship’ where he practically rapes his love interest, she is to be his salvation. Bercot’s film is full of well-drawn female characters: Catherine Deneuve’s aloof but warmly compassionate Judge; Sara Forestier’s emotionally tender but damaged mother; Diane Rouxel’s long-suffering but tenacious girlfriend and Maloney’s ever-patient teacher, and along with Benoît Magimel’s well-rounded father-figure, they all contribute to Maloney’s wellbeing, making STANDING TALL a positive, feelgood film to kick-off to Cannes 2015.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13-24 MAY 2015 | SEARCH CANNES 2015 FOR OTHER REVIEWS.

 

Austeria (1983)|Kinoteka 2015 | Martin Scorsese Selects

AUSTERIA (THE INN, 1983) is set in the Galician (now Polish) border with Russia in the first days of World War I. Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film of the novel of the same name by Julian Stryjkowki (who also co-wrote the script) is controversial because of its description of Jewish pacifism, which led to mass slaughter by Russian soldiers, and its parallels with the Holocaust. AUSTERIA is emblematic of the difficulties Polish filmmakers had after World II in dealing with the lack of Polish resistance to the Holocaust committed in their own country, and the fact that more than a thousand Jews, many of them survivors of the concentration camps, were murdered in Poland after the Second World War.

In the film, a Jewish innkeeper Tag (Franciszek Pieczka) is trying to keep some sort of order during the first hectic days of the war. Austrian troops manning the border, are on the retreat, Hassidic Jews from an nearby village arrive, panic stricken. An Austrian baroness and her family seem to have nothing else to do than to settle private scores; and a Hungarian hussar, who has lost contact with his regiment, is more interested in sexual escapades than finding his way back to his troops. A young Jewish village girl is killed and the rituals of her funeral are causing difficulties. The Hassidic Jews discuss Talmudic questions, before being slaughtered by the advancing Russian soldiers in a nearby lake. Whilst the film is a realistic portrait of the chaos and viciousness of the emerging war, its underlying ideology that Jews were slaughtered because they did not put up resistance is apologetic – centuries of pogroms in Poland are proof of a violent anti-Semitism. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | UNTIL 29 MAY 2015 | 13 MAY 2015

Semaine de la Critique | Critics’ Week | Cannes 2015

CDBqPtDUsAAPyM9.jpg-largeCANNES FILM FESTIVAL this year is very much a female affair with women stars and directors set to feature heavily in the competition line-up. With Isabella Rossellini heading up the UN CERTAIN REGARD jury and her mother, Ingrid Bergman, gracing the main festival poster, LA SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE follows suite with Israeli filmmaker Ronit Elkabetz leading the jury of an edition that includes seven titles in competition – six of which are feature debuts.

Those competing for the Critics’ Week Grand Prix are Italian-American director Jonas Carpignano with MEDITERRANEA and France’s Clément Cogitore with the Franco-Belgian co-production THE WAKHAN FRONT. From Argentina comes PAULINA (La patota) by Argentinian director Santiago Mitre, LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA by Colombia’s César Augusto Acevedo, and DÉGRADÉ by Palestinian directors Tarzan and Arab Nasser. Canada’s debut will be SLEEPING GIANT by Andrew Cividino and America’s KRISHA from Trey Edwards Shults. Korea’s Han Jun-Hee screen debut is COIN LOCKER GIRL.

Once again, French cinema seems to be heavily featured in LA SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE: the opening film will be LES ANARCHISTES by Elie Wajeman stars Tahar Rahim and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Mathieu Vadepied will bring proceedings to a close with his debut, LEARN BY HEART. And Cannes wouldn’t be Cannes without an appearance by Louis Garrel who this year presents his first film as a director, the Special Screening: LES DEUX AMIS.

SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | 14 -22 MAY 2015

 

 

Gittiler ‘Sair ve Mechul’ | Gone: The other and Unknown | LTFF 2015

GONE THE OTHER AND UNKNOWNWriter| Director: Kenan Korkmaz

Cast: Oyku Peksel, Sonya Akay, Yuhannun Akay, Selin Koseoglu, Ruhi Sari

97min  Drama   Turkish with English subs

Kenan Korkmaz’s second feature is a doomladen affair that follows two Assyrian brothers who realise that their stateless ethnicity will always marginalise them, both at home and abroad. After their father, a village headman, comes under threat of attack, the brothers go their separate ways: Yuhan (Yuhannun Akay) stays in rural Turkey whilst Joseph (Savas Ozdemir) goes to Sweden.

Expertly filmed on the widescreen and in close-up, Korkmaz’s ethereal visuals are enhanced by a poignant folkloric score: There is an evocative scene early on where we see Yuhan driving towards the camera in one side of the frame while cattle run beside the car on the other side, this effective visual device is repeated throughout. But Korkmaz’s film adopts a crass and heavy-handed case for the underdog rather than allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions on the plight of these stateless, but well-grounded people, with their close family links, farming and animal husbandry skills in the sweeping landscapes of Anatolia. That said, the sheer beauty and imagination of the f ilm’s visual poetry make the first segment a watchable and engaging look at these ancient East Semitic people, whose origins lay in Mesopotamia.

It emerges that Yuhan (Yuhannun Akay) feels hard done by in the local cheese seller and resents his kids watching Turkish language TV and studying Islam at school. As Christian orthodox, they feel that their small church is dwarfed by the towering mosque. He is even seen crying at one point, out of sheer despair at his plight – although he has decent a family life with his wife Sonya, a car and a roof over his head. His only apparent hardship is caring for his family and father (Iso Akay) – whose role as village leader he will eventually have to take up. His wife Sonya (Sonya Akay), is forced to deal with both of these miserable men.

The Stockholm-set second half introduces us to his brother Joseph, and is again concerned with playing up themes of exploitation and victimisation with frequent references to xenophobia in the Swedish News channels. Despite having lived in Sweden for more than ten years and fluent in Swedish, Joseph too appears disenfranchised – living alone and with few friends. And when he does forge a link with the recently-arrived countryman Aziz (Ruhi Sari) they soon fall out over an imagined slight with a racist element in a local bar. To ramp up the negativity, we are also treated to TV news footage of the Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Brevik, who was responsible for the childrens’ camp massacre in 2011. Meanwhile, back in Turkey, Yuhan is still bemoaning his lot with a ‘grass is always greener’ perception of his brother’s life.

Animals are very much part of this dour docudrama, showing their importance in Assyrian life and culture. A trapped pigeon imprisoned in Yuhan’s house seems to symbolise his pent-up feelings of isolation, whilst Joseph tries to kill his goldfish (later saving it) in his Stockholm apartment – he also works with animals – in a fish factory.

GONE is filled with mournful images and utter desperation. While the Assyrians’ struggle certainly merits representation and recognition, Korkmaz shoots himself in the foot with this over-dour and melodramatic attempt to garner our sympathy. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 -17 MAY 2015

Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) | Mubi

Wri/Dir: Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Tadeusz Konwicki: screenplay, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz | Cast: Lucyna Winnicka, Mieczyslaw Voit, Anna Ciepelewska, Maria Ciewalibóg, Kazirmirsk Fabiziak, Stanislaw Jasuikiewicz | Poland, Drama, 110min

A forerunner to Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971) inspired by Aldous Huxley’s fifties novel The Devils of Loudun, comes the minimalist splendour of Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od aniolów) from Polish Film School KADR director and writer, Jerzy Kawalerowicz who rose to fame with his stylish noir thriller, Night Train (1959). A fave of Martin Scorsese, the film was lauded as a masterpiece during the brief Polish New Wave of the fifties, winning the 1961 Special Jury Prize at Cannes. In a remote and nameless village in 17th Century Poland, Father Josef Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is despatched to investigate claims of ‘The Devil’ possessing a group of nuns. That is not all he finds.

Owing more to Dreyer than to Russell, there are also echoes here of Black Narcissus (1947) a certain salaciousness twists through this Polish black and white re-imagining of the supposed possession of an Ursuline Convent in the French town of Loudon in 1634. The convent setting in a bleak and barren landscape is almost metaphor for a repressed hardship of Poland under the cosh of Communism, adding a particularly piquancy to Kawalerowicz’s narrative: although being an atheist himself and had no sensibility for the Catholic Church. The opening sequences reflect the poverty of the times: an outbreak of the plague having just wreaked destruction on the village, the vast landscape is bare apart from the charred remains of a stake that scars the horizon, marking the spot of Urbain Grandier’s execution. The film has an ethereal quality with its stylised minimalist aesthetic, pristine visuals and exquisite rhythmic symmetry seen in the nuns, dressed in white robes, dancing out of the convent, photographed from above and also later as they leave in single file to a simple toll of the bell, and stand in formation to receive the Holy rites, captured by Jerzy Wojciek’s camera against a predominantly dark background contrasting with the black robes of the priests.

All is not well in this Holy place and after a brief meeting in the Convent with Father Suryn, Sister Joan slithers around the stone walls in feigned ecstasy, cackling mischievously, Clearly she has been possessed by dark forces. Lucyna Winnicka is superb as the lascivious and possessed Abbess Mother Joan. By contrast, Father Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is solemn and rather open-faced in his peity as he conducts the ceremony to exhort her sin, recommending total isolation to treat her condition. Particularly captivating is the scene where ravens swirl around to the chanting of female voices followed by the chiaroscuro sequence of Suryn’s self-flagellation as he fights inner demons of temptation provoked by his reaction to Mother Joan.

By the end he has transformed into quite a different character and visits the Rabbi for advice and support. Here, white-faced against a black background, the dialogue between a magnificently vehement Rabbi (also played by Voit) and the tortured soul of Father Suryn, alternate in an inspired twist of genius, Voit’s face looming out of the darkness to play each character to perfection.

Father Suryn is made aware of the duality of religion and that Christianity originates from Judaism, and takes pity on Mother Joan, clearly appreciating her plight of possession and, in an ultimate sacrifice of pure love, receives the demons into his own being, with the axe murder of two innocent stable boys. It is an impressive performance by Voit and a lively re-working of the novel. Each scene is a masterpiece of framing and inventiveness underpinned by the complexity of a storyline that feels fresh and fascinating even now. MT.

ON MUBI FROM6 JULY 2022

 

 

Pharoah (1966) | Kinoteka 2015 | Polish Film Festival

PHARAOH (FARAON) took director Jerzy Kawalerowicz three years to finish in 1966. It was the most expensive Polish film ever made with a running time of 175 minutes, which seems quite apt since this is not only a spectacle in the DeMille style, but a political excurse, with many parallels to contemporary Poland – if one reads between the lines.

The main struggle is between Ramses XIII (Jerzy Zelnik), a modern ruler, who cares for the whole country – unlike his main opponent, the scheming High Priest Herhor, who wants to manipulate the Pharaoh into wars he cannot win. Between these two men, Sarah, the Hebrew concubine of Ramses XIII and mother of his son, is slowly written out of the picture when Herhor’s oily assistant tries successfully to seduce Ramses. Simply read Gomolka – Poland’s prime minister of the 50s, who had been imprisoned by the Russians, before they freed him to placate the Polish comrades – for Ramses, and the evil priests for the Stalinist ideologists, and you get the picture.

Shot in Luxor, Cairo and Uzbekistan, PHARAOH has its spectacular moments, but the director never falls into the trap of overloading the film with exotica or mass scenes. From the beginning, PHARAOH has a very measured pace, the intellectual and emotional confrontations at court are always the centrepiece. Debate rather than battle dominates. Ramses is shown as a sometimes confused ruler, who oscillates between dictating his rights to be the supreme ruler and his wish for compromise. In the end, he is easy prey for the manipulating priests, who are in tandem with foreign powers. PHARAOH is a reflection on power, and its limits. AS

SHOWING ON 7TH MAY 2015 AT KINOTEKA LONDON | POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | UNTIL 29 MAY 2015 

Song of My Mother | Klama Dayika Min | LTFF 2015 |

11140380_1010029955674640_977008820429158815_nDirector: Erol Mintaş

Writer: Erol Mintaş

Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Zübeyde Ronahi, Nesrin Cavadzade

Turkey/France/Germany Drama 103 min 2014

The diasporic, purgatorial character of the present-day Kurdish identity is both the forefront and subtext of SONG OF MY MOTHER (KLAMA DAYIKA MIN), writer-director Erol Mintaş’ subtly layered, digestibly low-key feature debut in which Ali (Feyyaz Duman), a primary school teacher, lives in Istanbul with his mother Nigar (Zübeyde Ronahi), who longs to return to her home village in south-east Turkey. The film picked up the top gong when it premiered at Sarajevo Film Festival last August, and deservingly won the Golden Olive Tree at Lecce’s Festival del Cinema Europeo last week—where it bested nine other films in the Official Competition.

Kurdish identity is an inherently politicised subject matter today, concerning as it does the 40 million Kurdish people who live under conditions that effectively deny them political autonomy: Kurdistan is a geo-cultural region, not a recognised nation, spanning southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq and western Iran. SONG OF MY MOTHER begins in 1992, in Turkish Kurdistan, when masked men of the local gendarmerie kidnap Ali during a school lesson; events thereafter take place in 2013, years after his forced relocation. The reason why this accomplished film appears to be both direct and subtle is in the way it strips its protagonist’s life to an unvarnished, almost neo-realist minimalism, so that the deeper traumas simmer at the edges. Indeed, Mintaş is seemingly attuned to the fact that the existential and cultural crises that stem from enforced displacement don’t necessarily manifest themselves in explicit ways—and yet in some way they determine much of what constitutes everyday life.

To this end, Mintaş opts for a narrative style that is both naturalist and poetic—the former perhaps embodied best by Ali’s pregnant girlfriend Zeynep (Nesrin Cavadzade), and the latter by Nigar, whose increasing anxiety to return home gives the film its most visibly politicised thrust. Though the film risks confusing international audiences less familiar with the Kurdish plight, one can’t deny Mintaş the right to cut straight to the point—from 1992 to 2013—and though it might be overstating maters to refer to those many films that take viewers’ familiarity something like 9/11 for granted, Mintaş’ trust in his audience to do some of the work themselves is quietly refreshing and wholly justified. Though the film doesn’t state it, some 378,000 Kurdish villagers were left homeless inside Turkish borders alone in the 1990s, when forces seeking to quell the Kurdistan Workers’ Party upped their efforts to coerce locals into pledging allegiances to the Turkish government.

A film of this ilk needs compelling direction and performances—so that its verisimilitude can carry both the potentially oblique politicism and the folkloric feel of the simple narrative structure. Working with cinematographer George Chiper-Lillemark, Mintaş opts for a clear, unfussy palette and the gentle handheld adds an obvious but by no means overstated sense of restlessness to the characters’ respective ongoing predicaments. As much of the film’s scenes take place in the close confines of low-rent domesticity, director and DoP do well to keep things relatively unintrusive, filming performers in medium-long shots to allow for a fuller bodily expression—a style always welcome when more and more filmmakers are mistaking verité-style close-ups for genuine intimacy.

Under Mintaş’ direction, the cast knows that less is more—but a crucial strength of the film is the director’s own script, which eschews the dreary non-committal pseudo-poetics of many festival-bound pictures in favour of characters who actually talk to one another. As Ali, a man burdened with ties to the past and apprehension regarding the future, Duman must have an empathetic quality at the same time as appearing plausibly prone to indecision or even cowardice—as exemplified most when he asks a doctor about abortion options without having asked first discussed it with Zeynep.

Such cowardice—if it is that—isn’t Ali’s sole defining quality, and where SONG OF MY MOTHER really excels is in its refusal to judge, and its efforts to contextualise, its protagonist’s actions. A large part of such context has to do with geography. As key as its indoor conversations are, the film carries a vivid, anchoring sense of place when depicting Istanbul’s Tarlabaşı neighbourhood, the area of 20,000 square metres to which Kurds migrated en masse during the 1990s. MICHAEL PATTISON

The London Turkish Film Festival 7 -17 May 2015 | REVIEWS ON OTHER TITLES IN THE FESTIVAL 

Until I lose My Breath (2015) | Nefesim Kesilene Kadar | LTFF 2015

Writer/Director: Emine Emel Balci

Cast: Esme Madra, Riza Akin, Gizem Denizci, Sema Kecik

94min  Drama  Turkish with subtitles

In poor district of Istanbul Emine Emel Balci’s sure-footed feature debut, UNTIL I LOSE MY BREATH, follows a driven young woman, Dardennes-style. Senap (Esme Madra) is holding down a low-paid job in a garment factory, with little support from her friends or sister and brother in law, who only care about her contribution to the rent. Clearly Serap, is no fool and planning for better things; saving every Lira she can to pay for an apartment she’s hoping to share with her dad, Musatafa (Riza Akin), who has little regard for his youngest daughter, having already abandoned her as a child. Serap is quite keen on Yusuf (Ugur Uzunel), one of the factory delivery boys who often drives by to shoot the breeze with his mates and Seraps’s co-worker Dilber (Gizem Denizci), under the watchful glare of their draconian boss Sultan (Sema Kecik).

There’s nothing particularly new about this well-crafted and watchable tale of modern Turkey that shows our heroine as a diligent worker who is serious and emotionally unreachable in view of the negative experience that life has dealt her thus far. What emerges is a society where women compete with each other, desperate to escape to a better life abroad. We learn that Musatafa is a traditional male who is looking to a plaint female to take care of him, until the next one comes along.

One briefly joyful scene stands out – where Senap goes on a fairground rollercoaster but ends up vomiting into a waste bin: its almost as if women here are destined not to have any pleasure without pain in a place which is distinguishable only by its dismal streets, sunless skies and over-bearing disreputable males, seen through Murat Tuncel melancholy visuals.

Esme Madra’s debut turn as Serap shows promise as an actor who could well bloom and flourish in other more ambitious roles. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | 7 – 17 MAY 2015

Cannes Festival 2015| Full Competition Titles

image1After much speculation and debate, Festival President Thierry Frémaux has finally unveiled the crown jewels of this year’s CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, the most prized, important and famous of all international festivals in the film calendar year.  What emerges is a festival dominated, for the first time, by female stars and directors, in a “risk-taking” selection that aims to encompass all corners of the globe with a dazzling array of new and ground-breaking titles. American directors and Jurors, Joel and Ethan Cohen, will have to decide which of the following titles, all dramas, should win the coveted PALME D’Or.

IMG_1268The first surprise out of the hat is the festival opening film, LA TETE HAUTE, (Head Held High – title image -out of competition), from filmmaker and actress, Emmanuelle Bercot, who was last in Cannes with On My Way in 2013. Once again, it has Catherine Deneuve, who plays a judge in a teenage delinquency tale that could make a star out of its lead and newcomer, Rod Paradot. France has four films in this year’s Competition line-up: Valérie Donzelli casts fellow Polisse star Jérémie Elkaim and Anais Demoustier in her daring new drama MARGUERITE ET JULIEN, a delicate tale of 17th Century incest between a brother and sister and based on Jean Gruault’s romantic script ‘l’Histoire de Julien et Margherite’, which he originally offered to François Truffaut but which never reached the screen. Also in competition is Maiwenn’s romantic drama MON ROI exploring a couple’s traumatic relationship, with a solid French cast of Emmanuelle Bercot, Vincent Cassel and Louis Garrel. Next up is Stephane Brizé’s latest film, a one-hander entitled LE LOI DU MARCHE, and starring Vincent Lindon. And to complete the French selection, one of France’s most daring directors, Jacques Audiard, is back again teaming up with regular scripter Thomas Bidegain for DHEEPAN, a story of a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker.

saltFrom across the Atlantic comes Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s SICARIO, a drug-related crime thriller with Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro. The long-awaited CAROL finally makes the competition line-up after missing both Venice 2o14 and Berlin 2015. Todd Haynes’ glossy adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel SALT is set in  fifties New York, where Rooney Mara’s department store clerk falls for Cate Blanchett’s glamorous married woman. Gus Van Sant is back on the Croisette with the THE SEA OF TREES, an original story that unfurls in a mysterious forest at the foot of Mount Fuji, where a journey of contemplation and survival begins for two men in the shape of Ken Watanabe and Matthew McConaughey.

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Italy features very strongly in competition this year with Paolo Sorrentino’s follow-up to La Grande Bellezza (2013) With a star-studded cast of Rachel Weisz, Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda and Paul Dano, LA GIOVINEZZA is a Swiss-set drama that explores the relationship between two old friends. Matteo Garrone was last on the Croisette with Reality, a drama that focussed on the cult of celebrity. This year he goes back in time with an adaptation of Giambattista Basile’s 17th novel Il Racconto dei Racconti. THE TALE OF TALES stars Toby Jones, Vincent Cassel and Selma Hayek. Also from Italy is Nanni Moretti’s MIA MADRE, a fractured narrative focusing on a woman filmmaker, Margaret (Margherita Bui), whose film project is overshadowed when her mother is taken seriously ill.

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After last year’s triumph for White God (Prix Un Certain Regard), Hungarian cinema makes another visit to Cannes. Laszlo Nemes, a protégée of Béla Tarr, will present his first film, the only debut in competition, SAUL FIA (SON OF SAUL), a wartime story set during the horrors of Auschwitz. The Greeks are back bearing THE LOBSTER this year. It’s Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest drama that sees a great cast of Colin Farrell, Lea Seydoux, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman caught up in a dystopian future where all single people are imprisoned in a strange hotel where they are forced to mate or become animals within 45 days. For the first time in 36 years Norway has a competition entry in the shape of Joachim Trier’s LOUDER THAN BOMBS, his first outing since his touchingly brilliant drama Oslo, August 31st, and his first English-spoken film. It stars Jesse Eisenberg, Gabriel Byrne and Amy Ryan.

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And where would Cannes Film Festival be without the riches of the Far East to add exotic dazzle to the Red Carpet (and the Boutiques of the Croisette)? Chinese director Hou Hsiao Hsien brings a sparkling Marshall Arts actioner THE ASSASSIN, starring Qi Shu. Also from China comes Jia Zhang-Ke with MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART, an intriguing drama set over three eras: the 1990s, the present and the imagined future in Australia – Tao Zhao and Zhangke Jia star. And the last but not least of the competition titles to grace this year’s Riviera rendezvous, OUR LITTLE SISTER, is a family drama from Kore-Da Hirokazu (Like Father Like Son).

The last few titles in the competition line-up are Michel Franco’s CRONIC which stars Tim Roth as a care worker for the terminally ill – a role he should handle with aplomb after his superb turn in Broken.  And another French drama VALLEY OF LOVE from Guillaume Nicloux (The Nun) with the luminous Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu: Thierry Frémaux is certainly flying the flag for France this year at Cannes!  MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13-24 MAY 2015

 

 

Cannes International Film Festival 2015 | Un Certain Regard

IMG_1269Isabella Rossellini will head the jury of UN CERTAIN RÉGARD – the Cannes sidebar that presents a selection of “original and different” visions and styles in film. This is very much an arthouse competition, introduced by Gilles Jacob in 1978. Fourteen titles have been been announced and include three debuts. Eventually 18-20 titles will take part. Last year’s winner was the Hungarian drama WHITE GOD.

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Naomi Kawase will open the section this year with her latest film AN. Two films have been selected from Romania: Radu Muntean’s ONE FLOOR BELOW (Un Etaj mai Jos), and Corneliu Porumboiu, COMOARA (The Treasure) whose POLICE, ADJECTIVE won the FIPRESCI prize and the Jury Prize in the strand at Cannes 2009.

MARYLAND-ALICE-WINOCOUROnce again French film features heavily with sophomore directors Alice Winocour casting Matthias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger in CLOSE PROTECTION, a thriller that follows a troubled ex-soldier tasked with guarding a the wife of a wealthy Lebanese businessman – and Laurent Larivière’s debut, I AM A SOLDIER, (title image) starring Louise Bourgoin in the lead.

 

Masaan-Neeraj-Ghaywan-HDThis year’s selection is also marked by a treasure trove of Asian delights – two from India: Gurvinder Singh’s THE FOURTH DIRECTION, Neeraj Ghaywan’s MASAAN (left); two from Korea: Oh Seung-Uk’s THE SHAMELESS and Shin Suwon’s MADONNA; one from Iran: Ida Panahandeh’s NAHID and another from Japan: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s JOURNEYS TO THE SHORE, about a wife reunited with her husband who was supposedly lost in a drowning accident. From Thailand comes CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (right).

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RAMS, a farming tale from Iceland is Grímur Hákonarson’s new drama, and sees two brothers brought together by their animals, after 40 years of separation. Croatian director Dalibor Matanic, presents three different stories of forbidden love in THE HIGH SUN, and the Italian-American filmmaker Roberto Minervini (Stop the Pounding Heart) will be on the Croisette with THE OTHER SIDE, the only  film in competition so far to embracing documentary and fiction. Writer Director, Yared Zeleke’s debut LAMB is from Ethopia. Two hispanic hispanics films join the line-up this year: THE CHOSEN ONES by Mexican director David Pablos and ALIAS MARIA by José Luis Rugeles Gracia. And finally Brillant e Mendoza’s TAKLUB completes the selection.

Lamb_Yared-ZelekeSPECIAL SCREENING

Une histoire de fou DON’T TELL ME THE BOY WAS MAD by Robert Guédiguian

MIDNIGHT SCREENING

LOVE by Gaspar Noé

CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 13 – 24 May 2015 | SALLE DEBUSSY 

 

Night Train (1959) Pociag| Scorsese Selects | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Writers: Jerzy Lutowski, Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Cast: Lucyna Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Teresa Szmigielówna, Zbigniew Cybulski

99min  Thriller   Polish

Stylish and endlessly compelling, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s NIGHT TRAIN (1959), is an accomplished psychological thriller set on a train carrying a variety of passengers from Warsaw to the Baltic coast.

Belonging to the Polish School, that flourished briefly during the fifties, a seductive Noir ‘whodunnit’ was written and directed by the renowned Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and features a seductive a subtle performance for Leon Niemczyk, in suave shades and slick-back hair, travelling to Gdansk. Having lost his ticket, he offers to buy a double cabin for sole occupation but discovers that his berth is already occupied by the foxy Marta (Lucyna Winnicka) who refuses to leave. They agree to share the carriage but their guarded behaviour sets the tone for this sinister and unsettling journey into the night.

At a brief stop-off, Jerzy buys cigarettes and is pursued by a mysterious woman, whilst Marta bumps into a troublesome ex-lover Staszek (Zbigniew Cybulski). It soon emerges that a murderer is on lose and may even be on the train, and it may even be the suspicious Jerzy. With incredibly skilful storytelling, Kawalerowicz keeps the tension taut throughout, heightened by the claustrophobia of the carriage, revealing very little about these beautiful strangers, making us do all the work, pointing the finger at Jerzy, adhering to the maxim ‘speech is silver, but silence is golden. Marta is clearly suffering from emotional strain due to the presence of Staszek. But there is no chemistry between Marta and Jerzy, despite his sultry allure. The couple remain strangers to the others passengers and to each other, eventually becoming complicit in their own status as outsiders against a World poised to indict them without evidence or proof.

Train journeys, particularly at night, conjure up the exhilaration n of the unknown, the excitement of travel, the possibility of danger, the mystery of exotic strangers and NIGHT TRAIN revels in all these elements with its smouldering jazz score by the Andrzej Trzaskowski (Innocent Sorcerers) adding to the atmosphere. Very much a triumph of less is more NIGHT TRAIN borrows from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, with its undercurrents of danger, it is a metaphor for xenophobia in a society suspicious of anything unknown or unusual, of a Poland fleeing from the cosh of Communism and Socialist Realism. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 2015, POLISH FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON | EDINBURGH

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Eye Am (2014) | GÖZÜMÜN NURU | LTFF 2015

Dir.: Hakki Kurtulus, Melik Saracoglu;

Cast: Melik Saracoglu, Bilgin Saracoglu, Ismail Saracoglu, Öykü Altuntas

Turkey/France 2013, 78 min.

Co-directors Kurtulus and Saracoglu (Orada) have found an original way to tackle a serious topic: Melik Saracoglu’s serious eye condition, which might of condemned him to a life of blindness, having already lost the sight in one eye as a teenager.

After a quick de-brief of his childhood, the autobiographical narrative starts in Lyon, were Melik is studying film. He soon becomes aware of the retinal detachment in his only functional eye, and has to return hastily to Istanbul for an operation, which involves a convalescence of forty days lying on his stomach, taking endless medication. His close family: mother Bilgin, father Ismail and his brother, had to keep an eye on him during the night, in case he slept on his back. His girlfriend Öykü – who had only just recently been joking that she would scratch his eyes out if Melik if responded to romantic advances from a French girl Elodie,  joins in the family vigil. After the retina starts detaching itself again during a family dinner; a second, even more complex operation is needed, and Melik sinks into depression. In his vivid nightmares he meets a producer, an actress and a critic, who reject him.

EYE AM is shot in an anamorphic format (shooting widescreen on 35 mm non widescreen native aspect ratio), which is a perfect way of demonstrating the shattering world of Melik, unable to find a way to live in a world where sounds become overwhelmingly threatening, while the darkness closes in. Melik’s own voiceover explains the panic, particularly when he nearly loses his sight completely after the first operation: “welcome to the longest night of my life” he comments, fearing the worst. But EYE AM is also subversive, using clips from Turkish melodrama to illustrate his blindness. And Melik’s grandfather’s welcome sense of humour cuts through the horrendous pain Melik is going through, with his witty remarks, which are sometimes totally off the mark. The directors also make fun of the the rivalry between the various members of his family and their middle class attitudes that are full of hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

EYE AM is innovative and original and feels authentic in its effort to balance aesthetics with a humane message. It is perhaps too much to call it a feel-good movie, but the director manage to offer us a sparkling blend of nightmarish scenarios and brilliant visuals that are always refreshing, despite the grim subject matter. AS

LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 7 – 17 MAY 2015

Sivas (2014)

Director|Writer: Kaan Müdjeci | Cast: Dogan Izci, Okan Avci, Cakir, Ozan Celik, Ezgi Ergin, Banu Fotocan | Drama  Turkish with subtitles

Kaan Mujdeci’s brave feature debut has a fresh and feral feel to it, but don’t expect a shaggy dog story: this is about the powerful Kangal breed of working mountain dogs who are fierce and fearless in their work of protecting cattle and guarding the local farming folk who occupy this remote part of Turkey.

Set amidst the masculine world of dog-fighting in the wild open landscapes of eastern Anatolia, this stunningly photographed coming of age tale is about a boy of eleven with a strong personality despite his tender years. And it’s an astonishing performance for Dogan Izci, who plays Aslan, the boy in question. He has more ‘attitude’ and bravado than most adult men (we see him chucking stones at his father), yet he is still a child with his blue and white-collared school uniform peeping over his anorak. (Aslan appropriately means Lion in Turkish). His mutt, the eponymous SIVAS, whom he rescues from a savage local dog-fight, is named after one of the local cities in the region.

Mudjeci’s hand-held camera sketches out the the daily life of the village where Aslan lives with his parents and older brother, Sahin (Ozan Celik). A competitive and feisty character, Aslan considers it his right to play the principal part in the school production of Snow White, and yet there is still a cute vulnerability to his inchoate machismo: he has already an eye for the local girls, particularly Ayse (Ezgi Ergin) who has won the part of the Princess in the play.

But as the story develops, a more sinister vibe creeps in as the cruel and heartless world of dog-fighting is explored through Sivas’s meetings with other local kangal dogs. This is a serious sport. If these people lived on an estate in London, they would probably have ‘no fear’ tattooed across their muscled chests and own pit-bulls, but this is primitive rural Anatolia and Mudjeci gives the impression of a harsh, yet close-knit community where men are men and women remain behind closed doors. Although in reality some dogs will lose their lives, we are assured that this doesn’t happen during filming.

Eventually Aslan’s accompanies the older members of the village, including the head honcho (Muttalip Mujdeci), to the ‘National Championships’ of illegal dog-fighting in nearby Ankara. And this where the tone becomes more sinister and less intimate, the camera shifting into widescreen mode to capture the dangerous fights as darkness falls over the Anatolian countryside, lit only by roaring firelight as the macho crowd cheer noisily into the night. MT

PREMIERED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

 

Last Day of Summer (1958 ) Ostatni Dzien

Dir/Wri: Tadeuz Konwicki  CIN: Jan Laskowski: | Cast: Irena Laskowska, Jan Machulski | 66min  Drama  Polish

Tadeuz Konwicki hints at melodrama and impending doom in this elegantly-crafted mood piece set on a vast deserted Baltic Beach in amongst windswept dunes. As fighter planes pass overhead on a training sortie, two strangers meet tentatively, an older woman (Irena Laskowska) and a young man (Jan Machulski), each seemingly traumatised by memories of the past, unsure of each other and guarded in their attempts to reach out. The woman gradually warms to the man’s advances and they start to communicate with gestures and brief exchanges. Jan Laskowski’s sublime visuals conjure up a mood of sombre anxiety, perfectly capturing the feeling of reticent hope and restless energy in these troubled souls. There is an idyllic scene where the couple embrace in the rolling tide that echoes From Here to Eternity. The Last Day of Summer is perhaps a metaphor for the re-birth of the Polish nation in the aftermath of War, foreshadowing future conflict in the East but edging gradually towards the hope of renewal after a traumatised past. It won the Grand Prix at Venice in 1958. MT

NOW ON KLASSIKI CINEMA

Come to my Voice | Were Denge Min (2013) | LTFF 2015

Dir: Huseyin Karabey

Cast: Feride Gezer, Melek Ulger, Tuncay Akdemir, Bahri Hakan

Turkey/France/Germany 2014, 105 min.

Set in the magnificent landscape near Lake Van in Southeast Turkey, Huseyin Karabey (My Marlon and Brando) tells a simple, but beautifully-crafted tale about repression, liberation and the power of storytelling. A Kurdish village is gathering around a bard, to hear the story which unfolds as the film. At the same time, Berfe (Gezer) tells her granddaughter Jiyan (Ulger) the story of the fox, who lost his tail – his pride and joy. Just when she starts talking about the many tasks the fox has to perform to regain his tail, Turkish soldiers, under the leadership of a sadistic captain, raid the village, demanding to be handed over weapons, in the village’s “secret” arsenal. But it emerges that this is ploy of a jealous informer, no weapons are found, and the men are taken to prison, among them Berfe’s son Temo (Akdemir). Soon it becomes clear, that the soldiers are looking for free weapons, in exchange for the imprisoned men, so that they can sell them for profit. Neither Jiyan’s plastic pistols nor Berfe’s father’s old rifle are deemed acceptle , and after trying her luck with a smuggler, Berfe travels with her granddaughter to the nearest city, to visit her relatives. There she steals a revolver, and with the help of travelling group of blind bards, led by Casim (Hakan), they smuggle the weapon through the many control points. When the two come home, a surprise awaits them.

Karabey’s inventive structure is fascinating, the story of the fox, told in many instalments, is a parallel story to Berfe’s struggle to find a weapon, to free her son. We can imagine, how further generations will hear the story of Berfe’s adventures with her granddaughter. This sense of history binds the villagers together, their collective memory much stronger than the blunt, simplistic and brutal approach of the Turkish soldiers. All families have either dead or imprisoned members, mistrust of the Turkish occupiers is everywhere. But the Kurds, personified by Berfe and Jiyan, use the stunning landscape to their advantage, they become a part of the wild and beautiful terrain. There are long stretches in Come to my Voice, where not a word is spoken, but the power of the images does not need much explanation, and the majority of the dialogue is short and up to the point. Anne Misselwitz’ camera is always gliding over the terrain; then, in gentle curves coming down to show the impressive faces of the actors, some like Gezer, being amateurs. A very impressive, touching but never sentimental film, which tells a rich and varied folk tale. AS

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | 7- 17 MAY 2015

Dostoevsky’s Travels (1991) | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski

With: Dimitri Dostoevsky

52min   Doc   UK

In this brilliant made for TV documentary, Dmitri, great-grandson of the novelist, follows in the steps of the great writer, travelling from St Petersburg, where he worked as a tram driver, to Berlin, Baden-Baden and London. Unlike his great grandfather, he is not interested in literature at all, but is more keen on materialism, trying to buy a Mercedes, to show off at home. Homeless at first, he manages to raise finance after meetings with various business men, who also attempt to cash in on his name. After finally achieving his dream purchase it emerges, in the final credits, that his second hand car is now in the garage for repairs, after he crashed his brand new one in St. Petersburg. Pawlikowski’s clever editing and drôle take reveal Dmitri to be an opportunist of the worst order, not only trying to trade off a famous name, but also willing to sponsor a casino in Russia, owned by a profit-hungry German. While in the company of one of last surviving aristocrats, keen to return to the throne, Dmitri changes political colour again, declaring his love for the monarchy. DOSTOEVSKY’S TRAVELS is a rather sad film about a man who tries to sell himself to everybody on the back of a famous family name, but it also reveals Pawlikowski to have a rare style in documentary exposé. AS

KINOTEKA RUNS UNTIL THE 29 MAY 2015 IN LONDON AND NATIONWIDE

Tripping with Zhirinovsky (1995)

Dir: Pawel Pawlikowski | 45min  Documentary  English | DoPs: Bogdan Dziworski, Steven Ascher

Pawlikowski adopts a similar style to Louis Theroux in his documentaries. His minimalist,  observational approach is so lowkey that the extreme Russian nationalist politician and would be president, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, opens up like a flower seemingly without any encouragement. Like most egocentric men, left to ramble on, he talks about himself and the subject he enjoys most: politics. Ranting on voluably, Zhirinovsky thus emerges a comical figure, revealing a great deal about the banal superficiality of his point of view and of his politics.

Enjoying a cruise in New York, his first break in 48 years, he confesses that he feels cheated – sitting on a beach next to a rusting tanker. He then ambushes a complete stranger and pushes him into the water. Later he admits to never being interested in the Arts, so politics seem the natural choice as a career. A self-confessed ‘romantic’ who never feeling any passion, he also claims – now sex has been an avenue of pleasure closed to him since his twenties (his buxom wife still clearly dotes on him) – all that is left for him is politics. Back in Russia, while rowing his boat on the Volga, he posits: “Politics is like a woman, and water is like a woman….you have to feel for it”. And clearly he has a way of capturing the populace with his rousing nationalist speeches thrown at amassed audiences. It appears that Russians have a penchant for these river insurrections, up and down the Volga. TRIPPING very much conjures up the essence of this Russian tradition. Unlike Pawlikowski’s SERBIAN EPICS this is a one-dimensional affair. What it does do is conjure up the Russian tradition of  wandering around the landscape, sounding off. Amusing and quite surreal. MT

Serbian Epics (1992) | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Pawel Pawlikoswki

Cinematographer: Bogdan Dziworski

50mins  Documentary  Serbian with English subtitles

Radovan Karadšic styles himself as a poet and professional psychiatrist in Pawlikowski’s observational documentary that attempts to look at the Serbian nation from a purely anthropological point of view. Playing their sinister folkloric lutes, with a bow, in the dusk of the hills around an industrial-looking Sarajevo in this valley below, the Serbians appear to be a weirdly hostile crowd, and certainly one to be reckoned with. A hundred year’s old shaky archive footage of the Serbian Coronation of King Peter I is also a fearful affair. Clearly, this is a God-fearing nation of Orthodox Christians with all their pomp and splendour. At a Christening service, a bishop in full medieval robes prays that Serbia will “shine like a flock of stars in God’s grace”.

Radovan describes Serbia’s age-old fight against their neighbours, the equally fierce Turks, and gives this as a good enough reason to justify their violence and routing in Bosnia in order to “ethnic cleanse” their nation of Muslims – “we are not aggressors but defenders of our own territory”. Later, military types are seen rushing around with guns and guerilla battledress in the lush and mountainous countryside. The vestiges of the Turkish inhabitants, the ethnic Muslims, fled to the mountains where they “chose to be poor but not to change their religion” opines Radovic.

It all started in 1389 with the Battle of Kosovo, when the Turks defeated the Serbian King Lazar and his army, who died as Christian martyrs (martyr derives from the Greek “witness”). King Lazar then became a Christ-like figure in Serbian folklore, a belief that has been handed down through the generations and still survives today. The monarchy was established 500 hundred years later by the Karadjordjes family, with Peter I, being crowned in 1903. In 1929 the Kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia, under Alexander I, his son. In November 1945, the throne was lost when Communists seized power, but Prince Tomislav (1928 – 2000), Alexander’s son, a tall and rather well-spoken man who speaks the Queen’s English perfectly, and takes us through the dynasty ending with a remarkably life-like portrait of his youngest son, Prince Michael, is now dead. His eldest son, Prince Nikolas (b.1958), now styles himself “His Royal Highness, Prince Nikolas of Yugoslavia”.

Radovic appears to be a more gung-ho version of Hitler, who roused the German people after they had been brought to their knees after their grim defeat in the Great War. Radovan, through the power of myth and folklore, has done the same for the Serbian nation, who seem in Pawlikowski’s documentary, to be a God-fearing country people who are only too glad to be roused by nationalistic pride for their country. MT

KINOTEKA 2015 IS IN LONDON AND NATIONWIDE UNTIL 29 MAY 2015

Wojciech Wiszniewski Rediscovered | Documentary shorts | Kinoteka 2015

Alhough his life was short, maverick documentarian Wojciech Wiszniewski made a resounding contribution to Polish cinema in the 60s and 70s. His ground-breaking and radical observational style, which incorporated avantgarde framing, distortional sound and inventive narrative techniques, abandoned the documentary as a passive vehicle for reflecting reality. Today this style is known as ‘creational’ and his ten short films bear witness to his pioneering work before he died of a heart attack, aged 35.  Sombre in tone, the mordant humour of these shorts delivers a corruscating message about Poland under Communism – that even then, some workers outshone others, or questioned a regime under which hard work and inventiveness left them with very little material gain or security after a lifetime’s toil.

After winning an award in 1967 for the ironically-entitled HEART ATTACK (1967), a mood piece that follows a taxi-driver through a cityscape lensed by Slawomir Idziak’s expressionist cameraWisziewski focused on the world of work, filming characters such as socialist leader and miner, Bernard Bugdof, in A STORY OF A MAN WHO FILLED 552% OF THE QUOTA (1973) and WANDA GOSCIMINSKA, A WEAVER (1975) whose admirable industriousness and efficient work ethic helped to re-build a pre and post war Poland, whilst often casting their peers in an unfavourable comparative light. This was particularly the case in FOREMAN ON A FARM, where a retired miner who moves with his family to the country to start his own business is rewarded with maliciousness by the envious local community. Interestingly, Both Wanda and Bernard are deeply revered by their families: but whilst Bernard’s wife belittles his working achievements in comparison to those as a father and grandfather, Wanda’s children adore her both for her skills as a mother and her dexterity with her spindles at the Lodz Mill. This confirms that despite Communism, Poland’s status as a Catholic matriarchal society reigned supreme.

the carpenter imageWiszniewski’s films established that even during Communism, a competitive working style was indomitable in society, where human nature prevailed in the belief that years of inventive and efficient work should pathe the way to material success and security. Particularly brilliant is THE CARPENTER (1976 | left) whose narrative follows a fictional character whose career highlights and travails are reflected by genuine footage of Poland’s political and historical events. At the end he asks “How come all my hard work has only left me with a tiny flat?” Most prescient  is THE PRIMER (1976) that illustrates how even in the 70s, traditional learning was being overshadowed by a future where school kids know all the letters of the alphabet but cannot form the words to express themselves and communicate with each other. MT

Wojciech Wiszniewski Rediscovered | Documentary shorts | Kinoteka 2015

 

Hardkor Disko (2014) | Kinoteka 2015

Director: Krzysztof Skonieczny

Writers: Robert Bolesto

Cast: Marcin Kowalczyk, Jasmina Polak, Agniesszka Wosinska, Janusz Chabior, Ewa Skonieczna

85min  Thriller   Polish with subtitles

Krzysztof Skonieczny uses techniques from Polish Masters to offer a chilling view of contemporary Poland.

Marcin, the central character of HARDKOR DISKO, is similar in many ways to the infamous Jacek (Lazar) who played the psychopath in Kieslowski’s A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING (1988). In the feature debut of young Polish director Krzysztog Skoniesczny (which has the identical running time to Killing) Marcin is a textbook psychopath who appears in an upmarket suburb of Warsaw to infiltrate the lives of a professional family. Nearly thirty years later than his counterpart Jacek, who focused on a hapless taxi driver, our contemporary protag is considerably more urbane and charming than his predecessor, but still has no money, and seemingly no job.

images-2He meets Ola (Jasmina Polak) a spoilt twenty-something, at the entrance to her family’s penthouse and after being told that her parents are away, he joins her on an drug-fuelled evening climaxing in a prolonged bout of meaningless sex, doggie-style, in Ola’s stylish bedroom. Marcin’s Warsaw is considerably more prosperous than that of Jacek’s era and the jagged skyline of this cold-lensed thriller is perfectly captured by Kacper Fertacz (who honed his skills on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia) whose framing echoes that of Jerzy Skolismowski’s Walkower (1965), often on the widescreen and in harmony with its voyeuristic and detached feel.  There may be more money flushing around in this contemporary Warsaw but there is still the same feeling of disenchantment and alienation that also permeated Kieslowski’s eighties outing.

The next morning, Marcin flips into convivial mode (but with the same flat emotionless stare) as he meets Ola’s parents Pola (Agnieszka Wosinska), a theatre designer, and Olek (Janusz Chabior) an snarky architect, at their breakfast table overlooking Warsaw’s modern skyline. There is something glib and unlikeable about these characters yet HARDKOR DISKO is strangely compelling, drawing you into its icy stare, half expecting a slap on the face by some sudden brutal revelation.  But that is the point. The compulsion here lies in the lack of information provided and our inquisitiveness draws us further into this web of seeming intrigue, a clever ploy adopted by Jerzy Kawalerowicz in his noir thriller Night Train (1959).

Indeed, Marcin, (superbly played by Marcin Kowalczyk) is a suave and beautiful stranger, in the same mould as Leon Niemczyk’s Jerzy in Night Train: an adventurer and opportunist who can turn on the charm like a lightbulb and snap it off again, remaining a cypher at all times. Representing disenfranchised youth, he is clearly bored and ‘hungry’ but he is also out for revenge. After accepting a lift with Olek, he strangles him (from the rear, like our eighties villain Jacek), drags him from his jeep, ties him up and then places a cigarette, lit end into his mouth, slowly asphyxiating him with the fumes, before breaking his neck. Marcin’s aloofness continues in this elusive thriller that is, in some ways, more of a mood piece evoking the general state of contemporary Poland both for its upwardly mobile protagonists and the ones left behind. HARDKOR DISKO remains highly watchable, despite Skonieczny’s tendency to linger over shots,  particularly noticeable in the last shower scene, as the enigmatic narrative moves inexhorably to a disturbing anticlimax. Flashbacks to Ola, as a bright vivacious child, show a glimpse of happier more meaningful times. Whilst Poland has moved into more affluent times, Krzysztof Skonieczny HARDKOR DISKO suggests that new cracks have opened in modern Poland’s facade: they may be different from those of the past, but they are just as noticeable. MT

SCREENING AT KINOTEKA 2015 POLISH FILM FESTIVAL

The Constant Factor | Constans (1980) | Kinoteka 2015 |

DIR: Krzysztof Zanussi

Tadeuz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorazata Zajaczkowska, Cezary Morawski

98min  Drama  Polish with Subtitles

Krzysztof Zanussi explores the life of a man drowning in a personal and political nightmare. Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki) is young and idealistic. With his affinity for mathematics he tries to understand the world with ready made formulas, which work only on paper. Constantly fighting corruption and bribery in his workplace makes him  unpopular and he is relegated to an industrial job. The only person who he relates to is his mother and when she becomes ill and goes into hospital, he doggedly insists on a private room. A good-natured nurse, Grzyna, takes pity on him but it is too late: Witold’s mother is suffering from incurable cancer. The more Witold applies his logic, the more life points to death as the only “constant factor”. Not surprisingly, Witold is obsessed by his father, who died climbing in the Himalayas. Joining a climbing expedition to Nepal, he half-heartedly complies with the corrupt system – only to be cheated, in an ironic twist and tragedy soon follows.

Zanussi’s Poland is a drab and decaying picture of alienation and Witold’s rebellion is shown by the distance between him and the other protagonists, apart from his mother. Even when embracing Grzyna, the camera finds a little place, where the light falls in, to show Witold’s distance. Sometimes Zanussi’s humour is very provocative: when Witold is in India, he talks to an American business man who talks about upward mobility: “If the Indians work hard, they can go to New York, just like we can come here. You see, everyone has a choice just like you”. Witold replies with a simple “no’ and leaves the man standing. THE CONSTANT FACTOR is a very honest film, realist in it’s bleak and . Witold carries on in his dream like state, his equations leading nowhere. Death, follows, him where ever he goes, without touching him, but isolating him more and more.

THE CONSTANT FACTOR | 9 APRIL AT KINOTEKA 2015

 

Crossing Europe Film Festival | Linz | April 2015

CROSSING EUROPE is a film festival that showcases the best in Auteur cinema exclusively from European directors. This year, the competition features eleven new discoveries in the dramatic section and nine documentaries that have been successful in major international film festivals during the past year.

CE15_WF_Kreditis-Limitis_Line-of-Credit_03-KThe competition dramatic entries deal with the living realities of young people who, caught in the process of having to “grow up”, are looking for their place in life (AUTOPORTRETUL UNEI FETE CUMINTI (SELF-PORTRAIT OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER – below right) and LICHTES MEER (RADIANT SEA), or adolescents who, in very different ways, experience the daze of their coming-of-age process, whether by choice or by force (CHRIEG (LIMBO – main pic) and VARVARI (BARBARIANS). Two of the selected films highlight the negative effects of capitalism in post-Soviet countries (KREDITIS LIMITI (LINE OF CREDIT – above left) and UROK (THE LESSON), and two others show attempts to adjust in an absolute retreat from society EL CAMÍNO MÁS LARGO PARA VOLVER A CASA (THE LONG WAY HOME – below left) and HIDE AND SEEK. CE LUME MINUNATĂ (WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD) and TUSSEN 10 EN 12 (BETWEEN 10 AND 12) tell the stories of unexpected events brutally turning the protagonists’ lives upside down. CE15_WF_Autoportretul-unei-fete-cuminti_Self-portrait-of-a-Dutiful-Daughter_2-K

The selection of documentaries forges a bridge across Europe, both geographically and thematically. Three focus on the the still controversial issues of migration/borders of Europe: BRÛLE LA MER (BURN THE SEA), EVAPORATING BORDERS [executive producer of this film is Oscar-winner Laura Poitras] and FLOTEL EUROPE, two of the selected films tell family stories – the life of the director’s grandfather in exile CARTAS A MARÍA (LETTERS TO MARIA) and the conscious decision of a father to pursue an alternative lifestyle outside of society: STÁLE SPOLU (ALWAYS TOGETHER).

CE15_WF_El-camino-mas-largo-para-volver-a-casa_The-Long-Way-Home09-K

group of villages in southern Italy (PADRONE E SOTTO) and an eccentric street performer from Belorussia PEREKRESTOK (CROSSROADS) are part of the thematic universe as are the cautious attempt to portray the officially non-existing Abkhazia – LETTERS TO MAX and efforts to organise a concert for a group of Iranian female musicians from Paris, who are banned from performing in their native Iran where – NO LAND’S SONG.

 

CROSSING EUROPE FESTIVAL|  9 – 22 APRIL 2015 | LINZ | AUSTRIA

The London Spanish Film Festival’s 5th Spring Weekend | 17-19 April 2015

safe_image.phpA selection of the latest Spanish films arrives in London on 17th April, with a chance to see multi-award-winning Noirish thriller LA ISLA MINIMA (Marshland) before it goes on general release this Summer.

LA ISLA MÍNIMA | Marshland

dir. Alberto Rodríguez, with Raúl Arévalo, Javier Gutiérrez, Antonio de la Torre, María Varod | Spain | 2014 | col | 105 mins | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | London Première / Special preview courtesy of Altitude

Two ideologically opposed detectives are sent to the Guadalquivir river marshes to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls during the small town’s festivities only to discover that they have been brutally murdered and that there were many others before them. Marshland is a noirish and gripping thriller in which everything feels slippery as the marsh itself and, for this, oppressively real. Sevillian Alberto Rodríguez and long-time co-writer Rafael Cobos create here a captivating atmosphere thanks in part to their knowledge of the area and the depth of the characters. The film was the absolute winner at this year’s Goyas with ten awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Javier Gutiérrez).

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Enjoy a glass of Albariño wine courtesy of Martin Codax from 7.45pm

Fri 17 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10

10.000 km (main pic)

dir. Carlos Marqués-Marcet, with Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer | Spain | 2014 | col | 99 min | cert. 13 | In Spanish with English subtitles

10,000 km makes reference to the distance between Los Angeles and Barcelona, the distance between Alexandra and Sergio, who love each other but have to spend one year apart with their computer as the only tool to fight for their love and keep it alive. Based on the director’s own experience when he had to leave Barcelona, family and friends, the film is a reflection on the immediacy of communication nowadays and how there are certain things that cannot be substituted and that are key to our lives, such as touch and smell.

Fri 17 April | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10

Sun 19 April | 5.00pm | £12, conc. £10

LA VIDA INESPERADAThe Unexpected Life

dir. Jorge Torregrossa, with Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo | Spain | 2013 | col | 105 min | cert. 13 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK Première

“Primo” lives in Spain and, between jobs, decides to pay a visit to his cousin Juanito, who lives in New York City and works as an actor. Shortly after his arrival both cousins realise that the other’s life is not as good as it seemed. Written by Elvira Lindo and based in New York City, where the Spanish artist spends part of her time, La vida inesperada is a delightful romantic comedy about the uncertainties of life avoiding cultural stereotypes. Javier Cámara and Raúl Arévalo, two of Spain’s finest character actors, wander the streets of New York trying to find a sense to their lives when nothing is what it looks like.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

Sat 18 April | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10

TODOS ESTÁN MUERTOS | They Are All Dead

Dir. Beatriz Sanchís, with Elena Anaya, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Angélica Aragón | Spain | 2014 | col | 93 mins | cert. 13 | In Spanish with English subtitles

Beatriz Sanchís debut feature, is an inspiring film mixing evocative Mexican magic realism touches with 80s style music reminding the Movida madrileña, in which pragmatic Paquita invoques his dead son Diego to come back amongst the living to force her daughter Lupe to take responsibility for the education of her son Pancho. Best known to British audiences for her roles in Julio Medem’s Sex and Lucía and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, Elena Anaya delivers a stunning as well as moving performance as the traumatised ex-music star overwhelmed by guilt feelings for the death of her brother. Both Anaya and Sanchís received several Best Actress and New Director nominations.

Followed by a Q&A

Sat 18 April | 8.50pm | £12, conc. £10

EL_NINO_4 copyEL NIÑO

dir. Daniel Monzón, with Luis Tosar, Jesús Castro, Eduard Fernández, Sergi López, Ian McShane, Bárbara Lennie | Spain | 2014 | col | 136 mins | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English Subtitles | Screening courtesy of Studiocanal

After Cell 211’s hit, Daniel Monzón comes back with an enthralling drug-trafficking action film based in real facts and set in the Strait of Gibraltar enriched by the presence of the social background. With stunning visuals and an impressive cast, the film follows El Niño (“The Kid”, superbly played by newcomer Jesús Castro) who, with his friend El Compi (“The Buddy”), dreams of a better life and thinks he can get it by running drugs across the Strait in his jet ski. After him are four very human cops…

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Sun 19 April | 7.30pm | £12, conc. £10

THE LONDON SPANISH FILM SPRING WEEKEND | 17 – 19 April 2015

Cannes Film Festival| Projections for 2015 | 13 – 24 May 2015

In a months time the World’s most well-known film festival will once again be rolling out the Red Carpet and bringing you the latest in World cinema. Meredith Taylor speculates on this year’s programme hopefuls, ahead of Thierry Frémaux’s official unveiling in mid-April.

salt

Joel and Ethan Coen will Chair the Jury this year, so let’s start with American cinema. Todd Haynes’ glossy literary adaptation from Patricia Highsmith’s novel Salt: CAROL (below) has been waiting in the wings since being a possible opener for last year’s VENICE Film Festival. Starring Cate Blanchett it is a glamorous choice for this year’s Palme D’Or. Terrence Malick made his entrance earlier this year at BERLIN with the divisive (amongst critics) drama Knight of Cups and it’s possible that his next film, a documentary on the creation of the Earth, VOYAGE OF TIME, will be ready to grace the Red Carpet this May. Narrated by Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, this mammoth project is currently in post production. Cannes habitué Jeff Nichols also has a new film, MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, a father and son Sci-Fi road movie starring Adam Driver and regular collaborator, Michael Shannon, who discovers his boy has special powers. For star quality, Cannes thrives on US stars, and who better to add glitz to the Red Carpet than George Clooney. He stars in Brad Bird’s  TOMORROWLAND, a Sci-Fi adventure that also has Hugh Laurie. Gus Van Sant’s THE SEA OF TREES, a story of friendship between an American and a Japanese man (Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe) is another possible contender. William Monahan’s lastest, a thriller entitled MOJAVE, (Mark Wahlberg and Oscar Isaac) could also bring some glamour to the Croisette. Natalie Portman’s will bring her Jerusalem set screen adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS to the Croisette. It is a drama featuring an Israeli cast including herself, as his on-screen daughter, Fania Oz.

imageMost of this year’s films will be come from Europe and Italy has some brand new offerings from their côterie of well-known directors. Nanni Moretti was last on the Croisette in 2011 with his comedy drama WE HAVE A POPE, this year he could return with another drama co-written with Francesco Piccolo, MIA MADRE, in which he also stars alongside the wonderful Margherita Buy (Il Caimano) and John Turturro. There is Matteo Garrone’s long-awaited THE TALE OF TALES, adapted from Giambattista Basile’s 17th Century work and featuring Vincent Cassel and Salma Hayek in the leads. Another literary adaptation from Italy, WONDERFUL BOCCACCIO, is a drama based on The Decameron: the tales of ten young people who escape to the hills during an outbreak of Plague in 14th century Italy. A stellar cast of Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts appear in Luca Guadagnino’s latest, A BIGGER SPLASH, a thriller that unravels in Italy – when an American woman (Tilda Swinton) invites a former lover to share her villa with onscreen husband Ralph Fiennes, sparks fly, particularly as Matthias Schoenaerts is the love interest.  After Cannes success with The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino could be back with YOUTH (La Giovenezza), a drama of trans-generational friendship that takes place in the Italian Alps with a starry cast of Rachel Weisz, Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda and Paul Dano. Definite Red Carpet material. And Marco Bellocchio could well be chosen for his latest historical drama L’ULTIMO VAMPIRO which stars Italian actress of the moment, Alba Rohrwacher – recently in Berlinale with Vergine Giurata.

The Scandinavians could well be on board with Joachim Trier’s first anglophone outing LOUDER THAN BOMBS, a wartime drama in which Isabelle Huppert plays a photographer. Tobias Lindholm’s follow up to the nail-bitingly  rigorous A Highjacking, is A WAR. It has Søren Malling and Pilou Asbaek as soldiers stationed in Helmand Province, with echoes of Susanne Bier’s war-themed drama Brothers. Russian maverick Aleksandr Sokurov could present LE LOUVRE SOUS L’OCCUPATION, the third part of his quadrilogy of Power, following Moloch (1999) and Taurus (2001) and filmed in the magnificent surroundings of the Parisian museum. And Greeks could bear gifts in the shape of THE LOBSTER, Yorgos Lanthimos’ dystopian love story set in the near future and forecasting a grim future for coupledom, with Léa Seydoux, and Colin Farrell. There’s also much excitement about the long-awaited follow up Portuguese director, Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, with his 1001 NIGHTS, a re-working of the legendary Arabian tale; certainly destined for the auteurish “Un Certain Régard” sidebar together with Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski’s Sintra-set COSMOS, a literary adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’ novel and starring Sabine Azéma (the former partner of Alain Resnais).

macbeth-Further afield, it’s unlikely that Taiwanese fillmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien THE ASSASSIN will be ready to grace the ‘Montée des Marches’ but from Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s drama fantasy, CEMETERY OF KINGS, could well make it. Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s JOURNEY TO THE SHORE is in post production. The Japanese director is best known for award-winners, Tokyo Sonata and The Cure. Many will remember Australian director Justin Kurzel’s incendiary thriller debut SNOWTOWN, and his recent drama THE TURNING that is now on general release. His latest outing MACBETH (right) featured strongly in the Film Market at Cannes last year, starring Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender, so it could well enter the fray. For star quality and sheer impact MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (below) will make a blast onto the Riviera. Starring Britons Tom Hardy and Nicholas Hoult and the lovely Charlize Theron, the fourth in George Millar’s action thriller series could will certainly set the night on fire, in more ways than one.

 

SUNSET-SONG-premieres-images-du-nouveau-Terence-Davies-avec-Agyness-Deyn-47013From England there is Donmar Warehouse director, Michael Grandage’s GENIUS, a biopic of the book editor Max Perkins, who oversaw the works of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and F Scott Fitzgerald. Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Jude Law all take part. Asif Kapadia has two films currently in production: ALI AND NINO starring Danish actress, Connie Nielsen and Mandy Patinkin, and adapted for the screen by scripter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) from a book by Kurban Said. But his anticipated biopic on the life of Amy Winehouse UNTITLED AMY WINEHOUSE DOCUMENTARY is sadly not quite ready for screening. Other British titles could include Ben Wheatley’s HIGH RISE, a Sci-Fi drama based on J G Ballard’s eponymous novel centred on the residents of a tower block and starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Millar and Jeremy Irons. Veteran director Terence Davies could also be back in Cannes representing Britain. In 1988, he won the FIPRESCI Prize for his autobiographical drama Distant Voices, Still Lives. His recent work SUNSET SONG, (above left) is a historical drama based on the book by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and stars Agyness Deyn (Electricity) and Peter Mullan (Tyrannosaur).

 

Cannes PicAnd last but not least, the French have plenty to offer for their legendary ‘tapis rouge’. Cannes regular Jacques Audiard’s DHEEPAN is the story of a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who escapes to France and ends up working as a caretaker, Gaspar Noé’s first film in English, a sexual melodrama, in which he also stars, LOVE, is ready for the competition line-up. Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s BELLES FAMILLES is the latest vehicle for Mathieu Amalric to showcase his talents. After his stint at directing made the Un Certain Régard strand in the shape of Blue Room, he appeared in the recent English TV serial ‘Wolf Hall’. Here he plays a man who is sucked back into his past while visiting his family in Paris. Marine Vacth (Jeune et Jolie) and veterans André Dussollier and Nicole Garcia also star. And what would Cannes be without Philippe Garrel’s usual contribution. This year it will be L’OMBRE DES FEMMES, a drama co-written with his partner, Caroline Deruas. Palme D’Or Winner 2013, Abdellatif Kechiche, latest film, LA BLESSURE, starring Gérard Depardieu, it not quite ready to be unwrapped. But the well-known star may well appear on the Croisette with THE VALLEY OF LOVE, Guillaume Nicloux’s California-set saga which also stars the luminous Cannes regular Isabelle Huppert, never one to shirk the Red Carpet. I’ll be bringing more possibilities as the filming year takes shape, so watch this space. MT.

CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE FRM 13 MAY UNTIL 25 MAY 2015

 

To Kill this Love | TRZEBA ZABIC TE MILOSC | (1972) Kinoteka 2015

Dir: Janusz Morgenstern, Wri: Janusz Głowacki | Cast: Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, Andrzej Malec, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Jan Himilsbach

To Kill This Love is Janusz Morgerstern’s best known film. Like many Polish directors of this era, he was pushed into TV work, after having proved to be too ‘difficult’ with his cinema output. To Kill This Love is a bittersweet slice of seventies social realism but the tone is upbeat and breezy: Magda and Andrzej are finishing secondary school but are a few points short of university entrance level. Magda can start her medical studies in a year’s time,having worked as an orderly in a hospital for eight months. Andrzej too is preparing for university, working at a car repair shop. Their biggest problem is the housing situation, since flats are rare and landlords want some month’s rent in advance. Magda is living with her father, a middle aged engineer, who lives with Dzidzia, a woman, not much older than Magda. She is disturbed by her father’s subservient attitude towards his lover, and talks her father into giving her some money for a rent-deposit. But Andrzej is sleeping with the wife of the car repair shop, and Magda surprises the pair more or less in flagranti. On top of it, Andrzej has stolen a crucifix from his married lover, and sold in on the black market. Magda gives Andrzej a last chance, but is dismayed when she finds out about the theft and tempted into the arms of a surgeon at the hospital.

This narrative strand runs tandem a sad story between a handy man and a disobedient dog, who barks at all his customers. The two meet a tragic end.  Morgenstern shows seventies Poland as a gloomy world in which relationships suffer from opportunism and lack of equality. The central couple’ relationship flounders not so much because of the housing crisis (greedy landlords are not only a problem in communist Poland), but because of Andrzej’s crass materialism – he steals not only to pay for the rent deposit, but is addicted to money. There’s nothing new here in human terms but handyman Himilsbach’s love for his dog is the most touching aspect of the drama: like many people, he chooses a life with his dog, rather than being alone. To Kill This Love is a melancholy poem about emotions becoming a commodity like everything else – not surprisingly, the authorities condemned it as “pessimistic” yet it presents a breezy view of seventies Poland. AS

SCREENING IN THE SCORSESE PRESENTS POLISH MASTERPIECES STRAND AT KINOTEKA 2015

 

Heavenly Shift (2014) | ISTENI MÜSZAK

Dir.: Mark Bodzsar

Cast: Andras Ötvös, Roland Raba, Tamas Keresztes, Natasa Stork

Hungary 2013, 100 min. Drama

Director Bodzar’s feature film debut HEAVENLY SHIFT is very much in line with recent absurdist Hungarian comedies like György Palfi’s Taxidermia. Somehow between Luis Bunuel and David Lynch, HEAVENLY SHIFT is always entertaining, even though the grotesqueness is so over the top that sensitive souls might have difficulties in keeping their eyes open.

In 1992 young Milan (Ötvös) flees to Hungary from war torn Sarajevo, leaving behind his fiancée Natasa (Stork). In Budapest Milan joins up with a rather odd ambulance crew, led by Dr. Fek (Raba). The driver Kistamas (Keresztes) is very fond of his Samurai sword, which never leaves his side. Milan soon finds out that the crew’s wages are supplemented by a funeral director, who is called, whenever there is a fatality – often caused by Dr. Fek’s diagnosis, that the patient does not want to live any more and is therefore not be resuscitated. Luckily for Milan, said funeral director is also in contact with a Chinese gang, who smuggles people out of Yugoslavia in a coffin.

Milan saves up the 50 000 Forint reward to get his fiancée back, but Natasa has scruples about leaving her patients behind – on top of it, she does not fancy a long journey in a coffin. To compensate for this disappointment, Milan joins Kistamas in his frequent visits to a salon of topless hairdressers, the “Pink Laguna”. After causing the death of drug addict, the crew buries the body illegally, but Kistamas loses his temper and tries to kill one of burial crew, only succeeding in injuring Dr. Fek near fatally. Trying to save his life, Milan and Kistamas speed to the hospital, but  tragedy intervenes leaving only one survivor.

Most of the action is set in the narrow compound of the ambulance, sparing audiences little of  the gruesome and bloody details. Crass materialism and profiteering seem to rule post-communist Hungary, and Bodzsar is not very complimentary about his fellow countrymen. The acting is brilliant, and the camera as original as the narrative, always finding new angles from which to showcase the mayhem. Overall, cast and crew must have had a great time shooting a film which manages to entertain us as we fly by the seat of our pants amid an onslaught of grisly physical and psychological extremes. AS

HEAVENLY SHIFT WON THE DIRECTORS’ WEEK AWARD FOR BEST FILM AT FANTASPORTO 2014, PORTUGAL

 

Human Rights Watch Film Festival | 18 – 27 March 2015

The HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Film Festival, in its 19th year, takes place at various venues in London from 18th March. Here’s a flavour of some of the titles screening:

Mike STORM IN THE ANDES 01 Opening Night | Thu 19th March | CURZON SOHO

THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING (UK Prem)

Comedy troupe The Yes Men stage phoney events and press releases in an effort to bring attention to environmental dangers and corporate greed. Director Laura Nix (The Politics of Fur) gets to grips with these activists, some of whom are personal friends, to bring their challenges and motivations to the surface.

Life is Sacred. Main Still.Friday 20 March, CURZON SOHO | Sunday 22 March, BARBICAN

LIFE IS SACRED (UK Prem)

Danish filmmaker Andreas Dalsgaard has been documenting the Colombian professor-turned-politician Antanas Mocus for many years – first for Cities on Speed: Bogota Change (2009) which focuses on Mockus’ work as Mayor of Bogota and mire recently Life is Sacred, which features some of the people from the earlier film. Dalsgaard studied in visual anthropology in Paris and then anthropology in Aarhus, before graduating from film school in Denmark in 2009. His first feature Afghan Muscles (2007) became a festival hit and won the American Film Institute Grand Prix.

Democrats. Primary StillFriday 20 March, BARBICAN | Monday 23 March, RITZY, Brixton:

DEMOCRATS 

Director Camilla Nielsson spent three years filming the cross-party negotiations behind Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution – it took a year just to gain the right filming permits – and gained an extraordinary level access and trust among Zimbabwe’s political players.

WTB Image 1_2Friday 20 March, RITZY Brixton | Saturday 21 March, CURZON SOHO:

WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS (Exclusive preview)

Director Beth Murphy spent a year in Afghanistan filming What Tomorrow Brings about a newly established Afghan girls’ school, where the humanitarian battle to provide basic education for girls mirrors the military and political battles to save Afghanistan from again becoming a failed state. The film traces the stories of several girls over a single school year – both inside the classroom and at home – while providing a rare glimpse into the day-to-day life of an Afghan community torn between two radically different destinies.

Murphy has directed, produced and written nearly 20 documentary films for national and international media outlets including The Sundance Channel, The History Channel, Discovery International, Lifetime Television, The Sundance Channel, Discovery Health, PBS, NHK, and numerous international outlets.

STORM IN THE ANDES 01_0Saturday 21 March RITZY Brixton | Monday 23 March, BARBICAN

STORM IN THE ANDES (UK Prem)

Director Mikael Wiström is an award-winning Swedish documentary filmmaker, photographer and documentary teacher, who has been making films in Peru since 1982, and started travelling to Peru in 1974 as a photographer. For Storm in the Andes he originally intended to make a film about the Peruvian conflict from the peasants’ point of view, when out of the blue, Josefin Ekermann wrote to him wanting to find out more about her aunt and her family’s history with the Shining Path movement (Sendero Luminoso), which then changed the course of his film with extraordinary results.

wrestling_2_01_9186 copySaturday 21 March, RITZY Brixton | Sunday 22 March, BARBICAN

BEATS OF THE ANTONOV (UK Prem)

Director Hajooj Kuka is filmmaker from Sudan, currently based between Nairobi, Kenya and Nuba Mountains, Sudan. He is the creative director of 3ayin.com, a website that works with local reporters aimed at bringing news of the war through short documentaries, to the Sudanese people. Hajooj is a regular contributor to nubareports.org. His previous work includes the 2009 documentary, Darfur’s Skeleton (52 min), which explores the conflict in Sudan’s troubled region since 2003. Beats of the Antonov won the People’s Choice Award at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Sunday 22 March, CURZON Soho | Tuesday 24 March,RITZY Brixton:

Ouighours 1UYGHYRS: Prisoners of the Absurd (UK Prem)

Director Patricio Henríquez is a Quebec based filmmaker with a prolific body of work acknowledged by more than 70 awards and distinctions. He grew up and trained in filmmaking in Chile leaving the country after Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende. In 1974 he settled in Montreal and has been making television and feature documentaries about Chile and social justice around the world ever since.He brings the little-known story of the Uyghur detainnees to the screen with a collective narrative in which the cynical machinations of nation-states often win out over reason.

ABRI_12 - © CLIMAGETuesday 24 March, BARBICAN |Wednesday 25 March, CURZON Soho:

THE SHELTER (L’Abri) (UK Prem)

Director Fernand Melgar was born in 1961 in Tangier into a family of Spanish anarchist exiles. His parents clandestinely snuck him into Switzerland in 1963 when they entered as seasonal workers. He has produced over 20 documentaries on immigration and identity. His 2008 documentary La Forteresse won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival as well as many other international awards. His film Special Flight (HRWFF 2012) shot in 2011 in an administrative detention center, received more than thirty international awards, including the Swiss Film Award and the Prix Europa.

girl on wall again 1Tuesday 24 March, CURZON Soho | Thursday 26 March, BARBICAN:

THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD (UK Prem)

Multiple award-winning director, François Verster is based in Cape Town, South Africa. The Dream of Shahrazad has been his longest project in the making so far, and began with the idea of taking a classical piece of music and juxtaposing it with a contemporary political issue. Filmed before, during and after the Arab Spring The Dream of the Shahrazad weaves together a web of music, politics and storytelling to explore the ways in which creativity and political articulation coincide in response to oppression.

The_Wanted18_0Monday 23 March, CURZON Soho |  Tuesday 24 March, BARBICAN | Thursday 26 March, RITZY Brixton:

THE WANTED 18 (UK Prem)

Filmmaker Amer Shomali, a Palestinian artist, grew up in a refugee camp in Syria, went to art school in Bournemouth, studied architecture at the Birzeit University in Palestine and now lives in Ramallah. He has co-director credits for the film The Wanted 18 which is a part-animated documentary (Shomali did the animation of the cows) about the non-violent resistance during the first Intifada in the late 1980s in the West Bank Christian town of Beit Sahour. Villagers bought 18 cows and started producing their own milk as a co-operative. The farm was so successful that the Israeli army, in a desperate bid to stop it, declared the farm “a threat to national security.”

carla_night_2-1Wednesday 25 March, BARBICAN |  Thursday 26 March, RITZY Brixton:

A QUIET INQUISITION (UK Prem)

Directors Alessandra Zeka and Holen Sabrina Kahn have been producing documentaries together since 1998. Here they have created a powerful, character-driven story that revealed how total abortion prohibition impacts life in a public hospital. To contextualize the issue in the wider condition of women and girl’s reproductive and maternal health, it was particularly important that the story focus on the experience of a routine OBGYN surgeon rather than an abortion doctor. During our pre-production trips Dr. Carla Cerrato emerged as the brave and compelling central figure for the film and it is around her growing sense of consciousness that the story is told. As a portrait of a strong Central American female professional A Quiet Inquisition also brings to view a figure rarely represented in the Latino or American media. The serious social and human rights issues central to this intimate story of Carla, her colleagues and patients – individuals whose lives have been turned upside down by the law – come to light here through a nuanced lens.

1 - claudia paz y pazWednesday 25 March, RITZY Brixton | Thursday 26 March, CURZON Soho:

BURDEN OF PEACE (International Prem)

Director Joey Boink is a political sciences graduate and filmmaker who has gained extraordinary access to Guatemala’s first female Attorney General, Claudia Paz y Paz (during her four-year mandate in the world’s most dangerous countries ) to make this film. It observes her attempts to break the downward spiral of a society where drug cartels, corruption and violence have become part of daily life. She manages to improve the country’s safety and justice issues but is met with much resistance.

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THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 18 MARCH UNTIL 27 MARCH 2015. Tickets here  FEATURED IMAGE: ROSEWATER (2014) | MARCH 27 

Out To Win (2015) | BFI Flare

Directed by: Malcolm Ingram

With: Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and others

102min  Sport Documentary  US

OUT TO WIN is a full on in ‘your face’  affair that focuses on LGBTQA World class athletes as they share their ‘coming out’ stories to the camera. There’s nothing new here revelation-wise, for most of us, but the combined force of these heartfelt stories serves as a full scale slap in the face of the anti-sentiment that traditionally spread through the heartlands of America’s sporting life. Sporting communities are not as enlightened or as accepting as the creative arenas of film, theatre and the Arts, and most are reinforced by diehard traditionalists and often dominated by a macho male following, who are, by definition gay-phobic – particularly when it comes to the locker-rooms.

One after the other, talking heads of famous Athletes pop-up ‘close and personal’, to share their emotions and often their tears about being gay in the world of Sport: Wade Davies, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Brittney Griner, David Kopay, Jason Collins, Charline Labonté, Conner Mertens, and John Amaechi to name but a few. It emerges, not surprisingly, that many were scared to reveal their true sexuality for fear of losing valuable sponsorship or community support.

Without doubt, it’s a crying shame that these talented individuals have had to suffer in the name of sexuality. Filmmaker Malcolm Ingram is known for his documentary award-winning doc: Small Town Gay Bar. Here he has assembled an impressive array of news stories and archive footage to serve his hard-hitting story that doesn’t even give lip service to creativity in its camerawork or style. Often, the film is edited to repeat soundbites, like an advertisement, blaring out and reinforcing his message, over and over again so it feels like a list of examples instead of a cogent narrative. Rather than appealing to our hearts and minds, we feel pistol-whipped into commiserating with these confessions, worthy though they undoubtedly are, in telling a story of pain and gradual acceptance has come about due to the trailblazing efforts of the early lesbian and gay sporting pioneers.  MT

SCREENS DURING THE BFI FLARE FESTIVAL FROM 19-29 March 2015

Knife in the Water (1962) Martin Scorsese Selects | Polish Masterpieces

Director: Roman Polanski

Writers: Jakub Goldberg, Jerzy Skolimowski, Gerard Brach, Roman Polanski

Cast: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz

Cinematography: Jerzy Lipman    Score: Krzysztof Komeda

94min  Drama   Polish with subtitles

KNIFE IN THE WATER is a symphony in black and white, a perfectly performed ménage à trois between three scantily-clad adults that unspools over 94-minutes during a summer sailing trip. The threesome includes a married couple, Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) who pick up a random 19-year-old hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz), and take him for a day out on their yacht. A simple and low-key invitation turns into a sexually-charged drama where one man triumphs.

Roman Polanski’s first feature is one of the most psychologically-powered debuts on the 2oth Century. What makes it superlative is, without doubt, what also made Last Day of Summer so redolent of the Polish Film School (which had a brief heyday in the late fifties) its triumph of simplicity and quality. Polanski was a perfectionist and chose as his cinematographer, Jerzy Lipman. Most cineastes regard this as his best film although Polanski himself is believed to regard his later work Cul de Sac (1966) as his personal favourite. The drama is shot through with compelling scenes of psychological tension and even the weather joins in to express menace and moments of relief as dark clouds move in or clear to reveal calmer skies.

Zygmunt Malanowicz plays the student although Polanski voiced his dialogue, unsurprisingly we know whose part he would have chosen has he not been concentrating on directing. Using his usual two lenses, the camerawork avoids close-ups in this rigorous portrayal of masculine oneupmanship.

Scripting was a collaborative affair with colleagues Gerard Brach and Jakub Goldberg. Skolimowski’s dialogue between the three is verbose and loquacious, almost nervously so in parts to cover up for the undertones of machismo rippling just below the surface of this overtly polite social day on the lake. The performances from Leon Niemczyk and Jolanta Umecka are subtle reflecting the social etiquette of their upwardly mobile coupledom in contrast to the raffishness of the student from the other side of the tracks. Polanski would continue to make it his stock in trade to focus on the outsider or the underdog (The Tenant, The Pianist) or the unstable marriage (Cul de Sac, Bitter Moon, Carnage). The mounting tension is superbly reflected in a jazzy seductive score by Polanski’s regular composer, Krzysztof Komeda, whose life was to be tragically cut short, seven years later. And like most of Polanski’s films, KNIFE IN THE WATER avoids a happy ending. MT

SCREENING AT PART OF KINOTEKA 2015 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS | POLISH MASTERPIECES

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Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2015 | 8 April – 29 May 2015 | 13th Edition

10264804_1084725484887340_3803537261850274160_nKINOTEKA, the annual celebration of Polish Cinema and culture, is back in London for the 13th Anniversary. Taking place in various venues including BFI Southbank, ICA, Tate Modern, Fronline Club and Filmhouse Edinburgh.

Here’s a taster of this year’s highlights:

MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS : MASTERPIECES OF POLISH CINEMA

Filmhouse Edinburgh and BFI Southbank will be host to Scorsese’s 21 favourite Polish Films, all sparkling in new 2k prints. Showcasing the astonishing talent from the legendary Łódź Film School where directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Jerzy Has, Aleksander Ford, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Roman Polanski mastered their crafts.

Opening with a screening of CAMOUFLAGE with director Krzysztof Zanussi as special guest, KINOTEKA honours the work of Zanussi with 3 titles in the Masterpieces of Polish Cinema season: CAMOUFLAGE, THE CONSTANT FACTOR and ILLUMINATION as well as the UK premiere of his latest film, FOREIGN BODY  in the New Polish Cinema section.

N E W   P O L I S H   C I N E M A – 1o April 2015 onwards

The ICA plays host to KINOTEKA’s New Polish Cinema strand from 10th April with a selection of popular and critically successful contemporary Polish films from the last year. Krzysztof Zanussi’s FOREIGN BODY, takes an uncompromising look at contemporary Poland and the struggles between capitalist reality and Catholicism, sin and sainthood, men and women. Jerzy Stuhr’s latest film, CITIZEN, a dramedy set over sixty years, tells the story of Jan Bratek who regretfully finds himself at the heart of events from the modern history of Poland, from the 1950s through to the present day.

Wojciech Smarzowski ‘s (TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT), THE MIGHTY ANGEL, is in many ways Poland’s answer to The Lost Weekend and Leaving Las Vegas. An uncompromising, naturalistic tale of addiction and redemption, Robert Więckiewicz stars as a writer hospitalised for his alcoholism and the film follows him and the patients he meets during his treatment.

Krzysztof Skonieczny’s HARDKOR DISKO, hails the arrival of a fresh voice in Polish Cinema, his incendiary, psychological thriller wowed audiences when it premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival. When a young man arrives in the city and makes his way to the door of a successful middle-aged couple, his motives for being there are unclear. What quickly becomes apparent is that his overriding desire is to kill them. Compelling and disturbing, Hardkor Disko has elements of Michael Hanneke’s Funny Games.

U N D E R   T H E   L E N S Polish Documentary film in focus

KINOTEKA showcases original, innovative documentary from Poland. Paweł Pawlikowski is primarily known in the UK for his critically acclaimed feature films, including the BAFTA-winning LAST RESORT, MY SUMMER OF LOVE and most recently the Oscar® winning IDA. He began his career in television making documentaries for the BBC, where his distinctive mixing of fact with elements of the personal and poetic challenged expectations of the television documentary format. Paweł Pawlikowski will present a special weekend of screenings at the ICA (18th/19th April), including DOSTOEVSKY’S TRAVELS about the Russian novelist’s journey to Western Europe in the early 1990s, his great grandson Dimitri makes the same journey, travelling from St Petersburg to Berlin and London to lecture about his great grandfather. Dimitri’s sole ambition is to earn enough money to buy a Mercedes. Blending real and fictional events, Pawlikowski’s film reflects on one of the pivotal moments in modern history: the fall of the Berlin Wall; ruminating on the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s transition to capitalism.

In a short career before his premature death at the age of 34, influential documentarian Wojciech Wiszniewski (1946-1981) produced just 12 films in total, yet he is now considered to be one of the most outstanding personalities of his generation. Known for his cutting edge and pioneering approach, his work broke conventions by employing bold techniques of framing, distorting sound and an associative use of editing to orchestrate or create a reality. His legacy is explored in Wojciech Wiszniewski Rediscovered, a programme of 6 of his shorts at the ICA on 12th April.

The documentary strand also celebrates the work of emerging Polish documentary filmmakers. Both Aneta Kopacz and Tomasz Śliwiński who studied at the Wajda Film School have been Oscar® nominated for this year’s Best Documentary Short Film category. Aneta Kopacz’s JOANNA is a tender portrait of a woman with terminal cancer and her attempts to prepare her young family for a world without her in it. Shot by Łukasz Żal, the talented young Polish cinematographer who is also Oscar® nominated for Ida, Joanna is a story of strength in the face of adversity. Tomasz Śliwiński’s OUR CURSE, is a personal statement by the director and his wife, the parents of a baby boy born with a rare and incurable disease. The film forms part of their process of coming to terms with his diagnosis.This year KINOTEKA will draw to a close with a special screening of cult Polish comedy THE CRUISE (1970) at the ICA (29th May), to mark Second Run’s DVD release.

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 8 APRIL UNTIL 29 MAY 2015 IN LONDON AND EDINBURGH

The Lack (2014) |Cinema Made in Italy 2015

Directors: Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni

70mins  Experimental | Drama |  Italian

Women’s suffering has long been the subject of World cinema and particularly in Italy. Curiously titled The LACK is a semi-experimental mood piece that plays a tune with four different themes: abandonment, separation, courage and exertion and their effects on six isolated female characters. With minimal dialogue and some sumptuously inventive camera effects, a visual narrative explores their inner journey of loneliness, discovery and eventually, self-healing in natural surroundings.

Best known for their work as video artists, directing duo Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni call themselves THE MASEBO. A metaphor for survival, their film concentrates on sound and visuals to express the palpable emotions of their female protagonists as they grapple with the reality of life. The opening scenes play out like a slick advert for Volvo:, a woman wakes up abandoned in a bedroom and tries desperately to call her lover without success. In tears and distraught, she takes to the road and drives recklessly through a vast and frozen snowscape with only a flimsy white gown to protect her from the elements. As she leave sthe vehicle, the camera follows her in close-up and slow-mo, painting an ethereal picture of ice blue alienation against the windswept wasteland.

The second segment studies an Oriental beauty alone inside a massive ferry boat. Seawater gushes against ancient rock formations and craggy cliffs as waves wash over the echoing steel plates of the hull. Escaping to the shoreline she is warmed by the setting sun. Only her sighs of exertion and the mournful sound of the seagulls are audible in the marine wilderness as she installs a large searchlight on the cliff face, illuminating the approaching night.

Part 3 is set in remote Steppes of Russia where an enormous pipeline is carrying oil or gas from an inland refinery, belching smoke creates puffy clouds into the endless skyline. A woman flights for survival swaddled in furs. Another woman floats flotsom-like in the aftermath of flood desperately clinging to domestic detritis in possibly the most conceptual segment which is intercut with images of a little girl dressed in white. The final segment is probably the most bleak. The weaker sex emerges tough yet vulnerable, suffering throughout.

MASEBO have exhibited their work in museums and film festivals as well, such as Venice, Locarno, Rome, Istanbul, Lisbon, Athens, Miami and Reykjavik. Since 2002 they have been working with the French writer Michel Houellebecq with whom they have written and produced 11.22.03 and THE WORLD IS NOT A LANDSCAPE, video art piece with Juliette Binoche, it had its premier in Paris at the Grand Palais.

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2014. SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY

 

Catch Me Daddy (2014)

Dir.: Daniel Wolfe, Matthew Wolfe

Cast: Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron Garry Lewis

UK 2014, 111 min.

The debut film of the Wolfe brothers, Daniel and Matthew, can’t be faulted on any technical level: with Robbie Ryan’s stunning cinematography and an atmospheric soundtrack featuring music by Patti Smith, Tim Buckley and Nicki Minaj. However, their narrative of a damsel-in-distress (purportedly based on reality) raises so many personal and ideological questions which are never successfully explores make for a cliched chase thriller where type-cast cyphers are drowned out in a cacophony of perpetual motion on the Moors.

Laila (Ahmed), a teenager who has left her traditional British Pakistani family, is living with her out-of-work boyfriend Aaron (McCarron) in a trailer on the Yorkshire Moors. In a bid to track her down, her father sends out two groups of men: a Pakistani gang led by Laila’s brother Zaheer; the other by cocaine addict, Tony (Garry Lewis in fine form). Zaheer reaches the trailer first but is killed accidentally by Laila in a struggle. More struggles ensue followed by a long draw-out final scene where bitter vengeance is finally brought to bear.

The best thing about CATCH ME DADDY is its atmospheric setting on the windswept Yorkshire Moors  where some night-time chase scenes are well-crafted and exhilarating. What pretends to be social realism here is hackneyed victimisation that only goes to re-inforce gender and racial stereotypes: the Pakistanis are all shown as fanatics, indulging in a senseless killing and Laila’s reason for leaving the family is never revealed but touched upon briefly and questionably when one of his group calls Zaheer a “sister fucker”.

CATCH ME DADDY, with its relentless, one-dimensional action mode, leaves no time for contemplation, throwing up so many important questions without ever trying to answer them. The theme of “honour killing” is used merely as background noise to this depressing boys-only action movie which reduces Laila to the usual ‘victim status’ of a female, totally lacking any respect or individuality. MT/AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 FEBRUARY 2015

Greenery Will Bloom Again | Torneranno i prati (2014) | Cinema Made in Italy

Writer/Director Ermanno Olmi

Cast:Claudio Santamaria, Camillo Grassi, Niccolò Senni,

80min   Italian   Drama

English translations of subtitles and films titles leave a great deal to be desired. Are they all being churned out from a trailer park in deepest Albania by teenagers googling internet translation sites? Not that I have anything against either but the English in the subtitles simply does not do these arthouse and independent films any favours – it does not reflect the tone or content accurately. The English translation of TORNERANNO I PRATI is GREENERY WILL BLOOM AGAIN. Surely MEADOWS WILL BLOOM AGAIN would more evocatively conjure up the hope of Peace and renewed prosperity after the grim hardship of War in this starkly drawn First World War drama by one of Italy’s most talented contemporary filmmakers, Ermanno Olmi.

Shot in a sombre palette of gunmetal and taupe by cinematographer (and son) Fabio Olmi, the anti-War story unfolds in the desolate mountains of North Eastern Italy near the Austrian border, where a winter landscape envelopes a group of exhausted and grimy soldiers, chilled to the bone despite being swaddled by heavy (and sodden) uniforms. Led by a strong performance from Claudio Santamaria as The Major, who arrives with a dispatch that can only lead to tragedy for all concerned in the bunker of death. In the meltdown that follows, soldiers lose their lives and are interred in the heavy snow.

The strength of Olmi’s drama lies in his stark depiction of the miserable drudgery of combat: an uneasy tension builds as the platoon waits in appalling conditions for certain death either from the elements or the enemy. TORNERANNO I PRATI is a gruelling mood piece that fails to match the complex narrative of his previous outings THE PROFESSION OF ARMS or TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS but nonetheless conveys the pity and futility of war. This is war that affects ordinary working men equally – there are no good or bad characters here, just simple farmers or tradesmen forced to fight in a senseless battle where no one is ultimately a winner, Olmi’s tragedy delivers its message simple and soberly.MT

Reviewed at Berlinale 2015 and screening at the CINEMA MADE IN ITALY festival here in March.

Pioneer Heroes (2015) | Berlinale 2015

Director|Writer: Natalya Kudryashova

Cast: Aleksei Mitin, Daria Moroz, Natalya Kudryashova

116mins  Drama, Russian Federation

Writer\Director Natalya Kudryashova’s debut drama PIONEER HEROES, in which she also performs, sets out with good intentions to be a sort of Russian BOYHOOD. Sadly, the result is a muddled documentary-style piece that overstays its welcome, despite some convincing and even touching performances from the assemble cast.

Kudryashova follows the lives of three Russian kids born in the Soviet twilight years: Andrey, Olga and Katya, who attend the ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’ youth academy in the late 80s, until the present today. As kiddies, still wet behind the ears and full of excitement and patriotic enthusiasm, they are desperate to do the right thing by their country and we see them pledging allegiance to organisation. The only one who stands out from the crowd is Andrey – refusing pointblank to sing a solo in the choir, he later grows into a troublesome and frustrated young man, unhappily dating the endearingly gentle Katya. As little girls, Katya and Olga take their soviet origins very seriously, Olga even informing the authorities about her father’s crude attempts at home-brewing when she happens to a watch a political propaganda broadcast on TV, exhorting comrades to snitch on illegal  bootleggers.

It emerges that the bright aspirations of the Soviet Union of their childhood has failed them in adulthood: their immense pride for their country as kids simply does not prepare them for mundane modern life, leaving them saddled with expectations that simply to not deliver success, fulfillment or even security in the sober reality of contemporary Russia. A qualified actress, Olga is receiving psychotherapy for depression, PR girl Katya lacks the self esteem as a young woman to command any respect or attention from Andrey whose thoughts are completely focused on making headway in his political career, rather than enjoying his relationship in their upmarket modern apartment in Moscow. On his way to a business meeting he manages to help out in a unfolding tragedy and wonders whether his intervention is really what it means to be ‘a hero’ in modern times. This is a sad and depressing view of today’s Russia from a disenchanted and desperate voice that would make Stalin turn in his grave. MT

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER BERLINALE 2015

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Generation

Director: Marielle Heller

Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård., Kristen Wiig, Christopher Meloni

102mins  Drama   US

There are a number of films out there in the cinematic plains that are alleged to “rock”. There are probably some lost souls who claim that Cameron Crowe’s ALMOST FAMOUS “rocks”. Or perhaps some slightly more informed folk who say that DAZED AND CONFUSED “rocks”. Even typing the words feels a little mortifying. Marielle Heller’s THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL – that won this year’s Sundance cinematography award and is based on Phoebe Gloeckner ‘s book- really does sort of rock. There’s just no better word for it. In a ‘boot through the saloon door, balls to the wall’ kind of way. It’s not just a film about enjoying sex, it is (God help us all!) a film about a young woman enjoying sex. And not only that, it announces Heller as a zest fresh, ballsy first time writer/director, while introducing American indie cinema to an electric new star.

Bel Powley is that star. She jumps from her small screen role in BENIDORM (whatever that is) to play Minnie, the titular teenage girl. DIARY opens on Minnie’s first post-coital strut; slow-mo, eyeing up the world, flares waving from side to side. We’re back in the 1974; Patty Hearst’s just been kidnapped; things are getting a little wild. Minnie takes us through her first sexual experience, sleeping with her mom’s boyfriend Monroe; a dim, handsome golden retriever of a man, played by Alexander Skarsgård. She’s swept away, but is it him she falls in love with him or is it simply the sex?

Her best pal is a skinny blonde, so Minnie naturally considers herself fat and ugly (who doesn’t at that age). But sex just seems to liberate her from all that. So we follow Minnie as she goes off trying new things, leaving a trail of men behind her, making pals, taking drugs and dancing to rock and roll. She’s a cartoonist too and her illustrations, which come alive in the frame, also play a central role. This might all sound a bit familiar, but the cartoons- taken from Gloeckner’s original work and brought to life beautifully by the film’s animation team- are more in the vain of Robert Crumb’s grotesque human comedy than anything we saw sprouting out of Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer.

So Minnie’s an artist, and a badass, and she smokes pot and listens to Iggy Pop. Sounds horrendous but by some sort of miracle, it’s not annoying at all. Perhaps it’s a matter of attitude, or simply offering up two fingers to the world.

And how rare and special a thing that is. A badass story finds a badass director and an equally badass star. Bel Powley is pure lightning in a bottle; bursting at the seams with strength, vulnerability, sexuality, and youth. That (500) Days mention really is telling. By comparison, Heller’s film is like a Sundance EASY RIDER. Despite being set over 40 years in the past, it leaves that last generation of indie film looking strangely creepy and desperately old-fashioned. A last nail, perhaps, in the manic-pixie coffin.

The film screened in the Berlin Film Fest’s Generation sidebar. A program selected for young people aged 14 or over. We can only hope and pray such leniency is awarded when national ratings boards catch the scent. Whatever the case, it seems safe to wager that by this time next year, Bel Powley will be everyone’s favourite new star. Expect inundated Facebook feeds whenever Fox Searchlight see fit to release it. Hop on the wagon quick, those seats are gonna go fast. Rory O’Connor.

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. ALL OUR COVERAGE IS UNDER ‘BERLINALE 2015’

Under Electric Clouds (2015) | Berlinale | Competition

Director/Writer: Alexey German Jr.

138mins  Apocalyptic Drama  Russia/Ukraine/Poland

The end of times never looked as pretty as they do in Alexey German Jnr’s fourth feature UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS, unveiled in competition this week at the 65th Berlinale. German, whose most recent directorial credit prior to this was in helping to complete his late father’s epically grotesque swansong HARD TO BE A GOD, has made a similarly sprawling if less assaultive account of the times we live in.

201507331_4But while dad’s final film (no more mentions after this, I promise) was a science fiction work whose explicit allegorical links to our present-day transglobal crisis were half-cloaked in a tale set in a far-off planet suffering through its middle ages, UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS doesn’t afford our suspensions of disbelief the luxury of such temporal displacement: his film takes place in 2017, on the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Despairing through an endless winter characterised by gentle snow and an ecru-puce atmospheric haze, its ensemble of characters do not, however, have much to draw upon in terms of an industrialised class politically conscious enough to enact the wholesale change that is so evidently needed. Lenin is merely a statue here: the new future of post-communist Russia is a half-constructed building soon to be demolished.

Ranging from a Kyrgyz worker to two teen heirs of a deceased father’s estate to a museum guide and culture expert, to a jobless architect (“incredibly trendy, but meaningless”), German’s ensemble of unfortunates wander somewhat listlessly through the bleak, icy landscapes trying to figure out just what’s gone wrong. “The past is gone,” one of them notes. “We can build a new world, we just need to get rid of the dead weight.” Such lines, coming in a film whose opening ident ominously reveals funding from Russia’s Ministry of Culture, are at the very least ambiguous in intention. If the Brechtian mouthpieces don’t quite expose the film’s propagandistic agenda, German’s own penchant for half-baked ideas can often work against the film. (This is not to claim the film has an overtly propagandistic agenda; nor is it, of course, to claim it isn’t confused.)

Is this about the fall of capitalism, the ruthless world of real estate, or both? (The two, surely, are linked.) Perhaps the closest the film comes to addressing the root causes or results of our impending doom is in its nods to global warming (“In twenty years the climate here will be tropical”). “We enter a new era armed with historical experience,” one character claims. But there’s scant evidence here that the Russians can help themselves out of their rut. Multiple nods to China, the nation to which failing capitalist economies have looked with hopeful curiosity in recent years, offer little optimism: that too is in crisis. Japan doesn’t look much better. (Pepsi and Coke survive like unscathed ancestors, which might give some indication as to where Putin’s Russia needs to aim.)

Though it’s perhaps too stylised to be fully engaging as a drama, however, there are certainly things to admire, even love, about UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS. To a certain degree, this seven-chapter marathon works through its own lethargies in often teasing fashion, hinting at deeper truths about our ongoing catastrophe. German shoots at times from afar, allowing his actors full bodily expression while zooming into them to such an extent that their movements are often obscured, if not negated. The film is at once expansive and claustrophobic. Sergey Mikhalchuck and Evgeniy Privin’s cinematography, conveying a half-abandoned world of mist and infrastructural failure, compensates for scenes that German only intermittently feels the need to direct. Indeed, the visual beauty is often at odds with the content – perhaps deliberately so – so considered are the visual textures in contrast to what is sometimes a directorial laziness. MICHAEL PATTISON

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY. ALL OUR COVERAGE IS UNDER ‘BERLINALE 2015’

Misfits (2015) | Berlinale |

Dir.: Jannk Splidsboel

Documentary; USA/Sweden/Denmark 2015, 75 min,

After watching Jannk Splidsboel’s documentary about gay and lesbians in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one wonders why the religious fanatics of this world (in this case mainly Christians) create such hell on earth for everyone who fails to share their narrow perspective of life – whilst at the same time proclaiming endlessly publicly that these “sinners” will go straight to Hell.

Tulsa, population 400 000, is very much a soulless city and not only for these minorities. A uniformity of landscape prevails without any individual expression. It seems to have been censured by planner and inhabitants alike. A conformist force abides not only the suburbs, reducing the inhabitants to ants in a Lego world.

Now imagine being a gay or lesbian teenager in this environment. Suicides are not exceptional, doctors prescribe anti-anxiety drugs at the drop of a hat and many of the youngsters are literally thrown out of the house, as in the case of Larissa (17), whose mother simply declared “you are not part of the family any more”. The single safe heaven for these teenagers is the (only) Gay Youth Club in the city: “Openarms” has saved many lives, because people like Ben (19) feel that “it is me against the world”. For all of them, the club is “like entering a refuge, home and the family they never had”. On the wall of the meeting room is the motto of the club: “All love is equal”.

The stories these youngsters tell are disturbing – not only were they forced to go to Church but any book doubting strict religious dogma is confiscated by their parents. But not all of them have left religion behind; Benny (20) for example muses seriously about the concept of hell: “I believe in God, read the bible, and believe in hell. Where else would the bad people, the rapists and murderers go? But religion is contradictory”. All of them agree, “that no person would ever choose to be gay, looking at the trouble we are going through.” And the “trouble” is not just being thrown out of the family home, or being harassed by religious fanatics with megaphones and signs (“Remember Sodom & Gomorrah”) – one of the young men puts a knife into his boot because he has been attacked before.

The emotional turmoil these young people go through is shown with great sensibility: particularly the meeting of one couple, a transgender boy and a lesbian so full of angst (understandably, since they are literally re-inventing themselves), that the highly charged feelings are transferred to the audience. There is just one positive example here, when a young man discusses with his more liberal mother his proposed move to Dallas, to escape Tulsa for good.

Overall MISFITS suffers a little from structural issues and a restricted budget, but this is more than compensated for with a rare emotional directness. It certainly offers up a new example for the concept of “a living hell on earth”. AS

BERLINALE 5-15 FEBRUARY. OTHER COVERAGE IS UNDER BERLINALE 2015 

 

Nuclear Nation II | Berlinale 2015

Dir.: Atsushi Funahashi;

Documentary; Japan 2014, 114,min

Director Funahashi follows the refugees from Futaba on their long journey for an honourable resettlement. The accident at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima in 2011 made their town uninhabitable and killed 53 of them). Funahashi takes things from where he left them in Nuclear Nation at the end of 2012. The plant is still leaking and the 6942 ex-inhabitants of Futaba are living all over the province. The mayor, Mr. Idagowa, blames the government and TEPCO, the Atomic Energy Council, for the delays in the re-settlement of the town’s people, but his opposition holds him responsible for the delays and has him removed after a non-confidence vote.

On the second anniversary of the disaster the tone is solemn but progress has not been made. Particularly the elderly are suffering in makeshift accommodation in Kisai High School, where 801 days after the incident, 123 people are still living and sleeping in a vast room, which was once the art department of the school. Archive films show us Futaba before the first reactor was built in 1967: ramshackle buildings and a poverty-ridden countryside. By 1978, when reactor number six and seven were built, the town was booming. A café owner reports that his income doubled every year, “we had forty years of good time”. A huge sign at the entrance to the town, proclaims “A prosperous future for the birthplace of Nuclear Energy”.

Some of the inhabitants go back to the town for a limited two hours, to rummage around, putting down anti-rodent poison, trying to salvage some items, but knowing very well that they will never return to Futaba. The new mayor is as helpless as the old one. During a meeting in posh hotel, he has to admit that the inhabitants of Futaba are living all over the province, divided not only by distance but different categories of support, which is not good for unity. At the same meeting, the Energy minister blames the media for the “demonisation” of the Nuclear Power industry. At the end of 2013 the last refugees leave the Kisai High School, together with the administration – the latter would return in early 2015. By then, an area has been designated for de-contamination, many buildings in the town will be lost for ever, even though the government has declared “that radiation will not leak beyond a certain point” – but nobody believes any more what comes out of Tokyo.

NUCLEAR NATION II is impressive because it avoids dramatics and listens to the refugees. The cinematography is inventive showing the small details underlining the misery for the sad victims. Funahashi avoids the usual talking heads as much as possible leaving the audience space for imagining the tragedy and contemplating the misery.AS

BERLINALE 5 -15 FEBRUARY 2015 – FIND OUR COVERAGE IN BERLINALE 2015 SEARCH TAB

Dairy of a Chambermaid (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

Director: Benoît Jacquot

Cast: Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lyndon, Clothilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre

Drama. France

Léa Seydoux is well-cast in accomplished French director Benoit Jacquot’s bucolic bonkbuster that follows the ups and downs of a sullenly confident country chambermaid, Celestine, after Octave Mirabeau’s 1900 novel. The work has been adapted various times but this one adopts a light-hearted approach despite its foreboding musical score with melodramatic undertones.

Told as a fractured narrative, we first meet the recalcitrant Céléstine as her long-suffering agency is attempting to re-deploy her to the provinces. Despite her lowly origins, Céléstine feels she’s destined for better things although her haughty resentment hides a sad and unsuccessful past. So despite her love of sophisticating, she reluctantly takes up the housekeeping role in the delightful country villa of Madame Lanlaire (Clothilde Mollet), a frustrated wealthy middle-aged woman, and her portly husband (Herve Pierre). As soon as she arrives, Céléstine realises that with a little guile and coquettishness she can wrap Monsieur around her little finger but there is also the mysterious figure of Vincent Lyndon’s hostile and saturnine handyman (Joseph) to deal with. He is, it transpires, a political activist and raging anti-semite and this sketchy backstory is presumably why the title is in competition at Berlinale 2015.  However, the political angle is unexplored and largely unconvincing – making it feel tacked on to lend gravity and serious intent to this otherwise rather vapid affair.

Clearly, Céléstine  has her work cut out with Madame Lanlaire and her rather chequered employement history – we are shown in flashback that she was dismissed from her previous post simply for witnessing the presence of an ivory dildo in her employer’s trunk – means that she cannot really afford to be choosy and must knuckle under her Madame’s draconian cosh. Chambermaids of the era were regularly sexually put upon by the males of the household but they also had the considerable advantage of using their feminine charms to hold these often sexually unsatisfied males to ransom, with a little savoir faire.

Jacquot’s is well known on the French arthouse circuit with FAREWELL MY QUEEN and VILLA AMALIA and his most recent drama, TROIS COEURS, was well-received at Venice 2014. DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID will go down very well with French audiences who will love its cheeky ‘follies bergères’ naughtiness. There are scenes of a sexual nature but it’s all very bawdy and superficial with little dramatic tension even from Vincent Lyndon’s political undercurrent of subversiveness.  We do not remotely care for any of these people or feel moved by their plights. Even the young consumptive gentleman Céléstine is sent to care for (in another flashback) fails to evokes any sadness or even pity. There is nothing of  the Thérèse Raquin or Madame Bovary to our central character and in no way is she a heroine. We are not even persuaded by the unconvincing ‘romance’ that suddenly crops up in the final stages of the film between Céléstine  and Joseph although both actors perform well. Ultimately DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is as frothy as a lace petticoat – giving a certain texture but no weight in the competiton line-up. Perfectly respectable though for a Saturday night out.MT

BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY 2015. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE under BERLINALE 2015

Mr Turner (2014) | DVD blu release

MR_TURNER_still_2 copyMr Turner | Best Actor – Timothy Spall | Cannes 2014 | Biopic |149mins

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Joshua Maguire

Mike Leigh’s ambitious biopic of J M W Turner’s last twenty years serves as a worthy and painterly tribute to a national treasure. In a performance of some complexity, Timothy Spall portrays the ‘painter of light’ as a romantic gruffalo with a heart of gold but a curious style of love-making. The film opens in 1826 in a magnificent Dutch landscape where Turner is visiting to develop the impressionist style of his later years. A solid British cast works to the ‘Leigh family method’ fleshing out contempo social history: At the Royal Academy we meet arch rivals John Constable (a haughty James Fleet) and other Leigh ‘staples’ (Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen). At home in his studio, Dorothy Atkinson plays his obliging house-keeper, a willing recipient of his sexual abuse. All are carefully worked into the narrative along with a humorous vignette from Joshua Maguire as a geeky live-wire John Ruskin. In Margate, Turner finds peace amd contentment with a local landlady (a luminous Marion Bailey). Victorian England is very much a character, proudly flying the flag of the Empire at its peak but Leigh, in a apposite twist, is keen to underline that Turner left his works to the Nation and not the homes of the rich Victorian industrialists who had funded him. Although this is a departure from his usual subject matter; in casting his usual collaborators it all feels very ‘Mike Leigh’. MT

REVIEWED AT CANNES 2014

MR TURNER IS now on DVD blu

Queen of the Desert (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

QueenDirector/Writer: Werner Herzog

Cast: Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, Robert Pattison, Jenny Agutter

121mins  Historical Romantic Drama  Germany

Werner Herzog is considered one of the leading lights in German cinema along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders but those expecting quirky outlandishness from his dazzling epic that imagines the life and loves of explorer, writer and suave diplomat Gertrude Bell, will be disappointed. But don’t lose heart. QUEEN OF THE DESERT is devastatingly romantic, deliciously witty and Nicole Kidman gives a dynamite turn in the leading role.

In this drama Herzog embraces the sweeping romantic ideals that were central to FITZCARALDO and even NOSFERATU. rather than a straightlaced bluestocking, he styles the intellectual Gertrude as a imaginative and emotional character, whose independent nature and shrewd persuasiveness lead her to become one of the leading diplomats in Middle Eastern politics and tribal dealings leading up to the Great War and helping to establish Hashemite Kingdoms in Jordan and in Iraq.

QUEEN OF THE DESERT is all about heart and soul and yet Gertrude is far from being a pliant female. Starting life as one of the first women to study at Oxford, her mother (a luminous Jenny Agutter) advises her to “listen to the men and smile” rather than wield any intellectual prowess. Begging her father to ‘send her anywhere’ away from the comfort of the Shires, she is dispatched on a trip to Tehran where she is seduced by the unsuitably smarmy and langourous charms of James Franco’s, Henry Cadogan, a betting-man and attaché at the British Embassy. A palpable chemistry fizzles between the two and Gertrude is smitten but marriage plans are thwarted by her father, whereupon Cadogan hurls himself from the nearest rockface.

In Egypt, her next port of call, Gertrude actually befriends T E Lawrence – a vapid Robert Pattinson who lacks the charisma or clout of Peter O’Toole. This is a relationship that has more grounding as they were eventually to work together with Winston Churchill on the Ottoman question. But there is no real romantic tension between the pair and while Nicole Kidman has the freedom to create her own persona for the largely unknown character of Gertrude, Pattinson has a difficult act to follow in the dapper footsteps of O’Toole. For her part, Nicole Kidman portrays Gertrude as playful, charming, socially adept and highly elegant. She displays the confidence of good breeding, is never back-footed but supremely poised at every encounter even when she is waylaid by an Arab Sheikh as the intended newcomer to his harem. She presents an ideal female role model for contemporary audiences and yet she is one of many fearless women of the era who were simply held back by their peers and elders rather than by their ambition and capabilities, At 47 she looks extraordinarily delicate in close-ups and moves with a litheness and gentleness in every scene even excelling in a ‘wet tee-shirt moment’. After the Franco affair she creates a similar chemistry with Damian Lewis’s suave Charles Doughty-Wylie, an officer who is captivated by her charms, and the two correspond with smouldering billets doux, despite his ailing marriage.

The desert scenery or Morocco and Jordan is magnificently beguiling and we are carried along by Klaus Badelt’s exotic score that transports us back to Lawrence of Arabia, potent with Eastern promise. And although QUEEN lacks the dramatic punch of David Lean’s epic, the emotional roller-coaster that drives Gertrude forward to bigger and better adventures somehow adds tension to the narrative from a female perspective as Gertrude sublimates her romantic feelings and channels them bravely into higher goals: It’s almost as if Herzog is writing this with a female voice in his head and can read a woman’s mind. There’s also a feeling that QUEEN is a bridge he has built to allow wider and more mainstream audiences access to appreciate his legendary filmmaking talents. Arthouse audiences will enjoy this film but so will those who otherwise may be put off or scared of his usual arthouse or inaccessible fare. MT

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5 -15 FEBRUARY – to follow our coverage search BERLINALE 2015

 

Nobody Wants the Night (2015) | Berlinale 2015 | Competition

Director: Isabel Coixet  Writer: Miguel Barros

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Rinko Kikuchi, Gabriel Byrne

118m Spain, France, Bulgaria Drama

Catalan director Isabel Coixet’s Berlinale festival opener, a sweeping arctic epic that takes Juliette Binoche to the ends of the earth and back, is a drama that’s visually splendorous, if emotionally and intellectually perfunctory.

Binoche is Josephine, the wife of American explorer Robert Peary whose 1908-9 expedition to the North Pole gives the film its setting – the people involved, rather than events, inspire the film say its credits. Josephine arrives on Ellesmere Island, at the northern tip of Canada, to surprise her husband for his return from the Pole. She wants to be as close to him as she can be to his success at the top of the world, and sets out on a dangerous trip with huskies, Inuits and Gabriel Byrne’s crusty guide Bram to a remote outpost where her husband was last confirmed to be camped.

Arriving to find only eskimos and a frostbitten member of her husband’s party, Josephine sets up in a rickety hut, sticking her nose up at the native inuits who eat raw meat in their igloos outside. With winter approaching, the natives leave to head south, leaving Josephine and Rinko Kikuchi’s eskimo Allaka alone in the wilderness, the six-month long arctic night approaching. The scenery (actually northern Norway) is undeniably dramatic, helped by the authentic feel of Alain Bainée’s production design, this is a rare film that feels like it’s set at the edge of nowhere. Coixet’s direction in this department only lacked when – set in sub-zero temperatures – we never once saw Binoche’s breath in the cold air.

Binoche has neither the accent nor the pronunciation of the American she’s playing (she calls herself “Pee-air-ee”), but she’s a solid presence nonetheless, grounding Josephine as a bigot whose headstrong nature hides an insecurity of her roles of her family and her sex. But it’s Kikuchi, (nominated for an Oscar for Babel), who steals the show as Allaka, utterly believable as a woman only able to perform minimal verbal communication, but carrying deep emotional maturity.

Festival director Dieter Kosslick makes a significant move for women directors with Isabelle Coixet opening this year’s Berlinale – only three directors in the 19-film competition are women. Miguel Barros’s script is a broad feminist rewrite of arctic explorer myths of Shackleton and Scott: a particular moment when Josephine remarks that being “owned” by her husband gives her family life stability, proves cleverly ironic. Indeed, her stated desire to surprise her husband masks – perhaps even to herself – a wish to experience her own adventure in a way that would be inappropriate for a woman of her class from what she terms “civilised” society.

But if Coixet wanted audiences to take away a feminist perspective from the film, it’s almost undone by the fact that it is a man who comes to save Josephine from her frozen outpost. Indeed, Barros’s screenplay is frequently too self-regarding (lines like “every journey has its dangers – otherwise it wouldn’t be a journey” prompted guffaws) and a clunky voiceover takes away from the robustness of Coixet’s visuals in the Nordic mountains. It’s a shame that a film this highly promoted seems less strong when compared with other recent films of women in the wild. Only the scenery matches last year’s largely overlooked Tracks, led itself by a superb Mia Wasikowska performance. Another woman ‘on a mission’ in this year’s Berlinale is Gertrude Bell played by Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog’s competition film QUEEN OF THE DESERT. Ed Frankl.

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 5-15 FEBRUARY.

FOR OUR FULL COVERAGE SEARCH UNDER BERLINALE 2015 

British Film | Women Directors | Great start for 2015 | Festivals

DarkHorse_headshot1_LouiseOsmond_byDozWilcox_2014-11-25_04-47-10AMSO THE BRITISH NEVER WIN ANYTHING? – well we’re off to a good start in 2015. At Sundance, the US indie film festival that kicks off the cinema year, Louise Osmond’s documentary DARK HORSE about a local steed that gets up and finishes first, took the Audience Award. Dreamcatcher_Still05 2DREAMCATCHER a documentary about prostitution won seasoned UK documentarian, Kim Longinotto, Best Director in the World Cinema strand. Another Brit, Chad Garcia, took home the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER that sees a Ukrainian victim of Chernobyl tackling his dark secret during the revolution. SlowWest_still1_MichaelFassbender_KodiSmitMcPhee__byNA_2014-11-26_10-36-58AMAnd a UK/New Zealand- filmed Western SLOW WEST was awarded World Cinema Grand Jury Prize – it was directed by a Scotsman, John Maclean, and has Michael Fassbender in the lead role.

Meanwhile over at Rotterdam International Film Festival, filmmaker Debbie Tucker Green’s look at the life of a London family, SECOND COMING, with a sterling British cast including Idris Elba and Frederick Schmidt, won the Big Screen Award. And three women directors out of five, is certainly looking more promising for this year’s crop of indie films. 201506056_1

At BERLINALE, the major European festival held in February (5-15) each year, British filmmakers are set to fly the flag with 45 YEARS, a much-anticipated drama from Andrew Haigh (Weekend) and a starry cast of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay who play a married couple hit by tragedy when they discover a skeleton in the cupboard, in the shape of a past lover. The legendary character of Sherlock Holmes is brought to life when Ian Mckellen plays the 93-year-old detective, looking back over his sleuthing past, in a drama loosely adapted from the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind.

Helen Mirren will also be in Berlin with her new wartime drama Golden woman copyWOMAN IN GOLD. She plays a Jewish heiress embarking on a desperate search for a painting by Gustav Klimt. Directed by Simon Curtis, the drama also stars British veterans Jonathan Pryce and Charles Dance along with Ryan Reynolds. And last but not least, Berlinale will play out with Britbuster CINDERELLA ‘out of competition’. Filmed in the English countryside of Buckinghamshire, this is Kenneth Branagh’s new title for Disney and stars Brits, Derek Jacobi, Hayley Atwell, Helena Bonham Carter and Stellan Skarsgård.Cinderella_2015_official_poster

BERLINALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 5- 15 FEBRUARY 2015 – for all our coverage follow the link Berlinale2015

 

 

Corbo (2014) | Berlinale 2015 | Generation 14plus

Director: Mathieu Denis,

Cat: Anthony Therrien, Antoine L’Ecuyer, Karelle Tremblay, Tony Nardi, Marie Brassard

110mins  Drama  Canada

Montreal in the late sixties: the French-speaking minority are being repressed by the Anglophone majority in the rest of the county – English rules, not only in parliament. The “Liberation Front of Quebec” (FLQ) also holds sway in the region of Quebec. It’s a radical underground organisation, not unlike the “Baader Meinhof” Group in Germany and the “Red Brigades” in Italy, which followed in their footsteps by the end of the decade. The FLQ are using violence in the pursuit of their target: they want to bomb their way to independence from the rest of the country. Like the European groups that followed, the movement attracted, disaffected young people, mainly romantics from middle class backgrounds. Corbo is one of these young men.

Quebecois director, Mathieu Denis’s observational and linear narrative drives his elegantly-styled, classicly-framed drama forward. Jean Corbo (Anthony Therrien) is a shy boy who felt alienated even in his own family and persecuted in school, were he is a misfit due to his Italian origin. At home, Jean’s father is a Liberal careerist lawyer who does not want to be reminded by his son the Italian population of Canada were put in camps after the outbreak of WWIII. His older brother agitates for the “Quebec Independence Party”, a very tame outfit, compared with the FLQ. As is happened so often in “revolutionary” circles, alliances are often the result of love affairs (successful and failed ones), and Jean also falls first for Juliet (Tremblay), and joins the FLQ to impress her. Unfortunately for him, Jean has to prove to himself and the leading theorists of the movement that he is not a pampered result of middle class upbringing. And whilst Juliet and another comrade are not ready to use violence any more, after a woman is accidentally killed in a bombing, Jean develops a radical mindset that leads to tragic consequences.

Denis is careful in his characterisation of Jean, making him neither a hero nor a villain – just a mixed-up kid who wanted to impress his girl fr show his family that he was their equal, not the baby. His politics were immature, his longing to be a revolutionary founded on sentiments alone. CORBO shows the leaders of the FLQ (who, in 1970 would kidnap and kill a minister of the Quebec government and a British diplomat), as manipulative and remote. Therrien is convincing as Jean, showing youthful vulnerability and daredevil tendances. Denis and his cinematographer, Steve Asselin, capture the details sensitively, crafting the oppression of the secure, middle-class world Jean is desperate to escape. CORBO is a powerful and truthful portrait of a romantic soul lost in power games that lead to drastic consequences for all concerned. AS

CORBO IS SCREENING DURING THE BERLINALE  5 – 15 FEBRUARY 2015 

 

Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015 | 21 January 1 Feb 2015| Winners

The 44th Rotterdam Film Festival had 13 premieres competing for the Hivos Tiger Awards. The winners are:

La Obra del Siglo

Videophilia (and other viral syndromes)

Vanishing Point

2434_TP_00101RNicolas Steiner’s documentary ABOVE AND BELOW looks at the challenging lives of survivors in contemporary America and goes underground in Las Vegas where a couple inhabit a tunnel; to the Californian desert where a lonely guy survives the climate and to the flat landscape of Utah where a girl contemplates a mission to Mars. They may be far away but these characters all feel familiar.  Switzerland, Germany, 120 min.

Based on Indonesian legends, Ismail Basbeth’s ANOTHER TRIP TO THE MOON is a weird and wondrous fantasy that sees a young daughter hiding from the clutches of her mother, deep in the forest. Indonesia, 80 min.

Bridgend_Still01BRIGEND – full review 
And back in Wales, a mysterious cult of suicide has been prevalent over a 5-year period in Bridgend. 79 people, many of them teenagers, have taken their own lives without leaving any clue as to why. Danish director, Jeppe Rønde, explores this bizarre trend, hoping to shed light on this bizarre set of events. 2015, Denmark, 99 min.

Gluckauf_Still02GLUCKAUF 
In the impoverished Dutch province of South Limburg, a powerful father-son drama plays out. Like many co-dependent relationships, this one appears to offer no escape. Johan Leysen and Ali Ben Horsting star in Remy van Heugten’s drama  2015, Netherlands, 102 min.

Haruko's Paranormal Laboratory_Stil02HARUKO’S PARANORMAL LABORATORY

Lisa Takeba directs this comedy from Japan that focuses on Haruko, a girl who prefers to cuddle up to her old-fashioned TV set. Lisa Takeba, 2015, Japan, 76 min.

Impressions of a Drowned Man_Still01_EFIMPRESSIONS OF A DROWNED MAN

Kyros Papavassiliou’s drama focuses on a Greek man suffering from amnesia. He meets a former lover who tells him he is the famous poet, Kostas Karyotakis, who killed himself in 1928. Every year he returns.., 2015, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia, 82 min.

The Dog Woman copyDOG LADY  (Mujer de los perros)

Co-director Llinás plays an intriguing and offbeat character in this existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs in the wilderness. Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás, 2015, Argentina, 95 min. Definitely one to watch!

Norfolk_Still01NORFOLK

Another father and son drama unfolds, this time in an isolated part Norfolk (not a million miles from South Limburg) the narrative here surrounds a painful family saga. But who’s right and who’s wrong remains a mystery. Martin Radich, 2015, United Kingdom, 87 min.

THE WORK OF THE CENTURY (Obra del Siglo)

Carlos Quintela is a Cuban filmmaker who feature debut La Piscina has so far earned him several awards.  Here, drifting effortlessly between raw psychological realism and dreamy surrealism and loaded with unique Cuban archive footage, he explores the lives of three men. Carlos M. Quintela, 2015, Argentina, Cuba, Switzerland, Germany, 100 min.

Parabellum_Still02PARABELLUM

We’re hearing great reports about this sci-fi drama from Argentinian director Lukas Valenta Rinner. Threatened by the end of the world, a group of Buenos Aires residents receive lessons in survival at a resort in the marshy Tigre delta. Lukas Valenta Rinner, 2015, Argentina, Austria, Uruguay, 75 min.

Tired Moonlight_Still01_EFTIRED MOONLIGHT

At first sight, small towns are not so different from one another: identical shops and identical pleasures. In the big mountain country of Montana we meet Dawn, a middle-aged woman, who dreams of a great future while scraping a living in the daily grind. Someone from her past reappears to change things. Britni West, 2015, USA, 78 min.

Vanishing Point_Still03_EFVANISHING POINT 

A serious film about serious, complex issues (including a dramatic car crash), presented in a light, playful way. The film follows two very different men,
Jakrawal Nilthamrong, 2015, Thailand, 100 min.
Tickets »

VIDEOPHILIA (AND OTHER VITAL SYNDROMES)

Internet cafés and slackers, not-so-innocent schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass, Mayans and the end of the world, acid trips and guinea pigs all feature in this comedy drama mystery from Peruvian filmmaker: Juan Daniel Fernández Molero, 2015, Peru, 103 min

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 JANUARY – 1 FEBRUARY 2015

Las Ninas Quispe (The Quispe Girls) | Berlinale 2015 | NATIVe Selection

LAS NINAS QUISPE *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA (2013)

Haunted by sadness, mistrust and a hostile political climate, three sisters herd goats in the high planes of seventies Chile as they contemplate their bleak future. Sebastian Sepulveda’s debut is a plaintive affair shot through with human tenderness, subtles turns by the Quispe sisters (Francisca Gavilan, Catalina Saavedra and Digna Quispe) and a captivating sepia-tinted aesthetic. MT

 

The Last of the Unjust (2013) | 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

Dir: Claude Lanzmann; France, Austria

2013; 218 min Documentary

The title of the film was given, tongue in cheek, by its main protagonist: Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein (1905-1989), who was the third  and only surviving “Jewish Elder” “of the Nazi concentration camp Terezin (Theresienstadt). Nothing can compare with the role of a “Jewish Elder”, a position invented by the Nazis in camps and ghettos to divide the Jews by making the Elders do much of their dirty work.

The Elders were permanently in conflict with the German authority and their own people. They tried to rescue as many as possible but this was only possible if they achieved the quota for the transports to the death camps. For every Jew they could save, at least for the time being, they had to help sending thousands to gas chambers. They were mistrusted by their own and despised by the Germans. And most of them went to the gas chambers themselves.

The-Last-of-the-Unjust-003 copy

Lanzmann interviewed Murmelstein (as part of SHOAH) in 1975 in Rome, were he lived – and died in 1989 – in exile. Now age 88, Lanzmann decided, that Murmelstein’s story should be told at length in a separate film, like the uprising in “SOBIBOR 14.10.43” (2001).

Benjamin Murmelstein was born in Lemberg/Poland in 1905. He became Great Rabbiner of Vienna, and, after the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria, he became, as a member of the Jewish Council in Vienna, very familiar with a certain Adolf Eichmann, who was then in charge of Jewish Emigration on behalf of the SS. Murmelstein rejects Hannah Arendt’s thesis, that Eichmann was just a banal administrator – on the contrary, according to Murmelstein, Eichmann was very violent, he often threatened Jews with his revolver, and on “Kristallnacht” 1938 in Vienna he supervised the destruction of the main Synagogue in Vienna. Furthermore, he made a small fortune, selling Exit-Visas to Jews – which turned out to be useless.

The-Last-of-the-Unjust-002 copy

Murmelstein was sent to Terezin in 1942, just after the city had been cleared of their Czech inhabitants. Terezin was meant as a Ghetto for the elderly, many German Jews “bought” their places in this “retirement” town from the Nazi authorities, paying with their savings. It turned out to be a death camp like all the others: over 33 000 Jews, mostly elderly, died there, apart from the 88, 000 deported to the Gas chambers.

That nearly 17 000 survived was mainly due to Murmelstein, who became the third “Elder” in 1944. His two predecessors, Edelstein and Eppstein were dead: Edelstein was sent to Auschwitz with his family (after he was put in the most terrible of moral dilemma, when the Germans ordered him to find a hangman in the Ghetto, or be hanged himself), Eppstein was shot because he crossed a forbidden road on a bicycle ‘trying to escape’, whilst following an order by the Germans. When typhus broke out in late 1944, Murmelstein organised a successful action, top stop the epidemic. After the war, Murmelstein was put on trail for collaboration, but found non-guilty. He emigrated to Rome, where he lived for the rest of his life, shunned by his own people and the state of Israel, where his testament in the Eichmann trial was simply ignored.

The-Last-of-the-Unjust-004 copy

Lanzmann has not lost any of his vigour, we see him getting up the steep stairs in the surviving buildings in Terezin, which were simply made to exhaust the elderly. And, like in SHOAH, one cannot begin to understand, how this now seemingly peaceful little town was once a slaughterhouse. The footage from the Nazi propaganda film known as “THE FUHRER GIVES A VILLAGE TO THE JEWS” shows Terezin as an idyllic place – and again the Nazis coersed another Jew to participate in this “document” for the Red Cross: Kurt Gerron, director of many films in Babelsberg, shot some of the footage, but he was sent to die in Auschwitz with his family, long before the film was finished.  Lanzmann set against these falsifications the drawings of talented prisoner artists of the reality in Terezin, most of them died together with the other prominent musicians and academics from all over Europe.

This is still a necessary reminder of the holocaust, even more when one remembers the fate of Anton Burger, the second commandant of Terezin, who was sentenced to death in absentia and but died of old age in 1991 in Germany, helped by the authorities with a new identity.

Andre  Simonoviescz

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST IS ON GENERAL RELEASE COURTESY OF EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT ON 9 JANUARY 2015 TO COINCIDE WITH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ, AND THE UK BLU-RAY PREMIERE OF SHOAH LATER IN THE MONTH

 

 

The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh (2014) | Zurich Film Festival 2014

Director: Marilyn Ann Moss

100min Documentary USA

Though perhaps not as well-remembered a name as some of his contemporaries, Raoul Walsh nevertheless delivered many a well-loved film in his 50 year directing career; White Heat, High Sierra and The Thief of Bagdad among them. According to Walsh, cinema was movement, and he brought a true sense of momentum to his work, be they action, western or gangster movies.

This profile (“the story of Hollywood itself”, he calls it) of his life and career is essentially a filmed memoir telling us Walsh’s life story and the story of the pictures he made through a whimsical first-person narration in the voice of Walsh himself. He wasn’t one who cared to draw a distinction between fact and fiction, which is why this biography may well be full of tall tales and embellishments, but which doesn’t matter a jot. He met Mark Twain, rode with Villa, lost an eye in a car accident, discovered John Wayne and created the Wilhelm Scream as he packed over 100 films into his career, and there wasn’t a star of the day he didn’t work with.

Tremendously evocative archive photos show how he started out as an actor in New York before moving to Los Angeles and learning his trade at the feet of D.W. Griffith. From there it never really leaves its chronological path of trying to tick off just about everything he ever did, moving from movie to movie with no real pause for context. “Then I made this picture with so-and-so” is an oft-repeated phrase.

Still, the gossip and the history is great to hear, and he’s very candid about his work, calling them turkeys when they were turkeys, and about his affairs and who he liked and didn’t like, revealing himself as not a very nice man at a time when rampant racism and misogyny still flew. But it’s all incredibly one-note, especially once his career is in full swing, and it’s certainly not a Hollywood memoir on the level of something David Niven brought us. As fun as it is, in never straying from its formula, it’s much too prosaic and linear to make a lasting impression. Paul Greenwood

Ida (2013) Bfi player

Dir:: Pawel Pawlikowski | Writer: Pawel Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz | Cast: Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik | Poland 80’

Seven minutes into Ida, a startlingly beautiful return to Poland for UK-based director Pawel Pawlikowski, the character of Wanda Gruz stands against the window of her sparse kitchen, smoking, still in her dressing gown. Across the room sits a young novice, Sister Anna – Wanda’s niece. Wanda flicks ash from her cigarette, the smoke beautifully backlit. Casually, she opens her mouth and drops the bombshell that will shake Anna’s foundations to their core: ‘So you are a Jewish Nun’.

Sister Anna, we learn, is really Ida Lebenstein, a Jewish girl orphaned during the Second World War. Her Mother Superior has sent her into the world to meet her last remaining relative before she takes her vows. In Wanda, she finds a bullish presence, a world-weary judge with a formidable reputation (and immunity). Anna and Wanda may be opposites in so many ways, but their characterisation is deft and multifaceted enough to allow no easy answers. When the women set out on a quest to discover how Anna’s parents died, we glimpse beneath the surface, catching sight of the lasting impressions the estranged relatives will leave upon one another. Wanda believes in life, and encourages Anna to experience it in all its carnal forms – otherwise, she argues, ‘what sort of sacrifice are those vows of yours?’ And besides, she says later after referring to herself as a ‘slut’, ‘Jesus adored people like me’. Perhaps, the implication goes, living ‘life’ does not rule out God’s love? Perhaps there is room for both.

But such religious angst is not the only dilemma pounding in the heart of Ida. As the women’s quest through 1960s Poland continues, the legacy of war comes under examination. Political currents ripple through Anna’s personal search for her parents, causing questions of national – and international – guilt to rise to the surface. The spectre of death hovers in the air. It seems our past cannot be easily buried: perhaps we are caught in the consequences of the actions of those who came before us?

As a film, Ida too seems to be built upon forbears; the spirits of Bresson, Dreyer and Antonioni are all here, alive and well, not least in the film’s stunning1.37:1 black and white images. If those names imply an austere coldness alongside a total mastery of the cinematic medium, then all the better – when it is handled as well as this, such a tone is surely something to commend. Ida is intensely visual, impeccably performed, quietly profound – and, at a compact 80 minutes, it may even be perfect. Now with an Oscar under his belt (for Cold War) and another feature – The Island – in the offing more perfection is hopefully on the way. @Alex Barrett

FIPRESCI AWARD WINNER Toronto Film Festival 2013 | WINNER-BEST FILM 57th BFI London Film Festival 2013

 

The New Rijksmuseum (2014) |Winner IDFA 2014

TNR_70x100_onesheet_webDir.: Oeke Hoogendijk; Documentary; Netherlands 2014, 97 min.

When the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was closed for renovation in 2003, the re-opening of the building was planned for 2008. Now, we all know that initial forecasts of these types are always on the optimistic side and appreciate the difficulties of getting rid of builders (and those snagging lists!) but few would have suspected that the Rijksmuseum, with all its Vermeers and Rembrandts, would stay closed for nearly a decade. Oeke Hoogendijk has chronicled this mammoth project with an equally detailed and elaborate film that reflects the subtle nuances of the magnificent spaces; originally, the whole running time of the two parts was nearly four hours: this version is a mere snippet of just over ninety minutes.

The original and very imposing Rijksmuseum was finished in 1885. Together with the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Prado it forms the quartet of the leading art temples worldwide. The new museum was planned by two Spanish architects, Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz, who won the competition, because they solved the entrance problem: their design included an annexe and an underground entrance to the museum. But in 2005, when the project was still on time to be finished in 2008 as planned, Amsterdam’s very powerful bicyclist lobby took offence of the design. They argued that the cycle path through the old entrance, leading through the building and out at the back, was much smaller than the old one, and the equally curtailed pedestrian path would lead to an unsafe environment. The city council decided in favour of the bicyclist lobby, and the architects had to find a new solution. Whilst the curators of the museum went shopping around the world, for example to Japan, to acquire two statues of grim looking fighters, others have to make decisions, which of the old exhibition pieces have to go, since the space of the new museum is smaller than the old one.

Hoogendijk takes the side of the architects and museums staff against the political pressure group – hardly surprising when the spokesperson declares (very seriously) that cycle routes are more important than the right of the public to have the museum reopened, and at the same time constricting the spending. Ronald de Leeuw, world renown Director General of the Rijksmuseum, takes the consequences: he resign in 2008 and moves to Vienna.

His successor, Wim Pijbes, will have to fight for another five years before the re-opening. Unlike de Leeuw, he is a more dictatorial figure (perhaps understandable in the light of the on-goings) and he falls out with his designers. One of them, the Frenchman Jean-Michel Wilmotte, falls asleep in  a meeting, whilst Pijbes insists on the repainting of twenty rooms, since he dislikes the dark colours of the wall. In the end, to the surprise of everyone, the museum reopens, with a ceremony for the statutes of the Japanese fighters, to make them feel welcome in their new home, a belated triumph of art over political power groups and administrative conflict.

Hoogendijk’s style is close to Fred Wiseman, like him, she chooses the ‘fly on the wall’ approach (and the sumptuous running time of the original versions!), rarely taking sides, observing and chronicling a maddening process. Centre point is the slow demoralisation of the architects, who had to re-invent their concept many times over – no wonder, that they started to question the democratic process, which lead to situations, Kafka would have been proud of. An important film, questioning the decision making process of “progressive, democratic” institutions. AS

THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM WON BEST DOCUMENTARY AT IDFA – THE INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM.

EXHIBITION ‘REMBRANDT: THE FINAL YEARS’ WILL RUN FROM FEBRUARY 2015 UNTIL MAY 2015.

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Tallinn Black Nights Festival | 15 November – 1 December 2014

LUCIFER by van den Berghe awarded the best film at the Black Nights Festival at Tallinn, Estonia.

The winner of the Grand Prix of the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival was LUCIFER by the Belgian director Gust van den Berghe which carries a grant of 10 000 euros from the City of Tallinn for his third feature. The prize for the Best Cinematographer was awarded to Erik Põllumaa for IN THE CROSSWIND (Estonia), directed by Martti Helde for its compelling and innovative approach to filming one of the most bitter times in Estonian history and its aftermath.

Jury prize for Best Director went to Marat Sarulu for MOVE (Kyrgyzstan) for working against cinematic conventions by telling a story that not only compels but engages in remarkable social ways.

Jury prize for Best Actor was awarded to Eddie Redmayne in the film THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (UK), directed by James Marsh for his tour de force representation of the integrity of the human spirit as well as the human mind. The Best Actress went to Kalki Koechlin for her role in MARGARITA WITH A STRAW (India), directed by Shonali Bose and Nilesh Maniyar for its unmitigated approach to how physically challenged individuals can overcome all obstacles and learn to be at peace with one’s personal worth.

TALLIN BLACK NIGHTS FESTIVAL (a FIAPF-accredited non-specialized international competition) 15 November until 1 December 2014

Turin Film Festival (2014) | 21 – 29 November 2014

MANGE TES MORTSEddie Redmayne received the first of many awards for his Oscar-worthy portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING which was screened during the Turin Festival this week. The Grand Jury at the 32nd edition of the Northern Italian Film Festival, which culminated on the 29 November, was composed of Ferzan Ozpetek, Geoff Andrew, Carolina Crescentini, Debra Granik e György Pálfi, who awarded the following winners:

BEST FILM EAT YOUR DEAD:  Jean-Charles Hue (FRANCE 2014) (Above)

FOR SOMEJURY PRIZE: FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON Gábor Reisz (HUNGARY, 2014) (left)

BEST ACTRESS: Sidse Babett Knudsen (CYNTHIA) THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY Peter Strickland (UK, 2014)

BEST ACTOR: Luzer Twersky (SHULEM)  FELIX & MEIRA Maxime Giroux (Canada, 2014) (right)

FELIX & MEIRA

BEST SCREENPLAY: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS  Jemaine Clement e Taika Waititi (New Zealand, 2014)

ENDLESS

BEST DOCUMENTARY : ENDLESS ESCAPE, ETERNAL RETURN  di Harutyun Khachatryan (Armenia/Holland/Switzerland, 2014) (left)

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING will be out on general release early in January 2015 (right).

TTOE_D04_01565-01568_R_CROP-2

Ai Wei Wei: The Fake Case (2014)

AI WEI WEI: THE FAKE CASE

Dir.: Andreas Johnsen; Documentary; Denmark 2014, 89 min.

Released from prison after eighty days for a trumped up case of tax evasion, Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei returns to his walled-in residence at 258 Fake in Caochangdi for a year’s life under house arrest. Is Ai Wei Wei is the only Chinese artist we seem to hear about in the West: is he really as talented as we are led to believe or simply a con-man?.

In his abode the first impression is that the whole place is overrun by cats: later they will play with money bills which the artist has folded into little airplanes – the money came from all over China, people wanting to help him to pay off the fine of $ 2.2m he is charged with for his so-called tax fraud. While Ai cannot walk in the nearby woods anymore because he is followed, he strides along the parking lot near his property to keep an eye on the secret police officers. Later, after his house arrest is lifted, the hunted turns into the hunter: Ai chases the policemen in his car.

It is obvious that Ai is a very playful man and this irritates the solemn bureaucracy even more, because he makes fun of them. But western journalists are also the target for his biting humour: an American reporter, who wants to make a film about him, asks Ai for his input. Ai enjoys showering so he suggests a shower scene, to which the American reacts with horror: US-TV would never allow this from of nakedness. (Near the end of this documentary, Johnsen films the artist in the shower).

In China, his photograph ”One Tiger, eight Breast”, showing himself with eight scarcely dressed women, was forbidden as pornographic. Since Ai is not allowed to exhibit in China his new project S.A.C.R.E.D. which shows scenes from his life in prison, is shipped in six large boxes to the Venice Biennale.

Meanwhile, Ai remains positive about the political future in China: when the 80s generation grows up nothing will be the same any more – either the authorities will have to change or they will be blown away, he argues. His sanguine personality, his childlike enjoyment of pranks and his anarchic tendencies are well in evidence in Andreas Johnsen’s non-judgemental approach, the director maintains a serious stance regarding the political implications but never goes for a hagiographical approach, keeping both feet on the ground – just like Ai when he is not jumping in competition with his cats, trying to grab one of his money-planes. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 3RD NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

3rd Nordic Film Festival 2014 | 26 November 7 December

hotel copyNordic Film Festival is back again for a third visit to London with fresh and vibrant filmmaking, past and present, from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Demark. In an eclectic programme from the frozen North’s most exciting talent, award-winning actress Alicia Vikander stars in PURE director, Lisa Langseth’s second feature HOTELL (2013), a tonal curio that shifts from tragedy to humour in exploring four very different characters in search of escape from their traumatic lives.

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Back this year by popular demand is MY STUFF, an effecting documentary looking at how we relate to our worldly possessions through the personal experience of its young Finnish filmmaker, Petri Luukkainen.

Pakistani Norwegian director Iram Haq’s debut feature, I AM YOURS, is a strikingly fresh look at interracial love which explores the gritty relationship issues affecting single Pakistani mother Mina and Swedish filmmaker Jesper as they grow closer.

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The ironically-titled PARIS OF THE NORTH is a melancholic comedy that takes place in a tiny fishing village in Iceland. Very much a moody character piece, it gently probes the difficulties faced by an alcoholic man and his father as they come to terms with themselves and the inevitability of their difficult lives. Copenhagen is the setting for the composite piece NORDIC FACTORY where eight directors collaborate to create four shorts in teams of two. One of them is Lars Mikkelsen (What Richard Did).

Kon-Tiki is a rousing and gorgeous-looking adventure drama showcasing the derring-do of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. While on his epic 4,300 mile voyage of discovery on the high sees, he wrestles with a passing shark and lives to tell the tale. Occasionally becalmed but always eventful.

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This year’s new strand “Architecture and the City” showcases Nordic artist Olafur Eliasson in a documentary about a Icelandic landmark, ‘Harpa: from Dream to Reality’. together with a selection of recent cross-cultural collaboration and Nordic storytelling for children of all ages. Staying on the artistic theme documentary AI WEI WEI: THE FAKE CASE looks at the maverick artist’s life under house arrest in China. Is AI WEI WEI the talented artist he claims to be or simply a high-evolved con man. You decide.

 

THE 3RD NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
I AM YOURS ***
(Jeg er din)
Iram Haq | Norway 2013 | 96m | Norwegian/Swedish/Urdu + English subtitles | advised cert 15
A moving portrayal of a young woman’s struggle with love, motherhood and being caught between two cultures.
SCREENING: 2 Dec Arthouse Crouch End (London)

Kontiki KON-TIKI **
Joachim Rønning/Espen Sandberg | Norway/Denmark/Germany/Sweden 2012 | Norwegian/Swedish/French/English + English subtitles |118m advised cert 15
This epic global tale of bravery, camaraderie and sheer determination follows the 1947 expedition of Thor Heyerdahl across the Pacific Ocean.
SCREENING: 3 Dec ArtHouse Crouch End (London)

 

My StuffMY STUFF ****
Petri Luukkainen | Finland 2013 | 80m | Finnish + English subtitles | cert 15
Docudrama about a filmmaker’s one year experiment in creative living, locking away all his possessions in storage…
SCREENING: 4 Dec ArtHouse Crouch End (London)

 

 

pressbild/hotellHOTEL **
(Hotell)
Lisa Langseth | Sweden 2013 | 97m I Swedish + English subtitles I advised cert 15 |
Successful young professional Erika resorts to an ill-suited therapy group after her life takes an abrupt turn in this honest and at times humorous exploration of the human psyche.
SCREENING: 7 Dec Hackney Picturehouse (London)

 

NOT AT HOME ***
Katja Adomeit/Sharbhanoo | Sadat Denmark/Germany/Afghanistan) | 60m | advised cert 15
Courtesy of CPH:DOX
Collaboration with leading Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX, with a shorts programme from their CPH:LAB initiative.
SCREENING: 7 Dec The Proud Archivist (London)

HUGO AND JOSEPHINE
D. Kjell Grede | Sweden 1967 | 82m | Swedish + English subtitles | cert U
One summer in the Swedish countryside, Josephine, the pastor’s daughter, and Hugo, a boy who fends for himself in the woods nearby, join ranks in search of adventure. From the Cinema of Childhood touring season.
SCREENING: 7 Dec The Proud Archivist (London)

Highlights From December 8th Onwards Include:

i am yours_02_lowres copyI AM YOURS ***
(Jeg er din)
Iram Haq | Norway 2013 | 96m | Norwegian/Swedish/Urdu + English subtitles | advised cert 15 |
SCREENING:
10 Dec Filmhouse (Edinburgh)
14 Dec Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle)
16 Dec Broadway (Nottingham)

 

 

Paris_of_the_North_01PARIS OF THE NORTH ***

(París norðursins)
Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson | Iceland/Denmark/France 2014 | 98m| Icelandic + English subtitles | advised cert 15 |
Set against Iceland’s stunning West Fjords, this bleakly comic tale sees thirty-something Hugi’s life turned upside down when his estranged father arrives in town.
SCREENING:
8 Dec Glasgow Film Theatre
15 Dec Broadway (Nottingham)
16 Dec Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle)
17 Dec Filmhouse (Edinburgh)

DAYS OF GRAY

Ani Simon-Kennedy| Iceland 2013 | 78m | advised cert 15
With a nod to the tradition of silent cinema, Icelandic band Hjaltalín’s award-winning soundtrack set the tone for this atmospheric tale of hunters, outsiders and a society bound by strict rules.
SCREENING:11 Dec Filmhouse (Edinburgh)

nordic factory_04 copyAI WEIWEI: THE FAKE CASE ***

Andreas Johnsen | Denmark 2013 | 86m | Mandarin + English subtitles | advised cert 15 |
Detained for alleged tax evasion, artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei spent 81 days in a prison cell. Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen (Kidd Life, 2012) digs deep to document the ensuing high-profile court battle.
SCREENING:
15 Dec Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle)
18 Dec Broadway (Nottingham)

NORDIC FACTORY ***

Sundays (Kræsten Kusk/Denmark and Natalia Garagiola/Argentina)
Listen (Hamy Ramezan/Finland and Rungano Nyoni/Zambia)
Void (Milad Alami/Denmark and Aygul Bakanova/Kyrgyzstan)
The Girl and the Dogs (Selma Vilhunen/Finland and Guillaume Mainguet/France)
2014 | 60m | Danish + Englsh subtitles | advised cert 15 |
Nordic Factory is a collaborative project between young filmmakers in which each film is influenced by the coming together of different cultures and cinematic styles. Featuring Lars Mikkelsen (Borgen), Signe Egholm Olsen (Borgen) and Dar Salim (The Killing, Borgen, A Hijacking).
SCREENING:
15 Dec Glasgow Film Theatre

HOTEL **

(Hotell)
Lisa Langseth | Sweden 2013 | 97m I Swedish + English subtitles I advised cert 15 |
Successful young professional Erika resorts to an ill-suited therapy group after her life takes an abrupt turn in this honest and at times humorous exploration of the human psyche.
SCREENING:
17 Dec Broadway (Nottingham)
18 Dec Filmhouse (Edinburgh)
22 Dec Glasgow Film Theatre

The Grandmaster (2012) KUNG FU FESTIVAL | 1-4 December 2014

Director: Wong Kar Wai

Cast: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ziyi Zhang, Chang Chen, Zhang

120min    Drama  Cantonese/Mandarin with subtitles

A debonair man in in a black trench and white fedora steps out into the rain-drenched night, all noirish shadows and gunmetal streets. Sauvely and sinuously, he rapidly sees off a twirling troup of assailants in Wang Kar Wai’s latest outing choreographed by Yuen Woo-Ping in a dazzling opening sequence assisted by Philippe Le Sourd’s precision cinematography.

The Grandmaster This is the story of two Kung Fu masters. Ip Man (Tony Leung) comes from China’s south and Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) is his adversary from the north. Their paths cross and a elegant love story unfolds in Foshan on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1936. Gong Er’s father is travelling to Foshan to visit the legendary brothel, The Golden Pavilion, where the country’s best martial artists come together for his retirement ceremony. This tale of betrayal, honour and love plays out against a war-torn backdrop that opens in 1936, as the martial arts community of the Southern China anticipates the imminent retirement of Master Gong Yutain (Wang Qingxiang).

Tony Leung trained to be a legendary Grandmaster for his role in the film Wong Kar-Wai’s highly anticipated, years-in-the-making, arthouse treasure and claims it has made him a better and more disciplined actor. The art involves physical training but, more importantly, mental exercise and adds qualities of  unshakeable confidence, modesty and inner strength to his repertoire of talents, not least of which is star quality. At the press conference at Berlinale 2013, he claimed Ip Man is the the first character he’s actually enjoyed playing because of his supreme optimism in the face of the preternatural pressure faced by his slick protagonist as he undergoes a lifetime’s preparation, which sees him eventually training Bruce Lee.

The Grandmaster serves as both a biopic of the imagined kung-fu expert but also a tender love story, showing director Wong Kar Wai at the height of his technical skills and precision as a filmmaker with its sumptuous noirish look of richly lacquered hues of grey and green and snowy panoramic landscapes. But the director’s usually inspired and creaative storytelling occasionally feels difficult to follow and less immersive and despite its straightforward linear narrative structure. This current release has been edited down to 108 minutes from the original 120 minutes, tightening it slightly and including some helpful inter titles. Nevertheless, his latest film lacks both the heart and soul of In The Mood For Love and the edginess of Chungking Express or even the lush and dreamy imagination of 2046.  Even Ashes of Time (1994), his other martial arts film, generates a more profound and authentic sense of place and power with its clashing swords and acrobatics. But The Grandmaster is a highly commercial film that places Wong Kar Wai firmly in blockbuster territory despite its Mandarin/Cantonese script. Sadly, despite its remarkable kung-fu credentials, there is little emotion here behind the motion. MT

THE GRANDMASTER HEADLINES THE KUNG FU FESTIVAL

MONDAY 1ST DECEMBER – ENTER THE DRAGON

TUESDAY 2ND DECEMBER – CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

WEDNESDAY 3RD DECEMBER – HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS

THURSDAY 4TH DECEMBER – THE GRANDMASTER 

Tickets available at www.ODEON.com

 

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Dekalog (1988)

IMG_0931Dir.: Krzysztof Kiešlowski

Cast: Wojciech Klata, Krystina Janda, Janusz Gajos, Jan Tesarz, Anna Polony,Ewa Blasczyk, Miroslaw Baka, Jerzy Stuhr

Poland/West Germany 1988/89, 572 min.

This ten-part TV series is often called “Kiešlowski’s Ten Commandments”, but nothing is further from the truth. In the first place, the director never believed “in the need for an arbitrator” like the Church, when it came to a credo. Secondly, Kiešlowski never thought that his films would change anything – never mind being taken as commandments: “At best some people will remember some parts of some of my films”. So the deeply pessimistic director was doubting everything human and, particularly, he had little faith in society in all its forms: after his nearly life-long attack on Stalinism, he was deeply disappointed with life in Poland under Capitalism.IMG_0929

Whilst the ten parts are loosely connected by their references to the ten commandments, they primarily depict chaos and a lack of human commitment to anything but the individual. Kiešlowski’s co-author, the lawyer Krzysztof Piesiewicz, found the basis of the narratives in newspaper articles, declaring “that more and more I came to the conclusion that humans did not know any more why they lived”. Even then, it becomes clear that the media, TV or computers had become much more important than human relationships themselves.

Shot in a soulless, claustrophobic suburbs of Warsaw, the norm is Hell: indifference, loneliness and absurdity rule. The episodes are dominated by cowardice, violence, dishonesty and opportunism; nearly everybody seems to be a crook of some kind. Kiešlowski is just an observer, perhaps symbolised by a young man (Artur Barcis), who appears briefly in every episode, but never participates. Stanley Kubrick described the DEKALOG as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.

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DEKALOG offers no solutions at all, no home-made philosophies or didactic assistance; despite its comparative ‘triviality’ as a TV production, it presents no moral or ethical help to make us feel better. Perhaps “moral tragedy” is the right term for DEKALOG, even though Kieslowski would not have liked to call anything moral. His non-judgemental narratives pose questions, with the audience having to find the answers. This approach is perhaps best symbolised by the woman, in one of the episodes, who is pregnant by another man but only wants to carry the baby to term if her husband dies.

Kiešlowski was the last “metaphysical’ filmmaker in Europe, he is critical of all forms of society because they have chosen to live without any commandments, religious or otherwise. AS

(Dekalog Five and Six also exist as larger versions: “A Short Film About Killing” and “A Short Film About Love”)

SCREENING AS PART OF THE KIESLOWSKI RETROSPECTIVE IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Nordic Factory (2014) | 3rd Nordic Film Festival

Nordic Factory is a Residency, Workshop and Short Film Concept which brings together young directors from the Nordic countries and their counterparts from all over the world. Their short films are documents of the collaboration between filmmaker from very different backgrounds.

THE GIRL AND THE DOG by Selma Vilhunen and Guillaume Mainquet. Mette, Lina and Anna-Sophie, three young teenagers, are on their way to a party. When they find dead dogs on the shore, their reactions are very different. Whilst two of them shrug off the incident, one of the girls tells her friends a long fairy tale about dogs, which her friends reject as childish. The monochrome images of the girls are very impressive, together with the grey beach landscape, they conjure up a poetic atmosphere. Stylish and expressionistic, as well as wonderfully acted. ***1/2

SUNDAYS by Kraesten Kusk and Natalia Garagiola. Every Sunday Anne picks up her old father from the care home, and takes him to the hothouse. But this Sunday is different: the tearful father confesses his guilt for the many beatings he gave her daughter “to make her a better person”. But Anna is not impressed, and her reaction startles her as much as her father. Poignant and very well observed, the ‘confession’ of the old man is shown for what it is: not a confirmation of his guilt, but just wailing self-pity. Perhaps a little harsh, but very realistic, SUNDAYS is nevertheless very stunning. Camera work excels in narrow spaces. ***1/2

LISTEN by Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni. In a Copenhagen police station a woman, wearing a burqa, is giving evidence of her husband’s continuous abuse. The interpreter, a young Muslim woman, on purpose miss-translates her complains to the police officers, as to keep the conflict hidden from the outside world; telling the woman that the imam will solve her solution. But the woman feels that she is miss-represented and gets angry, which in course causes the police officer to shout at her. Than her son contacts his father, telling his mother that he is old enough to defend her. A vey simple but far from simplistic short feature, which shows that a woman can be as treacherous as a man, when it comes to cover up individual crimes in the name of a religion. ***1/2

VOID by Milad Alami and Aygul Bakanova. On a ferry from Copenhagen to Bornholm, Daniel, a man in his early 50ies, starts a conversation with Amir, an attractive man in his 30ies. For a while we are guessing: is Daniel making a pass at Amir; but then the older man invites Amir to come with him into his cabin, were Daniel’s beautiful wife is waiting, ready to sleep with Amir. After hesitating, Amir finally succumbs, but finds out, that Daniel is living in the past. A very claustrophobic tale, told with many undertones: homophobic, racist and psychotic elements all intermingle. The acting is brilliant, and the camera travels around the two men, as if they were two animals in cage. Brilliant. ****
AS

LA ISLA by Katarzyn Klimkiewicz and Dominga Sotomayor. A medium length film telling the story of a family tragedy, set on a rural island. Jaime is the main character of his film, even though he is killed right at the beginning of the film in car accident – but this is only known to the audience. His family waits for him, first in a small cottage, later they all go out into the wilderness. Everybody is talking about him, tales and anecdotes, but somehow a certain change occurs in the atmosphere: it is, as if we are transported in a future, were nothing is the same any more. The cottage is falling apart, and the woods seem to take over. A melancholy study of transcendence and morbidity, LA ISLA is photographed with great imagination, nature being shown as something eternal, compared with the fleeting human existence, which gets frailer, the longer the film goes on. An engrossing, magical tour de force. ****

THE 3RD NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 26 NOVEMBER UNTIL 7 DECEMBER 2014

Documentary shorts | UK Film Festival 2014 | 17-21 November 2014

UK FILM FESTIVAL 2014: SHORT DOCUMENTARIES

Unlike their feature film brethren, documentary filmmakers cannot rely so much on snazzy camera work and have to keep a closer eye on content. This proves to be an advantage looking at the short documentaries in competition of this year’s UK Film Festival.

SHAKESPEARE’S INTERMISSION by Diana Nilles, winner of the documentary section at this summer’s “Berlin Short Film Festival”, is a portrait of the “Intermission Youth Theatre” in London, where young people at risk of offending are rehearsing and performing in a church in South West London. Shakespeare plays are one of their favourites, since they reflect their own, conflict-ridden life – and performing “Romeo and Juliet” the cast can relate very much to the fights between the clans. But acting has somehow sobered some of the hot-tempered cast members up, leading them to a more reflective way of looking at their own street life. Whilst they all enjoy acting, some of them know, that there own demons are still not conquered. Nilles sensitively draws out the young actors, and her documentary profits from brilliant editing and an innovative camera work, dealing with the rather special light in the church. Overall, SHAKESPEARE is by far the most rounded outing making an impeccable entrance. ****

THE PENNINSULA directed by Hunter Abbey certainly deserves the prize for most original approach. It is a travel diary of a group of mature bikers from New Zealand who managed to get a visa for touring North Korea. Since visas are only granted for state visits, the streets they pass are flanked by waving officials and citizens alike, giving the group’s journey through the country a very absurdist feeling. In Pyongyang, the capital, this impression gets even stronger: the city is like a gigantic backdrop to a monumental film. Somehow set between the brutal architecture of the Nazis and the “Zuckerbäcker” style of Stalinism, this city is unworldly – dwarfing the bikers, who would stand out in any other environment, into total insignificance. Abbey catches scenes from the everyday life of the citizens, who are open and very hospitable. The camera work is brilliant, particularly the panoramic shots of the mountain landscape and the impressive images of the massive buildings in the capital. An impressive chronicle of a special journey. ***1/2

Louis Jopling’s THE WILL OF HENRY BOURNE suffers a little from a very laddish approach, trying to be funny when there is really nothing to laugh about. A group of young English lads discover a will by a Frenchman in a London office and set out to France to find the heirs. Jopling tries too hard to show how much fun the “boys” had, and neglects the finer points of the little tragedy unfolding during their search in France. **1/2

Just the oppositite can be said about SOCOTRA by Charles Cardelus, a very serious and in-depth portrait of the island of the same name in the Indian Ocean which is now part of Yemen. The island was often called “the place, which time forgot”, but Cardelus shows, that incredible changes have taken place in the last decades. Apart from technical progress, Muslim teaching has been taken on board and whilst women are still discriminated against, there are no witch-hunts any more as in the past, when women were killed or had to leave the community if they were accused of witchcraft. A floating camera catches the beauty of the place, keeping up the proportion between information and images. ***1/2

Finally, BIRDMAN by Sam Clarke is a short and very English portrait of his uncles Terry and Alan. Terry, who builds his own small planes, had suffered all his life from a kidney disease making him virtually the prisoner of a dialysis machine. Since his brother has donated him one of his kidneys, he has a new lease of life and has built a mini-version of the Spitfire. At the end, we see the two brothers setting off for the maiden flight. BIRDMAN, which won this years TRS award, is lovingly created and explores obsessive brotherly love and the pursuit of happiness in the air. The flying sequences are brilliantly handled and overall Clarke creates an idyllic but never cloying portrait. ***1/2 AS

THE UK FILM FESTIVAL 17-21 NOVEMBER 2014 FEATURING THE LUX FILM AWARDS

Gare Du Nord (2013) | French Film Festival UK 2014

Director: Claire Simon        Writers: Claire Simon, Shirel Amitay, Olivier Lorelle

Cast: Francois Damiens, Reda Ketab, Nicole Garcia

119min   Docudrama   French with English subtitles

Whether this stylish docudrama will keep you captivated for nearly two hours, it certainly offers a visually appealing look at the daily comings and goings of the one of France’s busiest transport hubs. In the Gare Du Nord, Paris’s ever-shifting social and economic population rub along together sometimes positively and sometimes with outbreaks of violent hostility.  Amongst the handful of characters who regularly inhabit the station is Algerian- born Ismael (Reda Kateb) and graceful history prof Mathilde (Nicola Garcia) who strike up an unusual romance when he interviews her for a survey.  Gradually, through snatched moments of talking and flirting, from platforms to cafes, they be come involved.

Claire Simon is best-known for her documentary work such as Coute que Coute (1995). Her original approach, which aims to capture ‘the essence of reality’ with half-documentary, half fiction pieces, has been seen before in her TV film: That’s Just Like You (2000) set inside the European Parliament and big screen outing God’s Offices (2008) which tackles the world of town planning.

Here in GARE DU NORD, she focuses on four main characters: Ismael, Mathilde, Sacha (Francois Damiens) and  Joan (Monia Chokri).  As Ismael introduces Mathilde to his many acquaintances, he discovers she’s undergoing cancer treatment and suffering considerable emotional and physical strain. But when she becomes involved with a store robbery by a particularly unpleasant thief,  it’s TV comic Sacha who comes to her rescue, acting as a witness and assisting the police with their inquiries. Ismael becomes elusive and it’s at this point that the narrative starts to wander off  on more generalised and less intimate terms, adding texture by introducing incidental characters (often non-professional actors) who commiserate with each other in snatched conversations about their hopes and dreams, as the voyeuristic camera pans over the station offering well-composed widescreen visuals of majestic local landmarks and interiors. Marc Ribot’s atmospheric original score highlights moments of zen-like calm and those of anxiousness.

Alluring and enigmatic at times, confusing and arcane at others, Claire Simon offers up an inventive way of reflecting both the anonymity and the intimacy that can exist in contemporary urban settings, echoing the rich tapestry of cosmopolitan life in an everyday setting. Performances from Damiens, Kateb and Garcia give ballast and integrity to this ephemeral slice of Paris. MT

My Stuff (2013) Tavarataivas | 3rd Nordic Film Festival 2014

Written and Directed by: Petri Luukkainen

With his friends and family

80min   Docudrama    Finnish with English subtitles

Bereft by the loss of his girlfriend, filmmaker Petri Luukkainen suddenly finds the experience a cleansing one.  Maybe a general clear out of his life is in order?  Does he need so many ‘things’?.  This being Finland, Petri lives in a modern, bright and well-insulated flat.  There are well-designed storage facilities nearby where he deposits his belongings and starts to live his life devoid of accoutrements and personal effects; for the time being.  And so begins Petri’s fascinating social experiment. Set in a snowy Helsinki and accompanied by Timo Lassy’s Jazzy soundtrack, this is a light-hearted, good natured affair – entertaining to watch and appealing in its concept.

Running naked through the snowbound streets of Helsinki feels liberating.  And gradually his friends are drawn in to the debate of what is really necessary in life. The dialogue kicks off with his grandmother who claims that after the War people were content just to have work. “Your things are not a measure of your happiness – Your  life is not made up of your things”.  With counsel like this, how can he go wrong?  When his mum turns up, they eliminate more of his belongings together – including his moustache: amid her infectious laughter this is turning out to be great fun.  A fridge is necessary and some decent bedding, they agree.  He even decides to confine the use of his ‘phone and camera for work. But Email?  How does he handle the problem of staying in touch socially without ignoring the inbox? Good friends drop by to visit and so he decides the quality of friendship is proportionate to their use of technology to stay in touch.  And he can always watch the game or World championships in the streets of the Helsinki.

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Six months into the experiment he returns to his hometown for a break.  Fortunately Finns are fun and possess a well-developed sense of the ridiculous.  His lack of belongings is emblematic of his strength of character – or that’s how he sells his slimmed-down identity to potential girlfriends.  Travelling out of Helsinki and into the summery Birch-strewn countryside, Jesse Jokinen’s glorious visuals capture the natural freshness of this most Northerly Nordic country with considerable allure.

And eventually a new girlfriend arrives. “Hopefully you don’t shoot blanks” says his grandma when he shares the glad news. And she’s dead right: “women need more things than men” and gradually the stuff creeps back into his life.  Maija’s arrival brings happiness and interest to his days: he’s falling in love but hasn’t got the courage to tell her.  Inevitably she brings more stuff and soon the place is all  nicknacked-up  because “she wants something purple or more stylish, and so it goes on”…

Charming and endearing MY STUFF starts as a study into ‘doing without’ but gradually develops into something much more important and meaningful. As Petri’s grandmother tells him from her new nursing home “things won’t build a home – it has to come from somewhere else”.  But when he starts clearing out her little flat of its treasured belongs, the tears inevitably flow: MY STUFF shows him that sometimes possessions are the only things we have left of the people that mean so much to us.  MT

MY STUFF IS SHOWING AGAIN AT THE 3RD NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL, COURTESY OF ‘DAY FOR NIGHT’.

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UK Jewish Film Festival | 6-23 November 2014

The UK Jewish Festival is back with another nationwide feast of film (Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester and Glasgow): this year is the biggest festival yet with 67 features and 28 shorts showcasing life and all its guts and glory throughout the diaspora.

The festival kicks off with the UK premiere of French thriller THE ART DEALER, a modern-day detective story set in Paris, where a young woman uncovers a web of deceit and betrayal surrounding her family’s fortune. Follow a selection of this year’s films here.

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Cold Eyes (2014) | UK Korean Film Festival

Dir.: Cho Ui-seok, Kim Byung-seo

Cast: Han Hyo-joo, Jung Woo-sung, Sol Kyung-gu; South Korea 2014, 118 min.

As we all know, remakes rarely match the original outing, but Cho and Kim have succeeded in re-planting one of Hong Kong’s most original crime thrillers EYE IN THE SKY from 2007 to a seedy Seoul with their COLD EYES, the original title translating simply into The Surveillants.

COLD EYES is the story of hunters and their prey. All three main protagonists are introduced in a long and rather enigmatic opening sequence set in a high-speed tube train: Tom-boy Ha Yoon-joo (Han) is muttering to herself, her fingers moving seemingly on their own will, whilst she constantly survives (and memorises) the goings-on in the carriage. Middle-aged Hwang (Sol) casts a detached eye on the proceedings: people dropping newspapers, bumping into each other, exchanging looks. Of all the people caught on camera one figure stands out: the grim-faced, soulless James (Jung) who tries to slip into the background, avoiding eye contact. The following scene, in a restaurant, at least solves the identity of two of the trio: Ha is a young police cadet, trying to qualify for Hwang’s prestigious surveillance unit. Needless to say, she passes with flying colours, even though Hwang makes sure that she can see her limits. It’s clear that boss and apprentice have much in common: in their different ways they are obsessed with surveillance work to the point of being slightly insane, having lost contact with the real world.

The unfolding narrative concentrates on the hunt for a gang of criminals led by James, who turns out to be a sadistic killer. After a bank robbery the surveillance unit follows one the participants caught on CCTV: an overweight man, given the code name “hippo” by Hwang, who has also given all his team members animal names; Ha being “Piglet”, somehow not as grand as her own proposed “Reindeer”, eventually proves her self in the impressive denouement.

There are hand-to-hand combat scenes, car chases and long, technical explicit surveillance scenes. The directors show a seemingly endless knowledge of this field. But neither this aspect, nor the fast-forward mode of the action sequences explain the fascination of the film: Ha is dominating the proceedings subtly, a brilliant mixture of vulnerability as well as mental and physical toughness. Like Hwang, she lives in a world of her own, when she is chasing her prey with a viciousness belying her frail but lean exterior. Her eyes seem to have a much more quality than the countless lenses we see in action.

COLD EYES is a playful exercise in over-kill, carried by Ha’s personality. The Seoul settings are changing constantly between the high-tech world of the city and the seediness of the districts – leaving the viewer in no doubt, how these seemingly so different environments rely on each other. Camera work is very innovative, particularly in scenes set at great height; it also gives every member of the team and James their own POV. Whilst the narrative hardly offers any surprises, Ha and the virtuosic photography make COLD EYES a superior action thriller.

Screening at the UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL

Revivre (2013) | UK Korean Film Festival

Dir.: Im Kwon-taek

Cast: Ahn Sunki, Kim Hojung, Kim Qyuri; South Korea 2014, 93 min.

In his 102nd feature film REVIVRE, veteran South Korean director Im Kwon-taek tells the story of an ageing man caught between his duty to a dying wife and his lust for a young woman. Based on the short story “Hwajang” by Kim Hoon, the ambivalence played out in the film is explained by the double meaning of ‘Hwajang’ in translation: “putting on make-up” as well as “cremation”.

Mr. Oh (Sunki) is an advertising executive for a major company producing beauty products. In his mid-fifties, he lives a very unhappy life: His wife Jinkyung (Hojung) is dying of a brain tumour, and he is suffering from prostate trouble, causing him to visit a hospital on a regular basis, to have his bladder emptied. Further more, his job is very stressful, competitors and his own staff making his working life a living hell. No wonder therefore, that he is falling in love with the young Choo Eunjoo (Qyuri), a new employee in his department. We suspect that the latter might be taking advantage of the situation, when Oh is finding out, that his by now deceased wife knew along about his feelings for the young woman.

Set between the months of February and December, Hoon’s short story is very much told in internal monologues. Im Kwon-taek avoid voice-overs, which would have been an easy solution, and tries instead to focus the narrative on Oh, whose ambiguity dominates the proceedings. His relationship with his wife is typical: whilst he is looking after her in the hospital, even performing tasks for the nurses, it becomes clear in flash-backs that he never really loved her. He sees her, like his job, as a duty, which he performs as well as possible. The only events he really enjoys before Choo Eunjoo appears, are the long drinking dinner parties with his staff. Family and work life always collide: after the funeral of his wife, Oh’s house is full of family guests, but he prefers to tend to employees who need his authorisation for the forthcoming release of the summer collection. Whilst he makes one failed attempt to talk to Choo, he prefers to imagine making love to her. Mr. Oh is a lonely man indeed and he is going to realise this even more when he learns rather surprising facts about the woman of his dreams.

REVIVRE is an elegy, a melancholic portrait of an old man who has to come to terms with his own mortality and a life that from the outside might have looked a success, but was much more empty. In one short scene with his wife and her dog, we see how much more the dog means to her – the gulf between the couple was only camouflaged by the presence of their children and Oh’s long working hours. The camera follows him often mournfully; in long shots he seems to disappear into the background. Sunki’s Oh is very understated, he is played with great restraint and his inner hollowness is translated into a stooping walk and long gazes into a far-away world. Somehow he seems to be so lightweight that a wind could blow him away. REVIVRE is a convincing “trauerarbeit”. AS

REVIVRE WAS THE CLOSING NIGHT GALA OF THE STRAND OF THE UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2014

French Film Festival UK | 7 November – 4 December | 2014

Aimed at bringing new French films to the provinces, there is also a strong London presence to this popular festival, celebrating its 22nd anniversary this year. From the latest features to iconic cult classics, the 2014 edition offers with a strong slate of dramas starring a variety of well-known French talent: Emmanuelle Devos, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Amalric and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, to name but a few. This year the focus is on the work of the late Alan Resnais, with his debut HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959) to his swan song: AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER (2014).

LifeLIFE OF RILEY | AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER | ALAIN RESNAIS | 2014 | ***

For his 50th film, which also turned out to be his swan song, Alain Resnais adapts the work of Alan Ayckbourn in this stagey farce with garish theatrical sets and occasional glimpses of the leafy countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. Starring his wife Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain (Bird) Andre Dussollier and Hyppolyte Girardot, it’s just the sort of thing that older French audiences lap up but do we really need another stage adaptation (his third) of YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET?. This turns out to have additional flourishes with drawings by French artist Blutch and puppetry to boot! You know the story here – middle-aged, middle-class couples whose close friend is diagnosed with cancer. Or is he? Mannered performances all round may appeal to his diehard devotees.

BLUE_ROOM_KissForestTHE BLUE ROOM | (LA CHAMBRE BLUE | MATHIEU AMALRIC | 2014 | ***

Mathieu Almalric bases his directorial debut, in which he also stars, on a 1964 crime thriller from Belgian detective Simenon. Lushly erotic and superbly shot on the Academy format (square) by the capable Christophe Beaucarne, it will please the art house circuit with its subtle performances and fractured narrative style. After making love to his mistress Esther (a sinuous Stephanie Cleau) in the eponymous blue room, tractor magnate Julien goes home to his lovely wife and daughter. The story jumps forward to show him being cross-examined by a local magistrate (a masterful Laurent Poitrenaux) as it transpires that his affair with Esther is not as simple and compartmentalised as he thought. As the story goes back and forward further clues gradually emerge, fleshing out the storyline but leaving the details as shady as Esther’s own background. The Blue Room is a workable and stylised piece of cinema that offers good entertainment, but many critics questioned why it was considered for Un Certain Regard this year at Cannes.

diplomatie-andre-dussollier-niels-arestrup copyDIPLOMATIE | VOLKER SCHLöNDORFF | 2014 | **** | Best adapted Screenplay CÉSAR 2015

Based on a play by Cyril Gely, Niels Arestrup brings his sinister talents to this slick WWII drama when he plays General Dietrich von Choltitz, a German assigned by Hitler to carry out the destruction of Paris in 1944. Fortunately he underestimates the negotiation tactics of Andre Dussollier’s Swedish consul, Raoul Nordin, and it soon emerges that both men have personal rather than moral issues at stake. Thrillingly tense and skilfully-crafted, the narrative is teased out slowly as the city’s cultural heritage hangs on a thread at the mercy of two men’s powers of persuasion. A brilliantly acted and tightly-scripted wartime treat.

adieuGOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, | ADIEU AU LANGUAGE | JEAN-LUC GODARD | 2014 | *** FRENCH_RIVIERA_01 copy

FRENCH RIVIERA, | l’HOMME QUE L’ON AIMER TROP | 2014 |**

ARIANE’S THREAD | AU FIL D’ARIANNE | ROBERT GUEDIGUIAN | 2012 | **

Robert Guédiguian takes a light-hearted break from his usual leftist political fare with  slice of magical realism set in his beloved Marseiiles and starring his regular collaborators Ariane Ascaride (in the lead) and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. Very much along the lines of GLORIA (2013) it focuses on a middle-aged woman who is suddenly all alone for the first time in her life on her birthday. Marseilles is very much a character here, and athough there are plenty of darker undercurrents to this sunny sejourn as Ariane’s attempts to have fun are thwarted by a series of set-backs, like a glass of Pastis on a hot day, it goes down smoothly enough but, at times, has you wondering whether you’re really seeing straight.

GARD DU NORD | CLAIRE SIMON | 2013 | ***

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FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME FOLLOW THE LINK

 

 

 

 

Manshin (2013) | UK Korean Film Festival

MANSHIN – TEN THOUSAND SPIRITS

Dir.: Park Chan-Kyong

Cast: Kim Geum-hwa, Moon So-Ri, Ryoo Hyon-Kyong, Kim Sae-Ron, South Korea 2013, 104 min.

When principal photography on MANSHIN was finished, the production run out of money and the film could only be finished after an extensive funding drive. The result is overwhelming and absorbing, even though one has to suspend belief in rationality and modern life for the entire length of film.

The central character of MANSHIN is Kim Geum-hwa, 83, the national Shaman of South Korea: her life story is performed by three different actresses covering the different phases of her life. Whether or not you can engage with her initiation and exorcism rituals performed on land and often on ships, these magnificent ceremonies with their piercing music are astonishing and unlike anything seen before. As far as the overall concept goes, it becomes clear that Kim is an evangelist  who, with the help of her many spirit guides, brings her followers into contact with friends and family members who have passed over to the other side. This collective approach to a spiritual otherworld is much more humanistic than that of the more mainstream religious concepts which rely on a single, more or less wrathful higher being who has to be obeyed at any price. One could say that Kim and her followers have taken a holistic and artistic approach to spiritual well-being.

Kim is now a respected figure throughtout the World but this wasn’t always the case. Even as a child, Kim was ostracized by the people in her village after she predicted the early death of the father of one of her friends. Later on, she was persecuted by various military dictatorships in South Korea, who tried to repress her rituals. The images, some of them in monochrome, are an extremely striking portrait of a very violent society.

Warching these traditional Korean spiritual rituals and listening to Kim requires a certain suspension of disbelief, of buying into this mystical world and learning to accept the spirit medium’s life on its own terms – but for this we also require a different concept of time. If MANSHIN teaches something, it is this concept of interlocking time levels, acted out in rituals that take over our entire being and existence;  becomimg a way of life. AS

THE UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 6-21 November 2014

La Sapienza (2014) | Seville Film Festival

DIR/WRITER; Eugene Green

Cast: Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Prot Landman, Ludovico Succio, Arianna Nastro

107min  Drama Italy/France

Eugene Green’s Portuguese Nun was a work of subtle and enigmatic beauty. La Sapienza (a Univeristy in Rome and ‘wisdom’ in Italian) has the same rather cool detached allure in which the actors recite their lines clearly and often looking straight into the camera, in well-composed frames. It centres on a disillusioned middle-aged couple who have reached the companion stage after a difficult marriage where they have lost a handicapped child. Alexandre (Fabrizio Rongione) and Alienor (Christelle Prot Landman) arrive in Stresa, Lake Maggiore, on the first leg of a trip that intends to re-ignite their relationship and allow Alexandre to complete his architectural research on the work of his hero, the Baroque master, Francesco Borromini. They come across a brother and sister who are students; the young man Goffredo (Ludovico Succio) is studying architecture, his sister Lavinia (Arianna Nastro) becomes bed-ridden with unexplained dizziness. Alienor suggests that her husband continues his research trip down to Rome with Goffredo’s able assistance, while she remains with the poorly young girl to chat in French and help with her recovery.

In this intellectual, dialogue-driven drama there is little natural small talk: each conversation is direct and frank, aiming to offer some kind of didactic enlightenment or edifying debate on the subject-matter discussed: architecture, the theatre, love, philosophy allude to the title of Wisdom. Through these crisp and pared-down exchanges, Green fleshes out his characters’ thoughts and feelings. The men embark on an richly textured architectural diatribe covering the finer points of Barroque architecture while the women discuss more emotional and psychological issues including the nature of how the past, present and supernatural co-exist in perpetuity. Gradually though, the mens’ conversations appear more cultivated and heavyweight while the womens’ are made to feel more trivial and ephemeral. That said, this is an ambitious and richly textured film not least for its spectacular landscapes and majestic views of Borromini’s Baroque architecture in various locations around Italy. Occasional flashes of humour help to lighten the load of the intense didacticism, enriched by the elegant visuals of Raphael O’Byrne. MT.

Seville European Film Festival runs from 7-17 November 2014

Kundo: Age of the Rampant (2014) | UK Korean Film Festival

Dir.: Yoo Jong-bin; Cast: Ha Jung-woo, Lee Sung-min, Kang Dong-wan

South Korea 2014, 137 min.

Honouring its full title KUNDO: THE AGE OF THE RAMPANT, the film was equally rampant at the South-Korean box office, before being replaced a few weeks later by an even more brutal seafaring movie as the best-selling South Korean movie of all times.

Set in 1862 in the last days of the Josean era, KUNDO uses this corrupt period as an background for an all out “Eastern”, a genre not long ago known as Kung-Fu, but elevated into the opposite of a “Western” to gain serious attention: some critics will draw parallels to Leone, Kurosawa and Morricone, but KUNDO is an unadulterated excuse to show off the fighting skills of all concerned. And as brilliant as these skills turn out to be, KUNDO is in the end just a martial art show-off with swords, guns and meat cleavers.

Warming-up very slowly and introducing too many characters, whose fate is never resolved, KUNDO finally boils down to a duel between two very different outsiders: Dochi (Ha), a cleaver swinging ex-butcher from the lower classes, who has to become a bandit to support his family, and Jo-Joon (Kang), a would be nobleman, who feels cheated out of his rights. The baby-faced villain somehow has our sympathy, since he was the original heir to his father’s title and fortune, but the birth of a half-brother meant that Jo-Joon was a disqualified to inherit the family title because his mother was a mere courtesan. Jo-Joon plans to murder the whole clan, including a pregnant woman. Entrance Dochi, who is too soft-hearted for such a heinous crime and declines to act, only for Jo-Joon to have his whole family murdered. The rest of the film builds up to the show-down between the two and their armies in a bamboo forest.

Yoo pulls every trick in the book, including a woman warrior, who slaughters hordes of men with her baby on the back. Camera work is brilliant, not only the fighting scenes, but the landscape panoramas are impressive. The subtitles are often hilariously funny, taking away any hope of seriousness for foreign audiences. Overall KUNDO is an outstanding choreographed martial ballet, which would have made more or less the same impression without the pretence of a narrative – light years away from anything a Kurosawa or Leone achieved. AS

KUNDO; AGE OF THE RAMPANT SCREENS DURING THE UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 6-21 NOVEMBER 2014

 

 

Whores’ Glory (2011)

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Dir/wri: Michael Glawogger | Germany/Austria Documentary 100min

Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger died from malaria on 23 April 2014. He was 54. Known primarily for his documentaries, Glawogger was the subject of IndieLisboa’s ‘Independent Hero’ retrospective in 2006, and his film WHORES’ GLORY won the Feature Film Grand Prize at the 2012 edition. The film is a highly impressive and exceptionally shot documentary about three brothels situated in red light districts in Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico: their employees, employers and clients.

Quoting Emily Dickinson’s four-line poem ‘God is indeed a jealous God—’, WHORES’ GLORY opens on a number of pole dancers in a viewing box elevated above a busy boulevard, down which walk streams of men who look up with intrigue and excitement. The venue is the Fishtank, located in Bangkok, and its employees are prostitutes who pray to God for “money, luck and all things good and beautiful” before signing on for their shift ahead. “So many girls,” one of them says, “I hope I get a client.”

Lined up against a wall of striking primary colours, the girls sit patiently and politely, as clients pile in to ogle them from behind a glass screen. “There’s no comparing these with my wife,” one of the men tells the camera. “My wife is a lifetime partner.” Another says: “I need a girl who will do everything,” to which the smartly dressed proprietor, referring to the girls by number, responds with assurance: “210 has a good attitude.” In fact, 210 and 232 are both particularly popular. Each costs a client 1600 bhats for two hours.

We head to City of Joy, in Faridpur—whose quarters are appreciably cramped in comparison to those of the Fishtank. Here, the pimps are predominantly women, whose literal and figurative daughters are forced through economic need into prostitution. “I’m going to get a condom from my mother,” one of the girls tells a client. In Bangladesh, the clients are younger than in Bangkok. One of them, a local barber, tells us that “having the brothel is definitely a good thing”: without it, women would be in danger from horny men willing to sexually assault them for their own gratification.

In Reynosa’s The Zone, meanwhile, clients are even more candid—talking with blunt openness about their sexual preferences. They come to the strip in their cars for sexual experiences that are, for one reason or another, unobtainable outside this area of legitimised sex. The women also appear to be more candid; in a scene near the end, one employee has sex with a client right there in front of the camera, charging more (naturally) for varied positions and sticking to her guns when stopping halfway through fellatio because the guy’s 20 minutes are up.

It’s to Glawogger’s credit that his subjects talk so openly. Shot by Wolfgang Thaler, the film is visually beautiful to a fault: combined with an eerie (and excellent) soundtrack that gives it a kind of zoned-out cosmic energy one might expect more typically from a Michael Mann crime thriller, Thaler’s cinematography lights these milieus like hyper-real neon fantasies. They’re both the real thing and a simulation of it. Indeed, its gorgeousness might even put the film’s documentary status into doubt.

As Glawogger shifts from one brothel to the next—heading east-to-west—his scenes become more melancholic and laced with latent danger. While the Bangkok women speak in their spare time of acquiring second jobs at weekends, their opposites in Faridpur compete in overwhelmingly claustrophobic surroundings with barely contained pettiness. “What can I do?” one of the women says, “I have nowhere else to go.” In Mexico, a palpably more anarchic environment, alcoholism and spaced-out confusion reign.

Make no mistake: any beauty Glawogger’s film boasts is ironic, as the director observes his subjects with both a genuine fascination and a distanced respect—and all the time without sentiment. Michael Pattinson

 

 

UK Korean Film Festival 2014 | 6-21 November

A_GIRL_AT_MY_DOOR_2 copyThis year’s Korean Film Festival will focus on the work of maverick filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, who is best known for his controversial titles such as PIETA and MOEBIUS. The UK premiere of his Venice Festival hopeful ONE ON ONE will also screen during the festival. The opening night film: Yoon Jong-bin’s KUNDO: AGE OF THE RAMPANT, is a 19th century ‘Robin Hood’ style Kung-Fu thriller about a militia group of bandits – Kundo – who rise up against their unjust nobility, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Cult classics will again feature this year with a selection from the archives under the ‘K Classics’ strand such Ki-young Kim’s shocking melodrama THE HOUSEMAID (1960).

Other films worth watching are Seong-hoon Kims’ A HARD DAY starring Baek Jong-hwan, and July Jung’s A GIRL AT MY DOOR, which was nominated in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year. THE KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-15 IN LONDON AND 16-21 NATIONWIDE. Tickets and schedule available here

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Saint Laurent (2014) Tribute to Gaspard Ulliel

Director: Bertrand Bonnello | Cast: Lea Seydoux, Gaspard Ulliel, Louis Garrel, Aymeline Valade, Brady Corbet | France Biopic

Bertrand Bonnello presents his sinuously sensual portrait of YSL that focuses on the designer’s early years. Although a great deal longer than Jalil Lespert’s version, it doesn’t really illuminate more of the designer’s life but centres on his sexuality to the apparent disproval of Pierre Bergé for reasons that will emerge on viewing. Gaspard Ulliel gives a far more complex portrait than Pierre Neney’s elegant but sterile take on YSL (although the latter was superb); Ulliel’s starry allure also has more to offer female audiences coupled with the additional frisson of Louis Garrel as his lover, Lea Seydoux as Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux (Aymeline Valade). There’s an inspired midway montage where the screen splits to offer salient events ‘du jour’ as the YSL key looks are parading on the seventies catwalk. This serves as a brilliant counterpoint to social history as much as a slight dig at the ephemeral nature of the fashion world. Bonnello captures the zeitgeist of the seventies and the heady world of pristine couture that ushered in the more relaxed prey-a-porter era. YSL’s languorous and luxurious styling; darkly exotic designs; femme fatale models (Helmut Newton-style); louche living both in Paris and Morocco, and, of course, his descent into drugs are all encapsulated in this dreamy drama. Ulliel’s performance is vulnerable and coltish; always delicate but supremely sexual. Bergé gets short shrift here, with Jeremie Renier hardly getting a look-in and there is much less focus on the business-side apart from a protracted scene with a US Financier (Brady Corbet) that feels out of place. Louis Garrel gives an awkward performance as his lover, Jacques de Bascher, looking more like a German stormbamführer than his aristocratic and dominant beau. The only other slight flaw in Bonnello’s biopic is his decision to cast Helmut Belger as the ageing YSL, in a badly voice-synced, and ill-advised jump forward. Otherwise, this is a visual treat that won Best Costumes at the Cesar awards. MT

GASPARD ULLIEL 1984-2022 | CÉSAR 2015 WINNER – BEST COSTUMES

Dancing Arabs (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival

Dir.: Eran Riklis; Cast: Tawfeek Barhom, Yael Abecassis, Michael Moshonov; Israel/ France/Germany 2014, 105 min.

Israeli-born director Eran Riklis tries very hard to be impartial in this portrait of Israeli Arabs. After all, they represent a fifth of the whole population. Everywhere, anti-Arab slogans daub the walls and Israeli youth bully these second class citizens, quite apart from the widespread stop-and-search tactics of the police who spring out of the woodwork with surprisingly regularity.

Gifted teenager Eyad (Barhom), leaves his family in Palestine to study at a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem. His family expects him to make up for his father, who went to university in Israel, but was arrested, imprisoned but never charged for terrorist activities. He is now working as a fruit picker and expects Eyad to ‘avenge’ him. Eyad’s Hebrew is weak, and he is teased (and worse) by his classmates. As part of the university programme, all the students have to do “social activities”, Eyad’s ‘case’ being Jonathan (Moshonov), a Jewish boy of his own age, who is suffering from muscular dystrophy and becomes Eyads only friend. Until that is, he meets Naomi, a Jewish girl from his college. The two fall for each other, and Eyad starts to forget a little about his roots. To make some money he uses Jonathan’s Jewish identity card so he can qualify as a waiter; Arabs work in the kitchens. When Jonathan’s mother finds out, she surprisingly encourages him. With Naomi, the dying Jonathan and his mother being closest to him, Eyad will have to make a decision about his identity, and his future.

DANCING ARABS takes its title from the saying, “that Arabs have to dance at two weddings”, meaning that they have to obey their religion and the rules of their family lives; but, if they want to succeed in Israeli society, they have to hide their roots, at least in public life. This leads to a schizophrenic state of mind, Eyad being a good example. Not only does he want to succeed for himself, he also carries the burden of his family’s expectations. But once away from his family’s influences, he soon discovers that love and friendship with Israelis can be a normal way of life. This film works best when exploring the relationship between Eyad and Jonathan, two outsiders, whose relationship is governed by equality. Eyad’s affair with Naomi on the other hand is less convincing, whilst his relationship with Edna, Jonathan’s mother, is very subtle – somehow replacing that of his own mother.

Lively cinematography offers panoramic shots of Jerusalem, intercut with newsreel images,showing the brutal war between Israel and the Arab world. Barhom is very convincing, and Moshonov plays out all the desperation of his ever shortening life. Riklis tries hard to be impartial, but in doing so, he sometimes has to resort to sentimentality. Still, DANCING ARABS is a worthy stab at reconciliation, even though the reality is much too grim for even such a small attempt at compromise – proven by the cancellation of the Open Air performance of this film in Jerusalem for security reasons. AS

LFF 9.10. 20.45 MAYFAIR, 12.10. 12.00 VUE5
THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Self-Made (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Shira Geffen  Cast: Sarah Adler, Samira Saraya

Israel 2014, 91 min.

Director Shira Geffen won the ‘Palme d’Or’ in 2007 in Cannes for Jellyfish. Here she uses absurdist comedy to deliver another provocative comment on the Israeli/Palestine conflict. In Jerusalem a conceptual artist is thrown out of bed with a bang. We naturally suspect a bomb attack, but the answer is much more simple: Mihal is the victim of a collapsing bed, leaving her with a bruise on the head and a rapidly diminishing memory. She forgets her husband’s trip to Stockholm and an interview with a German TV crew. Having ordered a new bed at an IKEA-clone shop, Mihal, complaining (wrongly) about a missing screw for the bed, inadvertently causes Arab teenager Nadine (Samira Saraya) to lose her job in charge of packing screws at the furniture store.

Meanwhile Nadine is fighting for her right to wear jeans and pink earphones, whilst her traditional family simply wants to marry her off. Since Mihal is a VIP, she not only gets a new bed, but some freebies in compensation – one of them being a playpen, which is ironic, since she’s had her uterus removed and made into a purse for a an exhibition at Venice Biennale. In the confusion that follows the two girls swop roles and assume each other’s identity and when Mihal tries to cross the border she gets arrested at the checkpoint between Israel and Palestine. Here the narrative descends into a ridiculous farce where anything can happen: Mihal is mistaken for Nadine, and after the identity switchover, Mihal is fitted out as a living bomb to cause havoc in Israel, whilst Nadine has to face the irate German TV crew. And so confusion reigns in a region where Arabs have to queue for hours at checkpoints between the two countries, just to do a day’s work in Israel.

Geffen delivers and clever and convincing drama full of contradiction, acerbic humour and convincing performances from Adler and Saraya. Mihal’s frustration in trying to assemble her ‘IKEA’ bed will strike a sympathetic cord with audiences everywhere in this is a well-craafted sociopolitical story from the much troubled Middle East. AS

LFF: 9.10. 18.15 Covent Garden, 12.10. 20.45 Cine Lumiere, 13.10. 15.15 NFT1

Villa Touma (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

VILLA TOUMA

Dir.: Suha Araf

Cast: Maria Zreik, Nisreen Faour, Ula Tabari, Cherien Dabis

Drama Israel 2014, 88 min.

So many stories from Ramallah Palastine deal with conflict and war, it’s refreshing to see a female-focused drama about the Christian community. VILLA TOUMA, is the feature debut of writer/director Suha Araf, and although it was produced mainly with Israeli money (and a female Israeli crew), is a technically a Palestinian film, running under a stateless flag. Set after the war of 1967, it explores the rather old-fashioned world of three aristocratic Christian sisters, who take their orphaned niece Badia (Zreik) into their house of gloom, as an act of generosity and altruism.

Badia, the niece of one of the sisters and a Muslim woman, has spent her life in a catholic orphanage, but even this harsh environment has not prepared her for the loveless and cloistered life with the three sisters, ruled with an iron fist by the oldest, Juliette (Faour). Even worse is Violette (Tabari), a spiteful spinster (whose elderly husband died before the marriage was consummated), who hates Badia because of her youth. Only the youngest, Violette (Dabis) has any humanity, and tries to support Badia as much as possible. After vainly trying to marry Badia off to one of the very few Christian suitors of the rapidly declining upper-class Christians in Palestine, the girl meets an Arab musician and gets pregnant after a secret one-night stand in the garden of the villa. Badia’s pregnancy isolates her even more from the sisters, who feel threatened not only by her fecundity but also by her ability to attract a member of the opposite sex behind their backs, and when she suddenly gives birth, disaster strikes.

VILLA TOUMA is not a perfect film, it feels rather airless and stagey, but it carries its heart-breaking story with brilliant acting and a bijou aesthetic: the villa is really more of a mausoleum than anything else: the sisters have buried themselves in time, pretending not to have witnessed any change in society. Furthermore, their attitude towards Arabs, in the specific case their caretaker, who is treated like a second-rate citizen, resembles very much the position of the Israeli. Their poverty is obvious, but they try to pretend a glorious life style to the outside world, particularly when entertaining suitors for Badia – ignoring the fact, that nobody falls for their charade. Admittedly the semitic races in the Middle East do still engage in matchmaking of this sort (Jordan and Syria are no different). But these cloistered sisters live in denial, and are only too happy to devour each other out of self-hate. Badia is their victim, and welcomed only as such. On the few occasions, the sisters go out into the world, they seemed lost, without the aggression they vent against each other and Badia, and we see them for what they really are: left behind relics of a long bygone era.

The Camera pans through the house, picking up objects of the past, and treating the sisters alike: inhuman, they are part of the furniture. Badia stands no chance against these immovable objects; only once, when dancing with Violette, is she allowed to move like a young person. The claustrophobic atmosphere gobbles her up. VILLA TOUMA is a nightmarish vision, in which the three sisters try to vanish into a glorified past, alienating themselves from the real life outside. AS

REVIEWED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

Mr Kaplan (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Alvaro Brechner; Cast: Hector Noguera, Nestor Guzzini, Rolf Becker

Uruguay/Spain/Spain 2014, 98 min.

Uruguayan filmmaker, Alvaro Brechner is perhaps best known for his multi-award winning comedy: Bad Day to Go Fishing. His second feature Mr Kaplan is Uruguay’s official submission to next year’s Academy Awards. It centres on an emigrant Jew from Europe. At 76, he’s living out his late-life crisis in a small seaside town in Uruguay, very similar to the one in Pablo Stoll’s Whisky (2004). Jacob (Noguera) has lost interest in his family, particularly his two sons who bore him with their quarrels (one a total conformist, the other an equally convinced outsider) and he often fights with his wife Rebecca (Nidia Telles), who tries to keep his diet under control. Then, one day he discovers the beach-bar owner is German, old enough to have been a Nazi, and overnight Jacob enlists the help of portly ex-cop Contreras (Guzzini), to mount a ‘war-crime’ case against him. Jacob, seeing himself in the news as a self-styled heir to the Eichmann hunters, succeeds against all odds with his companion playing Sancho Pansa to his Don Quixote.

But after having captured their prey, they find out why “the German” is running away: he is a Jew, having served in a concentration camp as a “Kapo”, meaning he was selected by the Nazis to do some of their dirty work for them. To refuse this appointment, would have meant immediate death for any inmate. The ex-Kapo, tired of running away from hunters and himself, decides to take his own life and in an extraordinary twist of fate finds salvation.

A small film with its heart in the right place where all the characters (apart from Rebecca) appear to be more or less lost; struggling for an identity, running from the past, and ultimately themselves. Jacob, bored with his bourgeois life-style, suddenly decides to become a hero at the wrong time of his life. Whilst the consequences of his actions could have been much harsher, when he finally finds himself back in the midst of his family, he looks grumpier than before, not at all relieved to be alive.

MR KAPLAN has a some fine performances, a bone-dry take on life, a vibrant camera capturing the action from interesting angles and a stringent script, which makes the audience root for Jacob because he is such a lovable anti-hero. AS

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-23 2014 NOVEMBER NATIONWIDE

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Brian Knappenberger; Documentary; USA 2014, 105 min.

This is the story of a genius who fell foul of the state machine: Aaron Swartz committed suicide aged twenty six in January 2013, after being harassed by the Justice departments on account of the “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFaAA)” of 1986 (!), which is obviously out of date and totally open to interpretations. Apparently House Member Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.) introduced the Repudiation of the Act as “Aaron’s Law” in 2013.

Knappenberger’s documentary is bookended by home movies of little Aaron, who taught himself to read at the age of three: after enjoying “Paddingon Bear” we see him dancing joyfully. By the age of 14 he was working at the “World Wide Web Consortium”, helping to develop the ‘RSS’ standard. But it was not only the technical side which interested Swartz. Because of his theoretical involvement, he was very aware of the possibilities of misuse – and censorship. When “Reddit”, the independent site he had help to set up, was sold to Conde Nast Publications in 2006, Swartz did only last a few months, he was aware of the power of corporations – and the politicians which were in their pay. In 2008 he co-founded “Watchdog”, a site who kept tabs on the elected members of Congress. In the same year he authored a paper with Shireen Barday, looking at thousand of law review articles written by law professors, who had been paid by industry to write their ‘opinions’. And to cap a busy year, he “liberated” 20 million of pages of “PACER”, the archive of court records – using a small window, when the government allowed free access – usually the public had to pay eight cent per page.

The case which brought the justice department on the scene, started in September 2010, when Swartz accessed the MIT network for their academic database “JSTOR”, and after they blocked him, he found a restricted closet and hardwired his laptop to the network, beginning to download huge volumes from the data base. He was accused of four felony accounts, but rejects a plea bargain, which would have meant a year long house arrest without a computer and a felony record. MIT meanwhile was staying “neutral” on the case, even though they know, that if they don’t press for prosecution, the government has no case. On 17.7.2012 bail is set at $100 000. In October of the same year, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is introduced in the House, to great acclaim of all side. But after a campaign culminating in the 24-hour blackout of the “Wikepedia” site on January 18/19 2012, the bill is pulled. In December of the same year, Carmen Oritz, US Attorney for the District of Masschusetts, and her deputy, the Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heyman, charge Swartz with more charges felony offences, by now the penalty has risen to 50 years in prison. On the 11.1.2013 the defence files a motion to supress evidence from correspondence between Heyman and the Secret Service. On the same day Swartz takes his own life in Brooklyn, New York.

Most harrowing is the interview with the computer journalist Quinn Norton, Swartz’s partner from 2007 to 2010. She was bludgeoned by the Justice Department for a “proffer”, a judicial term for a forced witness statement. Quinn would have gone to jail, if the Justice Department would have forced her, (as they threatened) to give up her password for her computer, containing her confidential files. She chose to be a witness, and was tricked into giving evidence, that might have been used against Swartz at the trial. Their relationship ended, even though they became friends later.

The material is overwhelming, to say the least, but Knappenberg focuses on the salient facts, keeping up a brisk pace, engaging the viewer in this rollercoaster action documentary. The camera always finds new ways to avoid “talking faces” and the narrative is never dramatized. But a tragedy it is nonetheless and the waste of a life of a genius; damming the government for its complicity. That nobody prosecuted Bill Gates or Steve Jobs for breaking the CFaAA – stands out as a resounding reminder; but then THEY only wanted to make money. AS

NOW SCREENING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL NATIONWIDE FROM 6-23 NOVEMBER 2014

 

 

 

Fury (2014)

Dir.: David Ayer; Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Alicia von Rittberg; USA 2014, 120 min.

War films tend to lack subtlety – understandable when considering the topic, but writer/director David Ayer (Sabotage) can claim to have reduced the genre to Neanderthal levels with this latest outing FURY. His motley US tank crew, fighting in April 1945 on German soil, consist among others of Brad Pitt’s Don Collier as the leader of the pack, a very oily and rather unconvincing Shia LeBeouf as Boyd Swan and a baby-faced Logan Lerman as the newcomer Ellison (as gunner), who claims “only to have trained as a typist, to achieve 80 words a minute”. Yeah…

It is impossible to catalogue all atrocities committed by cast and crew, but here are two of the worst: when Ellison arrives, after introducing himself with his CV mentioned above, he has to clean the inside of the tank including the remains of his predecessor whose face is literally plastered all over the floor. Later on, our ‘heroes’ conquer a German town and Collier and Ellison enter a flat where a middle-aged woman is hiding a frightened teenage girl, Emma (von Rittberg), under the bed. Collier finds her immediately and before sitting down for a meal, Lerman plays a few notes on the piano. Collier whispers in his ear “if you don’t take her to the bedroom. I will.” Lerman obeys his commander’s order, and has sex with Emma. One would expect the girl to be traumatised by this semi-rape, but Emma declares her love for Lerman, promising to “write to him” (sic). Soon afterwards she is killed, when bombs hit her house.

Collier’s tank is strangely shown more or less in single action, the budget obviously did not stretch to the employment of the usual divisions of armoured vehicles we are used to. This way, war is reduced to a purely individual combat, where ideology or even strategy is left out. Camera work is reduced to showing the obvious (in mostly garish colours), and the acting is as stereotyped as possible. FURY lacks intensity as well as drama, it is an empty vessel for stars ‘showing off’ – unworthy of the real allied soldiers, who fought the last war one could call justifiable. AS

FURY WAS THE CLOSING GALA AT THE RECENT LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

 

In the Crosswind (2014) | 30th Warsaw Film Festival

Director/Writer: Martti Helde

Cast: Laura Peterson, Tarmo Song, Mirt Preegel

Estonia Experimental 87mins

With invasion from Nazi Germany imminent, Stalin’s plans to ethnically cleanse the USSR of its Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian territories were first carried out in June 1941—and resumed between 1945 and 1949. It was the beginning of a mass deportation and genocide of men, women and children from these countries to the unthinkable climes and working conditions of Siberian labour camps in the north.

Dedicated to the 590,000 people whose lives were claimed by the Soviet holocaust from these regions alone (total estimations throughout all the USSR are between 1 and 1.5 million), IN THE CROSSWIND is Estonian writer-director Martti Helde’s visually stunning, cumulative suckerpunch of a debut feature, and screened in the 30th Warsaw Film Festival’s International Competition following its world-premiere in Toronto, and was awarded a prize by the Ecumenical Jury.

That Helde is still in his 20s is remarkable. Based on a mix of eyewitness accounts, photographs, memoirs and survivor-testimonies, IN THE CROSSWIND is a distinct contribution to a cinematic genre that must tread the delicate line between aestheticising and honouring a historical tragedy. Working with cinematographer Erik Pollumaa, the graduate of Tallinn’s Baltic Film & Media School conceptualises these catastrophically underreported-on episodes in Soviet history with a series of wonderfully choreographed tableau vivant (‘living picture’) compositions.

Said compositions are doubly posed: actors are arranged as if caught by a stills camera, trembling with contained energy. Pollumaa’s Steadicam moves with Tarr-like elegance through these scenes like a helpless onlooker to a visual snapshot that in the same instant invites participation but denies understanding. This moving elegy to resilience and hardship is fully aware of the cinema’s limitations in dramatising genocide.

Scenes depicted include those of anguished separation, as women and children are wrenched away from husbands and fathers; those of impoverishment and deterioration as women, underfed and humiliated, are put to work on collective farms; an arrest takes place, of a starving woman who dares to reach for a loaf of bread; men are placed before a firing squad and executed without trial; later, news of Stalin’s 1953 death comes resonating through on the radio. A vivid sound design animates these temporally paralysed traumas, while Pärt Uusberg’s riskily frequent musical score lends an unapologetically emotive swell whose impact is perhaps magnified by current developments in Crimea.

Chief among Helde’s sources of inspiration are the letters sent from one Estonian woman deported with her daughter to Siberia. Erma Tamm (Laura Peterson), a philosophy student, wrote without reply to her husband Heldur (Tarmo Song), who we learn was executed five months after his own deportation. Narrated and interweaved with other texts, Tamm’s diaristic dispatches heighten the frozen present-tense of her purgatorial trajectory. “The loveliest years of my life,” she notes, “passed at a standstill.” With knowing heartache, she laments not having fled Estonia before deportations began—instead living her life “held to ransom”.

The persistence of these scenes is brilliant. The fine line between a moving image and a still one, between life and death, is captured in the slight quiver of an actor’s sustained pose. Helde, keeping them in suspension as if filming a game of Musical Statues, reminds us that these are ongoing re-enactments that exist in time as much as space, by affording his actors the occasional involuntary blink, or allowing the odd drip of water from a creaky roof. The traumas of the Soviet holocaust persist. MICHAEL PATTISON

What a Wonderful World (2014) | 30th Warsaw Film Festival

Director/Writer: Anatol Durbală

Cast: Igor Babiac, Igor Caras-Romanov, Tudor Ţărnă

Moldova Drama 73mins

Born in 1970, Moldovan actor and television personality Anatol Durbală has taken his time to write and direct his first feature film, but the wait was worth it. World-premiering at Warsaw Film Festival – where it received the FIPRESCI Prize – ironically-titled WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD is as gut-thumping a debut as any.

April 7, 2009. Petru (Igor Babiac), a student in his early 20s, arrives for a short visit to his native Chişinău from Boston, USA, where he has been studying for two years. Being taxied from the airport to his aunt’s home, he calls his Dominican Republican girlfriend Elizabeth, with whom he arranges a Skype conversation later that evening. Upon sorting through his old bedroom, however, Petru remembers that he loaned his computer monitor to a friend, Slavic. He goes to retrieve it from the latter’s grandmother.

Anyone familiar with the civil unrest that rocked the Moldovan capital and other major cities following accusations that its unannounced parliamentary elections had been rigged (in favour of the incumbent Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova) will have been forewarned by in-scene news footage anchoring the film to April 2009. For others—and they’ll be numerous, for too little western coverage was given to such news—the narrative switch at this point will come as a surprise. Uprooting the previously established emphasis upon the quotidian—such as his protagonist simply walking from one place to another—Durbală has Petru, computer monitor in hand, suddenly attacked and arrested in the street by masked men.

Other ominous signs were present. The book on Petru’s lap as his plane lands in the opening scene is Harry Dolan’s Bad Things Happen. Indeed: whereas the film had teasingly suggested before this point that it might follow one lad’s dogged, neorealist quest to have an online video call with his girlfriend, the narrative thereafter brutally precludes any notions of romance. In the scene immediately following what looks like his random kidnapping, Petru is dragged out of a van and brought to lie face down with other detainees of similar age and appearance.

As a kind of statement of intent, the scene unfolds in one take, a De Palma-style crane shot that begins as a rooftop aerial view of shenanigans before descending with clinical precision to settle upon a helplessly limited ground-level perspective. Hereafter, cutting is sparse and misery is prolonged. Here, the end of a long take will afford the characters some kind of relief from the dreary, claustrophobic compositions in which they are trapped. “You want to turn us into Romania?” one character asks late in the film, which is presumably meant to double as a sly nod to Durbală’s neighbours, who have, with the likes of THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (2005) and POLICE, ADJECTIVE (2009), pointed unrelenting lenses at their own nation’s crippling post-communist bureaucracy.

Petru is caught up in the violent police crackdowns that followed protestors attacking and looting governmental buildings. His computer monitor is mistaken for the government’s. Similar to Steve McQueen’s own debut feature HUNGER (2008), Petru’s arrest initially gives way to a more ensemble feel, as protestors are collectively held in close confines, in the cold and without water. In an office along the corridor, two police officers enjoy humiliating one prisoner by having him elevate a TV aerial so that they can watch Barcelona’s football team hammer Bayern Munich.

Though such scenes risk caricature, Durbală’s unflinching portrayal of police brutality makes it clear which side he’s on—though opening his film with the vague gambit that it’s merely ‘based on facts’, and ending with a muddled dedication to ‘all victims of violent protests’ may dampen the blow in the same way that an amateurishly flat sound design detracts from scenes in which young people are truncheoned along a corridor by swing-happy coppers.

The suitably gruelling qualities of Durbală’s long takes, however, make compelling set-pieces out of increasingly doomed scenarios. Again recalling HUNGER, and perhaps also POLICE, ADJECTIVE, the climactic showdown here is a conversation-cum-interrogation between Petru and a tea-sipping police major (Igor Caras-Romanov). While the former naively persists with the only truth he knows, the latter, a simmering pot of inherited prejudices, deeply-embedded fascistic paranoia and ad hominem accusations, bubbles cartoonishly as he erupts into nostalgia about Stefan the Great and spits with incoherent venom about some kind of national degradation.

Though Durbală’s chosen, fictionalised vantage point often lacks dramatic insight, his writing and directorial talents are evident. Taking its title from the Louis Armstrong number, WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD is unapologetic in its deployment of such an overused but somehow never unmoving musical choice. Clichés can be effective too: in its artistic depiction of a painful episode in Moldova’s recent history, the film is all the more unremittingly gloomy for using a song whose beauty always felt melancholic to begin with. MICHAEL PATTISON

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD HAD ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT 30TH WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL WHERE IT WON THE FIPRESCI PRIZE

I Nostri Ragazzi (2014) The Dinner | Venice International Film Festival

Dir.: Ivano de Matteo

Cast: Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Luigi Lo Cascio, Barbara Bobulova

Italian with subtitles, Drama, 92 min.

Two brothers, Massimo (Gassman), a doctor and Paolo (Cascio), a glib lawyer, meet regularly with their wives, whilst their teenage children Benedetta and Michele go to parties together. The adults actually despise each other: Massimo is self-congratulatory, looking down on his more down-to-earth brother and trying to bend the law in favour of his clients. No love is lost between the women either: Massimo’s wife Clara (Mezzogiorno), a practical hands-on woman, finds the fashion-conscious Sofia (Bobulova) rather trivial, despite her responsibility for Benedetta, whose mother died very young.

But of the blue, the parents find out that their kids have killed a homeless woman, apparently just for fun. All but Paolo, want to cover up the crime so as not to destroy their future. But when Paolo insists on handing the pair over to the police, Massimo reacts with violence.

Ivano de Matteo delivers a moral, character-driven fable, with some unexpected twists. These are, by no means, the people we thought they were to begin with: Massimo starts out as the moral apostle, doing good in his profession, full of love for mankind (apart from his brother and his wife). Paolo is only interested in success, the means do not matter to him. But when it comes to the crunch, he is the only one to ask for justice – the other man wants to cover up for the children. Nowadays, over-protection of kids in the middle classes is the norm; parents buy (or cheat) to get their “mini-me’s” a good place in life (this author being no exception); trying to resolve all problems for them; making them dependent on the older generation; often forgetting to teach responsibility and self-reliance.  Sure, the outcome is not often so cruel as in this fictional case, but the root of Benedetta and Michele’s coldness lies in their own upbringing.

The cast is brilliant, the camera vividly tries to find the protagonists in the concrete jungle, or in their work places. The grown-ups seem always on the run; the teenagers are indolent. A very gloomy but perceptive indictment on a social class who, on superficial appearances, seems to have everything.

REVIEWED AT VENICE 2014. LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 19 OCTOBER 2014

 

The Immortalists (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Jason Sassberg, David Alvarado; Documentary; USA 2014, 80 min.

Finding a cure for dying; making humankind immortal: these medical solutions may be not around the corner, one reckons on about 25 years. Jason Sassberg meets the scientists struggling with the issues of getting us there: it really makes you wonder how people can talk seriously about “living forever” or “measuring our lifespan in thousands of years”. There are psychological problems, apart from our already over-crowded planet and questions of ethics: if there ever was a pill for eternal life it would most certainly not be sold over the counter, as predicted by one researcher, it would just be found in the medicine cabinets of the super-rich.

Scientists face many unresolved problems, among them clearing humans cells from garbage – like housecleaning; or the telomeres, long living cells, which are found in above average numbers in cancer tumours and have therefore to be isolated, otherwise they would kill instead of giving longevity.
But the real revelations of this documentary are the proponents of the usefulness of this research. One, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical biologist from Cambridge, looking like Rasputin, very fond of beer and women, discusses at the Oxford Union the pro- and cons of research funding. His opponent, a rather subdued Dr. Colin Blakemore, talks ethics, and de Grey is scathing in his reply. He is a good salesman, but somehow his glibness falls on deaf ears: the mainly young student audience rejects his motion, seemingly happy with our usual lifespan. Later, we learn that de Grey has found new funding and a working place in California, where he will live with his two girlfriends, leaving his wife, also a scientist, behind. Somehow one has the feeling with de Grey that he is much more a guru than a scientist.

Bill Andrews, an American proponent of the search for immortality, is a sober and earnest man, but something of a health freak: together with his wife (very much livelier and fitter than the good Doctor) he participates in a sort of treble marathon in the Himalayan mountains. Having nearly killed himself during an abandoned try in 2011, he repeats the trial again two years later, and has to withdraw with chest pains. With the encouragement of his wife, he finally finishes the course walking. Andrews, whilst being much more sober than de Grey, still lacks any imagination of the social implications of any breakthrough.

There is no mention of spiritualism or re-incarnation here and these scientists seem every bit as whacky and weird and many of those who peddle the constant stream of new-age beliefs. Even though the topic is very serious indeed, THE IMMORTALISTS is rather fun to watch. The proponents of eternal life are somehow proof themselves that humankind does not need or deserve an even longer stay on this planet than our ‘three score years and ten’, that was the ideal in biblical times. We create already enough sadness and destruction in our present life-spans – for ourselves and the environment – any concept of even more longevity for our species is frightening, but, alas, it may still happen. AS

LFF 18.10. 15.30 RITZY

The Imitation Game (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Morten Tyldum; Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance; UK/USA 2014, 114 min.

Tyldum’s moving biographical feature tells the story of the most unsung hero of British wartime and scientific history. Alan Turing (1912-1954), not only (nearly) single-handedly cracked the code of the German Enigma machine during WWII in Bletchley, shortening the war and saving millions of lives, but his Turing machine was also the first digital computer. THE IMITATION GAME explains why he didn’t become the household name he deserved to be: a sad tale then of a genius betrayed by an ungrateful country and a bigoted establishment.

For once, the use of dramatic liberty used in the narrative of this drama is legitimised by the fact that only such an artistic approach will ensure that Turing’s legacy is made known to a wider public. The events of Turing’s life are played out on three levels: the largest part is obviously reserved for his work on Enigma; his boyhood experience, the bullying and first crush on a boy called Christopher at Public School, and finally, his rather sordid end in Manchester, were he was convicted of indecency and chose a hormonal treatment, otherwise known as chemical castration, as an alternative to a two-year stretch in jail. After a year of treatment, Turing committed suicide, in love with his ‘Machine’, which he named – like the Enigma code breaker – ‘Christopher’.

Cumberbatch plays Turing as an eccentric often arrogant but usually reserved man, who is socially awkward, dissociating himself more or less from emotional life and his fellow humans; finding solace only in numbers and their application. He loved his own company and we frequently see him running long distance – the real Turing was a gifted marathon runner, nearly qualifying for the London Olympics in 1948. His time at Bletchley is memorable for his relationship with the cryptographer, Joan Clarke (Knightley), who wants to marry him, being unfazed by Turing’s self-confessed homosexuality. The two outsiders (Clarke was the only women in the team of ‘Hut 8’ were the code breakers worked), found solace in each other’s company, but Turing was unable to have a close relationship with anybody, regardless of their gender, and he broke off their engagement. The film overplays the rivalry between Turing and Hugh Alexander (Goode), who was the team leader of ‘Hut 8’, but Turing was hardly interested in the administrative duties this post brought with it. After Turing’s death Hugh Alexander was adamant that “there should be no question in anyone’s mind that Turing’s work was the biggest factor in ‘Hut 8’ ‘s success”.

After Bletchley, Turing worked on the Turing machine, based on his seminal paper of 1936, which was a modern computer but for its name: “Except for the limitations imposed by their limited memory stores, modern computers have algorithm execution capability equivalent to an universal Turing machine”. In 1948 Turing devised a chess programme, which beat a human player.

Tyldum’s approach is deeply humanistic because he avoids the ‘tortured soul’ treatment, Cumberbatch’s Turing is shown as just marginally off and very capable of psychological insight: “From contradictions you can deduce everything”. Whilst everybody around him could decipher the social niceties of white lies, he was so detached by choice, that he just listened to WHAT was said, making social engagement between him and the rest of society difficult. Knightley plays Clarke with the same understatement, her isolation caused by gender, Turing being the first man, who took her seriously as a scientist. The wartime atmosphere is lovingly recreated with great attention to detail. The camera encircles Turing and Clarke from above, as if finding specimens of particular interest in an experiment. In spite of some (perhaps unavoidable) clichés, THE IMITATION GAME is the rare exception of a mainstream movie not selling out. AS

LFF 9.10. 15.15 OWE2, 10.10. 20.45 HACKNEY

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 19 OCTOBER 2014

 

Ulrich Seidl – A Director at Work | !0th International Zurich Film Festival 2014

Director: Constantin Wulff

52min Documentary Switzerland/Austria/Germany

Ulrich Seidl, the never-far-from-controversy Austrian director of Dog Days, Import/Export and the Paradise trilogy, is the subject of this striking portrait that follows him as he shoots his newest documentary project, Im Keller (In the Basement).

For Seidl, basements are places of darkness and fear, where people go to fulfil their deepest desires, while the living space above is only used for show. Opening on a shot of a woman naked inside a cage barely bigger than she is, the natural inclination is to imagine that we’re about to witness something dealing in depravity and degradation. And yet it proves to be not as prurient as you perhaps might have expected, with these spaces used much of the time as a place for (primarily) men to drink and do DIY. That’s not to say there isn’t eye-opening content here, much of it relating to S&M practices although, as Seidl himself says, much of what he shows is harmless stuff, meaning it’s left to the audience to fill in the gaps. Interestingly, given some of the dark events of his country’s recent past, none of this is presented as a singularly Austrian pursuit, nor is the name Fritzl ever mentioned.

The subtitle is A Director at Work, and this is very much what we get; he’s shown as a meticulously hands-on creator, managing every little detail both on In the Basement and on stage, where we join Seidl as he and his actors rehearse for his new play, Böse Buben/Fiese Männer. It’s a largely improvised examination of men’s souls, starkly evoking the likes of Fight Club with its bastions of unchecked masculinity. As extensive as the behind the scenes footage and clips from his earlier films are though, hearing from Seidl himself is the real draw. The candid interviews reveal him as a thoughtful and intelligent man, as well as his process to get to the truth of human nature, to uncover that which is buried. It’s this that ultimately marks out this short but revealing film as a profound insight into why he thinks we should be making art. PG

ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL SEPTEMBER 25 – OCTOBER 5 2014

Nagima (2013) | BFI London Film Festival

NAGIMA_4Director/Writer: Zhanna ISSABAYEVA

Cast: Dina Tukubayeva, Galina Pyanova, Aidar Mukhametzhanov

80min KAZAKH, RUSSIAN – Drama – KAZAKHSTAN 80 min Russian with subtitles

Belonging, being wanted and loved are universal themes that Kazakh director, Zhanna Issabayeva, explores in this stark but affecting piece of social realism. Echoing Danis Tanovic’s Golden Bear winner An Incident in the Life of an Iron Picker, its heroine is ugly, passive and insecure but there is a stark beauty and nihilism about her wretched scenario that makes for compelling viewing right through to the shocking finale

In a devastated industrial wasteland somewhere in Kazakhstan, Nagima, (Dina Yukubayeva) a young migrant worker is abused daily in the kitchens of a local restaurant, by a Kasakh equivalent of Gordon Ramsey. At night, she is greeted by social alienation in an iron shack, the TV her only companion apart from neighbours, Ninka (Galina Pyanova) a pragmatic Kazakh prostitute, and pregnant Anya (Mariya Nezhentseva), another immigrant.

When Anya goes into early labour, the girls rush her to the local hospital where they receive short-shrift from the portly ‘jobsworth’ matron who demands documentation. But a doctor takes pity on Anya, who dies delivering a baby girl. This tragedy sparks Nagima to seek out her own biological mother; another unsympathetic female who offers no comfort or shoulder to cry. Inured to the pain of rejection, the worn-down Nagima then turns to her on/off boyfriend, Abai, whose tentative message of love, prompts her to return to the orphanage in a bid to adopt Anya’s baby. Here again, she meets rejection from the ‘powers that be’ but leaves with baby Mila, with the putative idea of finally creating a family for the three of them.  The unremitting pessimism is relieved by Sayat Zhangazinov’s able cinematography and a pared-down minimalist aesthetic which at one point sets Nagima on the summit of a vast grey concrete hillside, emphasising her fragility and insignificance in the scheme of things. In this vast and hostile terrain, the cast perform with a purity of expression completely devoid of histrionics, allowing space and serenity to contemplate the desperate struggle of these hapless individuals in this humanist portrait. MT

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

 

 

Casa Grande (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Fellipe Barbosa

Cast: Thales Cavalcanti, Marcello Noaves, Suzanne Pires, Clarissa Pinheiro, Bruna Amaya, Alice Melo

Brazil 2014, 114 min.

Fellipe Barbosa’s feature film debut is somewhere between late Buñuel and a Brazilian “Telenovela”. Family and servants living in the great villa the title refers to, will undergo a fundamental change during the detail-obsessed narrative, painting rich psychological portraits of downfalls and awakenings.

In Rio, we first see Hugo (Noaves), the patriarch, climbing out of the pool, surveying the mansion with a certain angst. His wife Sonia, a catholic from France, is the bearer of standards – mostly from the beginning of the last century. Their teenage children Jean (Cavalcanti) and Nathalie (Melo), try to hide their transgressions from the parents, particularly the randy Jean, who cosies up to the attractive maid Rita (Pinheiro) at night.

Gradually we learn the reason for Hugo’s anxiety: the family is bankrupt, and soon the driver Severino – a replacement father figure for Jean – has to go. When Sonia discovers pornographic photos of Rita in her son’s bedroom, she finds a good excuse to sack her too. And after the cook follows the exodus, Sonia has to start selling cosmetics to make ends meet. But these sacrifices are not enough: we see Hugo showing the villa to a potential buyer. Jean, left to his own devices, drops out of his high school exams at private school and starts looking for the servants in ‘favelas’: his real family.

The camera shows meticulously the objects in the family home, and the relationship the adults have with them. The same goes for the parents’ relationship with the servants: racial and class barriers are huge, even though Sonia pretends otherwise. The parents’ power lies in their status symbols (house and servants) and when Jean understands that both are gone, he is free from parental power, since love was never part of the bargain. Whilst the family interactions are convincing, Jean’s short relationship with Luiza, another student, who argues in favour of the new law for “University Quotas for students from public schools”,  is just a pandering to political correctness. Jean is only interested in members of a lower social class if there’s something in it for him.

Newcomer, Cavalcanti is brilliant in his raw performance of a permanently lustful teenager, he could easily be from a Truffaut film. Noaves’ Hugo is a fine portrait of a materialist, unable to function without house and servants, but too cowardly to accept his limitations, whilst Melo’s Sonia really belongs to the world of Buñuel/Visconti: unable to hide her transparent emotions when her husband puts his arm around her in bed, she viciously rubbishes his advances, hissing “can’t you see, I’m praying”. CASA GRANDE is a lively portrait of a society torn apart by race and class, a sort of South American “Götterdämmerung”. AS

LFF 10.10. 12.00 VUE5, 12.10. 15.30 MAYFAIR, 14.10. 18.15 Ritzy

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Macondo (2014) Berlinale 2014

Director: Sudabeh Mortezai

Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva, Rosa Minailova

93min   German and Chechen   Drama

Berlinale 2014 was awash with really good films about children, particularly boys. MACONDO was one of the best.  The feature debut of Iranian doc-director Sudabeh Mortezai, it’s a quietly observed cinema verité piece that looks at the life of a young Chechen boy, Ramasan Minkailov, growing up in Vienna with his mother Aminat (Kheda Gazieva)and siblings. Already the head of the household in his nuclear family (his father was killed by in Chechnya) to the Austrian authorities he’s still very much a child.

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The weight of responsibility lies heavily on his shoulders and is reflected in the stern seriousness of his boyish face, etched with the trauma of memories of the past: it’s a subtle yet moving performance from such a young actor.  Already his peers are resorting to petty thieving but Ramasan takes his responsibilities seriously and his cue from the elders of the community and, in particular, his neighbour. When Isa (Aslan Elbiev), an old friend of his father turns up, he’s on his guard; slow to trust and sceptical of the interloper.  As the slow-burning narrative moves forward, Ramasan’s vulnerable childhood morphs into hard-edged, impulse young adulthood with a suspenseful intensity that allows plenty of space for reflection; uncertain of how matters will unfold. Sudabeh Mortezai’s drama is cleverly-scripted, skilfully-crafted and sensitively-performed MT

MACONDO SCREENING IN COMPETITION AT BERLINALE 2014 and at the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL until 19 October 2014

GÜEROS (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Alonso Ruizpalacios; Cast: Sebastian Aguirre, Tenoch Huerta, IIlse Salas, Leonardo Ortizgris

Mexico 2014, 106 min.

When Tomas (Aguirre), a rebellious teenager from Veracruz, is sent to study in Mexico city with his big brother Sombra (Huerta), his family back home could not have foreseen the chaos he would encounter. Living in a soulless high rise block, Sombra, buries himself in his ‘thesis’ with a great deal of white noise. Whilst the students in Mexico City are on strike, Sombra and his flat mate Santos (Ortizgris) have declared themselves “on strike from the strike”, they steal electricity from their neighbours and escape in an old car on a journey that leads nowhere, but is vibrant and emotionally all-consuming.

Ruizpalacios’ debut film is the closest to “Nouvelle Vague” we’ve seen for a long time. The monochrome camera is inventive, bordering on the manic, the actors don’t take themselves very seriously, neither does the director: occasionally darting into the frame, he asks the actors what they think about the script (“not very much”), and criticise contemporary Mexican cinema, “where they grab beggars from the street, film in black and white and try to impress French critics.”

GÜEROS has a loosely structured narrative. There are some interesting subplots but overall the actors get more or less lost in the big city. The men are later joined by Ana, one of the student’s leaders, adored by the very shy Sombra. Avoiding tidy solutions to anything, the director keeps the emotional level very high, always engaging the audience: the small, mostly aborted missions they embark on give the film enough drive. And there are always new surprises: when the four of them visit the Zoo, Ana shows Sombra a tiger. But Sombra suffers from panic attacks and is plagued by tigers in his nightmares – and quotes a Rilke poem about a caged panther. The reason for their Zoo visit is Epigmenio Cruz, a singer, the brothers’ father adored. But Cruz is an alcoholic, and the stories told about him – he made Bob Dylan cry – are much more interesting than the man himself.

There is a nice elliptic structure to the film: it starts with Tomas throwing a balloon filled with water from a roof terrace in Veracuz, hitting a baby in the pram; later the quartet find themselves lost in a rough neighbourhood in Mexico City, and a kid throws a brick from a bridge, shattering the windscreen of their car. DOP Damian Garcia very zooms in very close, and sometimes, like in a scene were Sombra imagines a snow storm in the car, Garcia blurs the edges of the image, as in films of the silent era. The acting is spontaneous with humour echoing the early short film collaborations of Truffaut and Godard, before they became serious. Filmaking feels like fun for Ruizpalacios and his cast. AS

LFF 9.10. 18.30 NFT3, 12.10. 18.30 Ritzy

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Freefalling: A Love Story (2014) | 10th Zurich International Film Festival

Dir: Mirjam von Arx

83min   Documentary   Germany/Switzerland    In Swiss German and English

Mirjam von Arx’s courageous film is both a love story and ‘self-help’ documentary exploring the dangers of BASE jumping. In 2010 after a spell of internet dating, Mirjam meets Herbert, the man of her dreams. She is diagnosed with cancer in the same week. While she desperately fights for her life, Herbert is risking his by jumping from great heights with just a parachute.

Vertiginous camerawork from Samuel Gyger and Peter Kullmann show to what extent these daredevils take their lives into thir own hands in jumping thousands of metres from lofty mountain ridges and rockfaces just to satisfy a passion for danger. Did they get dropped on their heads as children or thrown downstairs, who knows? But the extreme sport of BASE jumping joins the long list of risk games along with gambling and free-diving: devotees have no choice but to follow their passion; it’s the only thing that makes them ‘feel alive’. Miryam is unfased by Herbert’s obsession, not wishing to stop him enjoying his passion at the early stage of the relationship. Three months later Herbert is dead. After a shaky start to a jump, he crashes into a rock face in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, and is discovered by his coach Andreas Dachtler. Speaking in heavily-accented English throughout the film, Miryiam admits she didn’t really appreciate the extent of the danger involved in handing over her own heart to man who, eventually, took it with it him into a mountain crevice. In the aftermath, Maryam conveys her pain to the camera but her treatment is not judgemental and pragmatic: this is an upbeat and watchable documentary that aims to instruct and edify, not just to offer another mawkish sob story of loss and misery.

In the months after Herbert’s death, Miryam plunges into despair but crucially, she is at pains to learn from his death. Being a filmmaker, she understands her craft and cleverly evokes the positive side to her loss with an intensely visual portrait of BASE jumping by harnessing the magnificence of the Swiss mountain scenery that makes the sport so exhilarating. Emerging through the stages of mourning she decides to discover more about Herbert’s final moments by visiting the scene of his death and talking to his colleagues and friends in a bid to discover whether the sport could help her in her own struggle for life. It’s almost as though meeting Herbert was somehow meant to prepare her and give her strength to fight cancer and conquer her fear of pain as she undergoes treatment, losing her thick, dark hair. Miryam is positive about the future, discovering as much as she can about his way of dying, despite the anger she feels towards Herbert. Out of all this comes acceptance. Her documentary offers a vision of the positive ways we can harness our own fears for the future, by grasping the nettle of life and controlling our own destiny. Werner Herzog explores this philosophy in the final moments of Heart of Glass: no one is able to avoid death but we can control our own destiny: the ideology behind BASE jumping seems to indicate that by taking over control of our lives and dicing with death, we can face the end with power and serenity. MT

FREEFALLING: A LOVE STORY PREVIEWS AT 10TH ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL 25 SEPTEMBER – 5 OCTOBER 2014

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Dukhtar (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Afia Nathaniel

Cast: Samiya Mumtaz, Mohib Mirza, Saleha Aref; Pakistan/ Norway/USA 2014, 93 min.

In contemporary Pakistan two warlords decide to make peace: the price of the alliance will be paid by 12-year old Zainab (Aref), who is to be married to man who could easily be her grandfather. But Zainab’s mother Allah Rakhi (Mumtaz), herself a victim of an arranged marriage to a man who isolates her and does not allow her to see even her own mother, flees with the child from the village. The warlords, disgraced by their own code of honour, both send their men out to hunt the two women. With the help of the truck driver Sohail (Mirza), they escape into the mountains, where they hide. But Rakhi wants to see her own mother who now lives in Lahore. Sohail drives them there, knowing that the warlords have not given up their chase.

The great mountain landscape of North Pakistan is the background to this moving and superbly cinematic tale. Whilst the men drive modern cars and use every electronic device available, they still rule women like cattle. And they fight viciously to keep their rights in the so-called ‘honour’ code. Zainab is clearly underage, but everyone maintains silence about the brutal consequences of her proposed marriage. Everybody – apart from Rakhi.

First time director Nathaniel focuses mainly on the relationship between the women; Sohail, even though he is putting his own life at risk, is somehow left out of the narrative: all men are an enigma to women like Rakhi, who is carrying the burden of endless generations of Muslim women in this region – victims of brutal male violence, that is not even camouflaged by religious excuses. This is an immersive drama with convincing performances from the central characters as the camera oscillates between widescreen panorama shots of the towering mountains and intimate close-ups of the women in fear for their life. Well-crafted on a tight budget, DUKHTAR is a cry for help, a cry that should be listened to. AS

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

 

Charlie’s Country (2013) | BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Rolf de Heer; Cast: David Gulpilil, Peter Djigirr, Luke Ford; Australia 2014, 108 min

David Gulpilil won Best Actor ‘Un Certain Regard’ at Cannes this year for his portrayal of Charlie. Its his third collaboration with helmer, Rolf de Heer, after The Tracker and Ten Canoes, but this time, Gulpilil also co-wrote the script, making CHARLIE’S COUNTRY more personal, and autobiographical. Charlie, a ‘blackfella’ lives in Arnhem Land community, another name for reservation. Alcohol here is strictly forbidden, so is the possession of “deadly” weapons. Charlie and his friend Pete (Djigirr) are guilty on both counts, losing not only their weapons (spear and gun), but also the buffalo they have shot. Because Charlie can’t stomach much of the white men’s food, this incident is particularly vexing for him: he had helped the police, led by the friendly but strict Luke (Ford), to find white lawbreakers – in return for nothing. As a result, Charlie decides to leave the community for a life in the wild. Initially all goes well; he catches fish and enjoys his freedom. But torrential rainstorms affect his already damaged lungs and Pete assists in getting him to a Darwin hospital. There he meets another Aboriginal from Arnhem, who is dying. Charlie discharges himself and meets some “long grassers”, homeless Aborigines, who drink and smoke, living homeless in the parks of the city. When the police arrive to arrest them Charlie takes a shovel and smashes the windshield of their car. Sentenced to time in prison, he returns to Arnhem after his release, to teach the young Aborigine boys to dance – something Charlie did himself in front of the Queen at the opening of the Sydney Opera House.

This is a film about identity: Gulpilil, the most famous Aboriginal face on screen since he appeared as a 16year-old in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, is very hard on himself because the prison sequence here is autobiographical. Gulpilil does not shrink away from his own failings, he is adamant to be held responsible for his actions. His face alone, seemingly cut in stone, speaks volumes. Proud and melancholic at the same time, it tells about the long struggle for cultural identity in a country  taken away from Aborigines by White settlers, who proudly consider themselves superior to Gulpilil and his fellow men and women. But his sense of identity is unbroken, even in prison he is neither cowed or intimidated. This is not only a film about ethnographical issues, but a poem, when spoken in Gulpilil’s own language, Yolngu. CHARLIE’S COUNTRY is a testament to permanent resistance, not glorious at all, but David Gulpilil is still walking tall. AS

LFF 9.10. 21.00 NFT1 11.10. 15.00 OWE1 and then on general release

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

Kelly & Cal (2014) |BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Jen McGowan Cast: Juliette Lewis, Johnny Weston, Josh Hopkins, Cybil Shephard, Lucy Owen; USA 2013, 110 min.

Debut features don’t come much more assured and risk-free than Jen McGowan”s bitter-sweet nearly-love story between Kelly (Lewis), a thirty something housewife, struggling with a new born baby, and Cal, half her age, wheel-chair bound after an recent accident. Kelly met her husband Josh (Hopkins) at art school, but now Josh is working an advertising, well aware that he has signed over his life (and, to a large extent, Kelly’s) to the corporate world – making neither of them happy, in spite of a their affluent lifestyle. Baby Jackson prefers his Dad to his Mum; the latter feeling even more depressed when Josh’s mother (Shephard) and sister Julie (Owen) turn up nearly every day to give the new mother unwelcome tips: how to change her sad life into that of a conceited member of the middle-class. After meeting Cal, who is rather rude to begin with, Kelly does discovers her 18year old self: a rebellious member of a girl band, which obviously impresses Cal. Whilst Josh slaves away in the city and has little time for chat (never mind sex) with his wife, Cal is only to keen to try his luck. Stripping in front of the window, looking down at the gasping Cal, Kelly oversteps the boundary, and Josh moves out with the baby to live with his mother.

The narrative starts out fresh and sometimes daring, even though some might consider scenes with Kelly riding on Cal’s lap in the wheelchair rather corny. But the longer this particular ménage-a-trois goes on, the more it calls for the Kleenex. In the end, every real conflict is drowned in sentimentality and pseudo-reconciliation. Everybody goes back to the starting position “trying harder” being the solution. This way, the status quo is confirmed, as in all “serious” Hollywood movies. Instead of producing the free flowing tears of the protagonists as an answer to their central dilemma, the director should have questioned why, just for a nice house and designer furniture, do Kelly and Josh have to sacrifice their love for each other. Having started out together at art school, they are now a millions miles away from the life they really wanted. Does the (limited) material security the Corporation offers really justify a life style that betrays their original aspirations?

Juliette Lewis is slightly over the top in her exuberant portrayal of an ’18 year old in love”. Hopkins’ Josh is a little too passive before his outburst, and whilst Weston manages the bravado of a teenager, it is difficult to see any real hurt, only bad-tempered anger. Shephard’s mother and Owen’s bitchy sister are by far less one-dimensional than the main protagonists. The camerawork is slick and effective in portraying the world of advertising: interior designs and cars feature prominently. Will Mc Gowan’s second film push the boundaries out a little further? AS

LFF: 9.10. 18.15 Hackney, 10.10. 18.00 VUE5, 11.10. VUE7

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

 

Walking Under Water (2014) | BFI London Film Festival

WALKING_UNDER_WATER_still_4Dir/Writer: Eliza Kubarska

76min  Doc   Poland/UK/Germany

Walking Under Water won the special jury prize at Hot Docs, Toronto this year for its remarkable portrait of the Badjao tribe in Mabul Island, Borneo. Connecting with a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world, it explores this tiny fishing community who live above and below the clear blue waters off Borneo: and are now threatened with extinction. The striking beauty of this ocean paradise will appeal to lovers of exotic nature programmes but there is much more here than first meets the eye. This is a magical tale of wonder about a culture surviving between the sea and the land who believe in the existence of an underwater spiritual kingdom, the Sema Sallang, whom they must pay homage to each day with offerings and prayers to keep them safe when diving for the daily catch. Using a slim pipe attached to a simple compressor in the boat, they are trained to free dive and fish underwater for turtles and other marine life.

Enriched by Piotr Rosolowski’s breathtaking visuals, a narrative structure gradually emerges that shapes this observational exploration of the Badjao’s simple life through the relationship between Alexan, and his nephew, Sari. Passing his experience on to the boy, with minimal dialogue, he shares tales of sea gods, strange fish and the Sema Sallang. Kubraska sensory soundtrack evokes a delicious serenity, weaving a web of ambient sounds: native voices, exotic birds, rustling breezes waft through the local flora, gradually enveloping us in silence.

But when Alexan and Sari are forced to make a trip to the mainland for fuel, the magic is broken. Resignation, disappointment and fear for their uncertain future reflects on their faces and Sari contemplates the inevitability of work in a local casino. A sensory overload of noise, pollution and the local diving school ruptures the peace and an electrical storm breaks over the purple horizon. Alexan’s wife nags him for only catching three fish: It seems that even in Paradise women are unhappy with their husbands. MT.

THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

4 Reasons to visit the 10th London Spanish Film Festival 2014

The 10th London Spanish film festival kicks off on 25 September with a varied programme of events in the Cine Lumiere and Instituto Cervantes. Here is a selection of films we recommend:

stella-cadente-sm STELLA CADENTE | Falling Star

Dir: Luis Minarro, with Lorenzo Balducci, Alex Batllori, Alex Brendemuhl, Gonzalo Cunil, Lola Duenas | 105 min | Spanish with Subt

STELLA CADENTE is as timely as it is flippant. Though historical periods are seldom fully analogous, Spain once again finds itself in political and economic disorder, and Miñarro’s film had its first of two public screenings at Edinburgh just days after the ascension to the Spanish throne by Felipe Carlos, following father Juan’s recent abdication. Even at an unjustifiably lengthy 110 minutes, though, STELLA CADENTE eschews the greater intricacies of its historical backdrop. For the most part, it’s instead an unfussily light-hearted affair, featuring musical interludes, tripod-fixed longueurs, matter-of-fact homoerotic desire and the incongruous minutiae of a rococo social class that doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Wed 1 Oct | 8.30pm | £10 |

10000-noches-en-ninguna-parte-sm10.000 NOCHES EN NINGUNA PARTE | 10,000 Nights Nowhere

Dir. Ramón Salazar, with Andrés Gertrúdix, Susi Sánchez, Lola Dueñas, Najwa Nimri | Spain | 2014 | col | 113 min | cert. 16 | In Spanish with English subtitles

In this high voltage, emotional roller-coaster, a young man tries to escape his deepest fears (and his mother) by making a journey to Paris and Berlin.. Beautifully shot, Salazar’s film experiments with narrative, cinematography, improvisation and script. Indeed, he does everything he can to create a unique experience. A wonderful, engaging film, free of any label.

Mon 29 Sep | 8.30pm | £10, conc. £8

dioses-y-perros-smDIOSES Y PERROS | Dioses y perros

Dir. David Marqués and Rafa Montesinos, with Hugo Silva, Megan Montaner, Juan Codina and Elio González | Spain | 2014 | 84 min| In Spanish with English subtitles

Pasca works as a boxing sparrer in an effort to earn some money, having abandoned his promising boxing career when the car he was driving crashed and killed his parents and left his brother in a wheelchair. Daily life is a painful existence, finding small jobs, earning a bit of money, getting his old friends out of trouble, and taking care of his brother. Dioses y perros is a film about facing our fears, getting on in life, finding and accepting love… and, ultimately, about hope.

Followed by a Q&A with actor Hugo Silva and director David Marqués

Wed 1 Oct | 6.30pm | £10, conc. £8

the-food-guide-to-love-smTHE FOOD GUIDE TO LOVE | Amor en su punto

Dir. Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri, with Richard Coyle, Leonor Watling, Ciara Bailey and Michelle Beamish | Spain/Ireland | 2013 | 91 min | In English

Richard Coyle plays Oliver Byrne, the ultimate foodie, and The Food Guide to Love, is his ultimate book about food. A connoisseur of fine dining, Oliver became a major success in Ireland thanks to his approach to food writing and his emphasis on the sensual aspect of food. His love life, however, is not as stable as his career, and he has serious problems maintaining relationships. That is, until he meets the Spanish Bibiana… A delicious romantic comedy about love, dreams and mistakes, with some spicy ingredients.

Followed by a Q&A with the directors and actress Leonor Watling

Fri 3 Oct | 8.30pm | £10, conc. £8

10TH LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 2014 RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER UNTIL 5 OCTOBER 2014

 

The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014)

Writer: Aik KARAPETIAN

Producer(s): Roberts VINOVSKIS (Locomotive Productions)
Cast: Maxim Lazarev, Anta Aizupe, Aris Rozentals

71min   Latvia/Estonia   Cult thriller

Although Latvian cinema is not well-known, one of the legendary directors, Sergei Eisenstein (Ivan The Terrible) was born in Latvia when it was still part of the Russian Empire and the first Latvian feature film, Lacplesis, was released in 1930. After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, Vilis Lapenieks (The Fisherman’s Son) became an internationally-acclaimed director and during this time the cinema was mainly a propaganda tool to depict the benefits of Sovietism. During the fifties, artistic expression flourished with increased funded from Goskino, the Soviet State Committee for Cinematography and after the country’s independence in 1991, the most successful directors were Janis Streics, Janis Putnins, Viesturs Kairiss and Laila Pakalnina, a winner of several international awards at Cannes ‘Un Certain Regard’ in 1998 for Kurpe (The Shoes) and a contender for the Berlinale ‘Golden Bear’ in 2006 for short film Udens (The Water).

With its pared-down minimalism and finely tined moments of cognitive dissonance The Man In The Orange Jacket is a promising if chilling introduction to contemporary Latvian cult horror from Armenian-born director, Aik Karapetian. In a vast shipyard somewhere along the Baltic coast, a wealthy shipyard owner has just made 200 workers redundant. But one of his victims is unwilling to accept his fate. Tracking down his former boss to his extenuative and beautifully furnished country mansion, he sadistically murders him and his young girlfriend within minutes of the opening titles. Setting up residence in the villa he then assumes the lifestyles of its unfortunate owner, wearing his clothes and enjoying his wine cellar and pantry. With minimal dialogue, slow motion sequences and a atmospheric soundtrack that’s both brooding and blood-curdling, Karapetian evokes a ambience of unsettling terror as the murderer descends into a world of paranoia, hovering between reality and a dreamlike demi-monde where he consorts with prostitutes, imagines sightings of a man in an orange jacket across and frozen lake and receives a visit from one of his victim’s business colleagues.

Despite the its well-worn horror tropes, this is a slick and well-crafted debut with some suggestive visual compositions and inventive touches particularly with sound: the gurgling of a woman drowning in her own blood is particularly evocative. Newcomer Maxim Lazarev gives a capable turn as the baby-faced psychopath in a thriller that combines elements of mystery, horror and cult cinema.

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9-19 OCTOBER 2014

 

City Visions Festival | 25 September – 8 October 2014

Berlin Symphony of a City_poster artworkFilm meets architecture and urban design in CITY VISIONS (25 September to 8 October) a documentary and feature season showcasing not only the energy and exciting variety of Urban life but also its decay and deprivation. City Visions highlights  the need for architecture and urban planning to respond not only to contemporary design and visual ideals but also to the needs of burgeoning globalisation at a time when city growth is at its most explosive. 50% of the earth’s population now lives 
in urban centres; a figure that is predicted to rise to over 75% by 2050 as rural workers flock to cities around the world), this is an exciting and timely look at our built environment and follows on from last year’s URBAN WANDERING season.

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This mini-festival gets off to a good start with ambitious compendium CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE: the six-part 3D project directed by Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin and Karim Aïnouz which offers startling different responses to the question: “if buildings could talk, what would they say about us?”. The featured buildings are Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin, Germany (Wenders); National Library of Russia, St Petersburg, Russia (Glawogger); Halden Prison, Halden, Norway (Madsen); The Salk Institute, California, USA (Redford); Opera House, Oslo, Norway (Olin); and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (Ainoux).

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In tribute to the late Michael Glawogger, who died earlier this year, there will be a chance to see his extraordinary MEGACITIES – Twelve Stories of Survival – which looks at a group of people living in four gigantic urban agglomerations:

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On Friday 26 September, writer and historian Leo Hollis, urban designer Alastair Donald and others will take part in a live debate: Are Cities Good for Us? On Saturday 4 October, a panel discussion about gender and the city will follow a screening of Mikio Naruse’s Tokyo masterpiece WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS.

Other highlights of the season are CAIRO DRIVE (Best Film from the Arab World – Documentary competition – Abu Dhabai Film Festival 2013) followed by a ScreenTalk with filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha and Dr Alisa Lebow. Producer Sarah Arruda will introduce, demonstrate and discuss Kat Cizek’s award-winning interactive project Highrise and the Architecture Foundation will present a ScreenTalk following Heinz Emigholz’ most recent essay: The Airstrip-Decampment of Modernism, Part III. Ignored Tags: $0150

Additional talks will include author Amit Chaudhuri, introducing THE BIG CITY Satyajit Ray’s panoramic portrait of metropolitan life in 1950’s Calcutta. Detroit-based journalist Rose Hackman will introduce Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s DETROPIA; Istanbul based journalist Constanze Letsch will introduce EKUMENOPOLIS: City Without Limits; and London based architectural and design journalist Herbert Wright will introduce ECOPOLIS CHINA.

There’s be a chance to see CANNES best screenplay winner A TOUCH OF SIN (2013), a drama set in rapidly expanding contemporary China, In LAGOS WIDE AND CLOSE – An Interactive Journey Into An Exploding City, architect Rem Koolhaas and filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak’s study of the Nigerian megalopolis in an attempt to understand the hidden logic that makes a ‘dysfunctional’ city work.

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Cult classics will include Eric Rohmer’s LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON as well as Jean Luc Godard’s TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and Mathieu Kassovitz’s LA HAINE. Filmmaker and author Richard Misek will introduce his documentary ROHMER IN PARIS about the director’s lifelong relationship with the world’s most cinematic city.  the season will include Author Richard Martin will introduce David Lynch’s enigmatic LA outing MULHOLLAND DRIVE, while the 10th Anniversary of Thom Andersen’s LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (recut and remastered) weaves together clips from hundreds of movies to build a fascinating argument about how Hollywood has represented – or misrepresented – LA. Woody Allen’s love-letter to the city MANHATTAN plus the 1921 silent short MANHATTA based on a poem by Walt Whitman depicting a day in New York City from dawn until dusk, and Robert Flaherty’s THE TWENTY FOUR DOLLAR ISLAND, which observes the docks and architecture of Manhattan in 1927. And last but by no means least, lovers of Jem Cohen can enjoy NYC Films featuring 30-years of the renowned music video-maker filming NY. MT

CITY VISIONS FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER TO 8 OCTOBER 2014 AT LONDON’S BARBICAN CENTRE EC2

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City Visions – Cult classics in the Metropolis

For the upcoming CITY VISIONS STRAND at the Barbican – Andre Simonoveisz looks at how the social impact of the metropolis is reflected in the cult classics from the roaring twenties to the year 2000. 

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In the beginning there was the city as a growing, permanently moving, uncontrollable juggernaut: Walter Ruttmann’s BERLIN – SINFONIE EINER GROSSSADT (1927) looks at Berlin for twenty-four hours and finds nothing but badly regulated chaos: everything is in motion, but somehow the humans are not the masters of the action but victims of the industrialisation, which enslaves them. After we see workers in the morning, on their way to the factories – shown like demons with their smoking chimneys – Ruttmann cuts abruptly to a herd of cows. But the film lacks any social commentary: rich people in posh restaurants and hungry children in the poorer districts, signify nothing, and are shown in the same superficial way as the delicate legs of a little girl, and the muscular legs of a cyclist. In the end the film is a victim if its own dogma of showing speed at any cost: the viewer is forced to watch, and has no time for any reflections of his own.

l-amour-l-apres-midi-1Paris, the city were the seventh Art was born, is naturally the setting for the most emotionally charged movies. Whilst many American productions are set in the city of light, we will concentrate on three Parisian filmmakers, and their view of the city they love –or hate. Eric Rohmer, who lived for decades above the offices of his production company “Films du Losange” (which he founded 50 years ago with Barbet Schroeder) in the fashionable 16th arrondissement, set many of his films in Paris, a very gentle Paris as shown in his debut film Signe du Lion (1962). He continued his view through to his Six Moral Tales, and the last of this series L’amour l’apres-midi: a celebration not only of Paris, but of large cities that allow covert liaisons to be conducted in clandestine corners. When Frederic (Bernhard Verley), a lawyer, meets his girl friend Cloe (Zouzou), his wife Helene (Francoise Verley) is meanwhile expecting their second child in a western suburb of the metropolis. Frederic sings Paris’s praises: “I m part of the great throng of people, leaving the Saint-Lazare Station, getting lost in the many little side streets nearby. I love the metropolis. The provinces and suburbs depress me. And in spite of the chaos and the noise I love being part of the masses. I love these masses like I love the sea, not to go under, loosing myself, but to be lone rider on the waves, seemingly following the rhythm of masses, but only to the point that I can follow my own way if the force of the waves dwindle. Like he sea, the masses thrill me and help me to dream. I have nearly all my ideas of the streets of the city, even the ones connected with my work.”

Two or Three Things

From his office in the Rue de la Pepiniere (8th arr.), near the Boulevard Haussmann, he often goes shopping, flirting with the beautiful shop assistants; endlessly discussing the colours of a shirt – and making love to Cloe, whilst his wife gives birth to their son. Frederic lives a gentle life and work seems to be only a vehicle for meeting people and having coffee with them in a café round the corner. Rohmer’s Paris does not exist any more, we suspect, that it was mainly part of Rohmer’s imagination – but it was wonderful, nevertheless.

Now we go five years back in time to Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (2 or 3 Choses Que Je Sais D’Elle). His anti-consumerist portrait of Paris makes one wonder: did Rohmer and Godard really go to see the same films, never mind writing together for “Cahiers du Cinema”? TWO OR THREE is the antidote to Rohmer’s romantic diary of a man with too much time on his hands – and on top, Godard produced it five years EARLIER. The mind boggles. Paris, by the way, doesn’t get very good grades neither. But one has to know that the “elle” of the title is Paris, undergoing a change for the worse. Rising prices and crass materialism mean that many housewives turn to part-time prostitution, whilst their husbands work in their offices. Needless to say; the husbands hate their jobs and their wives hate being prostitutes and it is all the fault of the giant advertisement boards we can see at length. The narrative follows the housewife Juliette (Marina Vlady), whose child is at nursery, whilst Juliette turns her flat into a part-time brothel. Then she shops for clothing, is accosted by a pimp, who offers her protection for ten percent of her earnings, and in the evening we see her playing happy family. Next we encounter her in a room with another woman, wandering around naked with air flight bags over their heads, to fulfill the sick phantasy of an American called John Bogus. There are off- narration containing agitation and poetry, whilst high-rise buildings rise into the sky, and people are hurrying through the streets. And DOP Raoul Cotard gives the film a Kodachrome-like image, further depicting the alienation of the Parisians, running aimlessly around in the raising tide of consumerism.

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Twenty-eight years later, the children of the adult Godard protagonists were most likely languishing with their parents in the cynically called HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré) blocks in the newly formed ‘banlieu’ of Paris, were Mathieu Kassovitz’ LA HAINE is set. These bleak high-rise blocks are even worse than the worst of the UK’s so called ‘estates’. Criminality is the norm, particularly among the teenage boys. The film tells the story of three of them: Vinz, a Jew, Hubert, a black boxer and Said, an Arab. They hang out together, terrible bored. They are not ring leaders, but move along the peripherie of the occasional small riots, staying mostly at the Youth centre, waiting for something to happen: their way of life. After an Arab youth is shot, something is going to happen: a major riot. After the school of Vinz’ sister has been burned down, his grandmother warns him “to stay out of it.” On a short trip to Paris, the trio run into trouble with the police. Hubert, being the least violent of the them, draws the attention of the police because of his skin colour. In Mathieu Kossovitz’s 1995 version, Paris has become the citadel of consumerism, Godard warned about. The only difference is that the prostitutes are now real professionals, because the housewives who stay at home can afford to have a good life on one salary – the rest of the undesirables has been “deported” to the banlieu. (London lagging some twenty years behind these developments). The young guys feel rightly that they are now in a different country: banks are the new cathedrals of the city. Shopping malls, full of goods, whose functions they can only guess. The huge advertisement boards have vanished, no need for incitements to buy are needed: shopping is the only game in town. Away from their concrete jungles, the guys react with bewilderment, then, when the police turn on them with hatred. The ending might be predictable, but the film is not: it is about a generation alienated from the society, but it is society itself who has made this choice.

David Lynch had shown in TWIN PEAKS how nightmarish the suburbs can be – but Los Angeles in MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) is a ‘city of angels of death’, in a cinematographic, absurd way, of course. To ponder the plot would be to miss the point of the film, it is the ultimate “McGuffin” movie, where all clues end in a cul-de-sac. Still, some sort of narrative develops: Betty (Naomi Watts), is a Hitchcock blond, who is staying as a guest in her aunt Ruth’s apartment in, whilst auditioning for a film role. Rita (Laura Elena Harring) is a brunette, type Rosalind Russell, who is about to be murdered in her limousine, but crawls out the wreck at Mulholland Drive and lands up with Betty. The girls now audition together, meet sinister detectives, a rotten corpse and have lots of lesbian sex. All this explains nothing, but that’s not the point. But LA is the real star of this movie, together with the music, and the permanent quotes of Hollywood’s history. LA has become the studio backdrop for all living in this city, were all genres, but particularly thrillers, are permanently played out – for the living, who are cops, detectives –are so simply victims. The lack of narrative in MULHOLLAND DRIVE coincides with the lack of any rationale in this city – when the whole cplace has become a mega studio, so many stories will collide, and nobody will ask for any logic. Lynch’s film is therefore full of dreams, and they are, more often than not, much more realistic than what’s going on with Betty and Rita. And since every landmark in LA has dozens of movie connections, and many more are in the making, the border lines between life, dream and cinema have vanished. You can have a nightmare like Betty and Rita, but you will wake up, telling your friends, that you have had this awful dream/saw this nightmarish film, and life will go on. Most of the time. AS

CITY VISIONS RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER AT THE BARBICAN LONDON EC2

 

 

The Casanova Variations (2014) | San Sebastian Film Festival

Director/Writer: Michael Sturminger

Cast: John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant, Veronica Ferres

Professional Singers: Sophie Klussmann, Daniel Schmutzhard

150min   Biopic/opera

John Malkovich is well-suited to the role of maverick 18th century serial seducer Giacomo Casanova (apparently he had a modest 120 lovers). Long-term collaborater Michael Sturminger has cast him in this strangely weird but rather enjoyable ‘chamber-opera in a musical biopic’ where he reminisces over his misspent youth, to a rousing Mozart score. His accent has echoes of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s in the recent Nymphomaniac (maybe they shared the voice coach) but his presence is more irascible than coaxing: admittedly he’s reached the end of his life and is angrily desperate and ailing rather than sensual and playful about the game of love here. He flails around desperate for satisfaction: but nowadays he ‘can’t get none’, so he writes his memoirs looking back in unrequited lust to his previous dalliances with paramours, played with talent and vivaciousness by Veronica Ferres (Elisa) and a beguiling Fanny Ardant (Lucrecia) and remembered in flashback with well-known operatic vignettes and arias sung and played by professional singers overseen by Martin Haselbock.

Sturminger’s script is adapted from Casanova’s ‘Histoire de Ma Vie’ with some embellishments but gives more of an impression than a well-formed narrative. The Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte score plays rather like a selection of Classic FM snippets. The elegant costumes and sets by Andreas Donhauser and Renate Martin (Paradise: Love) and DoP André Szankowski’s (The Mysteries of Lisbon) luscious visuals are what ultimately makes this a ravishing and mildly entertaining, if slightly bizarre, piece of filmmaking. MT reviewed at Cannes 2014

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 19-27 SEPTEMBER 2014

10 Reasons to visit the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2014

winter-sleep-2014-004-melisa-sozen-headshotWINTER SLEEP ***** Palme D’Or | Cannes | 2014

Sumptuously set in a mountain village in his beloved Anatolia, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s arthouse character study enters the slow-burn orbit of loquacious ‘resting’ actor and hotelier, Aydin (Haluk Bilginer). Presiding over his family and local community, he portrays a misunderstood victim, a gracious and urbane sophisticate who, destined for better things, is forced to civilise his unworthy community and minister to the needs of passing travellers. As the winter closes in on this feudal kingdom, Aydin is forced to come to terms with himself through a bitter and dysfunctional relationship with sister (Demet Akbag) and younger wife (Melisa Sozen) who both despise him. Themes of social class, moral responsibility and altruism weave slowly and sinuously through this engrossing tale that is intimate in style, yet epic in its length and ambitions (196 mins).  Stunning.

turnMr Turner ****  | Best Actor | Cannes | 2014

Mike Leigh’s ambitious biopic of J M W Turner’s middle-age serves as a worthy and painterly tribute to a national treasure. In a performance of some complexity, Timothy Spall portrays the ‘painter of light’ as a romantic gruffalo with a heart of gold but a curious style of love-making. The film opens in 1826 with a magnificent shot of a Dutch landscape where Turner is visiting for inspiration and work. A solid British cast works to the ‘Leigh family method’. At the Royal Academy we meet arch rivals John Constable (James Fleet) and his wealthy Patron and other Leigh staples (Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen). All are carefully worked into the narrative along with a humorous vignette from Joshua Maguire as a verbose live-wire John Ruskin. In Margate, Turner finds peace amd contentment with a local landlady (a luminous Marion Bailey). Victorian England is very much a character, proudly flying the flag of the Empire at its peak but Leigh is at pains to underline that Turner left his works to the Nation and not the homes of rich Victorian industrialists, who had funded him. Although this is a departure from his usual subject matter; in casting his usual actors, it all feels very ‘Mike Leigh’.

Jauja_Lisandro_AlonsoJAUJA **** FIPRESCI winner | Cannes | 2014

JAUJA (Land of Plenty) is a philosophical, existential drama, almost as enigmatic as the mythical place it claims to represent – an Argentinian ‘El Dorado’. Lisandro Alonso has wisely chosen Viggo Mortensen to play the role of a respectable but unsettled Danish 19th army captain travelling across the rugged region with his teenage daughter (Viilbjork Mallin Agger) and a motley collection of soldiers who speak Spanish, purportedly on a mission to wipe out the Zuluagas – a lethal tribe of natives, nick-named “Coconut Heads”.  In a horseback search across hostile terrain, the captain’s brushes with the Zuluagas are eerie and lethal. A change of tone midway signals a descent into a fantasy time-warp bringing the narrative back to contempo Denmark in a surprising but enchanting denoumen. Finnish photographer, Timo Salminen, captures this magical story in long takes, sumptuously lighting each frame as a work of art as Mortensen flexes his musical talents in an original score. MT

whitegodWHITE GOD **** Un Certain Regard WINNER | Cannes | 2014

Hungarian director, Kornél Mundruczó’s art house thriller has a ‘Pied Piper of Hamlin’ feel to it. An enigmatic parable that scratches the edges of horror, there are some bizarre and brutal elements. Dogs, or more correctly, mutts are the stars of the story which opens with a little girl cycling through the streets of Budapest, followed by a pack of barking beasts (front picture). From Alsations to Labradors, Rottweilers and even little terriers, WHITE GOD also brings to mind The Incredible Journey with a more sinister twist. These dogs are clearly well-trained and credit goes to the Mundruczo for his ambitious undertaking but then Magyars have a reputation for their handling skills with horses and this clearly extends to the canine species. Lilli (Zsofia Psotta) the girl on the bike, has adopted a large street dog called Hagen in a modern parable, quite literally, a tale of the ‘underdog’ rising up and claiming his rightful place in society. WHITE GOD is a unique and really captivating piece of filmmaking.MT

salvationTHE SALVATION ****  | Denmark| US | 2014

It’s always gratifying to see a great film that hasn’t had much buzz, pre-festival. THE SALVATION is one of those outings: but with Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green what could go wrong? Well, we’ve certainly found the next Clint Eastwood in Christian Levring’s Danish-American Western. As Jon, a former soldier who immigrated to America after the Danish-German war in 1864, Mads has just the right look and smouldering buttoned-up anger to keep the action taut and macho throughout this glowering, sun-burnished saga shot by lenser Jens Schlosser in South Africa and with echoes of High Noon. When Jon’s wife and son join him in the lawless Mid West after joining him from Denmark, they are brutally killed; the modest, law-abiding outsider Mads turns hurt into hatred, by taking the outlaw’s life in return. Eva Green seethes in a speechless part (as Princess) rendered mute by an Indian’s weapon and married to the Colonel (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who heads up the villainous Delarue Family, and looking for retribution. With a zippy running time of 89 minutes, this is a slick and enjoyable ride through the Wild West: Danish angle works well with the xenophobic locals of the era. MT

leviathan 4LEVIATHAN  ****  | Russia | 2014

A saga set in Northern Russsia. Before anything else are the familiar strengths of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s work: Regular cinematographer Mikhail Krichman shoots with a reliance on the natural light of northwest Russia’s late summer/early autumn, giving the whole thing a pallet at once unhealthily under-lit and richly blue. Elena Lyadova, a less central performer in ELENA, is here elevated to key player: in her, Zvyagintsev has found an actress whose hardened beauty betrays all the hurt and disappointment that an ordinary life down on the lower rungs can bring. In so much as a glance here, she conveys a woman caught between the rock of an unhappy marriage and the unbearably hard place of a doomed affair. Philip Glass’s music also returns: ‘The Ruins’, from his 1983 opera Akhnaten, bookends proceedings over sequences of harsh, foreboding cliff faces and crashing, ominous waves. Does the film overreach? Though such passages as that just mentioned are vivid and gripping in themselves, they do suggest a director who’s possibly too eager to imbue his work with an air of thematic significance. All the more refreshing, then, that the film is also Zvyagintsev’s funniest by far. Never settling for any one simple tonal register, it at times reaching levels of black satire, most notably in its early depictions of Vadim the mayor, a shark in a small pond whose office boasts a framed portrait of Putin, to whose shady Machiavellianism he palpably aspires (other framed leaders, from Lenin to Gorbachev, feature in another scene). As Vadim, Madyanov steals the show, resembling a fluffy teddy bear dowsed in vodka one moment and a ruthless, no-nonsense brute the next. MP

goobTHE GOOB **** | UK | 2014

Guy Myhill’s debut evokes the open spaces of Norfolk veiled in golden summer. An unsettling coming of age story, it pits a young man’s burgeoning sexuality against that of his mother’s boorish boyfriend – an avid stock-car racing champion and local grower. Simon Tindall’s ethereal camera-work captures the rough and ready appeal of this farming landscape and its gutsy inhabitants and a soft-focus arthouse twist contrasts well with the pumping score of hits that include Donna Summer. Constantly on the move, the restless Dardennesque pace also brings to mind that motorcycle opening sequence of Lawrence of Arabia. This is a very English affair bristling with sexual tension and dreamy awakenings from childhood to young adulthood in the Fens, it teases with an enigmatic storyline that weaves into focus then departs again in a different direction, never quite revealing itself but conjuring up a family in turmoil. A really atmospheric indie Britflick. MT

Im_Keller_2-©Ulrich_SeidlIN THE BASEMENT (IM KELLER) **** | Austria | 2014

After exploring the sex lives of a three contemporary women (Love, Hope, Paradise), Austrian maverick, Ulrich Seidl, plumbs the domestic cellars of his homeland for more outrageous material in his latest documentary IM KELLER (In The Cellar). A word normally applied to horror film ‘unheimlich’ describes these underground spaces that are the total opposite of cosy: we meet group of characters who appear only too happy to share with us their unusual habits and hobbies in this subterranean world. With his regular collaborator Veronika Franz, Seidl’s preoccupation with obesity, nudity and S&M goes hand in hand with religious bigotry and undercover Nazis (Hitler was, of course, Austrian) – all are alive and kicking in the homes of the outwardly innocuous Austrians. Indie and art house audiences with a penchant for the macabre and Seidl’s dark brand of humour will certainly flock to see Im Keller even though it is, in parts, a sight for sore eyes. It certainly proves that in Austria as well as Yorkshire there’s ‘nowt so queer as folk”. Guaranteed to make you squirm in your seats.MT

Altman_1ALTMAN **** | Venice | 2014

The fascinating career of Robert Altman is the subject of Ron Mann’s biopic that kicks off with the auteur’s chance meeting that changed his life. It all seemed so simple in those days, one lucky meeting leads to a career spanning 50 years. But you do need talent, of course, and perseverance, and Altman, we discover, had this in spades along with an ability to inspire and impress, and to re-invent himself in a career that led to prodigious TV work (Bonanza) before he even started making films. The only director to win top prize at three major European film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) and the first director to have concurrent conversations in his films; he developed a way of recording, allowing audiences to listen to several conversations at once, adding a feel of reality to his dramas. He also invented the ‘portmanteau’ film (Short Cuts, The Player). The majority of his films were financed independently and box office standout Gosford Park found finance at the last minute through the UK Lottery: ironically  it was also made after he received the heart of a young woman. Packed with fascinating details, Mann’s doc is watchable and entertaining. MT

photoTHE DUKE OF BURGUNDY **** 

Peter Strickland’s focus on the exploitation genre has already alighted on the Italian ‘giallo’ (Berberian Sound Studio) and the ‘revenge thriller'(Katalin Varga). Here he turns his talents to a seventies-set story of lesbian erotica. The Duke in question is a butterfly,  delicately exploring the love between two female etymologists engaged in a dominant/submissive affair. Chiara D’Anna (Evelyn) and Sidse Babett Knudsen (Cynthia) play the lovers in this intriguing and unconventional drama which drifts into dreamlike abstract and experimental episodes (complete with unusual  sound effects) evoking the emotional ecstasy of this complex sexual adventure. MT

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 8 – 19 OCTOBER 2014 ALL OVER LONDON

 

 

 

No One’s Child (2014) Niceje Dete | Venice International Film Festival

NICEJE DETE/NO ONE’S CHILD

Dir.: Vuk Rsumovic

Cast: Denis Muric, Pavle Cemerikic, Milos Timotijevic, Isidora Jankovic

Croatia 2014, 96 min. Drama  Serbian with subtitles

Based on true events, Vuk Rsumovic’ debut feature NO ONE’S CHILD, a variation on Truffaut’s L’Enfant Sauvage, tells the story of a young boy of about eight, who is found in the woods near Travnk, (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) by Serbian hunters. Sent to an orphanage in Belgrade, the prognosis of re-integration into human society is not that good. Haris (Denis Muric), as he has been called randomly, kicks and spits, moves on all fours, hates wearing shoes and eats with his bare hands. His language skills are non-existent and he dislikes all human contact. It is up to Ilke (Timotijevic), one of the guardians in the orphanage, to lure him into the human world.

Ilke makes certain progress, particularly teaching Haris words by showing him objects drawn on big posters, but the real breakthrough happens when of the boys, Zika (Cemerikic), takes a liking to Haris, who is called by the derogative name “Puchke” by the rest of the boys. Zika and his girl friend Alisa (Jankovic), take Haris to a fair, and show him around the city, gaining his confidence. But later Zika decides to go back to his violent father, and Haris regresses. When Zika returns, having been beaten up badly by his father again, he can’t stay in the orphanage any more, because he is over the age limit. For a short time, Haris is looked after by Alisa, who has left the orphanage and makes money as a part-time call girl. But disaster strikes for Haris, with the outbreak of the civil war in Yugoslavia. Because of the name given to him by the men who found him, the Bosnian authorities claim him, and soon the young teenager is seen fighting with adults in the trenches.

Muric is outstanding and his physical exploits are as brilliant as his acting skills. Rsumovic avoids pathos and sentimentality, showing the case with the eyes of a documentary filmmaker. Damjan Radovanovic’ widescreen photography captures the panoramic  landscapes and intimate close-ups alike with brilliant originality. Far from having the look of a debut film, NO ONE’S CHILD is a mature, but nevertheless a stunningly fresh achievement. Without being judgemental, the director lets the viewer decide which world is the more humane one: nature or the world of human relationships, fraught with permanent conflicts, build on an imaginary hierarchy, in constant flux with haphazardly changing values. Rsumovic’ elliptical parable is stunningly beautiful, and emotional harrowing, it fully deserved the FIPRESCI prize for the “Settimani di Critica” section of the Festival. AS

REVIEWED AT THIS YEAR’S VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SEPTEMBER 2014

 

The Postman’s White Nights (2014) | BEST DIRECTOR | Venice International Film Festival

Belye_nochi_pochtalona_Alekseya_Tryapitsyna_5The Postman’s White Nights (Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna)

Director: Andrei Konchalovsky

Aleksey Tryapitsyn, Irina Ermolova, Timur Bondarenko

Russia, 110 mins, Drama

Just when it appeared that the Venice film festival was winding up the red carpet for another year, in comes Andrei Konchalovsky’s remarkable small-town docudrama to set the cat among the pigeons (of St Mark’s Square). With his film warmly received at yesterday’s press screening, the veteran Russian filmmaker could prove a late Golden Lion winner after a 50-plus year directing career.

Konchalovsky takes us to the outer reaches of Russia to a remote, serene lakeside community where boat is the only means of entry. Their sole connection to the outside world is the postman Aleksey, a sprightly middle-aged man who brings not only the daily post, but supplies, food, fuel and the daily gossip. He chats with the locals and helps them with their chores and has a deep longing for outsider Irina and is a father figure for her son Timur.

The postman is played by Aleksey Tryapitsyn, a real-life postman who joins with the rest of the community in playing versions of themselves, following a similar fly-on-the-wall used in Kurochka Ryaba and House of Fools. Yet nothing seems overtly staged or recognisably false: this pastoral idyll has a glorious, charming, lived-in sensibility.

Tryapitsyn doesn’t falter with his grand role in the proceedings. He has an uncanny ability to convey emotional power in the slightest of reactions, and has a witty comic timing that belies his non-professional origin. His unrequited love for Irina (one of the few professional actors in the show) has elements of Checkov (particularly The Seagull), the playwright Konchalovsky recently directed for the stage in London.

A greater conflict comes when his boat’s engine is stolen, and Aleksey engages in a Gogol-esque encounter with an uncaring municipal representative on the mainland. Without a means of work, and a route to the island (it’ll take a month for a replacement to come from Arkhangelsk, he’s told), he seeks out his friend to deal with the situation, a general at a near-by military base. It’s revealed this is no normal base, but a space port – the absurdity of modest country life next to interstellar industry is barely recognised by locals – and the payoff is a glorious final, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot to close the film.

The best work happens in the quieter, contemplative moments. A moving scene comes at a village elder’s funeral, when the community talk of the “socialistic romanticism” of her era, a time unlike, apparently, a present Russia in which their humble roles in society seem almost obsolete. Why should Russians pay for humble fishermen in rural villages for their fish, rather than modern, faceless dragnet fishing, as one sequene depicts? And as the young Timur is wont to say to Aleksey, do we need postmen when we can email? Konchalovksy’s art reveals a beauty to a rustic life that is being lost – as if this is the last chance to witness this kind of small-town life. If it is, Konchalovsky has crafted a beautiful record of this world. Ed Frankl

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER

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Red Amnesia (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Red Amnesia (Chuangru zhe)

Director: Wang Xiaoshuai

Lü Zhong, Feng Yuanzheng, Amanda Qin, Qin Hao, Shi Liu

China, 115 mins

China’s past weighs heavily on the characters of Red Amnesia, Wang Xiaoshuai’s slow burning family drama that carries a quiet, subtle, but combative denouncement of the country’s treatment of recent history. This is a ghost story that unearths pains of the past that leading to tragic consequences, a thoughtful allegory of China’s contemporary relationship with its cultural revolution and, unquestionably, Tiananmen Square protests and beyond.

In a dearth of leading female performances at this year’s Lido, Lü Zhong is a top bet for a Best Actress win at the end-of-festival awards. At 73, she is tremendous as Deng, a lively grandmother who herself cares for her ageing mother, while being barked around by her affluent children who symbolise a faceless notion of China’s new rich. There’s something of Ang Lee’s early comedy of manners in the opening sections of the film, but the film turns out to be more politically minded and challenging.

Deng begins receiving anonymous phone calls in which nobody replies. Her kids think she’s dreaming, and she herself begins to have vivid nightmares of her own situation. Lü’s performance is just poised enough to suggest that she may or may not be losing her mind, especially when she starts talking to her recently deceased husband, even laying out a seat for him at the dinner table.

She begins seeing a young boy, at first worried he’s following her, but later engaging with him as he helps her one day with her daily chores. Is he real, or ghost? Deng suggests he might be the reincarnation of a mysterious man, Zhao, from her past, suggesting she makes good on her “debts”, and the film gives us only hints at her sanity. “Since his death it’s as if a shadow has been following me,” she says.

There’s something of Hidden in the set up, and like Haneke’s film, the whole situation unearths some terror of the past that cannot be rectified. That’s Wang’s intention: setting up a film that raises the issues of China’s lack of admission of past mistakes. In that way it’s a remarkable film – the title reveals to be ironic as, in China, the past hasn’t been forgotten; it’s the people in factories and the farmers in the countryside that the Chinese government have let down. Late in the film, we travel with Deng to the countryside where she grew up and where workers speak out against the authorities who say the government has given “No prestige for the workers”. Indeed, in the film’s sucker-punch ending, her past, and so China’s past, drives the guilt Deng so profoundly feels. Ed Frankl.

VENICE INTERNATIONL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 September 2014.  Follow all our  coverage under the FESTIVAL banner.

Le Dernier Coup de Marteau (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU (The Third Hammer Blow)

Dir.: Alix Delaporte

Cast: Clotilde Hesme, Romain Paul, Gregory Gadebois

France 2014, 82 min.

Set in Montpellier, Delaporte’s simple narrative (Angel and Tony) centres on a football-obsessed teenager, Victor, and his mother Nadia, who is suffering from cancer. The family lives in a caravan, next to Spanish emigrants, in the open seascape of the Camargue in southern France.

Victor has the usual teenage worries, but he is well-behaved and trying to teach the little Spanish neighbour French, whilst hoping to get into an elite football academy. Out of the blue, Victor’s father, the famous conductor Samuel Rovinski, turns up. He is  rehearsing Mahler’s 6th in the opera house at Montpelier. Father and son get on surprisingly well, and whilst Nadia’s condition is getting worse, Victor manages to get into the academy, somehow helped by the fact he has a famous father, and discovers a liking for classical music.

Le_dernier_coup_de_marteau_1-_JC_Lother

Delaporte often asks us to suspend any sense of reality, but nevertheless, she delivers a stunningly original narrative: with scenes of football played to Mahler’s music. Furthermore, she makes us really believe in this co-existence. Victor takes to classical music like a fish to water, he is his father’ son and the two share a palpable chemistry; yet Victor is proud to be independent with his mother. Despite living a simple existence, Delaporte shows mother and son enjoying themselves: jumping from a height into a cold lake, and trying to get as much fun out of life with their Spanish neighbours as possible. And despite their difficult circumstances, Victor and Nadia are never cast in the victim’s role, neither does Delaporte glorifies Rovinski’s world.

Hesme and Paul are perfect, Rovinski good at hiding his sensitive side. Camera work is unobtrusive, colours and landscapes vibrant and emotive.  LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU is a very original and moving film.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs until 6 September 2014. Follow our coverage under the FESTIVAL banner

Il Giovane Favoloso (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Director: Mario Martone

Cast: Anna Mouglalis, Isabella Ragonese, Elio Germano, Michele Riondino

137mins  Drama Biopic  Italian with English subtitles

Mario Martone (Amore Molesto) takes on the crippled 18th Century literarary genius, Giacome Leopardi, in this ambitious but rather worthy biopic.  Sumptuously set in the verdant countryside of Tuscany and The Marche it stars Elio Germano (A Magnificent Haunting) as the lonely poet and child prodigy who struggles to break into fashionable circles despite a disciplinarian father and poor health.

Leopardi did not score heavily on the romantic front, unlike Lord Byron, who, despite his club foot, enjoyed a great deal of erotic attention from the opposite sex; Ippolita di Majo’s screenplay dabbles with some of his female fantasies in the shape of a young illiterate girl who dies early on and a ravishing Florentine countess, played superbly by Anna Mouglalis who lights up this otherwise rather dry biopic with her charm and elegance. Sadly she falls for his more good-looking and glamorous friend Antonio Ranieri (Michele Rondino). The only aborted action he has between the sheets is with a Naples prostitute, but this episode ends cruelly in humiliation.

With some clever editing to the earlier scenes this is, however, an art house drama that could appeal to audiences outside Italy, or those who are interested to discover more about Italian literature beyond Dante, Ovid and Catullus. Indeed, Giacomo Leopardi’s work embraces many of the tenets of Romanticism and there are some allusions to this in Renato Berta’s dreamlike cinematography although Sascha Ring’s contemporary music feels strange and incongruous in a scene by the waterside where Leopardi’s collapses in sheer desperation at his blighted existence and health problems.

As the drama progresses to Rome and Naples, it opens out visually with some magnificent landscapes of southern Italy and further opportunities to discover Leopardi’s moving poetry and learn about his ideas as a philosopher. This is an ambitious and watchable film and Elio Germano gives a strong and convincing performance as a tortured artist wracked with pain and mental anguish who was wiser of the human condition than his elders gave him credit for: “People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not”. MT

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs until 6 September 2014. Follow our coverage under the FESTIVALS banner.

 

The Cut (2014) – | London Film Festival 2014

Director: Fatih Akin

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian, George Georgiou, Kevork Malikyan

138 mins, Drama Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Canada, Poland, Turkey

One of the hot picks for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Turkish-German director Faith Akin’s Armenian genocide epic is sweeping, if rather anodyne affair, starring Tahar Rahim as a (primarily) mute father searching for his missing daughters.

Taken out of the running for Cannes by Akin for “personal reasons” might have proved an omen, but Akin is able to rely on an old-fashioned sensibility, which only disappoints because he’s been so irreverent elsewhere. His Berlin winner Head On and Edge of Heaven were exciting indie films that talked about culture clashes and integration in a very modern and sophisticated way, but in making a historical epic in such a conventional fashion, The Cut misses out what was previously so refreshing about his work.

The film begins in 1915 in the Anatolian city of Mardin, as Ottoman troops tear away Rahim’s Nazaret from his wife and daughters under the auspices of conscription. In fact, like other ethnic Armenians, he’s dragged to lay roads for the Ottoman forces in the First World War. The slave labour is all right for some, who believe it’s better than being on the battlefield, but those who survive the dehydration and exhaustion are later faced with death marches. Nazaret narrowly survives after a civilian executioner feigns his death, leaving instead a tear in his throat that makes him unable to talk. After spending the war in soap factory – a metaphor for ethnic cleansing if you needed one – he discovers that his daughters survived, and proceeds to cross the Atlantic in search, from Havana to the plains of North Dakota.

The 1915 atrocity which killed 1.5 million remains a hotly politicised issue, which makes Akin’s conventional exploration of the story all the more baffling. This is an event that Turkey denies took place, and even Britain, unlike, say, France and Germany, also refuses to call a genocide. Directing aside, there are strong overtones with crises in the region today: at one point Ottoman soldiers order Nazaret and his fellow Armenians to convert to Islam to be set free – only a few accept the offer.

Rahim has a shaggy charm in the role, although when he stops communicating through words, he doesn’t quite have the physicality as an actor to really excel in the part. It’s strange, since his excellent performance in A Prophet depended so much on the presence he brought to the role, something found wanting here. One of the film’s more moving moments has Nazaret stop to watch Charlie Chaplin in The Kid in a town square screening, and you can’t help but regrettably compare the two actors – Rahim is even made to look like Chaplin.

The dialogue in English is not so much stilted but terribly naff, and the decision to have Armenians speak English in the film proves problematic when the film reaches, well, America. But perhaps concentrating on dialogue is taking away something from the film. This is a film about images – like when Nazaret, desperate for water, looks down a well to find piles of dead bodies – and, indeed, about silence. Silence about how the world has reacted, shrugged, at the history of the Armenian genocide that was an example to the Nazis two decades later. In that way Akin is speaking about today: while Chaplin’s job was to take people away from the horrors of the First World War, Akin and Tahar Rahim’s silent tramp is doing the opposite about today’s conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Ed Frankl

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. READ ALL OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER.

Loin des Hommes (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Writer/Director: David Oelhoffen

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Reda Kateb

110 mins, France,  Historical Drama, French with English subtitles

Albert Camus’s short story ‘The Guest” becomes a thrilling Western-orientated road movie, in which Viggo Mortensen adds French and Arabic to his screen repertoire of various European tongues.

Mortensen is Daru, a Pied-Noir schoolteacher educating village kids in French language and customs in the midst of the Algerian war high in the haute plaines of the Atlas Mountains, during the 1950s. In a desolate part of the country, on the northern fringe of the Sahara, his choice of profession is to the chagrin of people on both sides of the conflict now brewing: the French don’t see the point in educating ordinary Algerians, while the natives are irritated at the instruction in French rather than Arabic.

One evening, a French gendarme hands Daru an Algerian (Reda Kateb) accused of murder and asked to transport him to the French authorities at a village a day’s walk away. However, Daru has no wish to deliver a man to a certain death (either because of his real guilt, or the prejudices of the colonial establishment). Instead, he initially chooses to do nothing, allowing the prisoner to sneak out on his first night, only to return. Daru has no easy way out, and instead is forced to make some significant moral decisions about the welfare of his charge.

Mortensen is eminently watchable as the craggy-faced Daru (it’s a face that paints a thousand unknown memories) who develops a strange rapport with Kateb’s Mohamad that is unexpectedly warm. Crossing the barren wastelands, they find themselves fleeing Mohammad’s vengeful townsfolk and freedom fighters before rebels fighting for independence capture them. Some of the soldiers recognise Daru as their unit’s leader from the Second World War, commenting that now every Algerian in his unit is fighting for independence – and he must now pick his own side. Where once he was the teacher, now he is the prisoner. Is this what happens when, as Burke would say, good people do nothing?

A terrific scene sees Mortensen’s Daru become a hostage as the rebels take fire from a French brigade, and even though the film’s political slant might be slightly blunt, this is effectively-told filmmaking with a ravishing visual style. Camus’s story is given a new life here and Oelhoffen has provided one of the best adaptations of the author’s work. While Camus’s ‘L’Exil et le Royaume’ short story hints the outbreak of a coming divisive war in the country, Oelhoffen sets his film just as the independence conflict took hold. It provides the text with a renewed sense of moral purpose that finds parallels with the troubles rocking the north African country today. Photographed with an eye for stark and barren scenery (actually filmed in Morocco) and with another great score written by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis; it looks, sounds, and thinks like an epic with big ideas. Ed Frankl.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27 AUGUST UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER 2014. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER.

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Hungry Hearts (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Director: Severio Costanzo

Cast: Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher, Roberta Maxwell

USA/Italy 2014, 109 min.

In Severio Costanzo’s second Venice offering, Jude (Adam Driver) and Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) have an inauspicious meeting in a Chinese restaurant in New York, where they are locked in the bathroom together. It takes a while to free the couple, who then lose no time in slipping between the sheets. Mina is working for the Italian embassy and, when she is transferred, Jude asks her to stay. Soon they are expecting a baby. Mina consults a psychic who predicts this will be an ‘indigo’ with paranormal powers.

The audience, like Jude, shrugs off Mina’s conviction – but it is the first of many indications that Mina is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. After lengthy weddings celebrations champagne glasses are packed away as they couple hunker down in this weird and quirky drama that’s not quite a thriller but feels it ought to be. A feeling of claustrophobia descends on their cramped flat that seems to made of little boxes where nobody is able to breathe – but it is clearly a place were Mina really thrives. After the birth of the baby boy, the couple remain cloistered in the apartment.

Mina, who has been anorexic during the pregnancy, loses even more weight, and the baby, fed only on vegan food like her mother, is neither gaining weight or growing. Finally Jude wakes up to this fact, and takes his son to a doctor, who advises a radical change of food for the baby. Whilst Jude is only too willing to follow the advice, Mina fights him all the way. She is also germo-phobic and does not want to leave, or take the baby outside. Finally Jude, with the help of a social worker, more or less kidnaps his son, who goes to live with his mother (Maxwell) in the countryside outside New York. But Mina does not give up, she tries to regain custody of her son, and after Jude hits her, she manages to regain custody. The desperate grandmother can only think of a very radical solution.

Half way through the film, the fish-eye lense is introduced, turning the narrative even more into a real life horror story. Mina is a frail and emaciated creature, just skin and bones, a fanatical gleam in her eyes. Jude is geeky and ambivalent – for much of the film, he tries to mediate between Mina and reality. His mother is made of much sterner stuff, and does not fall for Mina’s passive-agression schemes. However harsh the denouement appears, it’s clear that somebody had to make a stand – and Jude was much too feeble to be this person. Despite a weak script with gaping potholes, the superb cast handle the action masterfully. Not a film for the faint-hearted, but a convincing story of ordinary madness. MT

REVIEWED AT VENICE 2014

3 Coeurs (2014) 3 Hearts – Venice International Film Festival 2014

Director: Benoit Jacquot

Writers: Benoit Jacquot, Julien Boivent

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Benoit Peolvoorde

116min  Drama/melodrama  French with English subtitles

3 COEURS is a classic French ménage à trois where two provincial sisters fall for the same man. Chiara Mastoianni and Charlotte Gainsbourg play the sibling love rivals as Catherine Deneuve watches this classy affair unfold with a beady eye, as doyenne of the family antique business in Valence, a picturesque town in the Rhone Alps. Benoit Poelvoorde turns in another powerful performance as the object of their affections, a neurotic tax inspector from Paris with a roving eye but a heart of gold.

It all begins when Marc (Poelvoorde) misses his last train home to Paris and finds himself chatting up Sylvie (Gainsbourg) in the station bar. A chemistry develops as they walk and talk through the night and arrange to meet up in Paris. Quite convenient, as she’s living with her husband. But when she arrives in Paris the next weekend, Marc suffers a heart attack and fails to turn up to their rendezvous. Thinking he has lost interest, Sylvia goes home. Strangely, Marc returns to Valence but this time runs into Sophie (Mastroianni) who needs tax advice on the antiques business. The couple fall in love, she leaves her boyfriend and Sylvie is strangely brushed out of the whole affair. Meanwhile she has decided to follow her husband to his new job in the States.

To keep the tension mounting and the vital clues hidden from the relevant characters, Julien Boivent’s screenplay relies heavily on poetic licence – a vital ploy in melodrama: no mobile phones are used in the early stages of this story, although they are critical in the denouement, and despite the sisters’ closeness, it never dawns on Marc from the numerous family photos in Deneuve’s family mansion, or the constant skyp-ing that goes on between the girls, that they are related.

The enjoyment of 3 COEURS depends heavily on suspension of disbelief: it’s certainly a slick and watchable film with some subtle performances particularly from Charlotte Gainsbourg as the ‘dark horse’ of a sister and Mastroianni as the more straightforward one. As in Strangers on a Train, the vital clue lies in Sylvie’s cigarette lighter that Marc discovers among Sophie’s stuff and twigs that he’s operating on dangerous ground. Where the story falls down is in director Benoit Jacquot’s failure to realise that these two sisters, who clearly love each other, would not have exchanged photos of Marc and discussed the subtle nuances of the relationship before things moved on to a permanent basis between Marc and Sophie.

Deneuve is very much in support mode here; chain-smoking and eating her way through the narrative as the wealthy and wise bedrock in the girls’ lives. If you enjoy Deneuve’s traditional French fare such as A Christmas Tale and Kings and Queen then this will definitely appeal. MT

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs from 27 August – 6 September 2014

 

The Humbling (2014) – Venice International Film Festival

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Nina Ariadna

USA 2014, 112 min.

In Levinson’s adaptation of the novel by Philip Roth, Simon Axler, a famous actor on the wrong side of 60, loses his craft and his love of the theatre. After a black-out he collapses into the orchestra pit and ends up in a posh sanatorium. There he meets Sybil, one of the patients, who wants to pay Simon handsomely to kill her husband, who has molested their daughter. Simon declines, but Sybil returns during the rest of the film, to talk him into the killing. Simon could do with the money, because he is broke. After returning home to his country mansion in Connecticut, he is visited by Pegeen (Gerwig), the daughter of an actress Simon had an affair with more than 30 years ago. Megeen, who is a lesbian, had a life long crush on Simon, and they start a rather one-sided relationship, in which the aging actor plays the role of a sugar-daddy, while Megeen still sleeps with women – hardly surprising when one considers Axler’s physical state. Finally, Simon has the choice between a hair replacement commercial and the title role in King Lear on Broadway. Choosing the latter, and wanting to father a baby with Pegeen, brings Simon again too close to the abyss.

This is a glossy, beautifully crafted drama in which Levinson shows us that leaving the sanatorium makes no difference to Simon: inside he had only Sybil to contend with, but in his own home he has Megeen on his hands, who literally drives him even more crazy. She wants all, material and attention-wise, and her moods are violent. Axler is caught between his own loss of reality, his wishful phantasies and his rapidly declining body. A crippled man, playing the teenager in an old body and a disturbed mind. Pacino is superb, he fights the dying of the light for far too long, always wanting a little stay from execution. He is so caught up in himself and his delusions, that he can not see what Pegeen is doing to him. In his mind he is still a much younger man, able to cope. Gerwig is dominance personified, crushing Simon, like her former lovers.

Shot in only 20 days near Levinson’s own house in Connecticut, THE HUMBLING has a freshness that suits the narrative: we are rushed through the last rites for Axler, his life violently fragmenting around him: past and present, all the stories of life and theater merging into one in the old actor’s mind. His fears and wishes are dangerously close, his imaginations haunting him. The vivid and innovative camera supports his descent into a private hell. AS

THE HUMBLING IS SHOWING AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FROM 27 August to 7 September 2014. Follow our coverage under the FESTIVALS banner.

Im Keller (2014) In The Basement – Venice International Film Festival 2014

Director: Ulrich Seidl

Writers: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz

81min  Doc  Austria

After exploring the sex lives of a three contemporary women (Love, Hope, Paradise), Austrian maverick, Ulrich Seidl, plumbs the domestic cellars of his homeland for more outrageous material in his latest documentary Im Keller (In The Cellar).  A word normally applied to horror film ‘unheimlich’ describes these underground ‘cribs’ that are the total opposite of cosy: translating as ‘uncanny’ but literally meaning ‘unhomely’ – it seems a particularly appropriate way to describe Seidl’s discoveries. The opening sequences make increasingly bewildering viewing, as we meet group of characters who appear only too happy to share with us their unusual habits and hobbies in this subterranean world. With his regular collaborator Veronika Franz, Seidl’s preoccupation with obesity, nudity and S&M goes hand in hand with religious bigotry and undercover Nazis (Hitler was, of course, Austrian) – all are alive and kicking in the homes of everyday Austrian folk.

Indie and art house audiences with a penchant for the macabre and Seidl’s dark brand of humour will certainly flock to see Im Keller even though it is, in parts, a sight for sore eyes. It certainly proves that in Austria as well as Yorkshire there’s ‘nowt so queer as folk”. One woman hides a series of baby-like dolls in cardboard boxes. As she mollycoddles and soothes them in the basement of the house, her Nazi husband sits upstairs under a prized portrait of Hitler, given as a wedding present: “unwrapping it, I nearly went out of my mind”, he comments with zeal. Another man uses his cellar to house his collection of ‘small game’ trophies (of antilope, kudu etc) and hones his skills at shooting with some target practice and a series of lethal firearms.

As we progress through the ranks of weirdos indulging their obsessions below stairs, Seidl moves onto more x-rated material. A couple who enjoy extreme sexual role-play (BDSM) explain and demonstrate the ethos behind their proclivities: “trust is the most vital element”.  Another woman takes us through the bondage routines involved in being a sexual masochist – it emerges, ironically, that during the day she works in a centre for abused woman.  All this is captured through Martin Gschlacht’s cold-eyed lens, with Seidl’s eerie trademark fixed framing, seen in previous outings. The phrase ‘cognitive dissonance’ springs to mind all through this odd documentary.  Seidl’s treatment of his subject-matter is completely dead pan and non-judgemental and the juxtaposition of these grotesque images and the gallows humour will make you squirm in your seats. MT

IM KELLER is showing at the VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL from 27 August until 6 September 2014.  FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER.

 

 

One on One (2014) | London Korean Film Festival 2014

Director/writer: Kim Ki-Duk

Don Lee, Kim Young-min, Lee Yi-kyung, Cho Dong-in, Yoo Teo, Ahn Ji-hye, Jo Jae-ryong, Kim Joong-ki

Drama, South Korea, 122 min

Kim Ki-Duk hasn’t been given a competition berth at Venice since he controversially won the Golden Lion in 2012 (beating off The Master almost by proxy), so it’s to the second-string Venice Days strand that the veteran Korean prankster goes. And it’s a shame if he’s completely side-lined by the critical fraternity here, even if One On One is a lesser film than his grisly but hilarious Moebius (2013), which premiered here last year out of competition. His latest somehow remains an intriguing skew-eyed look into the pain of violence n the giving as well as in the gruesome receiving.

Moebius began with a castration and got grislier from there, and alarm bells start ringing from the off as Kim launches into a brutal murder of a teenage girl in the opening frames. But even with its lot of ultra-violence and extended torture sequences, there’s a more nuanced tone at work as the narrative gathers momentum. Months after the murder, a group of mysterious mercenaries abduct the killers and those who authorised the murder one by one, torturing them through rusty nails, hammers, pincers, and electrocutions. But they only torture until the perpetrators admit their part in the plot, letting them live with any shame or indeed pride they might’ve held. It starts with dogsbodies, and the film takes us up the chain of command to the top of a web of gangsters. At first the men are apologetic and say they only did what they were told, but later the top men say they did it because it was a just action – one whose motives are never conclusively revealed. But when one character tells its leader (Don Lee) that there is “something sad in you”, he reflects a man whose viciousness is as painful to him as it is to those he gives it out to (well, almost).

At first the film’s kill-list narrative suggests we’re in the territory of a genre flick, but Kim plays with the ideas that the film present and it becomes a more than adequate allegory on the echoes of genocide, where culprits at different points of the chain of command have different explanations for unforgivable crimes. The paramilitary group themselves disguise themselves in various garbs – from an anti-communist brigade to a shady government organisation, as if to heighten the sense that this story cold play out on different levels in different settings.

The film’s violence becomes so routine that it may well bore some, but that’s part of the point, so numbed are these characters to a world where violence begets violence. One of the members of the paramilitary is a victim of domestic violence, raped in a scene that might’ve just have crossed an exploitative line here. But as one character says, “dictators are in families just as much as countries”, and I found myself considering, among the expected bloody finale, the implications of how violent men are often as much troubled as troubling.

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2014 | ONE ON ONE PREMIERED AT THE VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL |

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LA RANÇON DE LA GLOIRE (2014) – Venice International Film Festival 2014

LA RANÇON DE LA GLOIRE

Dir.: Xavier Beauvois

Cast: Benoit Poelvoorde, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Nadine Labaki

France/Belgium/Switzerland, 114 min.

1977: Eddie, a 40 year old Belgian small-time crook, is released from prison in Vevey, Switzerland. He is going to live with his friend Osman, looking after his daughter Samira, since her mother is in hospital. Whilst Eddie gets on well with Samira, his relationship with Osman (whose life he once saved) is strained, since Eddie is still not going straight, even stealing the lights for the Christmas tree and a TV. But soon Osman has to rely on Eddie’s ‘profession’, because of a legal loophole means he has to pay over 50 000 Swiss Francs for his wife’s  operation. Eddie comes up with a master plan: Charlie Chaplin had just died, and Eddie proposes to steal his corpse and ask for a ransom from the family. Osman is so desperate, that he agrees to the mad scheme. The two commit all sorts of amusing blunders along the way but Beauvois makes sure of a happy ending.

Xavier Beauvois tells his story like a fairy-tale, with the seven year old Samira being much more of an adult than the two men. Caroline Champetier’s photography is stunning, never falling to re-create the postcard-idyll of Switzerland, but showing us the grim places as well the the contrasting beauty. Performances are very convincing but Benoit Poelvoorde leads with his suberb portrait of a likeable ex-con whose heart is in the right place but can’t help slipping back into crime. Chiara Mastroianni, is shoe-horned in as the glamorous owner of the local circus, although as a love interest for Eddy, she doesn’t quite make the grade in a rather underwritten part. Michel Legrand’s music (plus Chaplin soundtracks) often help us over the the sagging middle of the film. A colourful B-Picture for children and grown-ups alike. But Beauvois makes sure of a happy-ending for Eddie in the arms of Chiara Mastroianni AS.

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27 AUGUST UNTIL 6 SEPTEMBER. FOLLOW OUR COVERAGE UNDER THE FESTIVALS BANNER

 

Venice Film Festival 2014 – preview

_AF_6405.CR2With a focus on World premieres from maverick directors from France, Italy and the USA, this year’s Venice Film Fesitval (27 August until 7th September) may yet prove to be a treasure trove of gems. Stars gracing the Red Carpet at the 71st Edition of the Italian Lido’s most glamorous event will include Ethan Hawk and Al Pacino. Composer, Alexandre Desplat, heads up the Competition jury that includes Tim Roth, Jessica Hausner, Sandy Powell.

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The Festival opens on 27th August with BIRDMAN, or the UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) starring Michael Keaton and Ed Norton and closes on 6th September with Ann Hui’s THE GOLDEN ERA, that looks back at Japanese Imperialism in China.

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The Competiton line-up at the World’s oldest film festival looks at new work from Abel Ferrara with a biopic on the Italian filmmaker  PASOLINI, (his Welcome to New York recently shocked critics at Cannes) Swedish director, Roy Andersson brings his existential film A PIGEON SAT ON BRANCH and Fatih Akin’s THE CUT, starring Tahar Rahim as a father looking for his lost daughters, promising to be a contraversial year with hardly any offerings from Eastern Europe or the Far East . Most noticeably, Venice agent provocateur of the past two festivals, Kim Ki-duk, has been side-barred to Venice Days with his latest outing ONE ON ONE. 

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Five American films feature in the competition line-up among them: R Bahrani’s subprime mortgage drama 99 HOMES, with Laura Dern and Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary THE LOOK OF SILENCE, a welcome follow-up to his critically-acclaimed The Act of Killing. Last year David Gordon Green brought Joe to the Lido, this year his film MANGELHORN stars Al Pacino as a small-town Texan locksmith suffering from unrequited love. Ethan Hawke appears in Michael Almereyda’s modern take on Shakespeare’s CYMBELINE.

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From France, Benoit Jacquot’s drama THREE HEARTS stars Charlotte Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuvre. THE PRICE OF GLORY is a seventies-set comedy involving the imaginary theft of Charlie Chaplin’s coffin, starring Peter Coyote. Viggo Mortensen plays a teacher in David Oelhofften’s LOIN DES HOMMES that centres on the French war in Algeria.

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From Italy comes Francesco Munzi’s mafia thriller ANIME NERE, Saverio Costanzo’s New York love story HUNGRY HEARTS starring Alba Rohrwacher and Adam Driver and Mario Martone’s historical biography IL GIOVANE FAVOLOSO that tells the fascinating story of the poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi.

Il_giovane_favoloso_4-Elio_Germano,Michele_Riondino,Anna_Mouglalis-_Mario_SpadaAnother Turkish director vying for the Golden Lion in this year’s competition is Kaan Mujdeci who makes his debut with SIVAS, that tells the story of an 11-year-old boy and his dog on the steppes. Already we have two contenders for the “Golden Dog” along with Vittorio De Sica’s Neo Realist drama UMBERTO D‘s mutt who appears in the Venice Classics strand this year. Meanwhile British outings are thin on the ground (in the Horizons (Orizzonti) sidebar) and include Duane Hopkins’s social-realist crime thriller BYPASS and Guy Myhill’s Norfold-set debut drama THE GOOB, starring Sienna Guillory and Sean Harris.

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Other highlights from the East include Andrei Konchalovskiy’s POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS that depicts an isolated community that live a neolithic lifestyle in contemporary Russia. Iranian director, Rakhshan Bani-Eternad’s TALES, Shanghai director, Xiaoshuai Wang’s thriller RED AMNESIA (Chuang ru zhe) and, finally, not to be missed in the competition line-up is,  WWII epic drama FIRES ON THE PLAIN (NOBI) – the original 1959 version involved the starvation and privation of its entire crew and cast and is said to be one of Roman Polanski’s favourite films. Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s remake is one of the most anticipated dramas, starring Riri Funaki (Like Father Like Son) in the lead role and is a fitting tribute to this year’s WWII commemorations.

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Debut films competing for the Lion of the Future
“Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film

Kaan MÜJDECI, Sivas (Turkey) (Venezia 71)
Naji ABU NOWAR, Theeb (Jordan/U.A.E./Qatar/United Kingdom) (Orizzonti)
Michele ALHAIQUE, Senza nessuna pietà (Italy) (Orizzonti)
Salome ALEXI, Kreditis limiti (Line of Credit) (Georgia/Germany/France) (Orizzonti)
Veronika FRANZ, Severin FIALA, Ich Seh / Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) (Austria) (Orizzonti)
Chaitanya TAMHANE, Court (India) (Orizzonti)

Suha ARRAF, Villa touma (Palestine) (SIC)
Stéphane DEMOUSTIER, Terre battue (40-Love) (France/Belgium) (SIC)
Ivan GERGOLET, Dancing with Maria (Italy/Argentine/Slovenia) (SIC)
Timm KRÖGER, Zerrumpelt Herz (The Council of Birds) (Germany) (SIC)
Hoàng Điệp NGUYỄN, Đập cánh giữa không trung (Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere) (Vietnam/France/Norway/Germany) (SIC)
Vuk RŠUMOVIĆ, Ničije dete (No One’s Child) (Serbia) (SIC)
Yukun XIN, Binguan (The Coffin in the Mountain) (China) (SIC)

Shawn CHRISTENSEN, Before I Disappear (USA/United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Mario FANFANI, Les nuits d’été (France) (Venice Days)
Peter HOOGENDOORN, Tussen 10 en 12 (Between 10 and 12) (Belgium/France/Holland) (Venice Days)
Guy MYHILL, The Goob (United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Adityavikram SENGUPTA, Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love) (India) (Venice Days) ”

THE 71ST INTERNATIONAL VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27TH AUGUST UNTIL 6TH SEPTEMBER 2014

 

French Film at Venice 2014

Near_Death_Experience_2This year’s Venice International Film Festival has a distinctly French flavour along with its French Jury President – the well-known composer Alexandre Desplat. Five of the competition films are from France (with one Out of Competiton) as established auteurs (Benoit Jacquot, Xavier Beauvois, Abel Ferrara, Amos Gitaï) rub shoulders with emerging talent in the shape of Alix Delaporte, David Oelhoffen), whose second outings have also been selected. Hungry_Hearts_4

The Orizzonti side-bar offers features from the latest wave of filmmakers Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine (Near Death Experience). Over the past ten years the pair have built up some interesting work and invited author Michel Houellebecq to join them this time, as well as the new film by Quentin Dupieux, Réalité, that offers something quite different from the usual French cinema landscape.

tournage "3 cœurs"

The Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) strand will screen four world premieres: Metamorphoses by Christophe Honoré, Return to Ithaca by Laurent Cantet, Les Nuits d’été by Mario Fanfani, and The Smell of Us by Larry Clark and Céline Sciamma’s Cannes hit, Girlhood is in the running for the Lux Prize.

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The 29th International Film Critics’ Week will show Terre battue, the debut feature by Stéphane Demoustier, starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi while Venice Classics invites Lido spectators to rediscover three classics of French cinema: L’Amour Existe by Maurice Pialat, Mouchette by Robert Bresson, and Stolen Kisses by François Truffaut. And if you can’t get to Venice Lido this year, don’t worry: a selection of the competition films will be heading for UK cinemas during the course of this winter. MT

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FROM 27 – 6 AUGUST 2014

 

Sarajevo International Film Festival 2014 – WINNERS

Feher_Isten_Kornel_MundruczoSARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL features a dazzling line-up of nine indie films competing for the HEART OF SARAJEVO AWARD of which three are World Premieres. Eastern Europe focuses strongly in the Balkans festival this year with titles from Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Austria and festival director Mirsad Purivatra is working to extend the selection to include cinema from further afield – North Africa, India and the Middle East.

Bela Tarr heads up the International Jury and Gael Garcia Bernal, Danis Tanovic and Agnès B (who styled the Festival this year) will be honoured with awards. WHITE GOD director Kornel Mundruczo will be there with his Cannes ‘Un Certain Regard’ winner, along with fellow Hungarian director Ádám Csász – LAND OF STORMS. Michel Hazanavicius will also grace the red carpet with his latest film THE SEARCH.

W O R L D   P R E M I E R E S

I AM BESO / ME VAR BESO
Georgia, 2014, Colour, 89 min.
Director and screenplay: Lasha Tskvitinidze
Cast: Tsotne Barbakadze, Soso Tarkashvili

SONG OF MY MOTHER / KLAMA DAYIKA MIN
Turkey, France, Germany, 2014, Colour, 103 min.
Director and screenplay: Erol Mintas
Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Zubeyde Ronahi, Nesrin Cavadzade

THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING / TRI DRITARE DHE NJË VARJE
Kosovo*, 2014, Colour, 93 min.
Director: Isa Qosja
Screenplay: Zymber Kelmendi
Cast: Irena Cahani, Luan Jaha, Donat Qosja, Aurita Agushi, Leonora Mehmetaj, Orik Morina, Xhevat Qorraj

INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

CURE – ŽIVOT DRUGE / CURE – THE LIFE OF ANOTHER – (see header for image)
Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2014, Colour, 83 min.
Director: Andrea Štaka
Screenplay: Andrea Štaka, Thomas Imbach, Marie Kreutzer
Cast: Sylvie Marinković, Lucia Radulović, Mirjana Karanović, Marija Škaričić, Leon Lučev, Franjo Dijak

REGIONAL PREMIERES

imageA BLAST
Greece, 2014, Colour, 83 min.
Director: Syllas Tzoumerkas
Screenplay: Syllas Tzoumerkas, Youla Boudali
Cast: Angeliki Papoulia, Vassilis Doganis, Maria Filini, Themis Bazaka, Yorgos Biniaris

BRIDES / PATARDZLEBI
Georgia, France, 2014, Colour, 93 min.
Director and screenplay: Tinatin Kajrishvili
Cast: Mari Kitia, George Maskharshvili, Natia Niguriani, Ana Grigolia, Nita Kalichava, Levan Kajrishvili, Erekle Tsintsadze Patardzlebi

THE LAMB / KUZU
Turkey, 2014, Colour, 85 min.
Director and screenplay: Kutluğ Ataman
Cast: Nesrin Cavadzade, Cahit Gök, Mert Taştan, Sıla Lara Cantürk, Nursel Kose

LAND OF STORMS / VIHARSAROK
Hungary, 2013, Colour, 105 min.
Director: Ádám Császi
Screenplay: Iván Szabó, Ádam Császi
Cast: András Sütő, Ádám Varga, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Enikő Börcsök

20143697_5-copy-610x250MACONDO
Austria, 2014, Colour, 93 min.
Director and screenplay: Sudabeh Mortezai
Cast: Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva, Rosa Minkailova, Iman Nasuhanowa, Askhab Umaev, Hamsat Nasuhanov, Champascha Sadulajev

OUT OF COMPETITION

WORLD PREMIERES

EQUALS / JEDNAKI
Serbia, 2014, Colour, 104 min.
Directors: Milos Petričić, Mladen Đorđević, Dejan Karaklajić, Ivica Vidanović, Igor Stoimenov, Darko Lungulov
Screenplay: Milica Piletić

A QUINTET / KVINTET
Germany, USA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2014, Colour, 74 min.
Režija/Directo: Sanela Salketić, Ariel Shaban, Roberto Cuzzillo, Elie Lamah, Mauro Mueller

GALA SCREENINGS

sarajBRIDGES OF SARAJEVO / MOSTOVI SARAJEVA
Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Germany, 2014, Colour, 114 min.
Directors: Aida Begić, Leonardo di Costanzo, Jean-Luc Godard, Kamen Kalev, Isild Le Besco, Sergey Loznitsa, Vincenzo Marra, Ursula Meier, Vladimir Perišić, Cristi Puiu, Marc Recha, Angela Schanelec, Teresa Villaverde
Artistic director: Jean-Michel Frodon
Animated Sequences: François Schuiten i Luis da Matta Almeida

WHITE GOD / FEHÉR ISTEN
Hungary, Germany, Sweden, 2014, Colour, 119 min.
Director: Kornel Mundruczó
Screenplay: Kata Wéber, Kornel Mundruczó, Viktória Petrányi
Cast: Zsófia Psotta, Luke and Body, Sándor Zsótér, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Lili Monori, Lászlo Gálffi, Lili Horváth

THE SARAJEVO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 15 – 23 AUGUST 2014 and the WINNERS are:

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST FILM
SONG OF MY MOTHER / KLAMA DAYIKA MIN
Director: Erol Mintaş

A simple and courageous indie drama with beautifully crafted performances and a special award for Fayyez Duman as BEST ACTOR.

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

BRIDES/ PATARDZLEBI
Director: Tinatin Kajrishvili (Georgia, France)

Hope, despair and perseverance is portrayed with great poignancy in this prison drama – Mari Kitia won BEST ACTRESS for her role.

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM
NAKED ISLAND / GOLI
Director: Tiha K. Gudac (Croatia)
Financial award, in the amount of 3,000 €, is provided by The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

SPECIAL JURY MENTION
HAPPILY EVER AFTER / LJUBAVNA ODISEJA
Director: Tatjana Božić (Netherlands, Croatia)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
JUDGEMENT IN HUNGARY / PRESUDA U MAĐARSKOJ
Director: Eszter Hajdu (Mađarska, Njemačka, Portugal)

67th Locarno Film Festival 6-16 August 2014 – WINNERS

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The 67th Locarno Film Festival, kicks off on August 6th with Luc Besson’s thriller LUCY, starring Scarlett Johansson, and closes on August 16th with Tony Gatlif’s immigration drama GERONIMO. Overseen by Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, the festival boasts a number of world premieres, thirteen of which will compete for the coveted GOLDEN LEOPARD in the festival’s International Competition section. World premiere titles in competition include Pedro Costa’s HORSE MONEY, Jungbum Park’s ALIVE, Syllas Tzoumerkas’s A BLAST, Paul Vecchiali’s WHITE NIGHTS ON THE PIER and Yury Bykov’s THE FOOL.

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Alongside the International Competition films, the festival has a further fifteen features in its famed Piazza Grande strand, with the films playing outdoors on Europe’s largest screen. Anticipated highlights include: road comedy LAND HO!, Aaron Katz’s Iceland-set follow-up to COLD WEATHER, co-directed with Martha Stephens; Olivier Assayas’ CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA starring Juliette Binoche (receiving a career honour at the festival); Jasmila Zbanic’s LOVE ISLAND (receiving its world premiere); and Lasse Hallstom’s restaurant comedy THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, starring Helen Mirren.

imageIn addition to the International Competition and Piazza Grande strands, Locarno features a number of other strands showcasing the diversity of modern cinema. They include: the new Signs of Life strand, centring on “cinema at the frontiers” (sample film: Nicolas Pereda’s THE ABSENT); the Concorso Cineasti /Cineastes of the Present discovery strand, featuring both first and second features (sample film: Soon-Mi Yoo’s SONGS FROM THE NORTH); the Open Doors section, which focuses on a specific region every year (this year, it’s films from sub-Saharan Africa); and the Pardi di domani section for shorts.

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One thing Locarno is feted for is its epic retrospectives and this year is no exception, with a strand dedicated to Titanus (one of the great Italian film production companies) that includes over fifty films, with De Sica’s TWO WOMEN and Visconti’s THE LEOPARD among them. There’s also a Histoire(s) du Cinema section, dedicated to film history, showcasing films as diverse as Charlie Chaplin’s MODEarN TIMES and Cem Kaya’s REMAKE, REMIX, RIPOFF. On top of that, there are two smaller tribute sections, one for actor Jean-Pierre Leaud and one for director Li Han-hsiang.

This year’s jury members at Locarno include Venice Golden Lion winner Gianfranco Rossi (Sacro GRA), German filmmaker Thomas Arslan (who made the wonderful GOLD, sadly still not released in the UK), Chinese director Diao Yinan (Berlin Golden Bear winner for BLACK COAL, THIN ICE) and actresses Alice Braga (City of God) and Connie Nielsen (NYMPHOMANIAC). Locarno has a happy tradition of screening films associated with its jury members, so there’s also an Official Jury Films strand, containing 15 films, including both Gold and Black Coal, Thin Ice. Alongside the main jury there are two other juries, one for the shorts strand (headed by Rutger Hauer) and one for the Concorso Cineasti strand, headed by Ossama Mohammed.

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This year, the festival is honouring three different actors with career awards: Juliette Binoche will receive the clumsily named Excellence Award Moet & Chandon, Mia Farrow will receive the Leopard Club award (a recent addition to the festival) and Armin Mueller-Stahl will pick up the Lifetime Achievement Award. All three actors will also have selections of their films screened as part of the festival. In addition, there will be a number of other special guests this year, with confirmed attendees including horror maestro Dario Argento, acclaimed Spanish director Víctor Erice (also receiving a career award and a mini-strand), Melanie Griffith, Julie Depardieu, Jonathan Pryce and Jason Schwartzman.

With so much going on, Locarno audiences are pretty much spoiled for choice, but here are five films to look out for, in addition to those mentioned above.

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BUZZARD (US) – Concorso Cineasti

Indie darling Joel Potrykus concludes his “animal trilogy” (his previous features include Coyote and Ape) with this low-budget drama starring regular collaborator Joshua Burge as a disaffected temp who runs a series of low-level scams from his office cubicle.

THE IRON MINISTRY US/China) – Official Competition

Director J.P. Sniadecki’s intriguing-sounding documentary explores China’s sprawling railway system and examines the social experience of train travel, meeting a range of passengers and railway employees along the way.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (US) – Concorso Cineasti

Director Charles Poekel took to Kickstarter to fund his feature debut, an ultra-low budget drama about a Christmas tree vendor in New York, based on his own experiences.

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DOS DISPAROS (aka Two Gun Shots) (Argentina/Chile/Germany/Netherlands) – Official Competition

The first feature in a decade from director Martin Rejtman, one of the founders of New Argentine cinema. The provocative film focuses on a 16 year old boy who finds a gun in his house and impulsively shoots himself, twice, only to survive.

LISTEN UP, PHILIP (US) – Official Competition

Writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s third feature is a sharply written, darkly funny comedy starring Jason Schwartzman as a bad tempered and self-centred writer awaiting the publication of his second novel. Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss co-stars as his long-suffering live-in photographer girlfriend.

THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 16.

THE WINNERS ARE:

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

GOLDEN LEOPARD – Mula sa kung ano ang noon (WHAT WENT BEFORE) –  Lav Diaz, Filippine
JURY PRIZE – Listen Up Philip – Alex Ross Perry, USA
BEST DIRECTOR – Cavolo Dinheiro (HORSE MONEY)  Pedro Costa, Portugal
BEST ACTRESS – Ariane Labed per Fidelio, l’odyssée d’Alice di Lucie Borleteau, France
BEST ACTORS – Artem Bystrov per Durak (THE FOOL) di Yury Bykov, Russia
SPECIAL MENTION – Ventos de Agosto di Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil

Thule Tuvalu (2014) – Locarno International Film Festival 2014

Director/Writer: Matthias von Gunten

Cast: Foini Tulafono, Kaipati Vevea, Vevea Tepou, Lars Jeremiassen, Tukaou Malaki,

Switzerland Documentary 96mins

THULE TUVALU, Matthias von Gunten’s beautifully shot documentary about global warming and two regions united by a gloomily common destiny despite being 20,000km apart, isn’t the aggressive polemic you might have hoped for—but is, perhaps, all the better for it. Because while this could in fact be a significantly angrier piece about the consequences of rising temperatures and sea levels, the inevitably anxious summarising text with which the film is bound to end would be just as speculative and, apparently, helpless. This Swiss-funded film screened this week as part of the 67th Locarno Film Festival’s Panorama Suisse section.

What THULE TUVALU does do well is give a sense of what it might be like to live in either of its two eponymous places. Dividing his time equally between the inhabitants of Thule, Greenland, and those of Tuvalu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, von Gunten accumulates two absorbing pictures of daily life, highlighting cultural similarities between the people residing in these appreciably contrasting paradises. In a strong opening, Thule resident Lars, 65, shoots a seal from afar—and many other early scenes unfussily depict hunting as a way of life. For Thule and Tuvalu inhabitants alike, animals function merely as transport, food and clothing.

Tuvalu’s temperatures facilitate more intimate means of catching food: Patrick, 42, casts a fishing net as he runs into the sea. On Namunea, the outermost island from Funafuti on Tuvalu’s mainland, we first meet 71-year-old Vevea—who incidentally has six wives and 21 children—as he cuts a pig’s throat. It’s through one of Vevea’s 21 children, 42-year-old Kaipati, that we first hear the C-words: as we learn, climate change is affecting life on Tuvalu in both short- and long-term ways, in the form of droughts and dying vegetation on the one hand and the likelihood that it could be the first country to be entirely submerged by the sea on the other. In a 2009 conference in Copenhagen, we’re told, the UN proposed to limit global warming to two degrees—a tokenistic proposition with which Tuvalu was pressured by industrialised nations into agreeing despite it more or less securing the island’s “certain demise”.

In Thule, meanwhile, the ice is melting and the winters are shortening, meaning its inhabitants are less and less able to hunt for the required amount of time each year to sustain themselves. Tuvalu’s yellowing trees are matched on Thule by an ominously unprecedented rift across a plain of ice. Such warning signs of a possibly irrevocable situation are resulting, understandably, in a great deal of uncertainty for the natives. Briefly, von Gunten travels to New Zealand to catch up with Tuvalu-born Foini, who jumped ship, so to speak, before it was too late. Not everyone can afford this option, of course—presuming they would also emigrate if able to—while others are displaced against their will. Back home, Takuaou makes a dress out of videotape for her daughter’s school performance to celebrate the region’s Day of Friendship; the ceremony took place, we’re told, on the same day a smaller island announced plans for the wholesale resettlement of its population.

For a documentary whose overriding message forbids humour, by the very virtue of spending time with these people, THULE TUVALU has many amusing and/or uplifting moments going for it. The abovementioned Day of Friendship performance is a particular highlight, while the several scenes on Thule featuring dogs are funny almost by default—as when one falls into some water, or when a puppy is distracted from the slab of raw meat with which it would much rather be left alone.

Assisted by Pierre Mennel’s often gorgeous cinematography, such scenes capture the vivid mix of Thule’s dark grey and deep pink skies as well as the serene qualities of overall life there. In a near-transcendent moment, however, the scene that unexpectedly steals the show here is that in which a narwhale is killed with several sniper shots, which dramatically punctuate the surreally quiet air—a profoundly sad encounter that touches on the sublime. MICHAEL PATTISON

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-16 AUGUST 2014

A Blast (2014) – Locarno International Film Festival 2014

Director: Syllas Tzoumerkas
Writer: Syllas Tzoumerkas, Youla Boudali
Cast: Angeliki Papoulia, Vassilis Doganis, Maria Filini, Yorgos Biniaris

Greece/Germany/Netherlands Drama 83mins

For Maria (Aggeliki Papoulia), the driving force of Syllas Tzoumerkas’ second feature A BLAST, the grass is suddenly greener. It wasn’t always so, needless to say, but from the opening moments of this slippery drama the happily married mother of three is in flight from life as she has known it, having left her children and a case of money with sister Gogo (Maria Filini) and driven off into the night—some time after cruelly exiling her burdensome, widowed father to an area of coastal forest. The film world-premieres this week as part of the 67th Locarno Film Festival’s International Competition.

Through flashbacks—and flashbacks within flashbacks—we’re gradually brought to speed: Maria is one of two feisty daughters of convenience store-owning parents who one day meets and falls in love with Yannis (Vassilis Doganis), a sailor whose sexual prowess is tempered by insufferably long bouts at sea. Discovering one day that her wheelchair-bound mother hasn’t been paying her taxes, Maria takes it upon herself to sort matters out. Along the way, she apparently grows detached from things, and begins attending meetings of an ecological activist group as well as group therapy sessions for victims of domestic abuse. She may or may not be hatching a moneymaking plan.

Pasts and present mix. Juxtaposing these timelines lends the dramatic stakes a mystery, recalling the causal disconnect of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 GRAMS (2003). A BLAST also evokes González Iñárritu in other, more irksome ways, such as the nagging suspicion that it’s structure in bad faith—that it’s overstuffed in order to disguise the ridiculous melodrama beneath. Though 21 GRAMS has a thematic justification behind its patchwork storytelling, questions remained: what would happen when González Iñarritu, a director with an apparent preference for soap-like melodrama, finally braved linear storytelling? BIUTIFUL (2010) happened: a film of such po-faced poetic severity that its miserable drama began to feel like a piss-take.

Perhaps aware of this, Tzoumerkas and co-scripter Youla Boudali opted to tell their tale of high passion—and its consequences—in such a way that you barely have a moment to figure out its purpose. Tonally, the musical score suggests it’s a thriller. Editorially, it’s a mystery. Imagistically, something more ominous is at work, such as when a car pulls up alongside Maria, or when Yannis is seen in his cabin with a sweaty roommate bearing a flick-knife. It’s absorbing to a degree, of course, but when Maria’s monologue to her group therapy class is juxtaposed with her mother struggling out of her wheelchair, things appear off. The out-of-focus long shot in which the latter character crawls into the bathroom to commit suicide is telling of the director’s misguided pretensions: there’s simply no reason for it to be framed or lensed in the way it is. Other choices, such as juxtaposing passionate flashback sex scenes with Maria searching for and unashamedly watching “porn sex videos” on a public computer, are baffling.

Throughout, Tzoumerkas relies on a number of shorthand devices, which range from the merely clichéd to the mildly offensive. From the former category: Maria’s insufferably ear-splitting screams of delight upon being reunited with Yannis; Maria slapping Yannis in uncontrollable fury when he departs for another sail; over-lit handheld to invoke Maria’s happier past; Maria and Gogo talking over one another with ironically foul language to denote their chemistry and hearts-on-sleeves emotionalism. Two moments in particular appear to be offensive; both involve Yannis. The first is in a brothel, wherein he has sex with a black prostitute, and the second is a deliberately abrupt cut to him having sex with a male colleague.

Though I won’t argue too much against anyone who defends the second instance as an acknowledgement of a sailor’s sexual needs while at sea (stereotypical as that may be), there’s something very wink-wink and SHAME-like in the way the film splices it in, with something resembling a shock-cut: what better way to connote a heterosexual man’s physical needs than by showing him having sex with another fella? The first instance remains objectionable, meanwhile, because one can’t help but think of Tzoumerkas and Boudali making their only black character a professional seductress in a tastelessly puce den of adulterous iniquity—that they deliberately opted for a black prostitute because a white blonde woman like Maria wouldn’t be unacceptable enough. MICHAEL PATTISON

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 6-16 AUGUST 2014

Il Cinema Ritrovato – Bologna 28 June-5 July 2014

IL CINEMA RITROVATO or literally, Cinema Rediscovered, is now in it’s 28th year and, judging by the increased attendance this year, continues to grow in popularity. The Bologna festival takes place each year at the end of June for 8 days with screenings showing across four main screens in the city, all within easy walking distance, and the famous late night free open-air screenings in the Piazza Maggiore.

Ureshii goro_01Each year film scholars, academics and everyday cinemagoers descend upon medieval town in Emilia Romagna for specialised film screenings ranging this year from a William Wellman mini-retrospective, James Dean, The Golden 50’s – India’s Endangered Classics, Riccardo Freda, Werner Hochbaum, Italian episode films, Polish New Wave in cinemascope and Hitler war films to name but just a few of the strands. The regular strands that continued this year included new restorations of cinema classics, cinema from 100 years ago along with this year’s Japanese section which focused on early talkies from the Shochiku studio.

At any given time you could bump into on the streets, or at a screening, the likes of Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dave Kehr, Scott Foundas, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson or even US director, Alexander Payne who is back for his second successive year.

renoir_la_chienne_03Director Costa Gavras was in attendance this year. Since 2007 he has also been president of the Cinémathèque Française. He was interviewed by the festival’s creative director, Peter von Bagh, and spoke about his early life in Greece and then working as an assistant director with the likes of René Clair (TOUT L’OR DU MONDE 1961), Jacques Demy (LA BAIE DES ANGES 1963) and René Clément (LE JOUR ET L’HEURE 1963 & LES FELINS 1964) before embarking on his own first film COMPARTIMENT TUERS (1965). He also discussed the political outcry around the release of his most celebrated movie Z (1969).

There was an opportunity to see some more recent restorations that had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. These included DRAGON INN (1967). LES CROIX DE BOIS (1931), LA PAURA (1954), COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1968) and LA CHIENNE (1931).

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There were two real highlights from these films and the first was Renoir’s film LA CHIENNE aka THE BITCH. Michel Simon plays the hapless Maurice Legrand, unhappy in his marriage to the nagging Adele and one night meets the beautiful Lulu who has just been beaten by her pimp boyfriend, Dédé. He walks her home to take care of her. Legrand falls in love with Lulu only to be the victim of her and her boyfriend’s plot to extract as much cash as possible from him. Simon is in superb form, as is Janie Marèse as the bitch of the story, Lulu. The film was later remade in 1945 by Fritz Lang as SCARLET STREET. The print screened at the festival was restored by the Cinémathèque française.

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The other film highlight from this strand was the L’Immagine Ritrovata Bologna restoration of Raymond Bernard’s 1931 film LES CROIX DE BOIS aka WOODEN CROSSES. Bernard’s remarkable and inventive use of both handheld and tracking shots to film recreated battle sequences in the trenches and on the battlefields of World War 1 are simply astonishing. There’s one particular battle scene that takes place in a cemetery that shall stay long in the memory as an incredible achievement of choreography in cinema.

The Polish New Wave in CinemaScope strand at this year’s festival was particularly impressive, following on from last year’s Czech New Wave strand entitled L’emulsione conta: Orwo e Nová vlna (1963-1968). Delights such as THE FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM (1964), SAMSON (1961), THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1964), FARAON (1965) and PASSENGER (1963) were on show. It would be hard to pick a favourite from this impressive selection as seeing  and Wajda’s SAMSON turned out to be a real discovery.

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Munk died tragically in a car accident on his way home from the Auschwitz concentration camp where he had been shooting PASSENGER, so the film was left incomplete and was finished posthumously by the use of stills and narration, two years later.  Seeing it projected on the big screen was a gruelling yet rewarding experience.

One of the more interesting strands, and an ingenious programming idea, were the Italian episode films. The strand was entitled L’Italia in corto. Prima parte (1952-1968) and featured two single episodes from different compendium films made during this period. Several of these were a lot of fun and worked surprisingly well when put together as a double bill. The best two were an episode entitled Il Professore by Marco Ferreri from the 1964 film CONTROSESSO paired with Renzo e Luciana by Mario Monicelli from the 1962 film BOCCACCIO ’70. The restoration of the latter film looked beautiful with its strong rich, vibrant colours literally glowing on the screen.

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William A Wellman was being celebrated at this year’s festival whereas in previous years we have seen the likes of Allan Dwan, Raoul Walsh and John Ford. I saw just three of Wellman’s films at the festival; NIGHT NURSE (1931) with a very early performance from Clark Gable as a suited and booted psycho-chauffeur, YELLOW SKY (1948) and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), a dark, disturbing western about a posse who end up lynching three innocent people. Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews starred.

BA remaining highlight of the festival, was Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film THE MAN I KILLED aka BROKEN LULLABY. Whilst the acting would never win any awards, the film itself was very affecting indeed. It tells the story of a French soldier who kills a German solider in the trenches of World War 1. After the war he becomes wracked with guilt and sets off to Germany to beg forgiveness from the dead German’s parents and fiancé. The screening I attended was packed, with people standing around the sides and seated on the floor of the cinema. When the film was over it received a very deserved rousing applause from the audience. There’s something comforting when a fairly obscure 1932 film can still cause this sort of a reaction and this is really what IL CINEMA RITROVATO is all about; re-discovering those forgotten gems of cinema. NEIL MCGLONE

 

brownlow_It_Happened_ Here_ 02Neil McGlone is agent/representative for Il Cinema Ritrovato’s creative director, Peter von Bagh and has been involved with both this festival and Midnight Sun Film Festival for the past five years.  He is also programme advisor for London’s Nordic Film Festival.  Neil recently worked as film advisor and researcher for Mark Cousins’ A STORY OF CHILDREN AND FILM (2013) and Peter von Bagh’s SOCIALISM (2014). He is currently in pre-production with Alexander Payne on a documentary about British film historian, Kevin Brownlow (IT HAPPENED HERE).

IL CINEMA RITROVATO

 

Before We Go (2014) – FID Marseille

Directors/Writer: Jorge Léon

Belgium Documentary 82min

Death is seldom interesting as a theme in and of itself, and so a whole film dedicated to confronting it is bound to come with limitations. Such is the case with Jorge Léon’s ostensibly daring and intermittently emotive documentary BEFORE WE GO, whose world-premiere at FIDMarseille this year brought a sombre air to the festival’s international competition.

Liminal spaces abound here. As stagehands prepare Brussels’ La Monnaie Opera House for a public showing with eerie, automated precision, three terminally ill people—two men and a woman—haunt the offstage areas, with varying mobility, like ghosts already on the threshold of corporeality. Aiding these ailing people’s backstage navigations are three leading modern dance choreographers: Meg Stuart, Lidia Schoue and Benoît Lachambre—who is himself HIV-positive.

Death is performative: it waits not in the wings but between the rows—a space in which Schoue lies, in the opening moments, dressed in a skeleton suit as the opera house’s opulent crystal chandelier is lowered for an official show we never get to see. Later, she encounters one of the older protagonists, embarking upon a playful game of cat and mouse, of director and directed. Later, Lachambre assists another terminally ill senior in assembling a colourful patchwork of filters against a window, which the old man later observes through a viewfinder. Stuart, meanwhile, interacts with an older woman, hugging her “super tight” in a hold bordering on a sexuality that transcends bodily and intergenerational limits. “Enjoy my joy,” the woman remarks.

Léon goes out of his way early on to foreground his older protagonists’ physicality, framing them in candidly unflattering nakedness as duodenal tubes emanate from their torsos. Mortality is his default sobering reminder, as when he shock-cuts from that aforementioned moment of kaleidoscopic, sensorily wonderful view of colours to the reality of a bed-bound, one-legged, one-eyed figure whose chest protrudes outward and whose stomach sinks like a deflated, lifeless balloon.

Elsewhere, Léon’s younger performers execute solo routines. Lachambre feigns an epileptic seizure as if to a violently contorting spirit attempting to leave his body. Stuart gives a convulsive, vein-popping manifestation of a kind of physical glossolalia, one whose twisting intensity encapsulates her comparatively youthful muscularity opposite the terminally ill woman she encounters. “Between dreams and reality, it was like a fusion,” says Lachambre, referring to the vivid dreams caused by his daily medication. Later, Schoue swaps clothes with her partner—who, after he’s donned her skeleton outfit, leads her outside for a dance on the balcony.

And so it goes. As one brief sequence showing music software on a laptop suggests, the greater joys of Léon’s film were to be found in the process of making it—that is, for those involved in its production. These three intertwined encounters, between movement and immobility as well as other more obvious binary opposites, were no doubt sources of euphoria for all participants. Like death as a nebulous abstract, though, touchy-feely therapies such as those portrayed here come with limits—which, for a film all about bodily boundaries, may be the point. MICHAEL PATTISON

FID MARSEILLE RUNS FROM THE 1-7 JULY 2014 IN MARSEILLE, FRANCE. follow the link for the full coverage

I Touched All Your Stuff (2014) – FID Marseille

Directors/Writers: Maíra Bühler, Matias Mariani

Brazil Documentary 89min

Suspension of disbelief is both the theme and challenge of I TOUCHED ALL OF YOUR STUFF (TOQUEI TODAS AS SUAS COISAS), the latest documentary from Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani, in which a self-confessed computer geek from Seattle tells the outlandish autobiographical tale of amour fou that landed him in a São Paulo prison on drug trafficking charges. The film world-premiered in the International Competition at the 25th edition of FIDMarseille.

Chris Kirk takes a seat before the tripod-fixed camera with pious contentment etched upon his face. His is to be a self-told anecdote, one containing unthinkable levels of gullibility and/or self-deceit—though as is hinted at repeatedly here, to be on the receiving end of romantic attention can be, for a guy like Kirk, completely intoxicating. It was through his amorous involvement with ‘V.’, a Japanese-Colombian woman he met in Bogota in 2004, that he came to be imprisoned. He previously told the story last year, on a podcast for a website where ‘ordinary guys become extraordinary men’, and the filmmakers here are less interested in the drug-trafficking charges than the emotional extremes Kirk willingly put himself through in pursuit of a happy-ever-after with the ever-elusive V.

A cautionary tale about the complex allures and perils of self-destruction (bafflement was “a large part of what was so intriguing…”), I TOUCHED ALL OF YOUR STUFF unfolds in a digressionary manner that creates an air of aura around V. and defers acknowledgement of her connection to drugs for a good forty or so minutes. Chapter one—it all started with the hippos—sees Kirk jetting to Colombia to see Pablo Escobar’s illegally-imported hippopotamuses. As a friend notes, Kirk was “sort of like Pinocchio—he’s the last innocent guy in the world… he hasn’t been corrupted yet.”

Pity, then, that he met V., who by all accounts left Kirk’s friends in Seattle “profoundly underwhelmed” while drawing in our blameless puppet for a prolonged period of torment and an eventual kick in the gut. Her semblance to a femme fatale is unquestionable: a noirish mystery surrounds her long before Kirk reveals he discovered the password to her email account was “mentira” (“to lie”). The question is, when an appreciably deceitful person/character such as V. remains unavailable for questioning (she’s limited here to an eerie photograph at the beach), how does one’s own logic hold up?

On this front, to their credit, Bühler and Mariani probe their subject, implying distrust for this implausibly fine storyteller whose anecdotal charm relies on such conscious self-distancing. In the latter stages of the film, at the point at which the love story turned in real life to a more nightmarish scenario, Kirk recounts how he pieced together conflicting threads, thanks to instant-messaging chats with his lover’s other male contacts across the continent. Though there’s something compellingly addictive in the narration, it’s a pity that the filmmakers allow this sequence to dominate; other questions go unasked.

Instant-messaging chats are rarely done well in films, and the staged conversations here confuse rather than entice. At a certain point, clarity is required from a film so open to accusations of disingenuousness. Kirk was present at the world-premiere, which suggests his final act decision to violate his parole and skip town to Uruguay had few legal ramifications. But suspicions persist… perhaps tellingly, the film takes its name from a post-script left on the post-it note that Kirk discovered in his own home, when a pal covered the vast majority of his belongings and interior in foil while he was away on vacation. That is, the film’s title is named after a prank. MICHAEL PATTISON

FID RUNS FROM 1-7 JULY IN MARSEILLE, SOUTH OF FRANCE. Other reviews from the festival are here

Trading Cities (2014) – FID Marseille 1-7 July 2014

Directors/Writers: Pedro Pinho, Luísa Homem

Portugal Documentary 139min

Initially beguiling but ultimately unwieldy, Pedro Pinho and Luísa Homem’s TRADING CITIES (AS CIDADES E AS TROCAS) offers a comprehensive, observational panorama of the changed and changing physical and economic landscape of Cape Verde, the former Portuguese colony off the West African coast. The film world-premiered to much applause in the International Competition at 25th edition of FIDMarseille.

Cape Verde might be most familiar to cinephiles through the work of Pinho and Homem’s countryman Pedro Costa, whose CASA DE LAVA (1994) was filmed there and whose other films often focus upon immigrants of Cape Verdean origin, living on the margins in Lisbon, with a distinctly idiosyncratic touch. No oblique techniques here, though: profitably limiting themselves to a strictly observational documentary style, the makers of TRADING CITIES paint an imagistically rich snapshot of the locale in an unfussy, down-to-earth manner that’s easygoing and uniformly intriguing even without a go-to protagonist to drive its narrative.

Indeed, this is a social fabric whose intricate makeup is enhanced by the film’s own sprawling canvas. Shooting on 16mm, the directors also assumed editorial duties for the film, and while the episodic nature allows space in which certain passages take on the qualities of a self-enclosed short in themselves, the sequences add up to a slightly repetitive whole. It’s possible that Homem and Pinho got too precious about the material, having evidently filmed a great deal and having formed an affinity to the landscape as a result.

Though the film would benefit from a trim, the temptations of an all-inclusive policy are relatable. As the opening images, of two cargo ships being systematically dismantled, show, this is to be a visually sterling work (disappointing, then, that its world-premiere screened digitally). As it unfolds, different traditions and economies are presented: farming, labouring, plastering; the sand trade, the tourist trade; a vibrant, striking street carnival. Some easy juxtapositions emerge: a thriving holiday-resort scene, as exemplified by a sequence at the local Riu complex, is followed immediately by the slums in which its employees reside.

Though never without interest—the images are certainly compelling enough, and local musicians add lively and sometimes poignant backing—such juxtapositions feel inevitable and familiar. At some point, the filmmakers need to intervene and ask: what of it? What of the tourist scene and its uneasy, problematic reinforcement of colonial relations? Such questions are most obviously absent during those scenes in which Cape Verdean dancers provide the nightly entertainment at the Riu, acting out a clichéd African-history scenario, complete with tribal body-paint and lion and leopard costumes, for the white westerners being waited upon with an endless stream of alcohol.

This isn’t to put blame on anyone, or point fingers. And, to its credit, the film itself refrains from such tones too—a rather inherently accusatory cutaway to one obese holidaymaker notwithstanding. But is TRADING CITIES meant to be a probing and investigative epic, or merely an epic tapestry? If the former, consider the nuance and complicated, no-easy-answers oomph of, say, Ulrich Seidl’s PARADISE: LOVE (2012). The holidaymaking protagonist of that film could be any one of those vacationers in Pinho and Homem’s documentary, laughing obliviously through their daily boredom-deferring water aerobics lesson. As crisp as the imagery may be, perhaps sometimes, observing isn’t enough. MICHAEL PATTISON

FID MARSEILLE RUNS FROM 1-7 JULY 2014 IN MARSEILLE, SOUTH OF FRANCE.

Here and Now (2014) East End Film Festival 2014

Dir.: Lisle Turner

Cast: Lauren Johns, Andy Rush, Susan Lynch, William Nadylam, Claire Coache

UK 2014, 82 min.  Drama

Set in the idyllic Wye valley, this coming-of-age romance between a “tough” inner city girl, Grace (Johns) from East Ham, and the rather introvert Say (Rush), whose grieving hippie mother projects even more gloom on to him, is believable as far as the psychological interactions are concerned – but there is simply too little of a narrative, and endless nature shots, however pretty, do not make up for it. Grace, whose parents are trying to save their crumbling marriage with a few summer weeks in the countryside, is totally displaced in the small village, surrounded by woods and fields. She obviously does not see the beauty, but longs for the city. Say, on the other hand, is very much at home, using nature to heal his inner turmoil, he escapes from his demons into the countryside, which he sees as much as liberation, as Grace feels alienated in her new environment. There is a group of white, racist hooligans who eventually beat Say up, but they are too peripheral to make any difference. Grace’s parents spend the time arguing loudly, but it is never quiet clear what the main conflict – apart from money – is, a little concrete information would have helped. The same goes for Say’s mother, who is always withdrawn, never opening up.

HERE AND NOW is lacking a structured narrative, instead we have episodes which are very engaging but leave us too much guessing. Apart from the convincing leads, all the other characters are only fragmented and one longs to know more of them. The rather flat ending is equally disappointing, leaving the audience with the impression that the filmmaker has run out ideas. The camera work is by far the strongest component, with beautiful (but never cloying) panoramic shots and sensitive close-ups. But overall, the sometimes entrancing atmosphere cannot make up for the lack of an engaging, gripping narrative, which, in turn, leaves us loosing (unjustly) interest in the protagonists. The low production budget is not an excuse for a script, which needed much more development and fuller characterisation to make this drama engaging. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 JULY 2014

FID Marseille 2014 – 1-7th July 2014

Each year Marseille’s International Film Festival is packed solid with the latest documentaries, a large number of them world premieres. Now recognised on the international festival scene as a breeding ground for budding directors and emerging movie forms, the FID Marseille has been including fictional films as well as documentaries in their official selection for the past few years. This fictional fare creates a kind of dialogue with the documentaries. The International Competition takes place in the city’s many outdoor venues and well-designed state of the art cinemas and this year includes the following World premieres:

Mitch – The Diary of the Schizophrenic Patient – Damir Cucic & Misel Skoric (Croatia), 2014 75′

Ela Volta Na Quinta – Andre Novais Oliveira (Brazil) 2014 115′

I, Of Whom I Know Nothing – Pablo Sigg (Mexico)2014 81′

As Cicadas e As Trocas – Luisa Homem & Pedro Pinho (Portugal) 2014 136′ (Trading Cities)

Before We Go – Jorge Leon (Belgium) 2014 80′

El Viaje de Ana – Pamela Varela (Chile/France) 2014  80′ Faux accords

Faux Accords – Paul Vecchiali (France) 2014) 70′

Le Beau Danger – Rene Frolke (Germany) 2014 100′

This year also celebrates the work of Marguerite Duras (La Vie Materielle, La Douleur).

FID MARSEILLE runs from 1-7 July 2014

The Golden Dream (2013) La Jaula de Oro

Dir.: Diego Quemada-Diez

Cast: Brandon Lopez, Rodolfo Dominguez, Karen Martinez

Guatemala, Spain, Mexico 2013, 102 min.

Diego Quemada-Diez has made an astonishing debut film: a poetic road movie, a wonderful character study of changing group relationships and an always surprising narrative, shot in wonderful colours, showing beauty and deprivation at the same time.

Young teenagers Juan, Samuel and Sara (masquerading as a boy) want to leave the slums of Guatemala for the bright lights of Los Angeles: to do so, they have to travel 2200 miles, mainly on railways but often on foot. Having crossed the border to Mexico, the trio soon encounters organised gangs of thugs, who specialise in robbing the would-be emigrants of their meagre possessions. They are deported back to Guatemala, where Samuel decides to stay put. Chauk, an Indian, who has recently joined the little group, makes up the new trio. He is liked by Sara, but despised by Juan, who looks down on him, because he can’t speak Spanish. Together they set out again, but soon they are rounded up by another gang in Mexico, who kidnap Sara, after having discovered her true gender. We are mercifully spared her fate. Chauk nurses Juan back to health after both boys are injured, trying to fight off Sara’s assailants. Later Juan sacrifices his US Dollars to free Chauk and miraculously they reach the border fence separating Mexico from the USA, where they have to carry drugs for their guides. They cross successfully, but Chauk is shot dead by a bounty hunter. Juan finally sees the snow they were all dreaming of – but watching him work in a frozen meat factory, makes the ending decisively more bitter than sweet.

Whilst the interactions of the little group are told carefully and detailed, the journey itself is breath-taking in its pace. Quemada-Diez has created a form of social realism that Loach and others can only dream of: similar to the films of Rosselini and De Sica, we not only see the grim reality, but also the dreamlike elements of the journey the trio undertakes. But this does not detract from the fact that children in these parts of the world seemed to be only there to be molested and exploited. Just a few priests seem to be aware of their plight. And the police treats them like the gangsters they encounter all the time: they steal from them. In the end, when utopia is replaced by the hell of dystopia for Juan, one is, rightly so, utterly deflated. From the wonderful, non-professional cast – again shades of Rosselini – the towering camera work and its stunning panoramic shots and hand-held chases, to the excellent structured, always twisting narrative, this is a truly great achievement. For once, poverty and degradation is shown neither sugar-coated, with false happy-endings nor grim as depressing realism, but with a wonderful mixture of dreamlike wonderment and shattering emotional turmoil. AS

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

 

Taking the Dog for a Walk (2014)

1538720_10152108899778732_303464132894968158_nDir.: Antoine Prum; Documentary with Derek Bailey; UK/Luxembourg 2014, 128 min.

They play their instruments tunelessly on purpose, don’t use a written score, improvise at length with a-tonal singing accompanied by anything that comes to hand even balloons!. “They” are the musicians of the ‘British Free Improvisation Movement’ and their audiences, sitting alone in bedsits; are small, sometimes only numbering three – plus a dog, as the inside joke goes. And how do they make their audience happy? Easy: Taking the dog for a walk!

This documentary about the British Free Improvisation Movement, is also the life story of the avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey (1930-2005), the founder of the movement, still revered as a leading figure, role model and innovator. Set mostly around Hackney, Stewart Lee interviews the musicians whilst the camera follows  their performances in clubs and pubs. Bailey first played Free Improvisation music in his flat in Glasgow in 1953, but only came to prominence, after he moved to London in 1966, performing in the “Little Theatre Club” with Evan Parker (Saxophone), Kenny Wheeler (trumpet) and the double bass player Dave Holland; the group calling themselves “Spontaneous Music Ensemble”. In 1970 Bailey founded the record label “Incus” and also co-founded “Musics” Magazine five years later. For over thirty years he was the spiritual leader of the movement, (playing in such diverse places like the ‘Wigmore Hall’ or with Morecambe & Wise in a BBC studio) before his death from Motor Neurone disease at the age of 74.

The music “should represent everything they are” and whilst there is banter, jokes are frowned upon even though landlords often don’t re-book them due to their lack of humour. Sometimes a group takes a holiday at the beach in Brighton where they argue about their provocative costumes but never forget that only ad-hoc music is true to their spirit – like cleaning their instruments (or their throats), Even though public comments like “must be nice to be paid to clear your throats” might hurt.

Bailey and the musicians of the older generation are mainly influenced by ‘Free Jazz’ whilst the younger ones take their inspiration from the Post-Punk scene. They compose on the spot, but are “every night a new person”; constantly inventing new objects to turn into musical instrument. They don’t even mind their babies listening. Few of them can make a living, but the majority is just happy just making music. Proud of their movement, the camera shows the tremendous personal sacrifices they make in the name of the movement: living the life of permanent students, some even existing without social security. But this is a human story where we care more for the musicians than their music, (rather painful to witness at times). Prum shows a lively, anarchic, but nevertheless constructive and creative scene, where passions run high and Bailey’s memory is kept religiously alive. AS

EEFF 24.6., Rio, 18.00 h.

East End Film Festival 2014

Blue Caprice (2013) | Washington Snipers – East End Film Festival 2014

Writer|Dir: Alexandre Moors | Cast: Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey Lauren AdamsThis exquisitely filmic arthouse docudrama, based on the Beltway sniper murders that rocked Tahoma (Washington) in 2002, is the debut of Alexandre Moors and tells the story from the perspective of the two killers as they gradually forge an unholy alliance that lead to their venal activities.

Sober in tone, the rather forlorn narrative unfolds with the early childhood of young Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond) who starts life roaming the streets of Antigua after his mother is forced to seek work abroad.  Swimming in the sea one day, he meets John Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) who appears, on the surface, as the ideal role model with his calm masculine demeanour and strong physicality.  John lives with his children, but he turns out to be on the run, having kidnapped them from his ex-wife.  By stealth John nurtures the psychopath at the heart of Lee and this is the powerful central focus of Blue Caprice, rather than the re-enactment of the Beltway murders.

With a hauntingly atmospheric semi-religious score and dreamlike pacing Blue Caprice is a work of stunning beauty that creeps up on you by stealth painting a picture of mental bewilderment that descends into a fight for survival as Lee becomes inured to a life of petty crime and murder at the hands of his iniquitous ‘saviour’. Particularly disturbing is the scene where John teaches Lee how to use a gun and drive the infamous petrol blue Caprice.  This is primarily a mood piece that focuses more on the men’s developing relationship than on the actual killings and once they hit the freeways on their murderous spree the story enters a kind of dream narrative of shot through with steel blue skies, neon landscapes and rain-washed gunmetal roads where flocks of birds rise silently in protest against the violence beneath them.

As John, Washington exerts an effortless power over Lee and his armed henchman mate Ray (Tim Blake Nelson). As Lee, Tarquan Richmond is a cold and vacant cypher who rarely speaks or has an opinion. R.F.I. Porto’s script doesn’t attempt to explain how Lee submits to John’s control. The fact that he represents a much-needed omnipotent father-figure is all that Lee requires as the psychopathic pair progress with inexorable and menacing intent towards their victims.

The compelling nature and ultimate success of Blue Caprice is the disassociation from the terrible events it portrays. The almost poetic way that Alexandre Moors portrays the development of an innocent and desperately lonely child into a fully-formed dispassionate killer. That is both its brilliance and its horror. MT

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

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Moonless Summer (2014) Kino Otok 2014

Director/Writer: Stefan Ivančić

Cast: Isidora Markovic, Jelisateva Karadzic, Stefan Djordjevic, Matija Ristic

Serbia Drama 31min

Yugoslav-born Stefan Ivančić follows last year’s SPRINGTIME SUNS with MOONLESS SUMMER (LETO BEZ MESECA), the final-year project with which the writer-director graduated from Belgrade’s prestigious Faculty of Dramatic Arts. Premiering in the Cinéfondation Selection at Cannes last month, the film boasts a level of sophistication and confidence often absent from such film-school settings. Last week, it screened at the 10th edition of Kino Otok, Izola’s international film festival.

Said screening was part of a themed triptych that also featured SPRINGTIME SUNS and Ivan Salatić’s INTRO. As well as sharing an editorial credit in Jelena Maksimovic, all three shorts are personal evocations of youth – and, by extension, that painful and mysterious space between adolescence and adulthood, not only in terms of individual growth but of political and social maturation: each work is a past-tense memoir-like piece by an artist born in 1980s Yugoslavia.

As its seasonal title suggests, MOONLESS SUMMER is both a continuation of and a departure from SPRINGTIME SUNS. Whereas the previous film was a palpably autobiographical account of four teenage lads enjoying a lakeside night together, Ivančić’s latest focuses on two female characters: seventeen-year-old Isidora (Isidora Markovic) and her older sister (Jelisateva Karadzic), with whom she spends a few days at their childhood country home before embarking upon studies abroad. As fleeting romances develop with two local boys, Isidora enjoys being in the moment, but dormant anxieties emerge.

As previously demonstrated, Ivančić channels presumably personal experience with vivid but unforced detail. It’s too often the case that this kind of ‘authorial’ filmmaking disappears into its own navel – so that one senses the filmmaker ‘needed’ to make the work but that one needn’t bother seeing it oneself; or else, the filmmaker experiments with form so as to paint over the more ostensibly ordinary aspects with a false radicalism. Needless to say, it takes a certain confidence in one’s own material to perspectivise and balance autobiographical elements (which in any case can be easily overstated).

To this end, Ivančić has profitably expanded upon the earlier film while also ‘othering’ it, opting to distance himself from incidents by telling them this time from a female perspective. (Like Isidora, the filmmaker moved to Spain with his parents in 1991; he returned to Serbia in 2009.) MOONLESS SUMMER, like SPRINGTIME SUNS before it, presents us with a relatably straightforward account of an otherwise innocuous vacation, one whose comprising minutiae are nevertheless experienced with a private, inexplicably heightened sensitivity by its protagonist.

Indeed, while Ivančić and cinematographer Igor Djordjevic often frame Isidora in detached, tripod-fixed mid- to long-shots – thereby evoking her conditioning environs as much as the character herself – the film also contains more gestural moments, when it gradually reveals one barely discernible image over another, such as that in which an apparition of Isidora’s holiday crush appears over a landscape shot of the rural surroundings. Suggestive and elusive, such moments juxtapose the world as we see it and the world as experienced by Isidora. When we see the night sky slowly dissolve over an image of two human hands touching, we feel all the romance of an inner cosmos blown out of proportion.

Beneath the veneer of this ever-shifting utopia, of course, is raw vulnerability. Though far removed from emotional hyperbole or some superficial apocalypse, MOONLESS SUMMER captures in its latter moments those often-unstable foundations upon which the straw house of adolescence is built, when it cuts from rigid framing to a handheld shot following an unaccountably tearful Isidora along a shoreline. Tides continue while traumas fade. MICHAEL PATTISON

 

Club Sandwich (2013) – East End Film Festival 2014

Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Cast:  Lucio Giménez Cacho, Maria Renée Prudencio, Danae Reynaud
82min Comedy.  Spanish with subtitles
A boy just nudging puberty spends time with his mother poolside in an off-season resort, in this charming and ruminative slow-burner from Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke.

In moments of extreme intimacy, such as picking the spots on his back, single forty- something mother Paloma (Maria Renée Prudencio) also feels comfortable talking candidly about sex with Hector and re-assuring  him of his own sex appeal which highlights their obvious oedipal link. The camera observes them quietly doing nothing but chomping through the eponymous sandwiches and discussing how to prevent his incipient beard looking like ‘peach fuzz’.

For his part, Hector (Lucio Gimenez Cacho), appears to be on the brink of a sexual awakening which is fulfilled when he meets Jazmin (Danae Reynaud Romero), a slightly older girl who’s staying at the hotel with her father. Hanging out by the pool, Jazmin gives Hector a deodorant which he slathers on while secretly trying out Paloma’s bikini top later in the room, in gentle nod towards sexual experimentation.

Gradually, Paloma grows resentful as the kids pleasure each other poolside, but fails in her attempt to interrupt their time together or dissuade her son of his potential girlfriend’s worthiness: even when she criticises Jazmin’s musical taste to Hector later at night, he defends Jazmin.

This gentle shift from peaceful acquiescence to irritation is so subtle it’s hardly noticeable but it marks that dramatic point in time where a mentally healthy child moves slowly from being a ‘mummy’s boy’ to a mature adult in possession of his own masculine sexuality and it’s that transformation that makes Eimbcke’s nuanced narrative such a triumph.  A beautifully performed and enjoyable drama that will coax you into a quietly contemplative mood. MT

SCREENING AT THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

Jack (2014) – Edinburgh Film Festival 2014

JACK: A leafy Berlin is the setting for Edvard Berger’s thoughtful and touching drama underpinned by newcomer Ivo Pietzcker’s performance of tear-jerking poignancy as Jack, a little boy left in charge of his half-brother, when their feckless mother abandons them.  Sensitive and filmic, it’s an old-fashioned portrait of childhood anxiety that echoes the Dardennes’ The Kid With A Bike and shows that children are sometimes far more intelligent and perceptive than we give them credit for but also that early responsibility and self-reliance can be the making of them. Won’t set the night on fire but will certainly brighten your day with its message of hope. MT. 104 MIN  GERMANY.

EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014 | EIFF

photoThis June (18-29th), the Edinburgh International Film Festival returns for its 68th edition with a programme absolutely jam-packed with filmic goodness – even by the festival’s high standards, this year seems an exciting one. With 156 features on offer, there’s an overwhelming amount to choose from, including the UK Premieres of such much-discussed festival hits as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, Tsai Ming-liangs’ Stray Dogs and Journey to the West, Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross and Fernando Eimbcke’s Club Sandwich (which we recently picked as our anticipated highlight of the East End Film Festival). Of course, Edinburgh isn’t only about new films, and this year’s retrospective strands focus on writer/director/producer John McGrath, overlooked German filmmaker Dominik Graf, and Iranian Cinema from 1962-1978 (the festival also has a special focus on new films from both Iran and Germany). With so much on offer, one wonders where to start… Here are ten things we’re particularly looking forward to:  Snowpiercer

Life May Be, Dirs. Mania Akbari, Mark Cousins – World Premiere

A collaboration between exiled Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari and the filmmaker/critic Mark Cousins, Life May Be is a correspondence of essayistic films, touching upon themes that ‘are at the core of their personal and artistic lives’. Both filmmakers have shown an insightful honesty in their previous work, and the film-letter form (which has worked so well for the likes of José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas in recent years), will surely bear interesting fruit in their hands.

My Accomplice still 2 (Alex in bedroom 1)My Accomplice, Dir. Charlie Weaver Rolfe – World Premiere

A romantic comedy concerning a burgeoning relationship between a young Scottish caretaker and a German baker, Charlie Weaver Rolfe’s debut feature My Accomplice should offer some light relief to off-set some of the festival’s heavier titles. The film plays in competition for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film which, in recent years, has cast a much-needed spotlight upon small, independent films such as this.

Something, Anything, Dir. Paul Harrill – International Premiere 

A feature-debut from a filmmaker behind a Sundance-award-winning short, Something, Anything tells of a young newlywed who abandons her domestic life to go in search of something more spiritual. If the premise invokes the story of Rossellini’s Europe ’51 (and therefore of Saint Francis), surely, 60-years on from Rossellini’s masterpiece, the time is ripe for another investigation into such themes?

The Invisible Life, Dir. Vítor Gonçalves – UK Premiere 

Gonçalves’ debut film, A Girl in Summer, was released to wide acclaim in 1986 – and now, after a 27-year hiatus, he returns with The Invisible Life. The film centres upon the melancholic memories of a middle-aged public servant. As he tries to remember the final days of his former superior, he is reminded of the woman he loved.

Letters From The SouthLetters from the South, Dirs. Royston Tan, Midi Z, Sun Koh, Tsai Ming-liang, Tan Chui Mui, Aditya Assarat – UK Premiere

A portmanteau film by an impressive roster of directors, Letters from the South examines the Chinese diaspora living in other areas of Asia. If it’s true that portmanteau films are often uneven in quality, it’s also true that last year’s Centro Histórico was one of Edinburgh’s highlights, suggesting that the EIFF team have a good eye for picking omnibus films that work.

Manakamana, Dirs. Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez – UK Premiere 

The new film from the Sensory Ethnography Lab (the people behind Sweetgrass and Leviathan), Manakamana takes its name from a legendary temple in Nepal. Confined to the cable car that transports people to and from the temple, the film offers an insight into the lives of several groups of pilgrims visiting the temple.

Sorrow and Joy still 1

Sorrow and Joy, Dir. Nils Malmros – UK Premiere

The new film from acclaimed Danish auteur Nils Malmros, Sorrow and Joy centres upon the bond between a husband and wife, and the challenges they face together after the death of their infant daughter – at the hands of the wife. The films is said to be Malmros’ most personal feature film to date.

Truths Beyond Truth: Three Masterpieces, Dirs. Forugh Farrokhzad, Kamran Shirdel, Amir Naderi – Retrospective Screening 

As mentioned, Edinburgh isn’t only about new films, and this collection of three short films from the Interrupted Revolution: Iranian Cinema, 1962 to 1978 strand promises to be quite a treat. The programme features the sole directorial offering from famed poet Forugh Farrokhzad, an ironic examination into notions of documentary veracity by Kamran Shirdel, and a wordless tale from Iran New Wave leading light, Amir Naderi.

Black Box Live, Dirs. Sally Golding, Michaela Grill, Karl Lemieux, Phillip Jeck, Guillaume Caillleau, Jan Slak – Live Event Screening 

After its successful debut last year, Black Box Live returns to offer another evening of expanded film performance from some of the biggest names in the live audio-visual scene, promising to be a ‘veritable treat for the senses’. As the festival’s experimental strand, Black Box continues to offer some of the most challenging – and the most rewarding – films on display in Edinburgh.

EIFF in Conversation: Wang Bing – In Person Event 

To coincide with their screening of leading Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s new film, ‘Til Madness Do Us Part, Edinburgh will be welcoming Bing to the stage to talk about his work, and discuss wider questions of documentary practice.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 18-29 JUNE 2014

 

Tip Top (2013) East End Film Festival 2014

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Director: Serge Bozon

Script: Axelle Ropert, Serge Bozon, Odile Barski from the paperbackl by Bill James

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Kiberlain, Francois Damiens, Karole Rocher, Aymen

105min      Comedy drama      French with English subtitles

Serge Bozon’s second outing is an awkward comedy adapted from a paperback thriller by Welsh writer Bill James. The action is re-located to a multi-cultural suburb of Lille (with a large Arab population), Internal Affairs duo  (Huppert and Kiberlain) arrive in town to investigate the death of an informant amid wrongdoings in the local police force headed by Robert Mendes (Damiens).  With a mix of racialist politics, homophobic gags; all delivered dead-pan and based on France’s post colonial Arab tensions, it’s a strange beast that aims at comedy, more drôle than ‘ha-ha,’ but ends up misfiring and morphing into an awkward mix of farce and detective drama that even the charms of Isabelle Huppert and Francois Damiens cannot save.

Isabelle Huppert can do comedy: In Another Country she succeeded very well with her wickedly amusing, offbeat portrait of a French woman’s experiences in Taiwan.  But here, as Detective Esther Lafarge, she fails to lift the character off the page convincingly, lacking her normal fearless confidence with offbeat roles.  She also makes an uncomfortable pairing with Sandrine Kiberlain, who was wonderful in The Bird but here is out of place as her sllightly scatty colleague who acts more like a librarian than a policewoman. Even as an ‘odd couple’, they simply don’t convince.

The best comedy performance comes from Francois Damiens as Mendes and his bullish, arrogance is perfect for the role with some really funny episodes that sail quite near to the wind and might offend some audiences.  However, for the most part, it’s an uncomfortable film with forced performances and bursts of histrionic energy from Huppert and Kiberlain that feel out of place and strained in a detective story setting, despite its comedy pretensions.  That said, it will be interesting to see how the film is received in France, where quite possibly it could go down with more success.  Visually it has the steely feel of the eighties in a Northern town with Huppert’s lycra power-suits and Celine Bozon’s highly stylised cinematography. MT

Costa da Morte (2013) IndieLisboa 2014

Director/Writer: Lois Patiño

Spain  Documentary  80min

Recipient of the Best Emerging Director Award at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, Galician filmmaker Lois Patiño makes his feature-length debut with the alluring and impressive COSTA DA MORTE, a documentary that can’t seem to screen anywhere on the international festival circuit without winning a prize. Following wins and special mentions in places as far apart as Buenos Aires, Palm Springs, Unam, Validivia and Galicia itself, the film screened out-of-competition at the 11th edition of IndieLisboa last week.

COSTA DA MORTE is an essayistic documentary about the eponymous coastline in the remote, semi-autonomous region of Galicia in northwest Spain. The region takes its name (‘Coast of Death’) from its notorious history of shipwrecks – and indeed early images here capture the sea in all its beautiful and formidable might. The Romans took such shores to be the end of the world.

Shooting from a physical distance but zooming in so that these landscapes are optically flattened, Patiño shows himself to be an expert, intelligent image-maker: just as history itself resists easy imagistic rendering, so Patiño’s cinematography challenges notions of a harmonious, postcard-friendly sense of place.

Before anything else, then, COSTA DA MORTE is an illuminatingly imagistic introduction to the Galician coast. With a varied succession of vivid scenes, Patiño offers one haunting shot after another, from a foggy forest whose trees are being felled to the giant waves of the sea crashing down upon a group of adventure-seekers; from the deafening explosions in a local quarry to the scorching heat of a bonfire flickering into the night. In one sequence, Patiño pays possible homage to James Benning’s structuralist masterpiece CASTING A GLANCE (2007), when he captures the dramatic fluctuation of a body of water’s tide.

Like the earlier film (though it’s ultimately very different), COSTA DA MORTE is all the more digestible for being so minimal, understated and contemplative (Patiño co-edits with Pablo Gil Rituerto). Illustrating such imagery are the locals themselves, on whose amusing conversations Patiño eavesdrops as if in possession of some Harry Caul-style, long-distance microphone (in reality, the dialogues were semi-scripted and recorded separately). Such exchanges touch upon the region’s folkloric myths and working traditions, both of which have helped shape daily life there.

The film is only the latest (and arguably the strongest) addition to a growing number of works comprising a new Galician cinema; others include Oliver Laxe’s YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS (2010), Xurxo Churro’s VIKINGLAND (2011), Eloy Encisco’s ARRAIANOS (2012) and THE FIFTH GOSPEL OF KASPAR HAUSER (2013). If notions of national cinema are still relevant to film criticism and/or scholarship, then take note: these are a distinct but by no means homogenous group of films at the forefront of Spanish Cinema—which is arguably ahead of all other national cinemas at present.

And on this evidence, Galicia has a wunderkind with truly international potential. Patiño has a natural sensitivity for not only striking and seductive cinematography, but also unassumingly politicised cinematography, and COSTA DA MORTE confirms his graduation from strong, image-driven short films such as his DURATION series (2012) and the beguiling prize-winner MOUNTAIN IN SHADOW (2012). Michael Pattison

SCREENED DURING INDIELISBOA – 24 APRIL UNTIL 4 MAY 2014 IN LISBON, PORTUGAL and KINO OTOK 4-8 JUNE 2014 IN SLOVENIA

 

The Japanese Dog (2013) – Edinburgh Film Festival 2014

CAINELE  JAPONEZ

Director: Tudor Cristian Jurgiu

Cast: Victor Rebenguic, Serban Pavlu, Kana Hashimoto, Laurentiu Lazar

85min  Romanian with English Subs    Drama

Romanian cinema is remarkable in its ability to take the rough with the smooth and often with humour. Here in his impressive debut feature (set in his childhood village) Tudor Cristian Jurgiu gradually builds a visual narrative of  the difficulties faced by an elderly man following the floods that affected the east of the country in 2010.  Slow, intimate and poetic in feel but always with its feet firmly on the ground, (no pun intended) this Romanian New Wave piece is upbeat and positive, for the most part.

Costache is played by the stoical and melancholic Victor Rebenguic (Medal of Honour), a strong man exuding integrity and not without hope, who has just lost everything including his wife, Maria.  Coping (barely) with the tragedy, his energy is spent clearing up and attempting to make a home of the new place he’s been given and dealing with the necessary authorities in the village. And this wouldn’t be Romania without the trademark red-tape that always rears its head at some point.  But that’s not his only worry. He’s concerned that his son (Serban Pavlu) will not make it for the funeral. But he does, with his Japanese wife , Hiroku (Kana Hashimoto) and a strange robot that looks like a dog – and talks.

010 - The Japanese Dog

As son and father re-connect, a deepening relationship develops that brings its own challenges. Andrei Butica’s (Child’s Pose) glorious but simple visuals convey the essence of the countryside and  the locals’ attachment to this bucolic way of life.  The humour often lies in the ‘lost in translation’ moments between Costache, his grandson and the Japanese dog.  MT

THE JAPANESE DOG’s Victor Rebenguic, has been an actor since 1957.

SCREENING DURING EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

 

 

Centro Historico (2012) Kino Otok 2014

Directors: Pedro Costa, Víctor Erice, Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira

Writer: Pedro Costa, Víctor Erice, Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira

Main Actors: Ilkka Koivula, Ventura, António Santos, Manuel ‘Tito’ Furtado, Valdemar Santos, Amândio Martins, Henriqueta Oliveira, Ricardo Trêpa.

80mins       Portuguese with English subtitles          Portugal

As befitting its title, the centre of this four-part portmanteau project consists of two densely woven examinations into recent history: Pedro Costa’s Sweet Exorcist and Víctor Erice’s Broken Windows. Surrounding these segments are Aki Kaurismäki’s drolly deadpan opener Tavern Man and Manoel de Oliveira’s playfully fluffy closer The Conquered Conqueror. Costa has said publicly that the film ‘doesn’t work’ and, voicing a seemingly common consensus, that portmanteau films ‘never work’. But in saying this, Costa is at least partially wrong: Centro Histórico may well be the exception that proves the rule, the juxtaposition of the lighter and heavier sections gracing the overall film with a coherent balance rarely found in works of this kind. If the Kaurismäki and de Oliveira sections would seem overly slight in isolation, they work all the better when placed against the richness of the other works.

Centro Histórico was commissioned as a celebration of Guimarães, the 2012 European Capital of Culture, and the directors were asked to make films about memory and history – themes amply explored by Costa and Erice. Indeed, Erice’s documentary segment engages directly with the recollected past, comprised as it is of a number of interviews with former workers of a now-defunct textile factory. As the interviews unfold, they weave a surprisingly poignant, philosophical and tender tapestry of the lives lived within the factory walls.

Meanwhile, in Centro Histórico‘s best section, Costa reteams with Ventura, who previously featured in his films Colossal Youth (2006), Tarrafal (2007) and The Rabbit Hunters (2007). A surreal examination into the legacy of the 1974 Portuguese revolution, Costa has said that everything in Sweet Exorcist grew out of a story told to him by Ventura – and thus memory and history are once more intertwined in the very fabric of the film’s creation. Caught in a hospital elevator, Ventura encounters the ghost of a soldier, leading to a pointed exploration of black experience during the revolution. The film is haunting and mysterious – a sweet exorcism indeed. The fact that the stunning opening images of people walking through foliage recall Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943) reminds us that Costa is engaging not only with the history of Portugal, but also with the history of cinema – and, perhaps, even with his own history (Costa loosely remade I Walked with a Zombie as Casa de Lava in 1995).

It’s been said that the film’s funders were disappointed with the finished film, and it’s probably true that Centro Histórico fails as a celebration of Guimarães. But as a piece of cinema, it excels on almost every level. ALEX BARRETT

SCREENING DURING KINO OTOK 4-8 JUNE IN SLOVENIA
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A Very Unsettled Summer (2013) East End Film Festival London 2014

Director: Anca Damian

Cast: Kim Bodnia, Jamie Sives, Diana Cavallioti, Ana Ularu

98min  UK/Romanian  Erotic Drama

Scottish journalist Daniel (Jamie Sives) lives in Bucharest with his homely girlfriend, Irina (Diana Cavallioti) but is still in contact with his ex-lover, Maria (Ana Ularu). When she offers to be a prostitute in a suggestive fictional role-play, Daniel is drawn back into their erotic love-making, cheating on Irina. But the affair becomes more complex when Maria starts to introduce additional fictional characters, which play on Daniel’s imagination, giving full reign and his emotional insecurity and jealousy. This is largely down to mutual friend Alex (Kim Bodnia), who secretly lusts after Maria, starts to focus his film script on the couple. Reality and fiction gently fuse, as boundaries blur and Daniel starts to lose control, heightening the seductive pull of Maria’s hold over him. Based on a short story by Philip O Ceallaigh, this is a clever, seductive drama that explores the suggestive power of the story-teller in controlling a narrative based on real-life by re-invention and manipulation.

What makes Anca Damian’s drama so authentic and engaging is the smouldering chemistry between the superb leads which is further heightened by the dramatic uncertainties between them, making their sex more passionate and giving in to the notion that sexual passion can be spiced up by drama. It is intensified by the stormy heat of the Romanian summer and judicious use of darkened internal scenes; even the outdoor scenes are often shot at night.  In comparison his live-in arrangement seems tepid and distinctly platonic, despite his deep affection for Irina. MT.

THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM JUNE 13-25 2014

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19th London Turkish Film Festival 2014

Celebrating its 19th year, the London Turkish film festival brings new films from Turkey. Six will compete for the coveted GOLDEN WINGS LTFF Distribution Award, which last year went to THE BUTTERFLY’S DREAM.  The programme this year will include Alphan Eseli’s magnificent First World War drama THE LONG WAY HOME, also a fitting tribute to this year’s 1914 centenary celebrations.

19th LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 22 MAY UNTIL 1 JUNE 2014

 

 

Cannes 2014 | Daily Dairy

CANNES 2014 WINNERS  Meredith Taylor follows the festival day by day:

DAY ONE

photoMr Turner (2014) **** In Competition

Mike Leigh ambitious biopic of J M W Turner’s middle age serves as a worthy and painterly tribute to Turner. In a performance of some complexity, Timothy Spall portrays the ‘painter of light’ as a romantic gruffalo with a heart of gold but a curious style of love-making. The film opens in 1826 with a magnificent shot of a Dutch landscape where Turner is visiting for inspiration and work.He returns to his Chelsea home run my his father and housekeeper Hannah (a sensitive Dorothy Atkinson) where the business of painting goes on as the cast work to their usual Leigh ‘method’. At the Royal Academy we meet his rivals John Constable (James Fleet) and his wealthy Patron and other Leigh staples (Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen) are all carefully worked into the narrative along with a humorous vignette from Joshua Maguire as John Ruskin. In Margate, Turner falls for a local landlady (Marion Bailey). Victorian England is very much as character, proudly flying the flag of the Empire is at its peak but Leigh is a pains to underlines that Turner left his works to the Nation and not the homes of wealthy Victorian industrialists. Although this is a departure from his usual subject matter, in casting his usual collaborators, it all feels very ‘Mike Leigh’.

DAY TWO

923195_727151780639094_8184037258253821718_nThe Blue Room (2014) *** (La Chambre Bleue) Un Certain Regard 

Mathieu Almalric bases his directorial debut in which he also stars, on a 1964 crime thriller from Belgian detective Simenon. Lushly erotic and superbly shot on the Academy format (square) by the capable Christophe Beaucarne, it will please the art house circuit with its subtle performances and fractured narrative style. After making love to his mistress Esther (a sinuous Stephanie Cleau) in the eponymous blue room, tractor magnate Julien goes home to his lovely wife and daughter. The story jumps forward to show him being cross-examined by a local magistrate (an masterful Laurent Poitrenaux) as it transpires that his affair with Esther is not as simple as compartmentalised as he thought. As the story goes back and forward further clues gradually emerge, fleshing out the storyline but at leaving the details as shady as Esther’s background. The Blue Room is a workable and stylish piece of cinema that offers good entertainment, but many critics are questioning why it’s playing here in Un Certain Regard.  MT

DAY THREE

10153927_723817000972572_4351406467583198709_nSAINT LAURENT (2014) *** Competition

Bertrand Bonnello presents his sinuously sensual portrait of YSL that focuses on his early years. Although a great deal longer than Jalil Lespert’s version earlier this year, it doesn’t really illuminate more of the designer’s life but centres on his sexuality; to the apparent disproval of Pierre Bergé for reasons that will emerge on viewing. Gaspart Ulliel gives a far more complex portrait than Pierre Neney’s elegant but sterile take on YSL (although the latter was superb); Ulliel’s starry allure also has more to offer female audiences coupled with the additional thrust of Louis Garrel as his lover, Lea Seydoux as Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux (Model Aymeline Valade).  There’s an inspired midway montage where the screen splits to offer salient events ‘du jour’ as the YSL key looks are parading on the catwalk.  This serves as a brilliant counterpoint to social history as much as a slight dig at the ephemeral nature of the fashion world.  Bonnello captures the zeitgeist of the seventies and this heady world of pristine couture that ushered the more relaxed prey-a-porter. YSL’s languorous and luxurious styling, darkly exotic designs, femme fatale models (Helmut Newton-style), louche living both in Paris and Morocco, and, of course, his descent into drugs. Ulliel’s performance is vulnerable; almost delicate but supremely sexual. Bergé gets short shrift here, with Jeremie Renier hardly getting a look-in and there is much less focus on the business-side apart from a protracted scene with a US Financier (Brady Corbet) that feels out of place.  Louis Garrel gives an awkward performance as his lover, Jacques de Bascher, looking more like a German stormbamführer than his aristocrat (dominant) lover.  The only other poor idea is an ageing Helmut Belger, who appears in vignette at the end (as YSL), in a badly voice-synced, ill-advised jump forward. Otherwise, this is a mesmerising watch. MT

DAY FIVE

Jauja_Lisandro_AlonsoJAUJA (2013) *** Un Certain Regard

JAUJA (Land of Plenty) is a philosophical, existential drama, almost as enigmatic as the mythical Argentinian place it claims to represent – an Argentinian ‘El Dorado’. Lisandro Alonso has wisely chosen Viggo Mortensen to play the role of a tortured Danish 19th army captain travelling across the country with his teenage daughter (Viilbjork Mallin Agger) and a collection of soldiers who speak Spanish, purportedly out to destroy the Zuluagas – a lethal tribe of natives who are nick-named “Coconut Heads”.  Stumbling around the countryside, he grows increasingly uneasy for the safety of his daughter, who has plans of her own and soon disappears with one of the young soldiers, the captain takes off on horseback to find her across a wild and perilous landscape where his brushes with the Zuluagas are eerie and lethal. A   change of tone midway signals a descent into fantasy time-warp bringing the narrative back to Denmark in a surprising but rather beautiful ending.  Finnish photographer Timo Salminen captures this magical story in long takes, sumptuously lit so each is a work of art and Mortensen flexes his musical talents in the original score.

DAY SEVEN

photoSALT OF THE EARTH (2014) ***** Un Certain Regard

A biopic of famous Brazilian photographer and philanthropist, Sabastiao Salgado, manages to be both illuminating and moving. The doc is directed (and narrated) by Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano and what starts as an harrowing and dramatic set of photographs from Africa and beyond, soon becomes a story with a truly inspiring and heart-warming conclusion, adding real weight to a simple story about this fascinating and driven man, now 70. From war zones in Ruanda and Bosnia to the deepest Amazon, his pictures show tremendous compassion and a desire to connect to his subject-matter. As is often the case, his son Juliano, received less attention as Salgado travelled the World, while his wife Leilia, archived and published his works; setting up exhibitions from home.  There are shades of the late Michael Glawogger to his searingly shocking images and a touch of the Richard Attenborough to his work with his animals. A peerless tribute to humanity and the animal kingdom. MT.

DAY EIGHT

Landscape_144973THE CASANOVA VARIATIONS (2014) ***  Market

John Malkovich is well-suited to the role of maverick 18th century serial seducer Giacomo Casanova. Long-term collaborater Michael Sturminger has cast him in this strange but rather enjoyable ‘chamber-opera in a musical biopic’ where he reminisces about his misspent youth, to a rousing Mozart score.  His accent has echoes of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s in the recent Nymphomaniac (maybe they shared the voice coach) but his presence is more irascible than coaxing: admittedly he’s reached the end of his life and is angrily desperate rather than sensual about the game of love here. His previous dalliances are recorded in flashback with well-known operatic vignettes and arias sung and played by professional singers.  The combination of a rousing Mozart score and dp André Szankowski (The Mysteries of Lisbon) are what ultimately makes this a visually ravishing and highly entertaining, if slightly bizarre, piece of filmmaking.  MT

Site_Fantasia_Wang_ChaoFANTASIA (2014) **  Un Certain Regard

Another piece of social realism from China, lamenting the rapid consumerism that has left the country with an array of social problems.  Fairly dour in tone and bland in narrative, director Wang Chao, takes a typical working class family and proceeds to tell us of their sad and miserable life.  After opening in buoyant mood with the family enjoying tea, it soon emerges that the father (Zhang Xu) is suffering from leukaemia;  the mother (Su Su), a former dancer, is now struggling to make ends meet as a newsagent and suffering the indignity of her daughter’s (Jian Renzi) emerging sexuality, allowing her hand to turn her hand to high class escorting, rather than hard graft, to help pay the medical bills. The son (lin) is bullied at school and his work is suffering: It’s all pretty grim for the commoner still in China, contrary to what they would have us believe.  A change in tone signals hope in the form of a chance (and rather whimsical) encounter for the son with a couple who live on a barge on the vast river banks.  Falling for the girl, and aiding the trumpeter (incongruously playing ‘Oh Sole Mio’) in acts of petty criminality, there is brief glimmer that things may become intriguing. But there are no surprises or twists here; only sad reality. MT

DAY NINE

Feher_Isten_Kornel_MundruczoWHITE GOD **** Un Certain Regard WINNER

Hungarian director, Kornél Mundruczó’s art house thriller has a ‘Pied Piper of Hamlin’ theme.  This enigmatic parable could also be classified as Horror, given its bizarre and brutal elements. Dogs, or more correctly, mutts are the stars of the story which opens with a little girl cycling through the streets of Budapest, followed by a pack of wild dogs. From Alsations to Labradors, Rottweilers and even little terriers, WHITE GOD brings to mind The Incredible Journey with a more sinister twist.  These dogs are clearly well-trained and Hungarians (Magyars have a reputation for their handling skills with horses and this clearly extends to the canine species).  It transpires that Lilli (Zsofia Psotta) the girl on the bike, has adopted a large street dog called Hagen, and tries to bring him to spend the weekend with her abattoir manager father in his rather upmarket flat.  Street dogs are not popular in Hungary and this does not go down well with him or the neighbours, and Hagen is despatched to a shelter awaiting certain death.  But he escapes into the hands of an unscrupulous dealer who grooms him for dog fights transforming the intelligent and gentle Hagen into a scary, vicious hound of the Baskervilles.  And this is when our parable emerges as, quite literally, a tale of the ‘underdog’ rising up and claiming his rightful place in society.  Uniting with the other street dogs of the Hungarian capital, these canines start a massive revolution that is both visually inventive and suspenseful.  WHITE GOD is a unique and really captivating piece of filmmaking. MT

salvationDAY TEN

THE SALVATION ****

It’s always gratifying to see a great film that hasn’t had much buzz pre-festival. THE SALVATION was one of those outings: a welcome surprise but with Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green what could go wrong?  Well, we’ve certainly found the next Clint Eastwood here in Christian Levring’s Danish-American Western. As Jon, a former soldier who immigrated to America after the Danish-German war in 1864, Mads has just the right look and smouldering buttoned-up anger to keep the action taut and macho throughout this glowering, sun-burnished saga shot by lenser Jens Schlosser in South Africa and with echoes of High Noon.  When Jon’s wife and son join him in the lawless West, they are brutally killed; the modest, law-abiding outsider Mads turns hurt into hatred, by taking the outlaw’s life in return.

Eva Green seethes in a speechless part (as Princess) rendered mute by an Indian’s weapon and married to the Colonel (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who heads up the villainous Delarue Family, and seeks revenge on Mads for the killing of his outlaw brother. With a zippy running time of 89 minutes, this is a slick and highly enjoyable ride through the Wild West and the Danish angle works a treat with the xenophobic locals.  MT

THE COMPLETE COMPETITION LINE-UP – in full

accr-jury-cannes-LMThierry Fremaux and his colleagues have selected and distilled this heady cocktail of international titles (chosen from 1800 submissions) to delight us at CANNES 2014 and what an intoxicating list it looks to be!

The Competition Jury is headed by Jane Campion and the Un Certain Regard Jury president this year is Pablo Trapero (right)

COMPETITION

photoAdieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

The Captive (Atom Egoyan)

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller)

The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones)
Jimmy’s Hall (Ken Loach)
La Meraviglie (Alice Rohrwacher)
Leviathan (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)
Mommy (Xavier Dolan)
Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello)
The Search (Michel Hazanavicius)
Still the Water (Naomi Kawase)
Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Wild Tales (Damian Szifron)
Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

WILD_TALES_1OUT OF COMPETITION
Coming Home (Zhang Yimou)
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Les Gens du Monde (Yves Jeuland)

Pablo-TraperoUN CERTAIN REGARD
Amour fou (Jessica Hausner)
Bird People (Pascale Ferran)
The Blue Room (Mathieu Amalric)
Charlie’s Country (Rolf de Heer)
Dohee-ya (July Jung)
Eleanor Rigby (Ned Benson)
Fantasia (Wang Chao)
Harcheck mi headro (Keren Yedaya)
Hermosa juventud (Jaime Rosales)
Incompresa (Asia Argento)
JaujaJauja (Lisandro Alonso)
Lost River (Ryan Gosling)
Party Girl (Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis) (OPENER)
Run (Philippe Lacote)
The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado)
Snow in Paradise (Andrew Hulme)
Titli (Kanu Behl)
Tourist (Ruben Ostlund)

JURY HEADED BY PABLO TRAPERO

salvationMIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
The Rover (David Michod)
The Salvation (Kristian Levring)
The Target (Yoon Hong-seung)

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
The Bridges of Sarajevo (various)
Eau argentee (Mohammed Ossama)
Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)
Red Army (Polsky Gabe)
Caricaturistes – Fantassins de la democratie (Stephanie Valloatto)

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QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS (DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT)

The Directors’ Fortnight programme features new releases and some cult classics;

semaine14posterSEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE  (CRITICS’ WEEK)

OPENING FILM

Faire: L’amour (Djinn Carrénard)

COMPETITION

Darker Than Midnight (Sebastiano Riso)

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)

Gente de bien (Franco Lolli)

When Animals Dream (Jonas Alexander Arnby)

Hope (Boris Lojkine)

Self Made (Shira Geffen)

CLOSING FILM

Hippocrates (Thomas Lilti)

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2014

 

 

Cherchez la Femme at Cannes 2014

This year’s 67th Festival de Cannes features nine films directed by women but only two compete in the official competition for the coveted PALME D’OR.  Here’s the low down.

I N   C O M P E T I T I O N

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Naomi Kawase – FUTATSUME NO MADO (Still the Water)

Something of a Cannes veteran, Japanese filmmaker Kawase not only served alongside Steven Spielberg on the festival’s 2013 Jury, but back in 1997 she became the youngest winner of the festival’s Caméra d’Or award for her debut fiction film, Suzaku. More recently, The Mourning Forest picked up the festival’s Grand Prix in 2007, and Hanezu premiered in competition in 2011. Perhaps this time she’ll take the top prize. Her fiction work is typically informed by her beginnings in documentary, and Still the Water is described as being a ‘romance’. 1510643_725798274107778_400950190347352490_n

Alice Rohrwacher – LE MERAVIGLIE (The Wonders)

The follow up to her acclaimed debut Corpo celeste, The Wonders sees 33-year-old Rohrwacher return to Cannes, moving from the Directors’ Fortnight to the Official Competition. Set in her native Italy, the film explores the impact of a stranger upon a dysfunctionally hermetic family living in the Umbrian countryside. As with Corpo Celeste, the film focuses on a young girl’s coming of age. The sole Italian film in the Official Competition, The Wonders stars Monica Bellucci alongside the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher.

U N   C E R T A I N   R É G A R D section

Keren Yedaya – LOIN DE SON ABSENCE (That Lovely Girl)

Another director who is no stranger to the Croisette, Israeli Yedaya won the Caméra d’Or for her debut Or (My Treasure) in 2004, before returning with her sophomore effort Jaffa in 2009. The film tells the story of an incestuous relationship between a 60-year-old father and his 22-year-old daughter. Cannes director Thierry Frémaux has stated that the film will ‘spark controversy’, and it is adapted from a 2010 book by Israeli author and poet Efrat Yerushalmi (aka Shez).

Jessica Hausner – AMOUR FOU

Five years after Lourdes, Hausner’s excellently complex exploration of faith, the Austrian filmmaker’s fourth feature will premiere in Un Certain Régard. A period biopic set in early 19th Century Berlin, the film concerns the tragic relationship forged between the Romantic dramatist Heinrich von Kleist and his terminally ill lover Henriette Vogel. Hausner has spoken about the detailed research undertaken for the project, and the influence of Vermeer’s paintings upon the visual style of the film.

July Jung – DOHEE-YA (A Girl at my Door)

Also playing in Un Certain Régard is A Girl at my Door, the debut film from South Korean filmmaker July Jung. The story concerns the obsessive feelings a young girl develops for a policewoman who attempts to save her from her abusive father. Jung has previously gained acclaim on the festival circuit with her imaginatively-titled short films A Dog-Came Into My Flash (2010) and A Man Under the Influenza (2007).

Marie Amachoukeli and Claire Burger – PARTY GIRL

The opening film of Un Certain Régard, Party Girl is the debut feature of co-directors Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. If that sounds like a lot of directors for a single film, the trio collaborated previously on the short film Forbach (2008), which they co-wrote (according to IMDb, Burger also directed, Theis also starred, and Amachoukeli also served as additional editor). The film screened at Cannes and won the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand in 2009. Party Girl centres on an aging nightclub hostess who decides to settle down, loosely based on Theis’ mother. All of the actors in the film are non-professionals.

Asia Argento – Incomprensa (Misunderstood)

Incomprensa, Argento’s third film behind the camera, is freely drawn from her own childhood experiences. The daughter of giallo director Dario Argento and his star Daria Nicolodi (who collaborated together on such classics as Suspiria), Asia has previously spoken of her formative years as being drenched in loneliness and depression, going as far as saying that she only became an actress to attract attention from her father. The film plays in Un Certain Regard, and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg as a Nicolodi-like figure.

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Pascale Ferran – Bird People

Long in the works, Pascale Ferran’s belated follow up to 2006’s Lady Chatterley plays in Un Certain Regard, after having originally been touted for screening at Cannes in 2013 (ultimately, it wasn’t finished in time). The film concerns an American engineer (played by Josh Charles) who abandons his old life in order to start afresh in Paris. Intriguingly, the film is said to also contain supernatural elements.

 

Stéphanie Valloatto – CARICATURISTES – FANTASSINS DE LA DÉMOCRATIE (Cartoonists – Foot Soldiers of Democracy)

Playing in the Special Screenings of ‘Un Certain Régard’, Stéphanie Valloatto’s debut film is a documentary portrait of twelve political cartoonists from around the world, featuring artists from France, Tunisia, Russia, America, Burkina Faso, China, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Venezuela, Israel and Palestine. Valloatto’s one prior credit as director is a 2011 episode of the television documentary series Empreintes. Meredith Taylor 

 THE 67TH CANNES FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 14 TO 25 MAY 2014

 

4th London Spanish Spring Weekend 16-18 May 2014

The highlight this year is Sergi López, one of Spain’s most acclaimed actors whose work in Spanish and Catalan spans both stage and screen. Well-known for his role as Vidal in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), López trained at the Lecoq School in Paris and his fluency in French has given his career a resolutely European dimension with a significant number of important film roles in the French language, most famously Dominic Moll’s Harry, He’s Here to Help (2000) and more recently in Dominic Moll’s The Monk (2011 alongside Vincent Cassel. He has even crafted English-speaking characters for film such as with the untrustworthy hotel porter in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

This short film season brings together four of his most acclaimed films, showcasing his remarkable breadth as an actor across four European languages. A special career interview on Saturday 17 May will allow Sergi López to discuss working across film and theatre, crafting some of contemporary cinema’s most resonant villains.

LONDON SPANISH SPRING WEEKEND 16-18 MAY 2014

Mr Leos Carax IndieLisboa 2014

Director: Tessa Louise-Salomé

Writer: Tessa Louise-Salomé, Chantal Perrin-Cluzet, Adrien Walter

France Documentary 72min

Tessa Louise-Salomé follows her HOLY MOTORS (2012) making-of with this career overview of France’s most mysterious auteur. After its world bow at Sundance in January, the film screened as part of the Director’s Cut programme at the 11th IndieLisboa last week.

On the one hand, a cult filmmaker like Leos Carax lends himself easily to a documentary like this. He has only five features to his name between 1984 and 2012, and while they return to timeless themes with an idiosyncratic, singular vision, each film seems to be more interested in how it relates to predecessors and successors rather than the world at large. Film critic Richard Brody refers to this in the film as “refracted self-portraiture.” Carax is a famously stubborn director who will endure years of financial trouble and production frailty in order to ensure the completed work matches his original idea. The tortured artist is the ultimate romanti

On the other hand, then, making a film about Carax brings palpable difficulties. What new insights might we get about the man, his life, his working methods—from he himself, his collaborators or other critical commentators? To what extent, furthermore, can discussions surrounding the artist go beyond the obvious clichés of hagiography, in order to situate him more critically and historically, within the industry or even French society as a whole? These are not questions particular to Leos Carax: they should be the founding queries from which any work of this kind embarks.

Unfortunately, in celebrating the mystery that surrounds Carax – perpetuated by himself as much as by others – the film reinforces a fairly non-critical approach. As such, the work is more suited to a featurette – perhaps one to be included on a high-end future DVD release, or in a ‘completed works’ box set – than as an original summary of, or even a probing introduction to, the director’s oeuvre. When someone says, “The recognition he received at such a young age will forever be held against him,” one wonders why this should be the case. Which social and intellectual currents is someone like Carax working within and against?

Though Carax is intermittently present in audio interviews, this is in many ways about the impact he’s had on those who’ve worked with him. Regular performer Denis Lavant – very much Carax’s discovery – features heavily, speaking of the duo’s difficult professional relationship and of the various demands Carax has made of him as a director. Other interviewees include Kylie Minogue (“he’ll kind of drift back, and say what he needs to say, and drift off again… he’s a bit like a breeze”), Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (who says MAUVAIS SANG is “a perfect film”), Harmony Korine (who says Carax’s films “have a deadly romance, a black romance, a dark romance”), as well as critics like Kent Jones and Jean-Michel Frodon; archive footage of Juliette Binoche is also included.

But where’s the zest, the revelation? MR LEOS CARAX plays out with all the stifled safeness of a fan symposium. When someone like Cannes President Gilles Jacob says, “Leos Carax is a visual poet,” what does it mean? Such statements, needless to say, are not very helpful. Only Brody – who earlier describes MAUVAIS SANG as “pure cinematic ecstasy” (eh?) – comes close to questioning the director, when voicing mild disappointment in POLA X (1999). Not that a film is inherently stronger if intellectual fisticuffs are on display, but Louise-Salomé’s documentary is in desperate need of a devil’s advocate—one of which Carax himself would surely approve. Michael Pattison

11TH INDIELISBOA 24 APRIL UNTIL 4 MAY 2014 IN LISBON, PORTUGAL

 

Kinoteka 2014 – Cinema of Desire 24 April – 30 May

Kinoteka is back this Spring for a month-long celebration of Polish film, music and visual arts.  This 12th year of the festival celebrates the work of Walerian Borowczyk with his Erotic Fables  CINEMA OF DESIRE – the legendary filmmaker whose debut THE BEAST (1975) brought him to the film spotlight after an early career as a painter, sculptor and poster artist.

Taking place at various venues across London: The Barbican, Riverside Studios, BFI Southbank, ICA, The National Gallery Dalston’s Cafe Otto and Islington Union Chapel, it offer the chance to explore the latest in Polish film with masterclasses, Q&As and interactive workshops.

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The festival opens with the award-winning PAPUSZA, that follows the rise and fall of Polish-Gypsy poetess Bronislawa Wajs and her relationship with her discoverer, writer Jerzy Ficowski. Directors Joanna Kos-Krauze & Krzysztof Krauze (Saviour Square, The Debt)’s film premiered at Karlovy Vary and is an insightful portrait of the Polish Roma community and of a way of life pushed to the margins of society. Joanna Kos-Krauze and the film’s star Jowita Budnik will be taking part in a Q&A after the special event.

Other highlights the latest in new Polish Cinema strand are TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT, a high-grossing, police thriller packed with sleaze and corruption in a Warsaw Police department.  The Riverside Studios play host to KINOTEKA’s popular New Polish Cinema strand, delivering a consistently strong selection of Polish films from the last year, boasting critical and box office successes.  In LOVING (Wojciech Smarzowski -Rose) a couple’s relationship is put to the test after an emotional and physical trauma. Maciej Pieprzyca’s LIFE FEELS GOOD is an upbeat tribute to the human spirit, based on a true story about a man with cerebral palsy struggling to communicate to those around him is an entertaining film, brilliantly acted by non-disabled performers, the film captures as much wonderment as frustration and is filled with fully fleshed-out characters.

Acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski will present his highly anticipated and multi-award winning new film IDA. Pawlikowski’s latest film is a poetic, almost Bressonian exploration of the limits of faith following the story of Anna, a young novice in rural 1960s Poland, who discovers a dark family secret on the verge of taking her vows. Exquisitely composed and shot in luminescent black and white, , won Best Film at the London Film Festival.

Sex behind the Iron Curtain, Sex in the Socialist Republic of Poland is a fascinating and insightful look at sex behind the Iron Curtain with a programme of Polish animation shorts from the Communist period, thematically linked around sex with works by Julian Józef Antoniusz, Andrzej Czeczot, Piotr Dumała and Alexander Sroczyński amongst others.

KINOTEKA – CINEMA OF DESIRE RUNS FROM 24 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY 2014

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Andorre (2013) IndieLisboa 2014

Director/Writer: Virgil Vernier

France Documentary 20min

Virgil Vernier follows his 2013 feature ORLÉANS—which screened at last year’s IndieLisboa—with 20-minute short ANDORRE, which screened as part of the reliably high-quality Emerging Cinema programme at the 11th edition of Lisbon’s festival of independent cinema last week.

It sounds counterintuitive for a critic to claim a film is better seen than described, but it’s to ANDORRE’s credit that there really is very little to say about it. Filmed in the mountainous country of Andorra—which is situated between France and Spain—Vernier’s short depicts a self-enclosed consumer’s paradise: tobacco, alcohol, sports equipment, chocolate, sweets, toy guns, jewellery and so on. Not only that, but brand names ahoy: Marlborough, Lambert & Butler, Toblerone, Haribo, and more. Shelves and shelves of endless joy!

Beyond this, Andorra is also a ski resort surrounded by hotels, casinos, fitness centres and, in the middle, an ultra-modern glass pyramid that towers over everything like some historical anomaly. There’s even a graveyard. Indeed, Vernier evidently sees in this locale a number of contradictions: situated at some idyllic remove on the one hand, the whole place seems to reek of exclusivity on the other, its literal elevation also connoting a social snootiness. One young resident says, “To grow up here is so comfortable… there are no criminals, no homeless.” But then, a confession: “There is no future here.” She yearns to escape.

Beautifully filmed, ANDORRE unfolds at once like science fiction neo-noir and a Cold War period piece. The place therein appears to be the nightmarish result of a terrible architectural idea actually brought to fruition – and so cut off from the rest of us that the extent to which it has dated hasn’t quite dawned on anyone. But for Morgane Choizenoux’s cinematography credit, it could even be a found-footage film, repurposing propaganda shot by the local tourist board to a more sinister effect. To this end, Julien Sicart’s gorgeous, haunting sound design is in many ways the principal character here. Michael Pattison

REVIEWED AT INDIELISBOA 24 APRIL UNTIL 4 MAY 2014, LISBON, PORTUGAL.

 

Bambi (2013) IndieLisboa 2014

Director/Writer: Sébastien Lifshitz

With: Marie-Pierre Pruvot

France Documentary 59min

Following his even-footed and effectively straightforward documentary LES INVISIBLES (2012), which concerned a group of middle-aged gay people in France, Sébastien Lifshitz makes mid-lengther BAMBI, an intimate portrait of one of the first French transsexuals. The film scored highly with audiences at the 11th edition of IndieLisboa last week – where it screened as part of the festival’s World Pulse programme.

Marie-Pierre Pruvot was born in a small Algerian village in 1935 as Jean-Pierre Pruvot. From an early age, she hated her given name and insisted to friends and relatives that she be referred to by the name she came to permanently adopt. Speaking of her past with unfussy clarity, Marie-Pierre tells of being an obese child who used to wear her sister’s dresses, and who at an early age began “a long process of construction, or reconstruction, which would last until [she] was 18.”

Marie-Pierre recalls her first love, a lad named Ludo, in whose arms she was found lying one morning by her mother. With this one incident, Marie-Pierre reveals, she changed in her mother’s eyes from being “a paragon of virtue, hard work and intelligence” to being merely “a sordid individual.” Contrary to initial external perceptions, however, Marie-Pierre wasn’t a homosexual boy: she was horrified by the idea of such a label, for it precluded her self-identification as a woman. And so began a two-fold struggle – against homophobia and transphobia.

Edited by Tina Baz, Lifshitz’s film follows a no doubt complex and often traumatic personal history in a defiantly simple manner – for which it is appreciably indebted to its central interviewee. Largely eschewing the sadness and hurt that might otherwise underline a struggle for acceptance in an unforgiving, prohibitive society, BAMBI remains celebratory of Pruvot’s infectiously determined outlook. Which is not to say its protagonist’s life has been free of hurt and sorrow; most moving here are Marie-Pierre’s recollections of when her mother came to visit her in Paris in 1956, realising for the first time how much humiliation and hearsay she had endured back in Algeria due to her daughter’s increasing fame in France.

The film is also evocative of a particular time and place, namely the 1950s Paris where Pruvot was able to join the famous high-end transvestite act La Carrousel de Paris after a successful stint at the renowned Madame Arthur’s. Including archive footage of Pruvot very much ‘at home’ in such a milieu – alongside fellow performers Capucinet and Coccinell – BAMBI provides a valuable chronological snapshot of a sociohistorical layer in which people who identified themselves as women could make unprecedented progress toward gender reassignment procedures. The film takes its title from a popular musical number by Michel Jaubert, which features throughout. Today, as the film itself reveals, Marie-Pierre lives and works as a teacher in Cherbourg. Michael Pattison

BAMBI SCREENED DURING INDIELISBOA 2014 

Naomi Campbel (2013) IndieLisboa 2014

Directors/Writers: Nicolás Videla and Camila Donoso

Cast: Paula Dinamarca, Ingrid Mancilla, Josefina Ramírez, Camilo Carmona

Chile Drama   83min

NAOMI CAMPBEL is the first collaboration between Chilean filmmakers Nicolás Videla and Camila Donoso and the debut feature of both. It screened at the 11th IndieLisboa in the festival’s long-standing Emerging Cinema programme, and its first screening proved very popular in the audience ratings (subsequent screenings are not voted upon).

On the outskirts of present-day Santiago, Chile, 22-year-old transgender woman Yermén (Paula Dinamarca) makes a living at Portal Tarot, an inbound call-centre that provides a fortune telling service. Aware that her wages won’t cover gender reassignment surgery, Yermén hopes to appear on a reality TV show, which could eventually earn her enough money to subsequently proceed with an operation. Undeterred by the bureaucratic process by which she must appeal for an op (which includes a series of Rorschach tests) and supported by older pal Lucha, Yermén remains optimistic about her immediate future.

Along the way, our protagonist ditches her neglectful boyfriend and meets an African immigrant who is herself seeking surgery – which will enhance her resemblance to Naomi Campbell. Named after such a narratively peripheral character (or, more precisely, her more famous surrogate), the film is a study of a certain milieu that promotes and feeds off the unattainable, from the glorification of size zero to the very consultancy provided by Portal Tarot. This is a society that alienates by way of seduction: it seduces the marginalised at the same time as denying the fulfilment of the very desires enabled by it.

The film is visibly documentary-like at points. Like its protagonist, it straddles the liminal space between two established codes with conviction and purpose and without self-pity or sentimentality. Most obviously, the film evinces a diaristic feel in those recurrent passages in which Yermén handles a lo-fi digital camera, depicting (for example) local canines that bark but don’t bite: “Just like men,” she says repeatedly and venomously, implying unacknowledged emotional wounds. Indeed, it is in such sequences that the otherwise inscrutably dogged Yermén’s vulnerability (as well as a palpably dormant torment) leaks through. At a decisive moment in the film – and in a rare instance of verbalised feelings – Yermén looks at a portrait of her deceased mother: “I miss you so damn much comrade.”

At other points, the filmmakers appear to capture the very real social layers amidst which their film is set. Early on, we eavesdrop on elderly neighbours’ prejudiced gossip, almost to camera, about Yermén’s gender. Later on, the film resembles an ethnographic study: nothing screams urban poverty like an image of two stray dogs mating in the street as locals walk by on their daily grind. In such scenes, Matthías Illána’s cinematography lends an authenticity of place that only anchors the story.

Despite the odd occasion of arthouse ambiguity here – such as that when we cut from Yermén peeling potatoes to a shot of her lying on the kitchen floor, in apparent shock-cum-paralysis – NAOMI CAMPBEL compellingly boosts its central drama with a subtly woven, more symbolic current. (Yermén’s idiosyncratic sense of humour also helps.) Indeed, in essence the film is about one transgender woman’s negotiation of an overly masculine world driven by ever-shifting masculinities – masculinities that are undergoing continual crises due, no doubt, to the changing shape and declining appearance of global labour relations.

One such masculinity is found in the propagandistic images of an incessantly action-packed war movie, which we see casually playing on a television set in the waiting room as Yermén awaits a consultation. Another is encountered when Yermén’s boyfriend suggests during sex that she fuck him from behind. Horrified by the thought of using the one organ she is hoping to have removed, her objection is an amusing and telling statement of anti-genderisation. Michael Pattison

INDIELISBOA runs until 4th May 2014 in Lisbon, Portugal

 

3X3D (2013) Indielisboa 2014

Directors/Writers: Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra, Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Carolina Amaral, Keith Davis, Leonor Keil, Angela Marques Nuno Melo, Miguel Monteiro, Jorge Prendas

Portugal/France Experimental 70min

Assaultive triptych 3x3D caused walkouts when it premiered in Cannes last year. On that occasion, the last of its three parts was that by Portuguese director Edgar Pêra, whose contribution followed those of Peter Greenaway and Jean-Luc Godard. Tellingly, in both the version I first saw at Seville European Film Festival last November as well as that which screened twice to an encouragingly if uncomfortably packed house at IndieLisboa last week, the order has been shuffled: Pêra’s entry is now placed second, bookended by his appreciably stronger counterparts.

As a portmanteau film, 3x3D is a typically uneven work, one whose appeal is rooted in its attraction of ‘big names’ to one project, but whose limitations are also found in that anticlimactic feeling of fulfilling a fantastical scenario in which several otherwise disparate heavyweights finally meet. 3x3D is one of two such projects made as part of the 2012 European Capital of Culture initiative by Portuguese city Guimarães – the other being CENTRO HISTÓRICO (also at this year’s IndieLisboa), which pulled together Aki Käurismaki, Victor Erice, Pedro Costa and Manouel de Oliveira to varied effect. In neither case does the world explode.

Greenaway begins proceedings with ‘Just in Time’, a bedazzling and almost self-parodic dash around Guimarães’s centre. Maximalist even by Greenaway’s standards, it plays out like a cross between an overwhelmingly unnavigable, formidably comprehensive and conceptually pretentious CD-Rom and RUSSIAN ARK on amphetamines. Greenaway himself partly narrates us through the first capital of Portugal’s legal, religious, military, sexual, literary, cultural, musical, political, architectural, social and even archaeological history, piling calligraphies upon calligraphies, splitting the screen into three horizontal banners and throwing orbs at us along the way. Greenaway may well know more about Guimarães than his audience does, but he evidently has little interest in imparting such knowledge in a digestible manner.

Of the three, Godard seems most at home working in 3D, adding to his deceptively unvaried CV as a master trickster, reusing sequences and techniques from his unfathomably acclaimed epic HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA. ‘The Three Disasters,’ as his contribution is called, philosophises on cinema, life, the Holocaust and moral responsibilities with smart-aleck epigrams and the safety net of old-vet humour. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled? Convincing the world he’s a genius.

There were laughs at the beginning of Pêra’s literal centrepiece in Lisbon, but the local charm seemed to wear thin fast – and understandably so. ‘Cinesapiens’ tells us that “there is nothing more unreal than yesterday’s realism,” as kitschy cavemen watch a present-day theatre fill up. “Cinema,” so it goes, “has betrayed provocation, sacrificing the fraternity of metaphors for the business of stories.” Trouble is, Pêra mixes his own metaphors so thick that his fraternity appears to be an obnoxiously derisive mess.

Unfolding like an all-cylinders performance piece one may come across at a workshop designed to exorcise pent-up stress, ‘Cinesapiens’ is the kind of bottomlessly dreadful curio one might happen upon in some gentrified warehouse along the River Thames – and walk out of in embarrassed laughter immediately after. The 3D is terrible, too: never have dissolves and overlays seemed so incessantly ugly. The only thing more offensive than Pêra quite obviously fancying himself as a jester? The notion that he also considers himself a historian. Michael Pattison

INDIELISBOA runs until 4 MAY 2014 in Lisbon, Portugal

 

Alentejo, Alentejo IndieLisboa 2014

Director/Writer: Sérgio Tréfaut

Portugal Documentary 97min

São Paulo-born documentarian Sérgio Tréfaut’s latest feature-length work is an impressive foray into a particular region of Portugal by way of its singing traditions. Heartfelt and moving, the film was unveiled at the 11th edition of IndieLisboa last week, where it won Best Portuguese Film.

Cante alentejano is a traditional, polyphonic form of singing that emerged in Alentejo, an open, agricultural region in south-central Portugal known for, among other things, its cork-growing and bread-making. Cante is historically rooted in the region’s labour traditions, whereby field workers and miners would sing collectively, without musical accompaniment, about their daily experiences. Tréfaut eschews voice-over and on-screen text, as if to suggest the film’s story tells itself. Featuring 26 songs in all, and moving seamlessly between generations, genders, interviewees and the region’s various industries, ALENTEJO, ALENTEJO is an evocative and original portrait of enduring geo-specific customs.

Typically consisting of 20 to 30 males, Cante choirs demonstrate a togetherness and harmony that is deeply rooted in the region’s working practices. “Cante began in the Alentejo region with agriculture,” says one interviewee. “There’s a different rhythm now,” chimes another. “Back then nobody had horses – we were always on foot.” Though the songs relate to working patterns, they also incorporate leisure times. Huddled together in a local tavern, one group of men sings, “By the sound of the guitar / I know what time it is / It’s past midnight / I’ve had a good evening!”

Drawing upon a shared, intergenerational experience and surviving so long thanks to a comparatively unchanging landscape, the songs are overwhelmingly melancholic – and have relevance to a crisis-ridden Portugal today: “This is our Portugal / Some people go hungry / This is our Portugal / We don’t know what to do / So many people living in misery / They can’t afford to eat / They have no place to work / And companies are closing down.” Such mourning would not be out of place in the busier centres of Lisbon.

Others are romantic in tone. “I went to sow the green parsley / Outside in the olive groves / To see if I could forget you / But I remember you more and more.” The simple lyricism of these lines conjures a daily toil that magnifies human sensitivity at the same time as it prohibits the fulfilment of desire. Many of the lyrics sung in the film concern insatiable yearning. Sung with such gusto, they are deeply moving. Even when younger males sing, they do so with passion; one lad notes that he’s a better singer when he feels the content of the lyrics.

Editorially faultless, the film includes footage of school children, eagerly answering their teacher’s questions regarding the large size of their families and how many of their relatives live abroad. (Teacher: “Because there’s no work here.”) Indeed, much of the school curriculum, we infer, revolves around local history and labour: kids draw their dads in the mines and decode Cante songs. The cultural significance of the genre is clear – and its cinematic merits are undeniable.  Michael Pattison

SCREENED AT THE 11th INDIELISBOA FILM FESTIVAL, LISBON, PORTUGAL from April 24 until May 4, 2014

 

Indie Lisboa Lisbon 24 April – 4 May 2014

131476INDIE LISBOA is Portugal’s largest film festival showcasing the best in Portuguese indie World film and raising the profile of new and even experimental cinema in the Emerging Cinema strand.

The festival revisits some familiar names: Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel’s O Novo Testamento de Jesus Cristo Segundo João, a documentary staring one of the big names in Portuguese theatre, Luís Miguel Cintra. Director Sérgio Tréfaut establishes with Alentejo, Alentejo, the reigning force of the “cante alentejano” (Portuguese traditional folk music from Alentejo) – also a celebration of Portuguese culture. Cláudia Alves will present Tales on Blindness, a documentary that unveils the Portuguese occupation in India. In the strand Director’s Cut, there will be films by Luís Alves de Matos, Refúgio e Evasão, a documentary that tracks the cinematographic vision of Alberto Seixas Santos and the short films, Head, Tail, Rail, by Hugo Olim and Walk in the Flesh by Filipe Afonso. Sebastien Lifschitz’s Teddy Award (LGBT) winner Bambi, the extraordinary story of a little Algerian boy who grows up to be a respected female professor and entertainer in Paris. From Italy comes Bertolucci on Bertolucci: Walter Fasano and Luca Guadagnano’s expansive documentary on the legendary director.Centro_Historoco

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Established directors feature in two Portuguese productions, specially made for the Capital Europeia da Cultura – Guimarães 2012 program: 3x3D, by Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra and Jean-Luc Godard and the long-awaited Centro Histórico by Pedro Costa, Manoel de Oliveira, Víctor Erice and Aki Kaurismäki. In Costa da Morte Lois Patino (who won Best Emerging Director at Locarno last year) takes to us to  Spanish region of Galicia, with a documentary that explores the traditions of this wild region infamous for its legendary shipwrecks and dramatic coastline. Meanwhile, Vitaly Mansky’s documentary Pipeline gives fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary country-dwellers in the vast expanses of contemporary Russia.

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In this year’s edition, the director chosen as “Independent Hero” is Claire Simon, and her latest feature film Gare du Nord will screen on the opening night. This section will display six films by the filmmaker:Gare du Nord, Géographiehumaine, Ça brûle, Mimi, Sinon, oui and Côute que coûte. Claire Simon will join the audience of IndieLisboa as she will visit our festival on the 29th to introduce and discuss her poetry, her films.

The Filmballad of Mamadada, by Cassandra and Lilly Benson is an ode to the extraordinary Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, dadaist that agitated the city of New York and an agent provocateur of her time. In Naomi Campbel, like the protagonist Yermén, the filmmaker Nicolas Videla and Camila Donoso dwell in two universes, the fictional and real one. Yermén, a transexual that survives as a spiritual telephone guide, while on a waiting room, meets a lady that pursuits the perfect body, the body of Naomi Campbell. The leading man in Jeremy Saulnier’s US indie thriller: Blue Ruin is a serial killer, almost by mistake, a lost, misguided soul with a need for revenge, somehow emerges as a sympathetic character. The young filmmaker Jordi Morató has brought to life outstanding images of Tarzan of Argelaguer – a man that built a labyrinth-city with his own hands and tells his story in The Creator of the Jungle. The lead in Suzanne, a film by Kate Quillévéré, is at the centre of a family falling apart, an complex soul who evokes everyone’s compassion. Mi Nina, mi vida tells the story of a father’s pain at the absence of his daughter and is one of the section’s highlights marking the comeback of Yan Giroux to IndieLisboa. 

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And finally as a special tribute to Austrian documentary-maker Michael Glawogger, who has died aged 54, there will be a screening of his 2011 film Whores’ Glory, the third and final part of his globalisation documentaries (Megacities (1998), Workingman’s Death (2005)). MT

INDIELISBOA RUNS FROM 24 APRIL TO 4 MAY 2014

Lifelong (2013) Hayatboyu CROSSINGEUROPE FESTIVAL

LIFELONG (HAYATBOYU) 2013

Director/Writer: Aslı Özge

Cast: Defne Halman, Hakan Çimenser, Gizem Akman, Onur Dikmen

Turkey/Germany/Netherlands Drama 102min

Istanbul-born Aslı Özge follows her award-winning debut feature MEN ON THE BRIDGE (2009) with a visually chilly treatment of one marital crisis. The film premiered at the 2013 Berlinale and won the Best Director prize at last year’s Istanbul International Film Festival. Its subject matter and symbolic edge will no doubt draw (unfavourable) comparisons to Joanna Hogg’s recently released EXHIBITION; both films received their Austrian premieres during this year’s Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz.

Opening in the middle of a sex scene between a woman and her husband, LIFELONG (HAYATBOYU) might suggest on first appearance that its central relationship is a healthy and functional one. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the fizz has gone from this marriage: but for one other brief moment of lust, Özge’s second feature unfolds in an emotionally constipated register while accruing evidence of its principal couple’s gradual and inexplicable estrangement from one another.

Middle-aged artist Ela (Defne Halman) is preparing for a new exhibition; her husband Can (Hakan Çimenser) is an architect. Their plush Istanbul home, with its immaculate glass panes and idiosyncratic geometry, speaks of a hard-earned social status. Like the house itself, though, the emphasis is very much upon the surface: left alone after daughter Tan moved away to study in Ankara, a discontentment has bubbled beneath. Clues of such tension are dropped early. Can’s phone vibrates when he’s out the room, and we see in Ela’s response to it a half-concealed acknowledgement of a secret she’s reluctant to confront.

Said secret is that Can is likely having an affair. And since she hasn’t been given the luxury of a close confidante, Ela’s suspicions and reasons for not challenging her husband are left to suggestion – though there are strong implications that her silence stems from an approaching menopausal insecurity and a rapidly declining self-worth. Framed – in its first half at least – through Ela’s perspective, Özge’s film is subsequently as restrained as its female protagonist. It’s to the writer-director’s credit that things open out in the second half in order to humanise Can – who, it must be said, is for too much of the film so unchangingly neglectful a partner that one is never really convinced of him as having been ‘marriage material’ to begin with.

Indeed, one comes to cringe in advance whenever Ela and Can are together, the former suffering one putdown after another. An early example is when Ela returns home one evening and comes to bed, only for Can to announce he’s going out to meet colleagues from Antalya. Another example is when Can quietly berates Ela following a double-date with friends – in which an innocuous comment concerning an e-mail from Can reveals Ela was not its intended recipient. Such scenes mount; the drama wears thin. It would surely have been more of a challenge – for filmmaker and audience alike – to write the husband character as something more nuanced than an overwhelmingly sloppy, one-dimensional loser. An awkward scene in a restaurant concerning a messed-up mixed grill feels merely clichéd.

Things change when an earthquake occurs – one with allegorical import no less. Though its epicentre is some distance away (Ela and Can sleep through it), the quake’s ripple effects come to determine Ela’s course of action – and, perhaps, Can’s awakening-cum-redemption. In the second half of the film, Özge demonstrates a clear penchant for symbolism as well as for patient and quiet revelations – though the dramatic cut-to-black that punctuates the ambiguous final scene betrays a more routine aesthetic approach than might otherwise have been the case. In forcing its characters to re-evaluate their situation, the earthquake is at once a subtle and obvious deus ex machina: subtle because its emotional ramifications aren’t felt immediately, and obvious because tectonic collisions have felt forced ever since Altman’s Short Cuts (1993). At least it wasn’t a car crash. MICHAEL PATTISON.

 

Father and Son on a Journey (2013) Ojciec i syn w podrozy Kinoteka 2014

Dir.: Marcel Lozinski

Cast: Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski; Poland 2013, 75 min.

This journey of a father and his son – both documentary filmmakers – from Warsaw to Paris is a trip into the past and a search for identities. Father Marcel was born in Paris in 1940, his mother was in the French Resistance, and he lived in different children homes, always frightened to lose his mother, even (or particularly) when she was visiting him. His son Pawel was born 25 years later in Warsaw. We see footage from Marcel’s Super 8 camera, showing the young Pawel growing up at home with his parents. But when Pawel was 17, his father left his mother Tamara for another woman, Ania: this trauma is still unresolved for Pawel, and during the journey he tries stubbornly to make his father own up to some moral responsibility for the divorce, particularly since he accuses him of having made him buy the wedding rings for the new couple – an accusation the father strongly denies.

The two travel in a camper van, stopping at camping sites along the route via the Czech Republic (which Marcel still calls Czechoslovakia) and Austria (“they still love order and organisation”), before arriving in Paris, where Marcel had buried the ashes of his mother in a public park in 1964. Two generations clash: Marcel still trying to find his identity, finally settling for Jewish, with Polish and French being relegated to the ranks. He too is still a believer in causes (which he needs, like most of his generation), whilst his son is happy just to care for his family, he accuses his father of being enthralled by the communist system, which turned out to be inhuman, even though “you thought it was fantastic”. Pawel further accuses his father of being a control freak, who has an opinion on everything and interferes with everyone. But, contradicting himself, he admits that his education of his daughters is much more conventional and hierarchic, than his father’s: Marcel treated little Pawel like an equal, not like a son – a fact, which Pawel turns against him “You wanted a little mini-me”.

Somehow a pattern develops: father and son wanted for their children an upbringing neither ending up having. Marcel grew up with parents who were looking very much for stability in their life, “happy not having to live in hiding any more”, whilst Marcel saw his son more as an object of an experiment – who himself in turn, wanted for his family nothing more than ‘normality’. In the end, in spite of unresolved issues, we get a sort of happy-end: father and son cuddling in the grass, the same way they did in Pawel’s childhood.

FATHER AND SON ON A JOURNEY is a very intimate document, the two of them living in a very cramped space, holding the camera alternatively. They stop mostly in the countryside, where they seem to feel free to express their feelings. But the dominant feature is their dialogue and their struggle for dominance: more than once, one of them leaves the scene sulking.  Somehow we end up with the feeling that Marcel’s concept of having a “partner, not a son” has been successful, the two behave very much like a couple – though it would be interesting to see Pawel’s take of this journey: his version (a mere 54 min), edited from the same material as his father’s film is called “Father and Son”. AS

KINOTEKA 2014 RUNS FROM 25 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY

 

 

 

 

 

Lasting (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director: Jacek Borcuch

Cinematography: Michal Englert (The Congress, Elles, In the Name of)

93mins    Drama      Polish with English subtitles

With its sun-drenched images, palpable sense of heat and lissome lovers with tousled blonde hair, JACEK BORCUCH’S drama LASTING will appeal to art house audiences, capturing the aching lustfulness of first love seen through eyes of two young Polish college graduates (Michal and Karina) who take off for a summer in Spain. LASTING is a dreamy memory of carefree love on the cusp of adulthood and challenged by fate.

Michal and Karina’s relationship is put to the test when a Michal’s chance meeting with a local man in the riverside farm where they are staying with his family, ends in tragedy sending a chill breeze through their sunny idyll and threatening to tear them apart.

Michal Englert uses the same bleached-out aesthetic, slowmo sequences and hazy camerawork that he does so effectively in In the Name of ; to create a timeless picture of Summer heat that is soon intensified by an undercurrent of anxiety, leaving us as bewildered as the protagonists themselves.  Borcuch’s effective use of silence, minimal dialogue and a subtle instrumental score ramps up the tension as the camera observes the fallout of the tragedy and its psychological effect on the young lovers. Once they get back home, it transpires that Karina is harbouring a secret of her own and this additional element starts to have a wearing effect on both their relationship and the pacing of the film. There’s nothing particularly original about Borcuch’s narrative, but the strong, performances and sizzling chemistry of the leads powerful sense of place  make it a romantic drama worth watching. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS UNTIL 30 MAY 2014 AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON

Blue Ruin (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, David W Thompson

90min  US  Thriller

Blue Ruin is a slow-burning feral beast of a thriller that holds you in tight claws ’til the final bloody finale.  Awarded at Cannes, it’s the second feature of Jeremy Saulnier who cut his teeth as a cinematographer on low budget horror outings before he wrote and directed this stylish indie revenge piece, which despite a low budget makes clever use of the atmospheric Virginia countryside, stunning visuals and a hunting original soundtrack with shades of the Coen Brothers in the storytelling.

Macon Blair plays Dwight, a mysterious and homeless loner gets by scavenging until he learns of the release from prison of Wade Cleland, who murdered his father in revenge for a long-standing feud with his family.  This forces him to return to his former home and his estranged sister’s to reconcile with her and protect her from further acts of retaliation from the Clelands.  Clearly disturbed and very much an outsider, Dwight is no murderer, but the depth of feeling he had for his dad, mingled with fear and anger forces him to fight back with a vehemence he never knew he had.  Tracking Dwight down he murders him in a surprisingly brutal act of defence which cannot go unpunished. The consequences take him down an unpredictable journey from which there is no logical or possible return.  An old school pal, Ben Gaffney (Devin Ratray ) provides unexpected support as they

Although Blue Ruin opens in a straightforward vein, it reveals its narrative very gingerly so as to keep up on tenterhooks as the true awfulness slowly emerges. This unsettling treatment of leaving out so much information is intensified by minimal use of dialogue and long stretches of silence allowing the imagination to run wild and feeding on the subconscious to powerful effect. Saulnier’s skilful use of pacing is probably the most powerful tool in his arsenal of mean tricks, making him an exciting talent in the making. MT

BLUE RUIN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 MAY 2014 and previews at SUNDANCE UK 25-27 April 2014

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You and Me Forever (2013)

Dir.: Kaspar Munk    Writers: Kaspar Munk, Jannik Tai Mosholt

Cast: Julie Andersen, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Emilie Kruse, Benjamin Wandschenider

Denmark 2012, 82 min.  Drama

Kaspar Munk’s coming-of-age drama looks at teenage friendship. Laura and Christine have been friends forever, but when you are only sixteen everything suddenly changes. When Laura meets Maria she’s awestruck by this new sophisticated girl who puts her down: ‘You are boring, but have nice eyes” and has lived in New York. Hesitantly she follows her into the world of parties, drugs and drinking. But when it comes to sex, she is diffident about Maria’s experience with boys, especially Jonas, who lives in a condemned building and seems suicidal. But when Maria pays a boy to sleep with Laura for 500 kroner, she is forced to evaluate not only her new friendship but also her own sexuality.

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Munk revolutionises the genre with his subtle approach in this well-paced drama with its stand-out performance from Julie Andersen as the melancholic Laura, who seems unable to make up her mind about anything, particularly when it comes to her own life. A dreamer, she’s held back by doting parents who panic at the slightest threat of their daughter becoming independent. Laura dreams her way through life and she is drawn to Maria (Frederikke Dahl Hansen) as the polar opposite to her. Maria plays the adult, it’s an strong and alluring performance – but when it comes to the crunch, she’s very much a teenager: promising a couple of boys a blow job if they pay for a taxi, but running away with the overwhelmed Laura in tow and the money – then missing the last train. Laura puts herself out for Maria – whose response to boys is always “don’t touch me”. Maria makes the mistake of using money to soften-up Laura.

A “Sturm und Drang” feel dominates permeates this dark and downbeat piece with lightning, storms and heavy rain predominating. The murky interiors are never fully lit, going in tandem with Laura’s dreamy demeanour. The strongest scenes are close-ups between the three girls: Christine pleading in vain, Laura evasive at the beginning, than alienating her childhood friend; whilst Maria stays in the background, pretending to be the adult. Laura captures the imagination of the viewer because she is living in slow-motion, dragged forward by Maria, but never loosing her subdued hesitancy. Andersen’s Laura is moody, evoking insecurity and self-doubt, yet carrying the film with consummate ease. AS

YOU AND ME FOREVER is on general release in selected cinemas from 25 April 2014

 

Little Accidents (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Sara Colangelo

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny

US  Drama  105min    Slow-burning mining drama really feels like the pits.

Grim reality bites for three people thrown together in the aftermath to tragedy in a depressed mining town. Sara Colangelo’s bleak drama tackles themes of class, comradeship and guilt affecting a community when ten families lose their loved-ones and potentially their livelihoods.

Boyd Holbrook plays Amos, a coal miner who is the only survivor of the accident. He’s faced with the invidious task of giving evidence on behalf of his co-workers to secure a large cash settlement from the management or keeping quiet in case the mine is shut down, risking the futures of those unaffected. Another victim is teenager Owen (Jacob Lofland from Mud) whose father was killed and whose mother (Chloe Sevigny) wants to use her settlement to spoil her bereaved sons incurring the envy of his schoolmates, one of whom, JT, is the son of the manager (Bill Doyle) implicated in the accident, caused by professional negligence. During a scuffle in the woods,  Owen witnesses JT’s death in a fall and is forced to remain silent whilst his mother (Elizabeth Banks) waits in agony for news.  The fallout to all this is intriguing and immersive as Colangelo explores the different relationships and dynamics, feeling her way intuitively with a slow-burning visual narrative, assisted by Rachel Morrison’s softly focused camerawork that makes good use of the dourly atmospheric West coast landscapes.

SUNDANCE UK RUNS FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

 

 

 

The Last Match (2014) BFI Flare 2014

THE LAST MATCH (LA PARTIDA)

Dir.: Antonio Hens

Cast: Milton Garcia, Reinier Diaz, Louis Alberto Garcia, Mirta Ibarra

Cuba/Spain 2013, 94 min.

In a contemporary Havana (even though the film was actually shot in Puerto Rico), two young men are fighting in their very different ways for economic survival and sexual identity: Yosvani is working for his future father-in-law, a loan shark and black marketer, as an enforcer. He does not seem to be much in love with his future bride, even kissing her seems to be an effort. On a rundown football pitch he meets Reinier, a star player, who supports his mother, wife and baby as a rent boy, mainly for wealthy Spanish men, who visit the city as sex tourists. At the beginning, it seems clear that Reinier is heterosexual, he tells one of his clients angrily that he is not a ‘faggot’. Yosvani on the other hand is certainly dreaming of boys, seeing the way he looks at them, but he is too uncertain of his budding homosexual awakening. But somehow Yosvani finds the courage to declare his love for Reinier, but leaving ‘the closet’ has dramatic effects for him: He steals money from his employer, originally for Reinier to pay his debts to the loan shark, but than Yosvani goes a step further – he wants to elope with Reinier, who has just started training with the national youth team.

THE LAST MATCH works well before the young men get together. The narrative is often hilarious, like in one scene, when Reinier’s mother is playing up to the clients of her son, in the hope to make a good impression, so he gets more work. Equally, the relationship between Yosvani and his girl friend is full of little details of mutual misunderstanding, which make one smile. But after the young men fall in love, the film deteriorates into a mixture of thriller and bad melodrama. As long as the social aspects are the driving force of the narrative, we can believe in the characters, but unfortunately it does not work as a tragic love story. Everything becomes contrived and the original ideas, which carried the film for so long, are replaced by stilted clichés, making the end torrid and simply unbelievable.

The main actors are by far the strongest aspect of this production, they are lively and their enthusiasm makes them carry the film, until the script lets them down. The camera is not so much adventurous, it is driving the point of the narrative (poverty and alienation) home in a very didactic way, creating an unsubtle world of opposites without being convincing (like the luxury hotel for the Spanish tourists and the beach front, where the young boys ply their sex trade). Less overtness would have been more in this case. But whilst the film suffers from its horrendous ending, one should not forget the original inspiring ideas, which carried it for so long. AS

THE LAST MATCH SCREENED AS PART OF THE BFI FLARE 2014

 

 

 

Copenhagen Architecture x Film Festival 27 – 30 March 2014

Pomerol_Herzog_de_Meuron_HD_1-960x540 copySome of the the World’s finest filmmakers are Danish: Carl Theodor Dreyer; Lars von Trier; Thomas Vinterberg; Nicolas Winding Refn and Susanne Bier. The Danes also excel in architecture, design and the spatial arts. With this in mind, COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL will open its doors for the first year of what aims to become an annual event. Offering 80 films and events. including first-run as well as older releases showcasing  architectural space as only cinema can. Copenhagen Architecture Festival x FILM is built around 6 strands: Cinematic and Architectural Space; Landscape and FilmPersonal SpacesArchitectural Processes;  Ritual, and Modernism.

oscar-at-niteroi_still_04-960x540 copyThe inaugural festival presents the world premiere of Heinz Emigholz’ entire trilogy of DECAMPMENT OF MODERNISM, the 21st part of his monumental series PHOTOGRAPHY AND BEYOND. All three films will be shown including the final part: THE AIRSTRIP, hot from Berlinale 2014with an an introduction by the filmmaker himself.

Wim Wenders’ 3D project CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE (2014) also comes fresh from its Berlinale 2014 World premiere and there are other treats in store: KOOLHAAS – HOUSELIFE  that takes a looks at the designs of legendary architect Rem Koolhaas and MICROTOPIA, Jesper Wachtmeister’s documentary study about a group of designers whose work focuses on the use of recycled and industrial products in order to minimise waste and human footprint. Dieter Reifarth’s HAUS TUGENDHAT (2013) explores the fascinating history of Mies van der Rohe’s functionalist villa from private ownership in the thirties to official functions under the Germans and Russians to its current status as a stylish backdrop to films such as Hannibal Rising.

niemeyer27shouse2-960x540 copyTHE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM, Oeke Hoogendijk’s prize-winning documentary is a massive undertaking that charts the controversial renovation of one of the World’s oldest and best known museums. Angel Borrego Cubero’s documentary masterpiece THE COMPETITION (2013) explores the working relationship of star-architects Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault and Zaha Hadid’s through the tense process of tendering for the design of a new Arts Museum in Andorra.

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There will be a chance to revisit the past with DOG STAR MAN, Stan Brakhage’s experimental sixties piece that prioritises the visual to create the concept of an ‘optical mind’, and Werner Herzog’s acclaimed sci-fi documentary FATA MORGANA (1971), that imagines the world’s most remote corners as another planet.  Critic Sophie Engberg Sonne looks at Wong Ka Wai’s films in the context of his greatest muse: Hong Kong: this artist-city double-act will be illustrated with excerpts from his oeuvre including HAPPY TOGETHER and    THE CROWD, King Vidor’s psychogeographical 1928 silent epic, based in New York; and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s haunting and sinister documentary ABENDLAND, that takes a voyeuristic look at the vast continent of Europe from the night skies.

COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27-30 MARCH 2014  

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Palaces of Pity (2011) Palacios de Pena AV Festival Postcolonial Cinema Weekend 7-9 March 2014

Directors: Gabriel Abrantes / Daniel Schmidt Writers: Gabriel Abrantes / Daniel Schmidt

Cast: Alcina Abrantes, Andreia Martina, Catarina Gaspar

Portugal Surreal Fantasy 59min

The theme for this year’s AV Festival, which runs in the Northeast throughout March, is ‘extraction’. Drawing upon its host region’s rich industrial history, the biennial festival of art, music and film concentrated its focus during Postcolonial Cinema Weekend (March 7-9) to showcase varying artistic approaches to colonialism and its lasting legacies.

Following its directors’ award-winning short A HISTORY OF MUTUAL RESPECT (2010), mid-lengther PALACES OF PITY (PALÁCIOS DE PENA) continues Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s preference for the distinctively ironic. As with their earlier work, the directors operate by means of cultural – and specifically cinematic – appropriation, in order to ruffle feathers, telling the tale of two spoilt cousins in present-day Lisbon who party their seventh grade away on the eve of their grandmother’s death.

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Just before she dies, the old woman recounts – in fantastical and eroticised flashback – a story to the two girls, in which two gay Moorish priests are tried and executed by knights who nevertheless admire the lovers. Upon waking up, the girls discover their grandmother has died. Following an intergenerational lesbian encounter with her notary, one of the girls is able to seize full inheritance of her grandmother’s will at the expense of her cousin. Absolute wealth corrupts absolutely.

Opening on a gorgeously and gradually illuminated football stadium, PALACES OF PITY unfolds against a series of breathtaking locations. Following the first scene, the two young protagonists visit a dam  and are dwarfed by it entirely as they take their grandmother’s goats to graze, while the flashback scene takes place in an actual Moorish Castle dating back to 700 AD. Natxo Checa and Eberhard Schedl’s cinematography belies the film’s apparently slim budget, while Abrantes and Schmidt demonstrate much tact in disguising their lack of resources, largely through well-timed cut-aways and well-chosen remote settings.

Strong images, however, can only go so far. PALACES has a forced surrealism to it, employing a kind of Lynchian, associational incongruity rather than concrete historical storytelling. No bad thing, perhaps, but the persistent artificiality rapidly wears thin. The deliberately wooden acting; the belaboured longueurs between lines of dialogue; the sudden dissolve from images of adolescent girls in high heels to a slow-motion sequence cut to a distorted adagio version of Alphaville’s “Forever Young”…  Such reappropriation and exaggeration of mainstream conventions has in the past been a legitimate political practice, but caught so knowingly between the appreciable (and insufferable) strains of INLAND EMPIRE and the jejune kitsch of SPRING BREAKERS, Abrantes and Schmidt seem to be sniggering at the thought of upsetting the status quo rather than making a wholehearted commitment to doing so.

Irksome dialogue is revealing of these limitations more than anything. In the opening scene, the grandmother – who sits in the stands as the girls stretch on the pitch for a soccer match – remarks, “The country has changed but we are the same.” Such on-the-nose symbolism is embarrassing. In the flashback, just before one of our seventh-graders cops a lustful kiss from her inheritance solicitor, the two Moorish priests masturbate one another while two Lisboan knights look on in awe of their intelligence and sensitivity.

More droll dialogue provokes us. Watching the Moorish priests masturbate one another (in such a stylised, symmetrically framed manner that its provocation is removed from any kind of historical context), one of the knights says, “show me your little piglet… Give me shelter, little puppy.” Upon being rejected, the knight remarks: “Those soft little faces are going to pay.”

To suggest systematised political oppression stems primarily from psychological shortcomings – that is, from the oppressors’ feelings of horror towards their own ‘forbidden desires’ – is surely a limited (if not entirely refutable) outlook. Sadly, then, while the political agency of surrealism stems from its legitimate emphasis upon those basic human desires that in class society are suppressed and driven underground (or within), the provocateurs seem on this occasion to be late to the party. Michael Pattison

AV FESTIVAL RUNS THROUGHOUT THE NORTHEAST OF ENGLAND DURING MARCH 2014

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CINEMA made in Italy 5-9 March 2014

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is at the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington from 5 – 9 March, giving Londoners an opportunity to see the latest Italian films that may not go on general release. Screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with directors and actors. The five day annual event is organised by Istituto Luce – Cinecittà’s promotional department in Rome (Filmitalia), and the Italian Cultural Institute in London. This year’s line-up includes eleven feature films and one documentary.  We recommend:

Viva 2 copyVIVA LA LIBERTÀ by Roberto Andò

THOSE HAPPY YEARS (Anni Felici) by Daniele Luchetti

HOW STRANGE TO BE CALLED FEDERICO! (Che Strano Chiamarsi Federico!) by Ettore Scola

THE REFEREE (L’Arbitroby Paolo Zucca

BORDER by Alessio Cremonini

ZORAN, MY NEPHEW THE IDIOT (Zoran, Il Mio Nipote Scemo) by Matteo Oleotto

THE FIFTH WHEEL (L’Ultima Ruota del Carro) by Giovanni Veronesi

THE THIRD HALF (Il Terzo Tempo) by Enrico Maria Artale

THE HUMAN FACTOR (La Variabile Umana) by Bruno Oliviero

FIRST SNOWFALL (La Prima Neve) by Andrea Segre

OFF ROAD (Fuoristrada) by Elisa Amoruso

Full Programme details

Pan-Asia Film Festival 26 February – 9 March 2014

The Pan-Asian Film Festival is a unique event showcasing the beauty, variety and dynamism of Asian cinema from IRAN, THAILAND, TAIWAN, JAPAN, CHINA AND INDIA. Taking place in London cinemas and a selection regional cities nationwide, it offers a chance to see premieres of the latest dramas and documentaries from established British Asian directors and introduces some fresh filming talent to audiences, for the first time. Q&As will offer the possibility to meet and engage with home-grown actors and directors as well as talent from across the globe.

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Kicking off on the 26th February with a star-studded gala performance of UNFORGIVEN, Sang-il Lee’s adaptation of the Clint Eastwood western, followed by premieres of a sparkling array of dramas such as HONOUR, Shan Khan’s gritty Glasgow-set urban thriller, the festival culminates with a premier of BHOPAL: A PRAYER FOR RAIN on 9th March. The Pan-Asian Best Film Award will be selected from a short-list of six titles.   

THE MISSING PICTURE

HONOUR 

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DANGEROUS LIAISONS

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MARY IS HAPPY, MARY IS HAPPY  

KAMIL’S PARTY

Mary Is Happy

 

Bhopal-Mischa Barton

BHOPAL: A PRAYER FOR RAIN

THE FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 26 FEBRUARY TO 9 MARCH 2014

for more details visit www.asiahouse.org

Oscar Winners | 86th Academy Awards 2014 | Foreign Language

So, LA GRANDE BELLEZZA wins the Oscar placing Paolo Sorrentino firmly on the international map. The Oscars are not all about the big studios and the blockbusters:  The archaically-named “Foreign-Language Section” was full of fascinating dramas  from all corners of the Globe from Hungary to Cambodia.  After disappointment for WADJDA and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR, who didn’t make the list – let’s look back at the films that competing in the year’s race to the Red Carpet.

The Grandmaster - Wong Ka Wai - Berlinale 2013Hong Kong director: Wong Ka Wai will present The Grandmaster, a dazzling drama of noirish shadows and precision camerawork by Philippe Le Sourd. It tells the story of two Kung Fu masters – Ip Man (the man) from China’s south and Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) is his adversary) from the north. Their paths cross in Foshan on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1936. Gong Er’s father is travelling to Foshan to visit the legendary brothel, The Golden Pavilion, where the country’s best martial artists come together for his retirement ceremony. This tale of betrayal, honour and love plays out against a war-torn backdrop as is Wong Ka Wai’s most commercial outing so far.

GREAT_BEAUTY_2D_DVDPaolo Sorrentino first came to fame with his 2004 outing Consequences of Love: a mafia thriller and love story set in Northern Italy. It featured a magnificent central performance from Toni Servillo who also stars in Italy’s nomination The Great Beauty, possibly his best film so far.  Capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle classes with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first described in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Servillo here plays Jep Gambardella, a writer, raconteur and party-animnal who embarks on a Proustian trip down memory lane in the rich Autumn of his life.  Ageing but suave, he exudes Mediterranean masculinity and confidence until he is suddenly jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery that throws him off-balance and into action before all is finally lost in old age.  The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet for the senses, epitomising the cultural essence of Italy and particularly of Rome.

Belgian’s entry is a musical love-story based on a true-life band.  Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen and set in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

broken_3Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle and Heldenbergh and Baetens’ attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band. As the narrative develops though, the storytelling becomes more erratic despite strong and heartfelt performances from the leads and particularly Veerle Baetens’ who is one of Belgian’s most popular actresses.

The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) is János Szász’s magnificent screen adaptation of Agota Kristof”s French-language: ‘The Notebook’ (hence the title) – a lesson in history and Hungary’s nomination to the 86th Academy Awards. Christian Berger’s sumptuous visual treatment almost blunts the harrowing nature of this Second World War tale of twin boys who are taken by their mother Gyöngyver Bognar, (Opium) to live in near-starvation with their tyrannical peasant grandmother (who  villagers call “the witch”) deep in the countryside.

Le-Grand-Cahier-001 copyTheir experiences are recorded in a notebook, providing illustrative testament to this important slice of Hungarian history and  serve as an intriguing psychological texture to the ongoing World War narrative.Despite its harsh subject-matter, Le Grand Cahier is a beautiful film to experience accompanied by its atmospheric score. János Szász has provided a rich and important account of the impact of the war on the Hungarian countryside.

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Omar was one of the hits at Cannes last year and Hany Abu-Assad’s tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories in the Palestinian nomination.  Adam Bakri leads as Omar, a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl Nadja (Leem Lubany). By night, he’s either a freedom fighter or a terrorist-you decide-ready to risk his life to strike at the Israeli military with his childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat). Arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into an admission of guilt by association, he agrees to work as an informant. So begins a dangerous game-is he playing his Israeli handler (Waleed F. Zuaiter) or will he really betray his cause? And who can he trust on either side? Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) dynamic, action-packed drama also engages with the universal themes of  moral dilemmas and tough choices that face those on the frontlines of all international conflict.

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Denis Tanovic made a big impression at Berlin this year with Incident in the Life of an Ironpicker (Bosnia Herzegovina), a piece of social realism that offers slim pickings in the way of entertainment or standout performances (despite the non-actor lead winning Best Actor in Berlin) but nevertheless raises the important debate on the plight of Roma gypsies in contemporary Europe. Traditionally they have wandered all over the place pursuing their own moral and social cod, living in encampments and opting  out of social costs.  Tanovic takes a poor couple who live with their two little girls a Roma gypsy camp in Bosnia Herzegovina. Denis Tanovic’s trick of using non-professional actors lends authenticity to this simple story with largely improvised dialogue which draws on the international debate of small communities all over the world and he makes a strong evolutionary point with this film. May be these people have inadvertantly discovered the ultimate answer to sustainability by running their own show in a political regime where many people feel marginalised, unheard, unloved, uncared-for and ultimately disenfranchised in the organised mainstream. But then the Romas weren’t running their own show; they needed medical care and they couldn’t provide it within their own community. A simple tale then that offers stimulating food for thought and a universal message.

000018.17045.METRO_MANILA_Still_1The British entry for the Oscars is another tale of the disenfranchised and comes from Sean Ellis, a British director who shot his tense thriller, Metro Manila while on location in the Philippines.  First shown at Sundance Film Festival in January, Ellis’ quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers, but he eventually succeeded. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Metro Manila - Audience Award World Cinema Dramatic - Sundance 2013

Poetic in feel and sumptuously filmed, Metro Manila is a immersive thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philippino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

The Danish submission The Hunt, comes from Thomas Vinterburg and actually premiered at Berlin in 2012.  It’s a mischievous psychological study of child abuse in a traditional contemporary village community in the heart of the Danish countryside.

official-1.Susse_Wold_and_Annika__TheHunt_Framegrab.Photo_by_Charlotte_Bruus_Christensen-e1354044858999The action revolves around Mads Mikkelsen who is pitch-perfect as Lucas, a metrosexual man relocating to the place of his childhood after a difficult divorce and custody battle for his son. And although Mads has been a baddie for much of his career, as Lucas, we’re rooting for him all the way as he fights his corner. The performance won him best actor and Cannes this year and, for my money, The Hunt was one of the best films showing at the festival, along with Heneke’s Amour which won the Palme D’Or. It also stars Thomas Bo Larsen and Alexandra Rapaport.

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And finally, Rithy Pahn’s The Missing Picture reflects his experiences with genocide on a large scale and serves as a heartfelt memoir of the invasion of Cambodia in the seventies.  Making his documentary has helped him come to terms with the terrible losses he suffered during the time of his adolescence, when over 2 million people died during the regime.

Using a collage of bleached-out black and white footage and finely-rendered clay figurines (symbolising stultifying control) set to a weirdly sinister score. What emerges is a a non-confrontational animated record of the hostilities; as individuals became a collective of meaningless numbers imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge to become Democratic Kampuchea. In a regime (similar Nazism and Stalinism) characterised by hunger, torture and emotional cruelty and lack of respect or compassion for the individual, Panh tells how his father was denied a decent burial. Schools became detention centres reflecting a ‘perfect society’ where Marxist ideology reigned as revolutionary winds wafted through the paddy fields heralding ideals of creating an agrarian socialist economy which failed incontrovertibly leading to the deaths (from hunger) of millions of its inhabitants. The mantra – “Whoever apposes, is a corpse” indeed became a reality.

Two Lives

Completing the list is Germany’s official entry for best foreign language film is Two Lives, an historical drama from director Georg Maas starring Juliane Kohler and Liv Ullmann. Based on the true story of Kathrine Evensen (Kohler), a German woman brought up in East Germany and  living in Norway, is the child of a Norwegian woman (Liv Ullmann) and a German Second World War solider. Her secret past gradually emerges during the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

THE 86TH ACADEMY AWARDS TAKE PLACE ON 2 MARCH 2014 IN HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES.

USE THE SEARCH ENGINE TO READ REVIEWS OF THE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE NOMINATIONS.

Cracks in Concrete (2014) Risse Im Beton Berlinale 2014

Director: Umut Dag     Writers: Petra Ladinigg/Umut Dag

Cast: Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Mehmet Ali Salman, Margarete Tiese

101min   Turkish/German with subtitles   Thriller/Drama

Best known for his work on 2007 Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters, Umut Dag’s drama explores the under world of a close-knit Turkish community in Vienna. Running along the usual lines of crims going against the grain of their previous misdemeanours to make good, it follows two men on a quest for acceptance and respect.  Ertan (Murathan Muslu) has served time for murder and is now on parole, Mikail is a teenage drug-runner for Yilmaz (Mehmet Ali Salman), and is hoping for a better life as a rapper.  But what makes this thriller really stand out from the crowd is the dynamic performances of the two leads Muslu and Tagaev.

CRACKS hits the floor running with a devastating opening scene where a middle-aged white woman is repeatedly slapping a heavy-set young man. Later we discover this was Ertan in an attempt to gain forgiveness from the mother (Margarete Tiesel/Paradise:Love) of his victim. Having fallen from grace with his father, brother and girlfriend, Ertan strikes a macho yet vulnerable figure in the ‘hood, and matters don’t seem to improve.  Meanwhile, Mikail is, in many ways, a younger version of Ertan and Dag’s narrative soon reveals that the ties run much deeper that initial appearances might suggest. But when Ertan gets a job in Mikail’s recording studio,  there is no doubt about their hidden connection, although at this stage Mikail is oblivious to the truth.

As a crestfallen antihero, Muslu is superb in a believable performance reflecting Ertan’s gradual descent into social hell, exquisitely etched in his myriad expressions of pain and dejection, as he reins back from violence and recidivism. The young Tagaev lacks Muslu’s acting finesse but projects a strong image of a broken teenager, gentle and fearful behind his ‘no-fear’ persona.

Shot through with its cool blue aesthetic, Georg Geutebruck’s agile ‘chiaroscuro’ camerawork skilfully captures both light and dark in a visually stylish thriller that races forward in the filmic ambience of a seedy concrete underworld, throbbing with sinuous energy and nightclubs throbbing with exotic totty and macho males. There’s a stunning sequence towards the end where Ertan is walking along the street, that makes you forgive Dag his slightly formulaic narrative in a feature that literally pulsates with the rhythm of life. MT

CRACKS IN CONCRETE SCREENED AT THE BERLINALE 2014

 

Berlinale Daily Bites 6-16 February 2014

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KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER *** The surreal collides with the banal in Nathan and David Kellner’s genre-blurring black comedy drama, in which David Kellner also stars. Kumiko, a doltishly passive Japanese woman, abandons her dull life in Tokyo to travel to snowbound Minnesota on the strength of an imagined treasure trove she sees buried in a film, aided and abetted by the kindness of narrow-minded strangers who help her on her mission. If you can suspend your disbelief and tune into the weird humour, this is a work of inspired genius and well-planned eccentricity: Alexander Payne put his money into it and the Kellner Brothers’ drama has shades of Joel and Ethan Coen about it. MT  105min  FORUM

The_Grand_Budapest_Hotel.jpg_rgb copyTHE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL ****   SILVER BEAR, GRAND JURY PRIZE

Ralph Fiennes is pure magic as Gustav H, a legendary lothario and eloquent hotel manager in this witty, whimsical and very European tale within a fairytale, inspired by the Gorlitzer Warenhaus on the Polish/Czech border (which is currently being renovated) in a fictional Republic of Zubrowka.  Written and directed by Texan Wes Anderson, it’s probably his finest film to date: perfectly scripted, beautifully acted by an assembled cast of Tilda Swinton, (who must be the most elegant and ethereal woman on the planet) Lea Seydoux, Jude Law, Matthieu Almaric, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Tony Revolori (as the young Zero M); it’s also gorgeous to watch with its candy-coloured aesthetic and fairytale sets.  Appealing to all ages, despite moments of scary violence, it tells the story of how the hotel came to be handed down to Zero Mustafa via a rich and riotous history. MT  World Premiere IN COMPETITION  100mins

20142188_1 copyIn Josephine Decker’s debut feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH, we first meet the central character Sarah, when she stumbles around dreamily in Brooklyn and sleeps with a man she picked up in a nightclub. Suddenly, she appears again at a summer festival of Balkan folk music in some woods near Mendecino, California. There she seems at first to settle down with girlfriend Isolde, but then the two get lost in a wood and nearly set it on fire. Exchanging intimacies and secrets, the two become become increasingly closer, but something is worryingly wrong with Sarah. We might connect her otherworldliness with the Balkan stories of people beings possessed by dangerous animals, like dragons (clearly shades of Tourneur’s Cat People). But before we are able to guess further, Sarah suddenly turns to the young Steph, but their relationship culminates into a dramatic and violent end near a lake in this inventive, dreamy, fantasy horror.  See full review

D  A Y   T W O

20142060_5 copyJACK ****  A leafy Berlin is the setting for Edvard Berger’s touching drama underpinned by newcomer Ivo Pietzcker’s performance of tear-swelling poignancy as Jack, a little boy left in charge of his half-brother, when their feckless mother abandons them.  Sensitive and filmic, it’s an old-fashioned portrait of childhood anxiety that echoes The Kid With A Bike; and shows that kids are sometimes far more intelligent than we give them credit for but also that responsibility and self-reliance can be the making of them. MT. 104 MIN  GERMANY. IN COMPETITION

20140777_1’71 ****  TV director Yann Demange (Top Boy) has chosen the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland as the subject of his feature debut ’71, setting his tightly-plotted narrative from the perspective of a young British soldier (Jack O’Connell) left behind by his unit following a street riot. The memory of the terrible internecine warring is brought back with visual clarity and some of the best street combat scenes ever committed to film.  Demange has masterful control of his subject-matter and delivers an utterly gripping thriller with a strong central performance from Jack Connell (This is England) and a superb all-British cast including Sean Harris, Sam Hazeldine and Paul Anderson MT 99min UK  IN COMPETITION.

20144685_1TWO MEN IN TOWN **

Rachid Bouchareb’s is an award-winning filmmaker known for LONDON RIVER, picking up a Silver Bear Award at Berlinale 2009.  Here he casts Brenda Blethyn as a lil’ ol’ Kansas probation officer who sets out to assist Forest Whitaker’s reformed convict, Garnett, in a small community near the Mexican Border. Recently converted to Islam, Garnett does his best to make a go off things but Harvey Keitel is determined to put a spanner in the works, as the local sheriff, so we know the outcome of this story before the get-go. Despite some filmic moments and an experienced cast, it feels about as plausible as Jesus coming down from the cross. MT  120mins  IN COMPETITION.

D A Y   T H R E E

AMMA & APPPA (2014) ***

Franziska Schonenberger’s debut documentary is a part-animated story of twenty-somethings who meet at University and fall in love.  Across the cultural divide of his strict Tamil parents, who envisaged an arranged marriage, and her homespun Bavarian background; a touching and immersive story emerges which is really a doc-style Meet the Parents, with some equally hilarious moments.  MT 89 min Panorama Germany

Free Range copyFREE RANGE- Ballad on Approving of the World  ** (2013)

Fred is a chain-smoking pseudo-intellectual with a high opinion of himself. After losing his job as a deliberately abusive film journalist and mindful of looming fatherhood, he turns his hand to working in a timber factory with equally disastrious results. Veiko Ounpuu’s bleached- out, grainy visuals evoke the lemon n lime beauty of the Estonian spring to great effect in this sardonic drama which is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack of hits from ‘The Smiths’ among others, but it’s difficult to care what happens to Ounpuu’s unappealing characters who never really feel authentic or to engage with his facile narrative. MT  104min. Estonia. Forum Expanded

20143250_2 copySTO SPITI (2014) At Home (2013) ***

The stunning coastal location and elegant summery visuals of Athanasios Karanicolas’s serene feature debut bely the melancholic nature of his narrative that follows a wealthy Greek family who are finding ends increasingly difficult to meet in the financial crisis. When their long- term Georgian housekeeper falls sicks it’s clear that life will have to change but also rather predictable in the way it does. So no surprises here but certainly some applause for this well-crafted and promising film. Maria Kallimani gives a performance of great subtlety in the central role. MT. 103min  Greece/Georgia. Forum Expanded

20147918_7 copyTHE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) ***

George Clooney has made a brave and well-intentioned bid to shine a light on one of the most important episodes of Art history – the looting of art treasures by the Nazis during their retreat during the Second World War. The result, in which he also stars as art historian Frank Stokes, (a fictionalised version of George Stout) along with a fine cast of Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, and High Bonneville, is rather too worthy for its own good. This is his 5th big screen outing and sees him and his colleagues setting out to France in 1944 where they discover  the Russians are also hot on the trail, and intend to keep to uncovered treasure as spoils. Cate Blanchett is remarkable as a bluestocking curator under the Nazis, who at first is unwilling to cooperate but finally falls for Damon’s charms. The search goes underground and there is much ranting and raving in rhetoric about the supreme value of Art, as if Clooney underestimates his audience, although naturally he has the best orating.  Production values are slick and strong and Alexandre Desplat’s score is well-pitched and moving, but ultimately this is a rather artless drama that sacrifices suspense for altruism. MT,  120mins  US IN COMPETITION

D A Y   F O U R

PatardzlebiBLIND DATES (2014) ***

Levan Koguashvili’s follow-up to STREET DAYS (2010) is another tale of contemporary Georgian folk with particular emphasis on womens’ issues in this male-dominated culture. Unexpectedly funny and feisty, it explores young hopes versus old ways in the crumbling splendour of Tbilisi through a tentative romance between 40 year old bachelor Sandro and a woman whose husband has just been released from prison. MT 95 mins. Georgia. Forum

20142588_3 copyHISTORY OF FEAR (2014) **

Random acts of violence, criminal activity and hostility between neighbours punctuate a hot summer in down-town Buenos Aires. Benjamin Naishtat’s first full-length drama strings together a series of interconnecting events in an attempt to evoke a climate of uncertainty and paranoia but leaves the audience bewildered and disengaged in the process. Ultimately he offers no reason for us to feel anything for his characters despite their plight and his narrative drifts aimlessly without a really immersive plot-line in the chaos.  MT Argentina. 79mins IN COMPETITION

20148131_5 copyNYMPHOMANIAC 1 *****- Director’s Cut

The entire, director’s cut version of Lars von Trier’s culminating segment of his ‘Melancholy’ trio that began with ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA leaves in some minor footage and artistic flourishes but fails to add anything to the plot, ultimately rather than gilding the lily it actually detracts from the piquancy of his brilliantly enigmatic narrative. 145mins  See our review

The Two Faces of January THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY (2013) *****

With a narrative based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, this long-awaited debut feature from DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini is a lavish affair set in sixties Greece. And what could go wrong with such a fabulous cast, magical sets, gorgeous tailoring and a romantic original score by? The answer is nothing! One of the most gripping and sophisticated thrillers for some time, THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst as an American married couple, the MacFarlands, and Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davis) as their tour guide, Rydal. After meeting up in by chance in Athens, a tragic accident forces the trio to flee to the islands whence they embark on a dangerously eventful journey that ends in  tragedy for all concerned. 96min UK USA France

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20141257_1 copyIN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (2014) *** 

Bruno ganz and Stellan Skarsgard star in Hans Petter Moland’s dark comedy follow-up to A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (2010) has some of the best snowscapes that you’ll probably see this year and also possibly the most unapologetically un-politically incorrect script. Skarsgard plays, Nils, a Swedish man living in Norway who drives a snow plow and has just been award ‘Best Citizen’. But when his son dies in a drug overdose, Nils turns vigilante to find out who is responsible.  That said, the tone is light-hearted: Moland wanted s narrative reflecting what happens when society’s attributes of decency get mixed up with the baser instincts that kick in when we are threatened: “Norway has a history of being generous to people in need but now this is being challenged” he said at the press conference. The comedic style was the best way to deal with this theme positively.  “Violence lurks within us and occasionally erupts in normal, well-adjusted people like Stellan’s character.”  What ensues is a brutally violent chase to track down the two rival gangs of traffickers: one Serbian (lead by Ganz as Papa), one local (lead by Pal Sverre at Greven).  There are some great gags that arise out of ‘ad-libbing’ rather than sticking rigidly to Kim Fupaz Aakeson script and give this piece a fresh and authentic feel, although 115mins is a tad long for this simple crime caper. MT  100min  Norway/Denmark  IN COMPETITION

_CALVARY copyCALVARY (2014) ***           ECUMENICAL PRIZE

A priest’s struggle when his life is threatened during a confession:”I first tasted a man’s semen when I was 7 years old”, is a metaphor for the continuing challenge The Church faces to retain a place of respect and succour in today’s society. Traditionally the bedrock of Irish communities, it gets a really rough ride in this black comedy that examines the role of the local priest amongst a group of characters in a small Sligo village, who have lost their way.  Gloriously set in this verdant Southern Irish county, Brendan Gleeson leads with a performance of rare dignity and integrity as the Father concerned , in this follow-up to THE GUARD.  Less comedic and that the former, CALVARY’s soul is a more brooding and desperate one, leavened by moments of gentle often caustic humour.  Pointing its finger at paedophilia amongst Church leaders,  it follows the tone of the recent PHILOMENA echoing documentaries such as Alex Gibney’s MEA MAXIMA CULPA.  For John Michael McDonagh it is a triumph and a far better drama than the recent and glib, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS.  A superb all-Irish support cast of Kelly Reilly, Chris O’Dowd, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran and Isaac De Bankole make this thoughtful and trenchant second feature a rare pleasure that stays in the memory long afterwards. MT 100min  UK/Ireland  Panorama Special. 

LifeAIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER – THE LIFE OF RILEY (2014)       ALFRED BAUER PRIZE

For his 50th film, Alain Resnais adapts the work of Alan Ayckbourn in this stagey farce with garish theatrical sets and occasional glimpses of the leafy countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. Starring his wife Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain (Bird) Andre Dussollier and Hyppolyte Girardot, it’s just the sort of thing that older French audiences lap up but do we really need another stage adaptation (his third) of YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET?.  This turns out to have additional flourishes with drawings by French artist Blutch and puppetry to boot!  You know the story here – middle-aged, middle-class couples whose close friend is diagnosed with cancer. Or is he?  Mannered performances all round will appeal to his devotees. MT 107min  France IN COMPETITION

20142278_2 copyHUBA, PARASITE (2014)

The work of Polish filmmakers, Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal (IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE)  focuses on simple lives of working people in the Polish countryside; their latest film is no different. A tender portrait of family closeness centres on an old factory worker and his daughter and her baby, who come to live with him.  Intimate in scale, daily rituals are viewed at close quarters with a ‘warts and all’ approach that provides an immersive and worthwhile testament to the continuing narrative of rural lives under threat in remote locations.  MT. 66min Poland  Panorama

D A Y   S I X 

20142433_4 copyPRAIA DO FUTURO (2014)

With some of the most captivating photography of Brazilian and Berlin skylines, Karim Ainouz’s filmic and leisurely-paced drama is sadly let down by poorly fleshed-out characterisation of its protagonists, who we hardly get to know at all.  Appearances can be deceptive and we soon find out that Praia do Futuro is one of the most beautiful but deadly beaches in Brazil. It also has the saltiest water, making it a hostile environment for living in.  When his friend is drowned, a Brazilian lifeguard follows his lover back to Berlin to discover a new life that’s both liberating and bewildering. Ainouz creates a palpable sense of place and identity but sadly the narrative floats untethered in a sea of plotholes with not enough momentum or feeling for his characters or their lives to carry it through to a meaningful conclusion. MT 106mins. Brazil/Germany  In COMPETITION

20148119_1SOUVENIR (2014)

German photographer Alfred Diebold disappeared during an Arctic cruise in 2009 leaving a massive collection of videos archiving his peripatetic life as an attention-seeking traveller, husband and politically engaged also-ran. André Siegers doc looks back at his footage (407 videos in all) but despite some moving moments from Alfred’s intimate family life, it’s difficult to work out why he considered this film worthy of the public domain (let alone financing) as it is neither involving, visually inventive nor particularly interesting from a historical point of view. Maybe a German audience would feel more empathy with the subject-matter. MT 81mins Russia/Germany Forum

20142517_2 copyTO MIKRI PSARI – STRATOS (2014)

Although not particularly intended as such, Yannis Economides’ drama serves as a metaphor for the parlous state of moral and physical decline that Greece has suffered over the past several decades.  In STRATOS communities are breaking down, buildings have fallen into disrepair and parks are overrun with weeds. Even felons are at each others throats, overworked by the burden of debt-fuelled crime in their neighbourhoods.  Economides’ narrative steadily builds into a caustically angry thriller involving local low-lives and their families. Tightly-plotted: the story is told through a series of one to one to conversations between the fellow criminal fraternity that grow in vehemence, and focus on the gang-leader in jail.  The story is told from the point of view of Stratos, (well-played by Vangelis Mourikis), a wealthy local crim who is called upon to finance the release of the gang-leader and in so doing is drawn further into a web of lies, deceit and paedophilia. Cracking performances from the support cast and Babis Papadopoulos’ edgy score help create a feeling or menace and desperation throughout. MT 136 min  GREECE  IN COMPETITION

D A Y   S E V E N

20142336_2 copyTHE THIRD SIDE OF THE RIVER  ***

‘Another Us and Them’ drama from Argentina. This time Celina Murga delivers a soft-focus, slow-burner about an affluent family in Buenos Aires, seen through the increasingly critical eyes of the eldest son. This disapproval of his father’s dominating ways gradually leads to a startling epiphany in this melancholic tale of a boy who is forced into responsibility at a young age. Not sure why Martin Scorsese gave this his ‘seal of approval’? Wait a minute – was his money involved? : yes Siree!. Nonetheless, this is a decent story, well-told and well-acted but hardly anything to write home about as a competition headliner. Spain. 104mins In COMPETITION

GUIDELINES: Le Marche a Suivre *

Jean-Francois Caissy fails to flag up any changes in the way kids are and always will behave in the classroom and out of it. His tame documentary kicks off, for some reason, rather promisingly with a car trying to cross a ford with difficulty.  Are we in for an exciting adventure? No, this is a predictable affair that focuses on a group of kids in the Canadian province of Quebec. Nicolas Canniccioni’s bland camera-work explores how they interact with each other with close-up one to one interviews intercut with images of the playground and ‘environs’  in and out of the school (i.e. the lens zoom in on a lock, and then a group of kids playing ball, there are frequent ‘black screen moments’).  Visually uninventive, and for the most part repetitive: it nevertheless provides a living testament for the parents involved and those interested in the subtleties of paediatric psychology. MT 76min. French Forum

20147700_1 ALOFT ***

Stunningly shot on the widescreen, this dreamily poetic Canadian drama from 2009 Golden Bear winner Claudia Llosa (from Peru) ‘boasts’ Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy and Melanie Laurent in its star line-up.  Told in fractured narrative style, it follows the central character Ivan (Murphy) as a child and as an adult as he sets out to find his mother who left after a family tragedy to develop her skills as a healer in the Arctic Circle.  Llosa’s highly creative camerawork evokes the enigmatic feel of this drama which is intimate in style yet deep and immersive in its scope and subject matter. There are sensitive performances from Murphy and Connelly as they portray a close son and mother relationship. 112min Spain Canada France. In competition 114min  Canada,  IN COMPETITION

20143347_3BLACK COAL, THIN ICE ***    GOLDEN BEAR WINNER, SILVER BEAR – BEST ACTOR

Chinese director, Yi’nan Diao offers an inventive drama set in a snowbound industrial landscape where body parts appear regularly on asphalt trucks heading off to furnish the country’s burgeoning building boom.  A former policeman turns vigilante in a bid to trace the perpetrator and falls in love with a mysterious woman who seems to be connected to the crimes. MT 106min  World Premiere  China/Mandarin  

D A Y    E I G H T  

20143897_2 copyNO MANS LAND Wu Ren Qu (2013) ***

 

Ning Hao’s follow up to is a slick parable about a society that has completely lost its moral compass in a struggle for wealth and prosperity in the modern world.  In a cheap Chinese car, a cocky lawyer sets off across a rugged Taklamakan desert populated by weird and dangerous wayfarers on his journey to a trial.  Visually and technically superb Ning Hao has excised the heart from his action drama, where men are macho and women are still looking for a hero to rescue them. There aint any here,  but then its really just abit of fun and a homage to Sergio Leone’s epic desert westerns minus the great performances the the killer soundtrack. That said, there are brilliant moments in this desert. of MT 119min Republic of China Mandarin COMPETITION

20148190_1BOYHOOD (2014) *****     SILVER BEAR, BEST DIRECTOR

Richard Linklater is popular in Berlin. Last year he collected an Honorary Bear and here’s back this year with Sundance break-out hit: BOYHOOD.  Following the life of Mason from five until eighteen it stars Ellar Coltrane in the leading role with Linklater’s regular collaborator on the series Ethan Hawke, it authentically captures these years of growing up into an immersive and moving drama that runs for nearly 3 hours. Although this will make it a headache for cinemas, it is elegantly paced, engagingly scripted and performed with seamless authenticity by Mason and his extended family and friends, amongst whom by Patricia Arquette as his mother and Tamara Jolaine, as his sister, particularly shine .  Ethan Hawke brings to his performance the same laid-back charm that he works so well in the Midnight Trilogy.  In order to achieve the subtle changes in the characters, Linklater began the project in 2002, with the crew getting together annually to film the developing story.  This isn’t the perfect childhood, but it’s warm, witty and deeply-felt and stands as a record of turn of the century interpersonal relationships and family life in the Western World.  This is drama that will be the talk of filmlovers for quite some time. MT 166min  US Drama COMPETITION

20143562_3 copyTHE FOREST IS LIKE THE MOUNTAINS (2014) ****

This quietly observed and beautifully filmed documentary was one of the standouts of this year’s Berlinale.  Debut Directors Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain spent some time in the enchanting mountain setting of Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania, with a community of Roma people. Living a self-regulated existence and avoiding interaction with the Establishment except when their annual potato harvest is sold to the local council, they follow the Seventh Adventist Faith, trusting in the spirit of a supportive and intuitive community and Christian prayer for guidance. Aron Lingurar is the self-appointed head of the village, commanding respect as the ‘governor’ he is a man of integrity who runs the show and instills a sense of respect amongst his people.  Christiane Schmidt’s sublime cinematography and clever eye for colour and framing make this a joy to watch and with a total absence of sound, apart from natural dialogue, it is serene experience to behold.  It would seem we have much to learn from these people. MT 101min  Romania/France/Germany  Drama  Forum

D A Y   N I N E

TriptyqueTRYPTYCH ****Canadian filmmakers have brought some great films to the Berlinale this year and this avantgarde piece from Pedro Pires and Robert Lepage is one of the best. Well-known for his theatrical work, Robert Lepage excels here with a transgenre drama that follows the lives of three interconnecting characters, sisters Marie and Michelle and Thomas, Marie’s soon to be partner. In an snowy timeless Quebec, Michelle, a book specialist, is recovering from depression. Michelle arrives to announce her marriage to Thomas, a brain surgeon. Dreamlike sepia-tinged visuals, unsettling characterisation and an eclectic score of jazz and classical music combine with Lepage’s unique approach make this an experience not to be missed. Sombre in tone, TRYPTYCH alludes to the deep melancholy of ageing, loss and illness. Lepage evokes a strong sense of the Quebec and Montreal but it is timeless in feel. MT 94min. Canada French/English

20141359_4 copyLA BELLE ET LA BETTE (2014) ****

Jean Cocteau’s gothic horror original was an pioneering piece of magic made when he turned his hand to filmmaking during WWII. With very limited resources, the result was enchanting and eerie. Even with a large budget (and filmed in Babelsberg where Metropolis and The Blue Angel were shot) this doesnt engender the same mystique but is a lavishly-imagined if over-the-top frolic from Christophe Gans that spans both Renaissance and Napoleonic eras. It has Lea Seydoux as a gentle Belle and Vincent Cassel as her fiercely masculine Beau yet elegantly pathetic Beast – essentially an asshole who turns into a nice guy. Andre Dessollier is strong as the kindly father. Because all the leads were versed in mime and method acting the piece really benefits from their acting chops and makes it a success, if you can overlook the overzealous CGI. Narrative-wise Gans has developed Cocteau’s original here, with co-writer Sandra Vo-Anh adhering faithfully to Madame de Villeneuve’s book to explore the origins of the Prince’s curse and its connections with the forces of nature. The result is more a chilldrens’ fairytale than Cocteau’s enchanting and subversive outing but there are some dark moments too. MT. 111min. In COMPETITION (out of competition)

the Little House copyTHE LITTLE HOUSE ***    SILVER BEAR, BEST ACTRESS

There’s something very sweet and old-fashioned about this Japanese domestic drama set in Wartime Tokyo. Taki (Haru Kuroki, who won Best Actress) looks back on her life as a maid in a well-to-do household (the red-roofed little house) echoing the previous Tokyo Family in tone. Now as an old woman, she tells her grandson in flashback what was really happening at home while the fighting was going on in the cities. There’s a genteel ‘soap-like’ quality to the drama and also shades of Hayao     Miyazaki’s recent THE WIND RISES to the storyline. But forget WWII, this really concerns the emotional yearnings of women in a society where men have the upper hand and the State dictates how society should conduct itself. Based on a novel by Kyoko Nakajima, THE LITTLE HOUSE quite literally explores the discrete charm of the bourgeoisie. Taki nurses the infant son through polio while also serves as a companion to the beautiful wife, Tokiko. The narrative shifts backwards and forwards from 1936 to the present, eventually engaging our attention as we witness the Tokiko’s affair with her husband’s colleague, a young and timid architect who doesn’t exactly set the night of fire, but buys into to her endless drivel. Engaging and demure, it may appeal to more traditional art house audiences for its quaint performances but lacks the romantic thrust or erotic charge to garner mainstream indie fans. MT  136min  Japanese  COMPETITION

photo-2A N D   T H E    W I N N E R S   A R E:

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM

Bai Ri Yan Huo Black Coal, Thin Ice by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE

The Grand Budapest Hotel The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson

SILVER BEAR ALFRED BAUER PRIZE for a feature film that opens new perspectives

Aimer, boire et chanter Life of Riley
by Alain Resnais

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR Richard Linklater for

Boyhood (Boyhood)

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTRESS

Haru Kuroki in
Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House) by Yoji Yamada

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTOR

Liao Fan in Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCRIPT

Dietrich Brüggemann, Anna Brüggemann for Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) by Dietrich Brüggemann

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION

in the categories camera, editing, music score, costume or set design

Zeng Jian for the camera in
Tui Na (Blind Massage) by Lou Ye

BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD

Güeros
Güeros
by Alonso Ruizpalacios

FOR MORE COVERAGE ON THE BERLINALE 2014 .  FOR MORE IMAGES AND VIDEOS VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE 

 

Berlinale 2014 preview

20147918_7 copyThe 64th Berlin International Film Festival is ready to roll with 20 of the 23 films in the Competition programme vying for the GOLDEN and SILVER BEARS. The following countries are participating: Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Uruguay and the USA. The Competition programme includes 18 world premieres and three feature debuts.The Award Ceremony will take place at the Berlinale Palast on Saturday, February 15, 2014.

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Of the festival big-hitters, Wes Andersen’s UK dramady THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is the star-studded, opening gala showcasing the experiences of an inter-war concierge and one Zero Moustafa; NO MAN’S LAND from China is an adventure drama set in the Gobi desert and George Clooney’s wartime drama THE MONUMENTS MEN, in which he also stars alongside Matt Damon and Bill Murray, are the titles that will attract the glitzy crowds.

Hot of the runway at Sundance is Richard Linklater’s highly-regarded BOYHOOD. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as his parents, it follows a small boy from six to eighteen through emotional development and introduces Ellar Coltrane as Mason.  John Michael McDonagh’s latest tale from Ireland, CALVARY is a dark morality tale that broods on Catholism, good and evil in the modern world and stars his long-term collaborator Brenden Gleeson. The full, unexpiated version of Lars Von Trier’s NYMPHOMANIAC (Part One) is also headlining the festival, although quite why this features so prominently when both parts have already been released in Europe, is beyond comprehension. THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY is the long-awaited directorial debut from Hossein Amini, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, it stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. The Korean break-out hit SNOWPIERCER will finally screen in Berlin. It imagines a world where the rich and the poor are divided on a train after an ice-age apocalypse sends humanity into meltdown. And best of all, it stars Tilda Swinton.

Tournage YSLBut in the lesser-known section of the festival, there are undoubtedly some hidden gems. Of the French films, I’m looking forward to Sophie Fillieres’ comedy IF YOU DON’T, I WILL (Panorama) which stars Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Davos.  I’m also intrigued to see how Christophe Gans will re-work LA BELLE ET LA BETE (Competition, out of Competition) with his stellar cast of Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux.  Jalil Lespert’s biopic drama about the fashion designer SAINT LAURENT and his life with partner Pierre Berge also looks a glossy art house treat, despite its distinctly un-starry cast.

Norway leads the Nordic contribution this year with Hans Petter Moland’s Competition entry IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE. It has Stellan Skarsgard and Bruno Ganz and promises to be great fun, judging by his quietly humorous previous hit, A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (from 2010).  From Norway also comes BLIND (Panorama). Written and directed by Eskil Vogt (Oslo, August 31st), it bravely attempts to probe the subconscious of a newly sightless woman.  Documentary-wise Norway also brings architectural portmanteau piece CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE, which boasts a fine pedigree of directors including Wim Wenders, Robert Redford and Michael Madsen.

20143250_2 copyThe Greek New Wave has been the source of much excitement in recent years and we can look forward to Yannis Economides’ competition entry TO MIKRO PSARI, a crime drama that follows in the footsteps of his previous successful outings MATCHBOX and SOUL KICKING. Athanasios Karanikolas will be in Berlin to present STO SPITI (Forum), a family drama. Yorgos Servetas’ STANDING ASIDE, WATCHING, is another bracing New Wave piece that uses deserted streets and industrial sites to express the lethargy that has descended on a small community after the troubles.

Also on the documentary front, anyone who enjoys Canadian Denis Cote’s work – BESTIAIRE, CURLING AND VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR, will be glad to see his latest film,  JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING (Forum), an absurdist piece that ponders the working connection between man and machine.  German doc VULVA looks like an intriguing examination of the timely issues of circumcision, anatomical myths and intimacy surrounding the most sensitive part of the female body.  Another provocative-looking and very welcome documentary is FUCKING DIFFERENT XXY  in which initiator Kristian Petersen bravely attempts to break down classic gender identities in order to overturn stereotypes of ‘what’s normal’.  Other gay-themed outings at the festival are TEST, US director Chris Mason Johnson’s eighties drama set during the AIDS crisis and UNFRIEND, a Filippino drama which explores and expresses the repressed emotions unleashed from a gay teenage break-up.

And where would Berlinale be without the tradition of the homage and retrospectives strands. This year’s glittering classics in the Retrospectives this year range from Howard Hawks’ AIR FORCE; to Jean Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BETE;  Orson Wells’ CITIZEN KANE;  Murnau’s FAUST; Clarence Brown’s FLESH AND THE DEVIL; Satyajit Ray’s NAYAK; and Marcel Carne’s QUAI DES BRUMES; not to mention Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON; Josef von Sternberg’s SHANGHAI EXPRESS. But lovers of Derek Jarman will be pleased that his own retrospective will be taking place at the BFI during February and March.

Here’s the C O M P E T I T I O N section in full:

20143347_3

Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice)  WORLD PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China

By Yinan Diao (Night TrainUniform)

With Fan Liao, Lun Mei Gwei, Xuebing Wang

 

20148190_1Boyhood – INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

USA

By Richard Linklater (Before Midnight, Me & Orson Welles)

With Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater

the Little House copyChiisai Ouchi (The Little House) INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

Japan – IMAGE TO FOLLOW

By Yoji Yamada (Tokyo FamilyAbout Her Brother)

With Takako Matsu, Haru Kuroki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Chieko Baisho

 

Historia del miedo (History of Fear)  WORLD PREMIERE History of Fear copy

Argentina / Uruguay / Germany / France

By Benjamin Naishtat – feature debut

With Jonathan Da Rosa, Claudia Cantero, Mirella Pascual, Cesar Bordon, Tatiana Gimenez

Jack copyJack – WORLD PREMIERE

Germany  – IMAGE TO FOLLOW

By Edward Berger

With Ivo Pietzcker, Georg Arms, Luise Heyer, Vincent Redetzki, Jacob Matschenz, Nele Mueller-Stöfen

 

20141257_2Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance) WORLD PREMIERE

Norway / Sweden / Denmark

By Hans Petter Moland (A Somewhat Gentle ManThe Beautiful Country)

With Stellan Skarsgård, Bruno Ganz, Pål Sverre Hagen, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Jakob Oftebro, Anders Baasmo Christiansen

 

20147599_1Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross)  WORLD PREMIERE

Germany

By Dietrich Brüggemann (MoveRenn, wenn du kannst)

With Lea van Acken, Franziska Weisz, Florian Stetter

20141359_2La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) INTERNATIONAL PREM

France / Germany

By Christophe Gans (Silent HillBrotherhood of the Wolf)

With Vincent Cassel, Léa Seydoux, André Dussollier

Out of competition

  20142336_2 copyLa tercera orilla (The Third Side of the River)  WORLD PREMIERE

Argentina / Germany / Netherlands

By Celina Murga (A Week Alone, Ana and the Others, Normal School)

With Alian Devetac, Daniel Veronese, Gaby Ferrero, Irina Wetzel, Dylan Agostini van del Boch

 20144685_1La voie de l‘ennemi (Two Men in Town) WORLD PREMIERE

France / Algeria / USA / Belgium

By Rachid Bouchareb (London RiverLittle Senegal)

With Forest Whitaker, Harvey Keitel, Brenda Blethyn, Luis Guzmán, Dolores Heredia

 

20143697_4Macondo  WORLD PREMIERE

Austria

By Sudabeh Mortezai – feature debut

With Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva

 

20142433_1Praia do Futuro   WORLD PREMIERE

Brazil / Germany

By Karim Aïnouz (Suely in the SkyMadame Satã)

With Wagner Moura, Clemens Schick, Jesuita Barbosa

 Tui NaTui Na (Blind Massage)   WORLD PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China / France

By Ye Lou (MisterySuzhou River)

With Hao Qin, Xiaodong Guo, Lei Zhang

 

Ba Na Wu Ren Qu (No Man’s Land)  INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China

By Hao Ning (Crazy Stone, Mongolian Ping Pong)

With Zheng Xu, Nan Yu, Bo Huang, Bujie Duo

20142518_1Zwischen Welten (Inbetween Worlds)  WORLD PREMIERE

Germany

By Feo Aladag (When We Leave)

With Ronald Zehrfeld

 

 

THESE ARE THE COMPETITION TITLES.  FORUM AND PANORAMA TITLES WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.  BERLINALE RUNS FROM 6 UNTIL 15 FEBRUARY 2014

P A N O R A M A

Panorama fictional features – IMAGES TO FOLLOW SHORTLY

Asabani Nistam! (I’m Not Angry!) – Iran

by Reza Dormishian

With Baran Kosari, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Reza Behboudi, Misagh Zare, Bahram Afshari

IP

_Blind copy Blind – Norway / Netherlands

by Eskil Vogt

With Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt

EP

 Difret – Ethopia

by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari

With Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere

EP

Fieber (Fever) – Luxembourg / Austria

By Elfi Mikesch

With Eva Mattes, Martin Wuttke, Carolina Cardoso, Nicole Max, Sascha Ley

WP 

20142287_1 copyGüeros – Mexico

By Alonso Ruízpalacios

With Ilse Salas

WP

 

 

 

Highway  India

By Imtiaz Ali

With Randeep Hooda, Alia Bhatt

WP

Ieji (Homeland) – Japan

By Nao Kubota

With Kenichi Matsuyama, Yuko Tanaka, Sakura Ando, Takashi Yamanaka, Seiyo Uchino

WP

In Grazia di Dio  Italy

By Edoardo Winspeare

With Celeste Casciaro, Laura Licchetta, Barbara De Matteis, Anna Boccadamo, Gustavo Caputo

WP

-LOVEISSTRANGE copyLove Is Strange  USA

By Ira Sachs

With John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson

IP 

 

Mo Jing (That Demon Within) – Hong Kong, China

By Dante Lam

With Daniel Wu, Nick Cheung

WP

20140967_2 copyNa kathese ke na kitas (Standing Aside, Watching) – Greece EP

By Yorgos Servetas

With Marina Symeou, Marianthi Pantelopoulou, Yorgos Kafetzopoulos, Nikos Georgaki

 

 

Night Flight – Republic of Korea WP

By LeeSong Hee-il

With Lee Jae-jun, Kwak Shi-yang

20147070_2 copyNước (2030) – Vietnam  WP

By Nghiêm-Minh Nguyễn-Võ

With Quỳnh Hoa, Quý Bình, Thạch Kim Long, Hoàng Trần Minh Đức, Hoàng Phi

 

 

PatardzlebiPatardzlebi (Brides) – Georgia / France  WP

By Tinatin Kajrishvili

With Mari Kitia, Giorgi MaskharashvilI

Risse im Beton (Cracks in Concrete) – Austria  WP

By Umut Dağ

With Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Mehmet Ali Salman, Erdem Turkoglu, Ivan Kriznjak

The Midnight After – Hong Kong, China  WP

By Fruit Chan

With Wong You-nam, Simon Yam, Kara Hui, Janice Man, Suet La

Viharsarok (Land of Storms) – Hungary   WP

By Adam Császi

With Andras Sütő, Ádám Varga, Sebastian Urzendowsky

YE (The Night) – People’s Republic of China  WP

By Hao Zhou

With Zhou Hao, Liu Xiao Xiao, Li Jin Kang, Zhou Feng Qi 

Arrête ou je continue (If You Don’t, I Willby Sophie Fillières, France (WP)

Bai Mi Zha Dan Ke (The Rice Bomberby Cho Li, Taiwan (WP)

Bing Du (Ice Poison) by Midi Z, Taiwan / Myanmar (WP)

Calvary by John Michael McDonagh, Ireland / United Kingdom (EP)

_CALVARY copy

Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (The Way He Looks) by Daniel Ribeiro, Brazil (WP)

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? by Michel Gondry, France (EP)

O Homem das Multidões (The Man of the Crowd) by Marcelo Gomes, Cao Guimarães, Brazil (IP)

Papilio Buddha by Jayan Cherian, India / USA (EP)

Quick Change by Eduardo Roy Jr., Philippines (IP)

Stereo by Maximilian Erlenwein, Germany (WP)

Test by Chris Mason Johnson, USA (EP)

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The Better Angels by A. J Edwards, USA (IP)

Kuzu (The Lamb) by Kutluğ Ataman, Germany / Turkey (WP)

Things People Do by Saar Klein, USA (WP)

Triptyque (Triptych) by Robert Lepage, Pedro Pires, Canada (EP)

Über-Ich und Du (Superegos) by Benjamin Heisenberg, Germany / Switzerland / Austria (WP)

Unfriend by Joselito Altarejos, Philippines (WP)

Xi You (Journey to the West) by Tsai Ming-liang, France / Taiwan (WP)

Yves Saint Laurent by Jalil Lespert, France (IP)

(WP= World Premiere, IP= International Premiere, EP = European Premiere)

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 6 UNTIL 16 FEBRUARY 2014

 

 

 

MyFrenchFilmFestival online January 17 – February 17

So how about a film festival you can watch from home?  Entirely online and perfect for those sofa suppers with your loved-one or just the dog, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline is the antidote to going out in this bleak and blustery winter weather.

Now in its fourth year, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline will runs from January 17 until February 17 this year. For a whole month, cinema lovers all over the world over will be able to access the festival  on 20 partner platforms, including iTunes in 80 countries.- Shortlisted films will be screened in more than 1,000 venues around the world.  Films will be available for free on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com and on partner platforms in Latin America, China, Poland, Russia and Turkey.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (restored version) will be available for free viewing on January 17, the first day of the festival.

The full feature programme #MYFFF – here’s a flavour of what’s on offer:

IN A RUSH, by Louis Do de Lencquesaing

[youtube id=”t_NCuKKGCuQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

AUGUSTINE, by Alice Winocou

[youtube id=”6JWEORpY2xc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

MADDENED BY HIS ABSENCE, by Sandrine Bonnaire

[youtube id=”_jqcfXyWdTI” width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE VIRGINS, THE COPTS AND ME, by Namir Abdel Messeeh

[youtube id=”Uq55basWt28″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

THE DAY OF THE CROWS,  by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

[youtube id=”09PUtsdbHt4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

WELCOME TO ARGENTINA,  by Edouard Deluc

[youtube id=”Fc_HXWZr610″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

PAULINE DETECTIVE, by Marc Fitoussi

[youtube id=”cmEsme64xuA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

MyFrenchFilmFestival.com will be available on 20 partner platforms including iTunes in 80 countries. MT

Sundance 2014 WINNERS ANNOUNCED 16 -26 January 2014

SUNDANCE is the top American festival for independent film.  The brainchild of Robert Redford, it takes place each year in the snowy city of Park Town, Utah, often selecting films that go on to become strong contenders in Hollywood’s annual awards race. Previous selections include 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, which won two Oscars and 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was nominated for four Oscars. 

This year’s 30th Festival offers the latest indie docs and features taking a look at the lives of extraordinary people.  From 118 films (97 World premieres) the competition strand will showcase 17 feature films and 11 documentaries from upcoming directors together with those of more seasoned critical acclaim.  No less than 11 documentaries will be shown in the premieres section, reflecting the increased popularity of this form of filmmaking. Robert Redford describes this as ‘a cultural exchange’.

_Amostwanted copy

Highlights this year will include 20,000 Days on Earth, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s biopic of the notorious musician Nick Cave; In Mitt. Greg Whiteley follows former governor Mitt Romney on his failed 2012 US presidential campaign. Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney returns with Finding Fela, showcasing the life of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, while To Be Takei by Jennifer Kroot explores the career of Star Trek actor George Takei.

_LAGGIES copy

In the dramatic section, Mike Cahill’s I Origins, is a drama about a pair of scientists who make a breakthrough altering the future of mankind; Dutch director Anton Corbijn presents his adaptation of John le Carre’s best-selling thriller novel A Most Wanted Man, featuring a starry cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe. British actress Keira Knightley stars as a young woman with emotional development issues in Lynn Shelton’s Laggies alongside Sam Rockwell and Chloe Grace Moretz. Frank is Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s follow-up to What Richard Did (2012).

The theme of genre-defying films continues within the premieres category. Oscar-nominated actor William H Macy makes his directorial debut with Ruddersless, a story of a bereft father who forms a rock and roll band to keep the memory of his lost son’s songs alive. Starring Billy Crudup and Anton Yelchin it will be the closing film this year. Arrested Development star David Cross also makes his directorial debut with black comedy Hits, which examines the culture of fame in today’s YouTube generation.

_ATRIPTOITALY copy

Comedy-wise, British director Michael Winterbottom returns to Sundance with his latest comedy: ‘The Trip to Italy, a follow-up to 2010’s The Trip, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s good food travelogue of the best restaurants in Britain.  Comedian Nick Offerman’s directorial debut is American Ham, a live stand-up show with topics as diverse and sex and woodworking.  Other strands this year are  ‘In the Spotlight’, ‘Park City at Midnight’ and ‘New Frontier’.

Rather than cherry-picking from the selection – here’s this year’s full run-down to give you a full flavour oF what’s to come:

PREMIERES

_CALVARY copyCalvary / Ireland, UK (Dir/writer: John Michael McDonagh) For those who enjoyed The Guard, Calvary sees McDonagh back on familiar territory with this black comedic drama about a priest tormented by his community. Father James is a good man intent on making the world a better place. When his life is threatened one day during confession, he finds he has to battle the dark forces closing in around him.Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Marie-Josée Croze.

_FRANK copyFrank / Ireland, UK (Director: Lenny Abrahamson, Screenwriters: Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan) — Frank is an offbeat comedy about a wannabe musician who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant garde rock band led by the enigmatic Frank—a musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy.

_HITS copyHits / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Cross) — A small town in upstate New York is populated by people who wallow in unrealistic expectations. There, fame, delusion, earnestness, and recklessness meet, shake hands, and disrupt the lives around them. Cast: Meredith Hagner, Matt Walsh, James Adomian, Jake Cherry Derek Waters, Wyatt Cenac.

I Origins / U.S.A. (Dir/Writer: Mike Cahill) — A molecular biologist and his lab partner uncover startling evidence that could fundamentally change society as we know it and cause them to question their once-certain beliefs in science and spirituality. Cast: Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun, Archie Panjabi_IORIGINS copy

Laggies/ U.S.A. (Dir: Lynn Shelton, writer: Andrea Seigel)  Laggies is a coming of age story about a 28-year-old woman stuck in permanent adolescence. Unable to find her career calling, still hanging out with the same friends, and living with her high school boyfriend, Megan must finally navigate her own future when an unexpected marriage proposal sends her into a panic. Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin, Mark Webber.

Little Accidents / U.S.A. (Dir/writer: Sara Colangelo) — In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets. Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Chloë Sevigny, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas.

-LOVEISSTRANGE copyLove is Strange / U.S.A. (Director: Ira Sachs, Screenwriters: Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias) — After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot, but George loses his job as a result, and the newlyweds must sell their New York apartment and live apart, relying on friends and family to make ends meet. Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson.

A Most Wanted Man / Germany, U.S.A. (Director: Anton Corbijn, Screenwriter: Andrew Bovell) — Based on John le Carré’s bestselling book, Anton Corbijn directs this modern-day thriller with Academy Award–winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, and two-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe headlining an ensemble cast.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright.

Nick Offerman: American Ham / U.S.A. (Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Screenwriter: Nick Offerman) — WARNING: MINOR NUDITY AND NOT SUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS. This live taping of Nick Offerman’s hilarious one-man show at New York’s historic Town Hall theater features a collection of anecdotes, songs, and woodworking/oral sex techniques. The routine includes Offerman’s 10 tips for living a more prosperous life, so hearken well. Cast: Nick Offerman.

_THEONE copyThe One I Love / U.S.A. (Director: Charlie McDowell, Screenwriter: Justin Lader) — Struggling with a marriage on the brink of falling apart, a couple escapes for the weekend in pursuit of their better selves, only to discover an unusual dilemma waiting for them. Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson.

The Raid 2 / Indonesia (Director and screenwriter: Gareth Evans) — Picking up where the first film left off, The Raid 2 follows Rama as he goes undercover and infiltrates the ranks of a ruthless Jakarta crime syndicate in order to protect his family and expose the corruption in his own police force. Cast: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad.

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Rudderless / U.S.A. (Director: William H. Macy, Screenwriters: Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison, William H. Macy) — When a grieving father in a downward spiral stumbles upon a box of his deceased son’s original music, he forms a rock ‘n’ roll band, which changes his life.Cast: Billy Crudup, Anton Yelchin, Felicity Huffman, Selena Gomez, Laurence Fishburne, William H. MacyCLOSING NIGHT FILM

_THEYCAMETOGETHER copyThey Came Together / U.S.A. (Director: David Wain, Screenwriters: Michael Showalter, David Wain) — This subversion/spoof/deconstruction of the romantic comedy genre has a vaguely, but not overtly, Jewish leading man, a klutzy, but adorable, leading lady, and New York City itself as another character in the story. Cast: Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Ed Helms, Cobie Smulders, Max Greenfield, Christopher Meloni.

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The Trip to Italy / United Kingdom (Director: Michael Winterbottom, Screenwriters: Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, Michael Winterbottom) Michael Winterbottom reunites Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for more delectable food, some sharp-elbowed rivalry, and plenty of laughs. Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon.

The Voices / U.S.A., Germany (Director: Marjane Satrapi, Screenwriter: Michael R. Perry) — This genre-bending tale centers around Jerry Hickfang, a lovable but disturbed factory worker who yearns for attention from a woman in accounting. When their relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn, Jerry’s evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog lead him down a fantastical path where he ultimately finds salvation. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver.

_WHITEBIRD copyWhite Bird in a Blizzard / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Gregg Araki) — Based on the acclaimed novel by Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard tells the story of Kat Connors, a young woman whose life is turned upside down by the sudden disappearance of her beautiful, enigmatic mother. Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Shiloh Fernandez, Gabourey Sidibe, Thomas Jane.

Young Ones / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jake Paltrow) — Set in a future where water is hard to find, a teenage boy sets out to protect his family and survive. Cast: Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee._YOUNGONE copy

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES

Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries. Each film is a world premiere.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball / U.S.A. (Directors: Chapman Way, Maclain Way) — Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.

Finding Fela / U.S.A. (Director: Alex Gibney) — Fela Anikulapo Kuti created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life, music, and political importance.

_LASTDAYS copyFreedom Summer / U.S.A. (Director: Stanley Nelson) — In the summer of 1964, more than 700 students descended on violent, segregated Mississippi. Defying authorities, they registered voters, created freedom schools, and established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Fifty years later, eyewitness accounts and never-before-seen archival material tell their story. Not all of them would make it through.

Happy Valley / U.S.A. (Director: Amir Bar-Lev) — The children of “Happy Valley” were victimized for years, by a key member of the legendary Penn State college football program. But were Jerry Sandusky’s crimes an open secret?  With rare access, director Amir Bar-Lev delves beneath the headlines to tell a modern American parable of guilt, redemption, and identity.

Last Days in Vietnam / U.S.A. (Director: Rory Kennedy) — During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.

Life Itself / U.S.A. (Director: Steve James) — Life Itself recounts the surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert. The film details his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer. _MITT copy

Mitt / U.S.A. (Director: Greg Whiteley) — A filmmaker is granted unprecedented access to a political candidate and his family as he runs for President.

This May Be the Last Time / U.S.A. (Director: Sterlin Harjo) — Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s Grandfather disappeared mysteriously in 1962. The community searching for him sang songs of encouragement that were passed down for generations. Harjo explores the origins of these songs as well as the violent history of his people.

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To Be Takei / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Kroot) — Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.

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We Are The Giant / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Greg Barker) — We Are The Giant tells the stories of ordinary individuals who are transformed by the moral and personal challenges they encounter when standing up for what they believe is right. Powerful and tragic, yet inspirational, their struggles for freedom echo across history and offer hope against seemingly impossible odds.

WHITEY: United States of America v. James J. Bulger / U.S.A. (Director: Joe Berlinger) — Infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s relationship with the FBI and Department of Justice allowed him to reign over a criminal empire in Boston for decades. Joe Berlinger’s documentary chronicles Bulger’s recent sensational trial, using it as a springboard to explore allegations of corruption within the highest levels of law enforcement.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.

Camp X-Ray / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Peter Sattler) — A young woman is stationed as a guard in Guantanamo Bay, where she forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, J.J. Soria, John Carroll Lynch.

 

Cold in July / U.S.A. (Director: Jim Mickle, Screenwriters: Jim Mickle, Nick Damici) — After killing a home intruder, a small town Texas man’s life unravels into a dark underworld of corruption and violence. Cast: Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, Sam Shepard, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici, Wyatt Russell.

Dear White People/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Justin Simien) — Four black students attend an Ivy League college where a riot breaks out over an “African American” themed party thrown by white students. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film explores racial identity in postracial America while weaving a story about forging one’s unique path in the world. Cast: Tyler Williams, Tessa Thompson, Teyonah Parris, Brandon Bell.

_FishingWithoutNets_still1_AbdikaniMuktar__byAlexDisenhof_2013-11-30_05-58-14PM copyFishing Without Nets / U.S.A., Somalia, Kenya (Director: Cutter Hodierne, Screenwriters: Cutter Hodierne, John Hibey, David Burkman) — A story of pirates in Somalia told from the perspective of a struggling, young Somali fisherman. Cast: Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb, Idil Ibrahim.

God’s Pocket/ U.S.A. (Director: John Slattery, Screenwriters: John Slattery, Alex Metcalf) — When Mickey’s stepson Leon is killed in a construction “accident,” Mickey tries to bury the bad news with the body. But when the boy’s mother demands the truth, Mickey finds himself stuck between a body he can’t bury, a wife he can’t please, and a debt he can’t pay.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks, John Turturro.

_HappyXmas copyHappy Christmas / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Joe Swanberg) — After a breakup with her boyfriend, a young woman moves in with her older brother, his wife, and their 2-year-old son. Cast: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg.

Hellion / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kat Candler) — When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob’s delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home. Cast: Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Jonny Mars, Walt Roberts.

Infinitely Polar Bear / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maya Forbes) — A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don’t make the overwhelming task any easier. Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Imogene Wolodarsky, Ashley Aufderheide.

Jamie Marks is Dead / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Carter Smith) — No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead. Cast: Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver, Morgan Saylor, Judy Greer, Madisen Beaty, Liv Tyler.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter/ U.S.A. (Director: David Zellner, Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner) — A lonely Japanese woman becomes convinced that a satchel of money buried in a fictional film is, in fact, real. Abandoning her structured life in Tokyo for the frozen Minnesota wilderness, she embarks on an impulsive quest to search for her lost mythical fortune. Cast: Rinko Kikuchi.

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Life After Beth / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jeff Baena) — Zach is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend, Beth. When she mysteriously returns, he gets a second chance at love. Soon his whole world turns upside down… Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser.

Low Down / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Preiss, Screenwriters: Amy Albany, Topper Lilien) — Based on Amy Jo Albany’s memoir, Low Down explores her heart-wrenching journey to adulthood while being raised by her father, bebop pianist Joe Albany, as he teeters between incarceration and addiction in the urban decay and waning bohemia of Hollywood in the 1970s. Cast: John Hawkes, Elle Fanning, Glenn Close, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Flea.

The Skeleton Twins / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Johnson, Screenwriters: Craig Johnson, Mark Heyman) — When estranged twins Maggie and Milo feel that they’re at the end of their ropes, an unexpected reunion forces them to confront why their lives went so wrong. As the twins reconnect, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship. Cast: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell, Boyd Holbrook, Joanna Gleason.

The Sleepwalker / U.S.A., Norway (Director: Mona Fastvold, Screenwriters: Mona Fastvold, Brady Corbet) — A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia´s secluded family estate. Their lives are violently interrupted when unexpected guests arrive. The Sleepwalker chronicles the unraveling of the lives of four disparate characters as it transcends genre conventions and narrative contrivance to reveal something much more disturbing. Cast: Gitte Witt, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, Stephanie Ellis.

Song One / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kate Barker-Froyland) — Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring musician, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn, Mary Steenburgen, Ben Rosenfield.

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Whiplash / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Damien Chazelle) — Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity. Cast: Miles Teller, JK Simmons. DAY ONE FILM

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory / U.S.A. (Director: Michael Rossato-Bennett) — Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

_ALLTHEBEAUT copyAll the Beautiful Things / U.S.A. (Director: John Harkrider) — John and Barron are lifelong friends whose friendship is tested when Barron’s girlfriend says Barron put a knife to her throat and raped her. Not knowing she has lied, John tells her to go to the police. Years later, John and Barron meet in a bar to resolve the betrayal.

CAPTIVATED The Trials of Pamela Smart  / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Jeremiah Zagar) — In an extraordinary and tragic American story, a small town murder becomes one of the highest profile cases of all time. From its historic role as the first televised trial to the many books and movies made about it, the film looks at the media’s enduring impact on the case.

The Case Against 8 / U.S.A. (Directors: Ben Cotner, Ryan White) — A behind-the-scenes look inside the case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Shot over five years, the film follows the unlikely team that took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cesar’s Last Fast / U.S.A. (Directors: Richard Ray Perez, Lorena Parlee) — Inspired by Catholic social teaching, Cesar Chavez risked his life fighting for America’s poorest workers. The film illuminates the intensity of one man’s devotion and personal sacrifice, the birth of an economic justice movement, and tells an untold chapter in the story of civil rights in America.

Dinosaur 13 / U.S.A. (Director: Todd Miller) — The true tale behind one of the greatest discoveries in history. DAY ONE FILM

E-TEAM / U.S.A. (Directors: Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman) — E-TEAM is driven by the high-stakes investigative work of four intrepid human rights workers, offering a rare look at their lives at home and their dramatic work in the field.

_FEDUP copyFed Up / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig) — Fed Up blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and weight loss, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz / U.S.A. (Director: Brian Knappenberger) — Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.

Ivory Tower / U.S.A. (Director: Andrew Rossi) — As tuition spirals upward and student debt passes a trillion dollars, students and parents ask, “Is college worth it?” From the halls of Harvard to public and private colleges in financial crisis to education startups in Silicon Valley, an urgent portrait emerges of a great American institution at the breaking point._IVORYTOWER copy

Marmato / U.S.A. (Director: Mark Grieco) — Colombia is the center of a new global gold rush, and Marmato, a historic mining town, is the new frontier. Filmed over the course of nearly six years, Marmato chronicles how townspeople confront a Canadian mining company that wants the $20 billion in gold beneath their homes.

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No No: A Dockumentary / U.S.A. (Director: Jeffrey Radice) — Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then worked for decades counseling drug abusers. Dock’s soulful style defined 1970s baseball as he kept hitters honest and embarrassed the establishment. An ensemble cast of teammates, friends, and family investigate his life on the field, in the media, and out of the spotlight.

The Overnighters / U.S.A. (Director: Jesse Moss) — Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor’s decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

Private Violence / U.S.A. (Director: Cynthia Hill) — One in four women experience violence in their homes. Have you ever asked, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” Private Violence shatters the brutality of our logic and intimately reveals the stories of two women: Deanna Walters, who transforms from victim to survivor, and Kit Gruelle, who advocates for justice.

Rich Hill / U.S.A. (Directors: Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos) — In a rural, American town, kids face heartbreaking choices, find comfort in the most fragile of family bonds, and dream of a future of possibility.

_WATCHERS copyWatchers of the Sky / U.S.A. (Director: Edet Belzberg) — Five interwoven stories of remarkable courage from Nuremberg to Rwanda, from Darfur to Syria, and from apathy to action.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.

52 Tuesdays / Australia (Director: Sophie Hyde, Screenplay and story by: Matthew Cormack, Story by: Sophie Hyde) — Sixteen-year-old Billie’s reluctant path to independence is accelerated when her mother reveals plans for gender transition, and their time together becomes limited to Tuesdays. This emotionally charged story of desire, responsibility, and transformation was filmed over the course of a year—once a week, every week, only on Tuesdays. Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Imogen Archer, Mario Späte, Beau Williams, Sam Althuizen. International Premiere 

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Blind / Norway, Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Eskil Vogt) — Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. But Ingrid’s real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over. Cast: Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt. World Premiere

Difret / Ethiopia (Director and screenwriter: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari) — Meaza Ashenafi is a young lawyer who operates under the government’s radar helping women and children until one young girl’s legal case exposes everything, threatening not only her career but her survival. Cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere. World Premiere

_TheDisobedient copyThe Disobedient/ Serbia (Director and screenwriter: Mina Djukic) — Leni anxiously waits for her childhood friend Lazar, who is coming back to their hometown after years of studying abroad. After they reunite, they embark on a random bicycle trip around their childhood haunts, which will either exhaust or reinvent their relationship. Cast: Hana Selimovic, Mladen Sovilj, Minja Subota, Danijel Sike, Ivan Djordjevic. World Premiere

God Help the Girl / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stuart Murdoch) — This musical from Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian is about some messed up boys and girls and the music they made. Cast: Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray, Pierre Boulanger, Cora Bissett. World Premiere

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Liar’s Dice / India (Director and screenwriter: Geetu Mohandas) — Kamala, a young woman from the village of Chitkul, leaves her native land with her daughter to search for her missing husband. Along the journey, they encounter Nawazudin, a free-spirited army deserter with his own selfish motives who helps them reach their destination. Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Geetanjali Thapa, Manya Gupta. International Premiere

Lilting / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Hong Khaou) — The world of a Chinese mother mourning the untimely death of her son is suddenly disrupted by the presence of a stranger who doesn’t speak her language. Lilting is a touching and intimate film about finding the things that bring us together. Cast: Ben Whishaw, Pei-Pei Cheng, Andrew Leung, Peter Bowles, Naomi Christie, Morven Christie. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Lock Charmer (El cerrajero)/ Argentina (Director and screenwriter: Natalia Smirnoff) — Upon learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, 33-year-old locksmith Sebastian begins to have strange visions about his clients. With the help of an unlikely assistant, he sets out to use his newfound talent for his own good. Cast: Esteban Lamothe, Erica Rivas, Yosiria Huaripata. World Premiere

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To Kill a Man / Chile, France (Director and screenwriter: Alejandro Fernández Almendras) — When Jorge, a hardworking family man who’s barely making ends meet, gets mugged by Kalule, a neighborhood delinquent, Jorge’s son decides to confront the attacker, only to get himself shot. Even though Jorge’s son nearly dies, Kalule’s sentence is minimal, heightening the friction. Cast: Daniel Candia, Daniel Antivilo, Alejandra Yañez, Ariel Mateluna. World Premiere

Viktoria / Bulgaria, Romania (Director and screenwriter: Maya Vitkova) — Although determined not to have a child in Communist Bulgaria, Boryana gives birth to Viktoria, who despite being born with no umbilical cord, is proclaimed to be the baby of the decade. But political collapse and the hardships of the new time bind mother and daughter together.Cast: Irmena Chichikova, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Mariana Krumova, Dimo Dimov, Georgi Spassov. World Premiere

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Wetlands / Germany (Director: David Wnendt, Screenwriters: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt, based on the novel by Charlotte Roche) — Meet Helen Memel. She likes to experiment with vegetables while masturbating and thinks that bodily hygiene is greatly overrated. She shocks those around her by speaking her mind in a most unladylike manner on topics that many people would not even dare consider. Cast: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Marlen Kruse, Edgar Selge. North American Premiere

White Shadow / Italy, Germany, Tanzania (Director: Noaz Deshe, Screenwriters: Noaz Deshe, James Masson) — Alias is a young albino boy on the run. His mother has sent him away to find refuge in the city after witnessing his father’s murder. Over time, the city becomes no different than the bush: wherever Alias travels, the same rules of survival apply. Cast: Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Glory Mbayuwayu, Salum Abdallah. International Premiere

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WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.

20,000 Days On Earth / United Kingdom (Directors: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard) — Drama and reality combine in a fictitious 24 hours in the life of musician and international culture icon Nick Cave. With startlingly frank insights and an intimate portrayal of the artistic process, this film examines what makes us who we are and celebrates the transformative power of the creative spirit. World Premiere

Concerning Violence / Sweden, U.S.A., Denmark, Finland (Director: Göran Hugo Olsson) —Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. World Premiere

The Green Prince / Germany, Israel, United Kingdom (Director: Nadav Schirman ) — This real-life thriller tells the story of one of Israel’s prized intelligence sources, recruited to spy on his own people for more than a decade. Focusing on the complex relationship with his handler,The Green Prince is a gripping account of terror, betrayal, and unthinkable choices, along with a friendship that defies all boundaries. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Happiness / France, Finland (Director: Thomas Balmès) — Peyangki is a dreamy and solitary eight-year-old monk living in Laya, a Bhutanese village perched high in the Himalayas. Soon the world will come to him: the village is about to be connected to electricity, and the first television will flicker on before Peyangki’s eyes. North American Premiere

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Love Child / South Korea, U.S.A. (Director: Valerie Veatch) — In Seoul in the Republic of Korea, a young couple stands accused of neglect when “Internet addiction” in an online fantasy game costs the life of their infant daughter. Love Child documents the 2010 trial and subsequent ruling that set a global precedent in a world where virtual is the new reality.World Premiere

Mr leos caraX / France (Director: Tessa Louise-Salomé) — Mr leos caraX plunges us into the poetic and visionary world of a mysterious, solitary filmmaker who was already a cult figure from his very first film. Punctuated by interviews and previously unseen footage, this documentary is most of all a fine-tuned exploration of the poetic and visionary world of Leos Carax, alias Mr. X. World Premiere

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My Prairie Home / Canada (Director: Chelsea McMullan) — A poetic journey through landscapes both real and emotional, Chelsea McMullan’s documentary/musical offers an intimate portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon, framed by stunning images of the Canadian prairies. McMullan’s imaginative visual interpretations of Spoon’s songs make this an unforgettable look at a unique Canadian artist. International Premiere

The Notorious Mr. Bout / U.S.A., Russia (Directors: Tony Gerber, Maxim Pozdorovkin ) — Viktor Bout was a war profiteer, an entrepreneur, an aviation tycoon, an arms dealer, and—strangest of all—a documentary filmmaker. The Notorious Mr. Bout is the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir, documented by the last man you’d expect to be holding the camera. World Premiere

Return to Homs / Syria, Germany (Director: Talal Derki) — Basset Sarout, the 19-year-old national football team goalkeeper, becomes a demonstration leader and singer, and then a fighter. Ossama, a 24-year-old renowned citizen cameraman, is critical, a pacifist, and ironic until he is detained by the regime’s security forces. North American Premiere

SEPIDEH – Reaching for the Stars / Denmark (Director: Berit Madsen) — Sepideh wants to become an astronaut. As a young Iranian woman, she knows it’s dangerous to challenge traditions and expectations. Still, Sepideh holds on to her dream. She knows a tough battle is ahead, a battle that only seems possible to win once she seeks help from an unexpected someone. North American Premiere

We Come as Friends / France, Austria (Director: Hubert Sauper) — We Come as Friends is a modern odyssey, a science fiction–like journey in a tiny homemade flying machine into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, Africa’s biggest country, is being divided into two nations, a “civilizing” pathology transcends the headlines—colonialism, imperialism, and yet-another holy war over resources. World Premiere

Web Junkie / Israel (Directors: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia) — China is the first country to label “Internet addiction” a clinical disorder. With extraordinary intimacy, Web Junkieinvestigates a Beijing rehab center where Chinese teenagers are deprogrammed, focusing on three teens, their parents and the health professionals determined to help them kick their habit. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE IN PARK CITY, UTAH FROM 9 UNTIL 26 JANUARY 2014.  

THE WINNERS OF THE 2014 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

US GRAND JURY PRIZE; DRAMATIC   –  WHIPLASH

US GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RICH HILL

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE:  DRAMATIC – TO KILL A MAN

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RETURN TO HOMS

AUDIENCE AWARD US DRAMATIC – WHIPLASH

AUDIENCE AWARD US DOCUMENTARY – ALIVE INSIDE : A STORY OF MUSIC & MEMORY

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA; DRAMATIC – DIFRET

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA: DOCUMENTARY – THE GREEN PRINCE

AUDIENCE AWARD: BEST OF NEXT – IMPERIAL DREAMS

 

 

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)

Dir: Jacques Demy, Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castalnuevo, Roland Cassard, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel

France 1964, 89 min. Drama   French with English subtitles  SPARKLING NEW REMASTERING

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LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG, a musical which won the Palme D’Or’ in Cannes 1964, is the middle part of a loosely connected fantasy trilogy by Jacques Demy (1931-1990); bookended by Lola (1961) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). The latter two starred the young Catherine Deneuve, who Demy made into a star. LES PARAPLUIES is set in Nantes, Demy’s hometown. It relies very much on architecture and interiors, Demy even had part of the town repainted, so it would fit in with his colour scheme. The narrative is simple: The young Genevieve Emery (Deneuve) is madly in love with Guy (Nino Castalnuevo), an auto mechanic. Her mother (Anne Vernon) is vey much against this match, since she has long ‘decided’ that her daughter should marry the well off jeweller Roland Cassard (Marc Michel). Fate takes a hand when Guy is called up to serve in the Algerian war. Just before he leaves, the couple consummate their relationship, pledging eternal love. But the one night stand is enough to make Genevieve pregnant, and her mother successfully intercepts and destroys all letters Guy sends from the front. In the end, Madame Emery gets her way: Genevieve, pregnant, gets married to Monsieur Cassard. And when she meets Guy by chance three years later, there is only embarrassed silence.

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LES PARAPLUIES was seen as the French answer to ‘Mary Poppins’ – obviously we get a love instead of a kiddies classic . But the aesthetics are similar: a sort of pre-pop escapism, with a colour scheme to match. Everything is over the top, the singing and design scream loudly of a world widely removed from any reality. Together with Legrand’s magical music score Demy delivers the viewer into a fairy-land – but no happy Hollywood ending. Bittersweet and with radical changing emotions, PARAPLUIES is a very French escapade.

Jacques Demy was a contemporary of all the Nouvelle Vague crew, and he started his career at about the same time. But unlike them, he did not wanted to break with tradition, his films are in the tradition of the pre-war films of Prevert, Max Ophuls and Renoir. Demy wanted to relieve the viewer of the pressure of reality, not confront them with it like Jean-Luc Godard. Most of his films are set in Nantes, he relies heavily on this background. But it is anything but realistic, Demy re-creates a contained fantasy world. Playful and always relying very much on the central performances as in PARAPLUIES, he created an alternative universe, in which reality goes under in waves of colour, music and melodramatic emotion. AS

LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG CELEBRATES 50 YEARS WITH A BLU-RAY RELEASE COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL OUT ON 10 FEBRUARY 2014

Two Lives (2012) Zwei Lieben

Director: Georg Maas

Writers: Georg Maas, Christoph Toele, Stale Stein Berg and Judith Kaufmann

Cast: Liv Ullmann, Julianne Koelher, Sven Nodin, Ken Duken

Psychological Wartime thriller  97mins  Germany/Norway   subtitled

Georg Maas’s Two Lives is Germany’s foreign-language submission to the 2014 Oscars. Loosely based on the novel by Hannelore Hippe,  this well-crafted and sombre tale is set ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but brings to light an important episode in German Second World War history for a Norwegian family.

Liv Ullmann and Julianne Koehler play  Norwegian mother Ase and her German national daughter Katrine, fathered by a German soldier serving in German-occupied Norway during the War.   The family’s whole identity is blown apart by revelations that emerge after the fall of the Berlin Wall directly relating to events that happened during the War and  forming of the Stasi Police in the new East Germany.   As a young girl, Katrine was transferred to Germany and raised in a children’s’ home, finally to be united with her mother in Norway after a gruelling escape as the War comes to an end.  After marrying a Norwegian Navy Captain Bjarte (Sven Nordin), she then has a daughter of her own  (Julia Bache-Wiig) and  also becomes a grandmother.

The film’s narrative structure reveals Katrine’s motivations as a decent woman with a double life, going from blond to brunette (as ‘Vera’) and travelling back and forth to Germany purportedly to see friends – although we know otherwise. And although this serves as interesting insight into her difficulties (and Koehler’s admirable acting talents), it has the effect of robbing the story of much of its dramatic punch, as we are ‘in the know’.  However, Bjarte believes she’s having an affair and is naturally aggrieved and suspicious, being ‘in the dark’.  But when a human rights lawyer working on reparations gets involved, the situation becomes painfully complex for all concerned, as the real facts start to emerge.

The final denouement redresses the balance slightly as the full shocking psychological effects ripple through the family, shown in grainy flashback footage on a handheld camera.  With its strong performances and richly stunning cinematography of the Norwegian coastline and rural locations in Westphalia, Bonn and Hamburg,  Two Lives is a classic War-related story and a sobering tribute to an important part of Norwegian/German history. Tightly-plotted and immersive throughout, it is accompanied by a suitably rousing score.  MT

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THE OSCARS CEREMONY TAKES PLACE ON 16 JANUARY 2014

Chasing the Wind (2013) Jag etter Vind 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Director and Writer: Rune Denstad Langlo

Cast: Marie Blokhus, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Frederik Meldal Norgaard,  Sven Bertil Taube, Tobias Santelmann

91min   NORWAY   Drama

CHASING THE WIND is an intimate family drama, small in scale yet far-reaching in its themes of human communication and the difficulties of family ties.  Set in an idyllic part of Norway on the Western archipelago of Afjord, this melancholy piece of filmmaking is rendered even more so by the poignantly delicate occasional score composed by Ola Kvernberg, The gentle seascapes and verdant summer landscapes are imaginatively lensed by cinematographer Phillip Ogaard’s on the widescreen and in gorgeously framed close-ups, shot through with muted shades of aqua, taupe and blond reflecting its marine location.

Anna hasn’t seen her family for almost ten years. When her grandmother dies, she returns home to face her grandfather (Sven-Bertil Taube) and the ones she left behind. In the week leading up to the funeral, as numerous setbacks confound proceedings, Anna is forced to reconsider how she lives her life.  The narrative is driven forward purely by the simple often troubled conversations between Anna, her grandfather  and  her ex-boyfriend Lundgren (Anders Baasmo Christiansen). Occasional chats with locals help to add texture and context, reflecting the insular prejudice of communities all over the world.

Chasing the Wind is a lightly bittersweet love story that shows how communicating with family is the most difficult engagement of all. The film’ s humour emerges from the frustration and anger felt by the characters when they can neither reach or comprehend each other. The melancholy is connected to their realization that the longer they wait to tell the truth to more it hurts all concerned. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 2ND NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013) 10th Romanian Film Festival in London 2013

CAND SE LASA SEARA PESTE BUCARESTI SAU METABOLISM

Director/writer: Corneliu Porumboiu

Diana Avramut, Mihaela Sirbu, Alexandru Papadopol

89min   Romanian with English subtitles   Drama

Do directors always cast women they fancy in their films?.  Of course they do, and preferably those they can impress with their finely -tuned intellect. But they try not to get too involved until the end of the shot.

Here director Paul (Bogdan Dumitrache – Child’s Pose) is so taken and obsessed with his lead that delays proceedings film-wise (feigning illness – an ulcer) in order to clinch a romantic deal with Alina (Diana Avramut).  So, a simple love story gains banal intricacy as is dissected to within an inch of its life as every single subtle nuance of the script is analysed in minute detail between the two: dinner, differing World cuisines, language and finally her body come under the same scrutiny of approach so he can spends as much time with Alina as possible, during the lengthy filming project –  even forcing her (albeit fully-clothed) to act out shower scenes in excruciating detail, over-intellectualising every element of life in the country, through cinema.  This is meta cinema but the approach feels stifling, ponderous; constricting any freedom of movement and Paul’s haunched figure chain smokes through the entire feature – so clearly evolution has moved a long way.  And what has Alina learnt in drama school having neither heard of Antonioni or Monica Vitti. Evidently, these are sophisticated times in Bucharest.

Tudor Circea confines his camera to long-take static shots through small openings; doorways; car interiors or dinner tables always centring on the characters and their lengthy dialogues. Very similar in style to his previous feature, Police, Adjective this metaphysical style piece won’t appeal to all audiences but nevertheless masterfully explores the connection between truth in (male/female) relationships and reality in Romanian cinema.  Keats or even Karl Popper would have a field day but possibly they’d be happier in a field. MT

WHEN NIGHT FALLS ON BUCHAREST OR METABOLISM SCREENS DURING THE 10TH ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON AT THE CURZON SOHO. TICKETS HERE

 

 

Only God Forgives (2013)

Dir: Nicolas Winding Refyn | Cast: Kristen Scott Thomas, Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke | 90mins    Denmark/France

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For sheer cinematic brilliance and artistic style, Nicolas Winding Refyn’s Bangkok-set revenge tale really set the night on fire at its Cannes premiere back in 2013, dividing critics and polarising opinion.  Some derided it for its cold brutality and lack of emotion but Heli was equally violent, gratuitously so, and won an award.  

Only God Forgives is all about controlled emotion, seething under the surface of Refyn’s glittering jewel-box of visual tricks: brooding resentment, latent anger, moody scorn and dysfunctional lust also join the party in a thriller seething with a pervasive sense of dread,  heightened by a dynamite score.

The performances are stylised, mannered and supremely elegant: Ryan Gosling, who runs a Thai boxing club, very much serves the film rather than stars in it, wearing a sharp suit and the expression of a frightened rabbit as the submissively loyal son of Kristen Scott Thomas’s vampish mother and drug baroness, Crystal.  She’s a woman at the top of her game, her two sons are trophies she toys with dispassionately.

 

We first see her arriving in Bangkok to demand retribution for the murder of her ‘first son’ Billy (Tom Burke) on the grounds of his raping and killing a local teenager. “I’m sure he had his reasons” she claims, very much her own woman.  It’s a superbly entertaining performance and one which should have won her Best Actress. Sporting a long blond wig and killer heals, she is every bit as sexy, poised and alluring as any actress half her age, or less.

Against advice, she hires a hit man to take out Chang (Pansringarm), the local police chief responsible for the killing of her son Billy. But the plan backfires and Chang turns the tables on Crystal and her agent (Gordon Brown) who is tortured and killed in possibly one of the most inventive and exquisitely painful deaths in cinema history, all playing against a glimmering back-drop of the lacquered night club interior.  Glamorous hostesses look on motionless and expressionless in compliance with their oriental culture of self control.

Only God Forgives glides gracefully along, each frame an expertly composed, perfectly balanced, a shimming masterpiece. Punctuated by brusque episodes of savage violence, it epitomises a world of clandestine doings and shady characters suggested but not fully fleshed-out, adding an exotic mystique to the piece rather than detracting from it, leaving room for the imagination to wander, to speculate and to dream.  It’s a world where evil meets evil and no one is up to any good.

Nicolas Winding Refyn’s points out “We must not forget that the second enemy of creativity, after having ‘good taste’ is being safe”.  This is not a safe film, it’s a daring, exciting and malevolent. MT

NOW ON MUBI | OUT ON DVD

 

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

BROADWAY MUSICALS: A JEWISH LEGACY

Dir. Michael Kantor: USA 2013, 84 min., Narrated by Joel Grey (Documentary) + 185 min (Bonus Material, DVD)

Michael Kantor’s lively and informative film includes interviews, excerpts from the musicals and footage manages also to be very moving, helped by a running time of under 90 minutes. Particularly impressive are the scenes from the 20s, showing a “noisy, over crowded and dirty” Lower East Side in New York. True fans will enjoy the three hours bonus material of excerpts included in the DVD.

The Broadway Musical is the most American of art forms (apart from TV commercials), and its past and present is dominated by Jewish composers and lyricists. The reason for this is that Jewish artists successfully developed the tradition of the Jewish musical theatre of the Lower East Side into a national art form by the 1930s. They simply replaced the downtrodden Jewish heroes and heroines with other minorities. Nobody did this better than the composer George Gershwin and his brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics. But one should not forget that Gershwin was at first rejected many times by  Broadway producers for being “too” Jewish”. His break trough “Rhapsody in Blue” was a sort of Blues played on a Klezmer clarinet, this being made possible by the fact that both Black and Jewish music was both mostly written in the minor key, to describe the suffering of both minorities. The Gershwins, unlike others, had a healthy distrust of orthodox religion, starting “Porgy and Bess” with the debunking of the Torah, by opening a ceremony with the line “It may be not be so”.

It helped, that some of these composers and lyricists ‘anglicized’ their names, like Irving Berlin (Isidore Beilin), or had it done by their parents like the Gershwins (Gerschowitz). The musical became soon a feel good factory, Rogers and Hammerstein being the leading pair with hits like “Oklahoma (1947), “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I” and their last cooperation “The Sound of Music” (1959), which dealt with emigration from Hitler Austria in a rather quaint form. By then Irving Berlins songs “Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “God Bless America” (which for a long time was the second National Anthem) were the epitome of post-war optimism, though it should be said that many Christian leaders protested openly against the latter song, questioning if a Jew had the right to express anything about the Lord.

We also learn how from the sixties onwards, Jewish composers and writers started to come to term with their own history, starting with “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964), composed by Jerry Bock. In spite of the catching songs, the story, starting with a pogrom and ending with an emigration was hardly uplifting. The same can be said for “Cabaret” (1966), where John  Kander’s music could and would not camouflage the rise of Nazism in Germany. The musical was, in contrast to the film version of 1972, not a success. Finally, Mel Brooks tried more or less successfully with “The Producers” (‘Springtime for Hitler’) to kill the ghosts of the past in 2001 with laughter. AS

SHOWING AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER AT CORNERHOUSE, MANCHESTER AND 13 NOVEMBER AT BARBICAN LONDON tickets here

 

 

 

Adore (2013) (Two Mothers) 57th London Film Festival

Director: Anne Fontaine

Screenplay: Christopher Hampton

Cast: Robin Wright, Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn

100mins  Australia/France   Drama

The oedipus complex provides the counterpoint to this complex drama about female sexuality and friendship. It follows two women who have grown up together in an idyllic oceanside location in Australia.  Their visceral bond has kept them close through marriage, children, widowhood and separation; exploring the nature of friendship, love and sexuality from a uniquely female perspective.

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Based on a short story by Doris Lessing, The Grandmothers: subversive French auteur Anne Fontaine (Nathalie, Coco Before Chanel) has refreshed the narrative bringing it firmly up to date, casting two attractive and well-maintained fortysomething ‘cougars’ as the women: they could be you or me: Naomi Watts plays Lil and Robin Wright, Roz completely dispelling the image of ‘grannies’ being old biddies with knitting.  Healthy living has enabled these two to look good. A potent cocktail of emotional maturity and enduring sexual desire empowers them to enjoy young lovers in the same way that traditionally was the preserve of men. Enjoying a beach lifestyle, Roz and Lil are neighbours at work and home, living with their respective grown-up sons. Adore-004

Lensed by Christophe Beaucarne, ADORE is lovely to look at but initially suffers from clunky moments on the dialogue front. Gradually this resolves as a taut drama emerges. Robin Wright is magnificent, giving one of her best performances so far  as the tough but emotionally available Roz and  is by far the stronger of the two. Naomi Watts is more fluffy and unsure of herself, but convincing as the ultra feminine Lil. The boys are  powerfully handsome with an appealing vulnerability that ramps up the erotic value of what happens next.

Fabulously plotted by Doris Lessing, ADORE covers all the intellectual aspects and subtle nuances of female sexuality reflecting poignant biological truths and exultant moments of pleasure and insight.  Anne Fontaine is at pains to point out the barren male choices available to these women that has driven them towards their eventual romantic entanglements. But their behaviour never lacks decorum, steering well-clear of the pitfalls of gratuitous over-emoting. These are women who are really worthy of praise as role models despite all.  The adult male characters here are predictable: self-centred and puffed up on their own egos.  Roz’s ex-husband drifts off to prioritise his career in Sydney with unsurprising results.  Lil attracts a work colleague Saul, who pursues her endlessly failing the read the signs and then accuses her of being a lesbian when she fails to reciprocate. So no evolvement on the adult male characterisation there. ADORE begs to be seen by any intelligent audience, male or female.  Long after the sheltering palms and sugar-white sandy beaches have faded from view, the complexity of this absorbing film will stay in your memory. MT

ADORE IS SCREENING AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 10TH  (VUE7), FRIDAY, 11TH AND SUNDAY, 13TH OCTOBER (CINE LUMIERE).

 

 

57th BFI London Film Festival 9-20 October 2013

image012Tom Hanks headlines this year’s London Film Festival in the opening gala of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS: a Somali hijacking drama on the high seas. He also plays Walt Disney in the closing gala SAVING MR BANKS  co-starring Emma Thompson as the ‘Mary Poppins’ author P L Travers.  This year’s festival will feature biographical films on Julian Assange, Princess Diana, Grace Kelly and Nelson Mandela. And Judy Dench joins Steve Coogan in Stephen Frears’ latest drama and Venice hit, PHILOMENA, about a  mother’s search for her long-lost son, given up for adoption by Irish nuns.

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The nine main sections are each headed by a Gala performance as follows: photo

LOVE with Cannes 2013 Palme D’Or winner BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR **** See Cannes highlights

DEBATE with Kelly Reichhardt’s environmental psycho thriller NIGHT MOVES ****  (see Venice highlights)

DARE with Alain Guiraudie’s haunting waterside drama L’INCONNU DU LAC (STRANGER BY THE LAKE) **** (see Cannes reviews)

LAUGH with Joseph Gordon Levitt’s DON JON – a Berlinale hit ***

THRILL with Ivan Sens’s MYSTERY ROAD – an Australian thriller

CULT with Jim Jarmusch’s ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE **** a vampire drama with Tilda Swinton

JOURNEY with Alexander Payne’s road movie NEBRASKA **** which won Bruce Dern best actor at Cannes 2013

SONIC with Lukas Moodysson’s WE ARE THE BEST! a punk drama set in 90s Sweden

FAMILY with Juan Jose Campanella’s FOOSBALL 3D Night

BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE RESTORATION of THE EPIC OF EVEREST.

Of this year’s competition line-up, the features we recommend are LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON from Kire-Eda Hirokazu, Clio Barnard’s THE SELFISH GIANT, Xavier Dolan’s standout Venice thriller: TOM AT THE FARM and Jonathan Glazer’s existential drama: UNDER THE SKIN. Documentary-wise, Alex Gibney is back with another controversial look at the life of Lance Armstrong: THE ARMSTRONG LIE, and, if you have time: Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour AT BERKELEY is a fascinating insight into the legendary uni and its many famous alumni.  However, steer clear of UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL, a thin and poorly edited effort to champion the Ukraine feminist movement Femen by Kitty Green.  Other recommendations are Sebastian Leilo’s GLORIA, which won best actress at Berlin this year. Tomasz Wasilewski FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS tackles bisexuality.  floating_skyscrapers_2-pubsWhile female sexuality is dealt with poignantly in ADORE, Anne Fontaine’s adaptation of Doris Lessing’s short story and Jill Soloman’s AFTERNOON DELIGHT, a raunchy look at one woman’s bid to spice-up her marital relations.

Gloria by Gerhard Kassner

Where would cinema be without Andrzej Wajda’s contribution? WALESA. MAN OF HOPE is his important, well-crafted and watchable docudrama about the life of nobel prize-winner and president who made an valid contribution to freedom in the workplace.  Roman Polanski love of sport is not well-known but Jackie Stewart certainly is and the two old friends collaborated on a documentary with his favourite racing driver, entitled WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION. Francois Ozon is back with another look at teenage prostitution: JEUNE ET JOLIE. For all the ultimate in geekdom, 80s-style film COMPUTER CHESS will appeal – shame it’s not available on betamax.  Documentary JODOROWSKY’s DUNE looks at the story behind the Chilean maverick director’s bid  to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s fantasy opus DUNE. jeune_at_jolie_-001.jpg_rgb

In car thriller LOCKE is an action-packed one-hander that will keep you firmly wedged in your seat thanks to a immersive turn from Tom Hardy and finally classic music fans and anyone who’s interested in the story behind opera will welcome BECOMING TRAVIATA, an exultant piece of filmmaking from Philippe Beziat and one of the highlights in the Cannes Market section this year.  FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME DOWNLOAD HERE

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Espoo Film Festival 2013

Heading up to Finland this summer? Then why not visit Espoo, just west of Helsinki.  Apart from being the home of Nokia and EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art), it also hosts the ESPOO CINÉ FILM FESTIVAL which takes place from 16th – 28th August 2013.

Premièring this year, there are number of the coming season’s FINNISH films: the long-awaited Princess of Egypt, (Silmäterä) the debut feature directed by Jan Forsström, one of Finland’s foremost young screenwriters today. Taru Mäkelä makes a return to fiction features with the satiric comedy August Fools (Mieletön elokuu), starring Laura Birn and Kati Outinen in a completely original role.  Ulrika Bengts presents her latest outing, The Disciple (Lärjungen), a powerful drama about the difficult choices made by a lighthouse keeper’s apprentice in the summer of 1939.

The parade of new Finnish films is rounded off by a German-Argentinian-Finnish co-production Midsommer Night Tango (Mittsommernachtstango), directed by the German filmmaker Viviane Blumenschein which sees three Argentinian tango musicians travel to the land of the midnight sun to investigate the claim made by Aki Kaurismäki that tango music was actually born in Finland.

Espoo Ciné in co-operation with Helsinki Festival will also be screening a live film Kiss & Cry by Belgian film director Jaco Van Dormael and choreographer Michele-Anne De Mey.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gna_V9qgppk

The festival kicks off with Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra and the closing film this year will be Baltasar Kormákur’s Icelandic drama, The Deep, based on a true story of survival surrounding a fishing disaster.  The line-up includes Woody Allen’s latest: Blue Jasmine starring Kate Blanchett and Alex Baldwin.  Further highlights of the festival: The Best Offer starring Geoffrey Rush, Dormant Beauty with Isabelle Huppert and this year’s Golden Bear winner from the Berlinale Child’s Pose by Calin Peter Netzer.

ESPOO FILM FESTIVAL 16-28 August 2013 www.espoocine.fi

 

 

 

 

 

 

Locarno International Film Festival celebrates 75th Edition

The Swiss lakeside city plays host to one of the highlights of the Summer calendar, and this year Locarno International Film Festival celebrates its 75th Anniversary.

 

Famous for its outdoor screenings in Piazza Grande – the largest town square in Switzerland, seating up to 7,500 spectators – the 75th Edition of the LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL honours actor/director Matt Dillon, political filmmaker Costa-Gavras and auteuses Kelly Reichardt and Laurie Anderson with a selection of their features.

Meanwhile in this year’s highly anticipated Retrospective the luxurious red leather fauteuils of the Grand Rex are ready tomwelcome guests for the complete works of renowned director Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) who started his film career as Detlef Sierck in 1936 and went on to make over 75 films including Hollywood titles All that Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956).

The festival, taking place from 3-13 August, aims to attract cutting edge contemporary talent along with more established fare. Amongst the titles in competition for the Golden Leopard this year includes Alexandr Sokurov’s Fairytale, Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Patricia Mazuy’s Bowling Saturne, Abbas Fahdel’s Tales of the Purple House and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Matter out of Place. A host of other celebrations will also take place in the mountainside location of Ticino.

 

 

Piazza Grande

DELTA by Michele Vanucci Italy – 2022

BULLET TRAIN by David Leitch USA – 2022

COMPARTIMENT TUEURS by Costa-Gavras France – 1965

International Competition

ARIYIPPU (Declaration) by Mahesh Narayanan India – 2022

BALIQLARA XÜTBƏ (Sermon to the Fish) by Hilal Baydarov Azerbaijan/Mexico/Switzerland/United Kingdom – 2022

BOWLING SATURNE by Patricia Mazuy France/Belgium – 2022

DE NOCHE LOS GATOS SON PARDOS by Valentin Merz Switzerland – 2022

GIGI LA LEGGE by Alessandro Comodin Italy/France/Belgium – 2022

HIKAYAT ELBEIT ELORJOWANI (Tales of the Purple House) by Abbas Fahdel Lebanon/Iraq/France – 2022

HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH by Helena Wittmann Germany/France – 2022

IL PATAFFIO by Francesco Lagi 23 Italy/Belgium – 2022

MATTER OUT OF PLACE by Nikolaus Geyrhalter – 2022

TOMMY GUNS by Carlos Conceicao – 2022

PIAFFE by Ann Oren – 2022

RULE 34 by Julia Murat – 2022

SERVIAM – ICH WILL DIENEN by Ruth Mader – 2022

FAIRYTALE by Alexandr Sokurov – 2022

STELLA EST AMOUREUSE by Syvie Verheyde- 2022

STONE TURTLE by Ming Jin Woo – 2022

TENGO SUENOS ELECTRICOS by Valentin Maurel – 2022

 

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 AUGUST 2022

 

 

Satellite Boy (2012) East End Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Catriona McKenzie

Cast:  David Gulpilil, Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley, Rohanna Angus, Dean Daley-Jones

Australia 2012; 90 min     English       Genre: Drama

Catriona McKenzie’s feature debut, Satellite Boy, is a fine addition to the canon of Australian films and, like so many, showcases the enduringly magnetic presence of David Gulpilil. She has made several short films and indeed, directed serial television in Australia prior to this but took a while before deciding to make her feature debut.

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Gulpilil came to prominence in Nic Roeg’s 1970 classic Walkabout and here, 42 years later, he passes the baton in another coming of age story, Aboriginal style. 12-year-old Cameron Wallaby was a boy playing in the road before this, his acting inauguration, and brings with him a naturalism and a very real sense of where Aborigines are now in their relation to ‘civilisation’.

Satellite Boy is a sensitively drawn depiction of something that could so easily have tipped over into mawkish or derivative fodder. The two young leads are engaging and their motivations and actions certainly believable in this rite of passage, à la Rob Reiner’s excellent 1986 Stand by Me.  Where it differs though and, to the writer/director’s credit, travels in a different direction, is that her film is not only about the brotherhood of boyhood friendship, but about real traditions, about the land and our immutable connection to it and the danger to us of losing sight of that.

Catriona describes the film as a love letter to her father, now passed away; an effort to explain that she now understands his process and what it was he was wishing to pass onto her, too young as she was to grasp it at the time. I would say she succeeded. AT

SATELLITE BOY IS SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE FROM 5TH JULY 2013

 

 

Shameless (2012) Bez Wstydu Kinoteka 2013

Director: Filip Marczewski

Script:   Grzegorz Loszewski
Cast:  Agnieszka Grochowska, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Anna Prochniak, Maciej Marczewski

Poland        81mins    2012      Drama

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Shameless is director Filip Marczewski’s feature debut and quite a debut it is too.
Mateusz Kosciukiewicz plays Tadek, an 18 year old holding an unhealthy infatuation with his beautiful and sexually active older sister Anka. She however, has the hots for Andrzej an ambitious would-be neo-Nazi politician.

Into this already complicated mix comes Irmina, a feisty young gypsy who takes one look at Tadek and knows he is destined to be hers, if she can but break the ties that bind…

Of the many things that are refreshing about European films, one is sex. The Polish Film Festival is already yielding more than one title with not only a preoccupation with the subject but also a fascinated portrayal. No prudish, suppressed toothless American ideology here, but all the mess, the complexity, the darkness and the desperation spread out for all to feel.

This isn’t to say that Shameless is at all pornographic or gratuitous. It isn’t. In fact the sex is muted in comparison to some other films in the festival, but the adult way in which the topic is tackled is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the spotty teenage boys that rule Hollywood shenanigans.

Mateusz Kosciukiewicz is a real find and I’m sure a career beckons for his understated handsome charm coupled with juvenile Jagger-esque looks. The two women, Prochniak and Grochowska are also compelling and the supporting cast are excellent, adding a weight and authenticity to the piece.

Award-winning writer Grzegorz Loszewski has come up through television writing, but it is pleasing to see that the transition to film has not been at all difficult or lumpy. He has written a well-tuned, mature and balanced piece; a meditation on love, need and desire, with Romeo & Juliet overtones and that time worn but no less valid sentiment that you always want what you can’t have… tonally, it’s spot on.

Another strong offering from the Kinoteka then, leaving me hungry for more from this hugely exciting and so far captivating festival. Seek it out. AT

Somewhere in Between | Araf (2013) | London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Yesim UstaogluCast: Neslihan Atagul, Baris Hachihan, Ozcan Deniz, Nihal Yalcin, Yesemin Conka

124mins *** Drama Turkish with subtitles

Another Anatolian story this time set in contemporary Karabuk, an industrial town that seems an appropriate location for its title, literally meaning in between heaven and hell or limbo. Yesim Ustaoglu tells her story of frustrated dreams and hopes in the middle of a snowswept winter where two young people are stuck in dead-end jobs with grueling schedules and long commutes.

Yesim Ustaoglu is a well-known filmmaker in Turkey and has had success with previous features Pandora’s Box (2008) and Waiting For The Clouds (2003) both focus on the human condition seen through difficult circumstances.

Here in Araf, Zehra (Neslihan Atagul) and Olgun (Baris Hacihan) are drawn to each other, attraction serves as an antidote to their monotonous lives. Then Zehra meets Mahur (Ozcan Deniz) at a wedding and the two become close but face considerable problems due to societal pressures. What follows is an unflinching portrait of a woman trapped in time and place with little choice or personal freedom. As Zehra, Atagul’s is convincing and believable as she scales the highs and lows of her emotions in this cultural backwater.

Yesim Ustaoglu is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. That said, her latest film is too long and tonally monotonous to sustain such emotionally demanding subject matter. Araf would have had more impact with the benefit of judicious editing and tighter scripting with the inclusion of some lighter moments to contrast with the gloom. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | FEBRUARY 2013

Somewhere In Between | Araf (2012) | London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Yesim Ustaoglu | Cast: Neslihan Atagul, Baris Hachihan, Ozcan Deniz, Nihal Yalcin, Yesemin Conka | 124mins ***  Drama Turkish with subtitles
Another Anatolian story this time set in contemporary Karabuk, an industrial town that seems an appropriate location for its title literally meaning in between heaven and hell or limbo.  Yesim Ustaoglu also tells her story of frustrated dreams and hopes in the middle of a snowswept winter where two young people are stuck in dead-end jobs with grueling schedules and long commutes.
Yesim Ustaoglu is a well-known filmmaker in Turkey as had success with previous features Pandora’s Box (2008) and Waiting For The Clouds (2003) both stories of the human condition seen through difficult circumstances.
Here in Araf, Zehra (Neslihan Atagul) and Olgun (Baris Hacihan) are keen on each other despite their monotonous lives. Then Zehra meets Mahur (Ozcan Deniz) at a wedding and the two become close but face considerable problems due to societal pressures. What follows is an unflinching portrait of a woman trapped in time and place will little choice or personal freedom and as Zehra, Atagul’s is convincing and believable as she scales the highs and lows of her emotions.
Yesim Ustaoglu is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. That said, her latest film is too long at over just two hours and would have had more impact with the benefit of judicious editing for such emotionally demanding subject matter. MT
THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | FEBRUARY 2013

GIFF Gothenburg 2013 Dragon Awards

GOTHENBURG FILM FESTIVAL:  25 JANUARY – 4 FEBRUARY 2013

THE DRAGON AWARD WINNERS 2013

BEST NORDIC FILM – Before Snowfall (Norway)   Hisham Zaman

INGMAR BERGMAN INTERNATIONAL DEBUT – Dog Flesh (Chile)  Fernando Guzzoni

BEST NORDIC DOCUMENTARY Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart – Mike Ronkainen (Finland)

LORENS AWARD Searching for Sugarman – Malik Bendjelloul (Sweden) 500k SEK for development finance for his next film.

FIPRESCI PRIZE – Northwest (Denmark) Michael Noer

DRAGON AWARD FOR NEW TALENT – La Ravaudeuse – Simon Filliot

AUDIENCE AWARDBEST FEATURE Wadjda (Saudi Arabia) – Haifaa Al Mansour

AUDIENCE AWARD – BEST NORDIC FILM – A Hijakking – Tobias Lindholm (Denmark)

Gothenburg is the largest film festival in the Nordic countries and a great one to attend if you can cope with truly subzero temperatures and the sight of the icebreaker trawling around the harbour in an effort to keep it open for business. However, the welcome is warm and the audiences are massive: 34,000 enthusiastic filmgoers each year attend something like 450 films from about 70 countries.

In film going terms, it simply doesn’t carry the cachet of the Berlinales or Venices of this world and hence far fewer World Premieres on show, but this works in its favour too making it a much more informal, relaxed affair. The possibility of bumping into a real filmmaker and spending time chatting to them; even sharing a beer, is much more likely.

Gothenburg also hosts the Dragon Awards, a very handsome prize of 1 million Swedish Kröner for the best Nordic film- that’s almost 95 Grand in English money.

On January 25 Norway’s Oscar entry, Kon-Tiki, will open this, the 36th festival. Kon-Tiki was made by the directors behind the previous film success, Max Manus, and is Norway’s biggest and most expensive film production to date, filming at sea being what it is… (think ‘Waterworld’!).

Kon-Tiki is about the young Norwegian researcher and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 sets out on a sensational expedition to prove that the small islands in Polynesia are populated by people from South America—not from Asia as the prevailing theory claims. Despite his fear of water and poor swimming skills, he gathers a crew to sail 4,300 nautical miles on Kon-Tiki, a raft built according to an ancient design of balsa wood, reeds, bamboo shoots and banana leaves.

For three months the isolated crew sails the ocean while fighting sharks, raging hurricanes and scorching sun. The journey is punctuated by dramatic twists where they risk losing all but in the end, as we already know, Heyerdahl proves that faith can move mountains. For the first time, the festival’s opening film will be screened in several theatres simultaneously, allowing the festival to cope with the huge ticket demands customary for the opening film. Both the directors and actors will be in attendance.

 

Oddly enough, outside of Chile, Sweden has the highest proportion of Chileans per capita, more than any other country in the world and accordingly, this year there is a focus on Chilean films.

Chile is undergoing something of a resurgence subsequent to Pinochet’s rule where filmmakers activities were severely limited, to say the least.

Veteran Director Raul Ruiz, a forced exile to Paris, made Night Across The Street (La Noche De Enfrente) just before his death in 2011 and this, along with a whole slew from the upcoming generation of Chilean filmmakers screens this year. Dominga Sotomayor’s Thursday Til Sunday (you may have caught this at the London Film Festival in October 2012), Rodrigo Marin’s Zoo and Dog Flesh by Fernando Guzzoni are the titles being touted as strong and are sure to be enthusiastically supported by the resident Chilean public.

Three of the eight nominated films premiering at the festival are Dane, Tobias Lindholm’s film A Hijacking; Swede, Fredrik Edfeldt’s film Faro and Norwegian, Sara Johnsen’s All That Matters Is Past starring Maria Bonnevie (Reconstruction and The Banishment).

Among the nominees this year is Wadjda by Haifa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia’s first female director. The film is about ten-year Wadjda, a determined little girl who, in contrast to her country’s norms, dares to dream about a bicycle.  Wadjda won best film at the recent Dubai Film Festival.

Another nominee is the Israeli director Rama Burshtein and her film Fill The Void, a story that gives an insight into a strictly religious Hassidic world in Tel Aviv. Hadas Yaron won best actress for this feature at Venice last August.

Another film worth mentioning is Ziba. It tells the story of a housewife from the upper classes who lives a life of repression and enforced silence, in the way that many Iranians are living today. Director Bani Khoshnoudi is a guest at the festival. Also visiting is Nahid Persson Sarvestani who shows her film My Stolen Revolution, a painful history in which she creates a picture of her assassinated brother’s life.

In the feature film Reliance, William Olsson gives a compelling picture of a society where security is threatened from within. In this year’s closing film Crestfallen, Tuva (Josephine Bornebusch) learns that she’s adopted and decides to find her biological mother. Johan Lundh’s feature debut is a suggestive drama thriller.

In the competitive documentary section there is Linda Vastrik’s Swedish-made Forest Of The Dancing Spirits, concerning the embattled pygmy tribes in the Congo River basin. Black White Boy, by Dane Camilla Magid about an albino taken away from his parents and facing severe racism among both teachers and pupils. No Burqas Behind Bars by Nima Sarvestani which focuses on womens’ rights and My Afghanistan-Life In The Forbidden Zone by Nagieb Khaja all look very interesting.

 

The documentary Call Me Kuchu (also shown at the LFF last October) shows horrific images of how priests preach that homosexuals are rapists, how the press is allowed to disclose the names and addresses of gays and draws connections to Al-Qaeda. The film will be shown in this year’s HBTQ-section and is a documentary about Uganda’s most famous HBTQ-activist, David Kato, and his struggle for a better life for Ugandan homosexuals.

In the Masters section, we see news films by major directors such as Olivier Assayas, Harmony Korine, Yousry Nasrallah, Brillante Mendoza, Cristian Mungiu, Kira Muratova, Goran Paskaljevic, Volker Schlöndorff and Ulrich Seidl.

 

 

 

A few of the festivals guests attending this year are German filmmaker, Volker Schlöndorff with his submission, Calm at Sea. The French director Olivier Assayas is also one of the year’s acclaimed guests with Something in the Air. Haiffa al-Mansour (Wadjda) is Saudi Arabia’s first female director and regarded to be one of the most important people in the country’s film industry, will also be attending.

Other visiting luminaries include Margarethe von Trotta, Peter Lord, Dominga Sotomayor, Barbara Albert, Nahid Persson Sarvestani, Esteban Larraín, Ulrich Seid, Matias Varela, David Denick, Stefan Jarl, Jens Jonsson, Gustaf Skarsgård, Sara Johnsen, Dag Johan Haugerud and Margreth Olin.

Not one of the top tier festivals, a la Cannes or Toronto then, but big, well-organised and very well attended by filmmakers and cinephiles alike. If you can go, I can thoroughly recommend it. AT

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Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Director: Benh Zeitlin

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry

91mins  Drama

In a remote part of the Bayou cut off by time and tide lives Hushpuppy a tiny Southern Belle..except her ‘big hair’ is a thatch of Afro curls and on her feet are dirty wellies.  All cute and petulant, she clambers amongst the rubbish dumps and make-shift dwellings called the Bathtub, tending her garden of driftwood and her baby farmyard animals in a place where fantasy and reality seem to co-exist in a bubble.

You’re going to fall in love with her: she’s an adorable kid who doesn’t need to act; she just plays herself. her daddy Wink, a loose-limbed masculine dude who doesn’t seem to give a damn about the authorities or the tropical storms is well played by Dwight Henry. Theirs is a love hate relationship bound by blood ties and the memory of a mum who is deeply missed. The local community of lushes and lost souls is a strong and resilient one borne out of self-sufficiency: suffering but proud and resistant to chance threatened by the guys on the mainland who think they know better. Hushpuppy is played by local school girl Quvenzhane Wallis and her dad is Dwight Henry another non-actor. Based on a play by Lucy Alibar who wrote the screenplay with young director Benh Zeitlin this film is nothing short of magical. Gorgeous visuals and its imaginative setting also make a winner. It took the Sutherland prize at London zfilm Festival 2012. MT

On General release from 19th October 2012 at Everyman, Tricycle and Curzon cinemas.

 

 

Brussels Film Festival 2012

Death_For_Sale_Dounia_and_Malik

The Brussels Film Festival celebrated its 10th Anniversary on the 16th June 2012 and selected Faouzi Bensaidi’s thriller DEATH FOR SALE to win this year’s Golden Iris Award.  The feature also picked up the Cineuropa award from the European competition section.  A female director Maja Mils won the White Iris Award for best first film for her controversial drama CLIP. The Audience Award was given to an Italian co-pro  ITALY: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT by writer/director duo Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi.

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The winners were selected from an eclectic mix of European titles by an official jury featuring directors Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers); Frederic Fonteyne (Une Liaison Pornographique);  Edouard Molinaro  (La Cage Aux Folles) and actors Tania Garbarski (Rashevski’s Tango) and Mireille Perrier (Un Monde sans Pitié).

AMONG US (Onder Ons) by Marco van Geffen (Netherlands)

BLOODY BOYS (Jävla pojkar) by Shaker K. Tahrer (Sweden)

CAN by Raşit Çelikezer (Turkey)

CLIP (Klip) by Maja Miloš (Serbia)

DEATH FOR SALE by Faouzi Bensaïdi (Belgium/France/Morocco)

KAUWBOY by Boudewijn Koole (Netherlands)

MERCY (Gnade) by Matthias Glasner (Germany/Norway/Great-Britain)

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL by Sally El Hosaini with James Floyd & Saïd Taghmaoui (UK)

NO REST FOR THE WICKED (No habrá paz para los malvados) by Enrique Urbizu (Spain)

ROSE (Róża) by Wojciech Smarzowski (Poland)

TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (Portret v sumerkakh) by Angelina Nikonova (Russia)

VOICE OF MY FATHER (Babamin Sesi) by Orhan Eskiköy & Zeynel Doğan (Turkey/Germany/France)

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GOLDEN IRIS AWARD for best film 

DEATH FOR SALE

by Faouzi Bensaïdi (France/Belgium/Morocco)

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Contemporary Morocco is reflected in the lives and destinies of three men who take part in a heist

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WHITE IRIS AWARD for best first film 

CLIP (KLIP)

by Maja Miloš (Serbia) 

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This no-holds barred insight into the life of a Serbian teenager is raw and urgent

AUDIENCE AWARD 

ITALY LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

by Gustav Hofer & Luca Ragazzi (Italy/Germany) 

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An affectionate look at Italy past and present that asks the question: Should I leave or should stay?     

This year’s festival hosted several premieres including Sophie Lellouche’s PARIS-MANHATTAN a madcap comedy starring Woody Allen as himself and TO ROME WITH LOVE, a cliche-ridden ride through the Italian capital bringing his European tour to a resounding halt on a past-laden low.

The festival featured a new section dedicated to musical documentaries.  Among these were the The Libertines: There are no innocent bystanders and Vinylmania).  More than 1000 people attended the Anniversary Party with a concert by The Chromatics who wrote music for the film Drive followed by dj sets by Carl Barât, Saul Williams, Sofa, Didz and a surprise-gig by the band J-Prock. An entire day was dedicated to music in cinema culminating in a speed dating session between producers, directors and film music composers – imagine all those egos jostling for position!.

Masterclasses were a particular highlight this year with offerings from Peter Greenaway (of Draughtsman’s Contract fame amongst others), Peter Aalbaek Jensen (producer of the films of Lars von Trier, Susanne Bier, Lukas Moodysson and Thomas Vinterberg), Jean-Michel Bernard (composer for Michel Gondry and for Scorcese latest film Hugo), Thomas Bidegain (screenwriter of Un prophète and De rouille et d’os by Jacques Audiard, A perdre la raison van Joachim Lafosse), Lucas Belvaux (director of Un couple épatant/Cavale/Après la vie, La Raison du plus faible, Rapt and 38 Witnesses).

The 11th edition of the BRUSSELS FILM FESTIVAL will be held from June 19th to 26th 2013 in Flagey and in Bozar. www.brusselsfilmfestival.be

Meredith Taylor ©

Toronto 2012

The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival often helps to raise the profile of small independent films and gives wider exposure to higher-profile projects that may be in the running to compete for Oscars.

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This year the Indies did well winning some critical acclaim in the festival’s main prize sections:

  • Blackberry Peoples’ Award:
  • Silver Linings Playbook
  • First runner-up: Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’
  • Second runner-up: Eran Riklis’ ‘Zaytoun’
  • Documentary: Bartholomew Cubbins’ ‘Artifact’
  • Second runner-up: Rob Stewart’s ‘Revolution’
  • Midnight Madness: Martin McDonagh’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’
  • First runner-up: Barry Levinson’s ‘The Bay’
  • The prize of the international critics (Fipresci prize)
  • Francois Ozon for ‘Dans la maison’ in the Special Presentations category
  • Mikael Marcimain for ‘Call Girl’ in the Discovery Program, which spotlights feature films by new and emerging directors
  • The city of Toronto and Canada goose award for best Canadian feature film
  • Xavier Dolan’s ‘Laurence Anyways’
  • The Skyy Vodka Award for best Canadian first feature film
  • A tie between Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Antiviral’ and Jason Buxton’s ‘Blackbird’

We looked at a selection of films that seemed to be creating buzz at this year’s festival, read our reviews:

La Sirga (The Towrope) 2012  William Vega’s second feature, from Colombia

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7 Cajas (7 Boxes) 2012  Paraguayan directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori’s first feature

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Satellite Boy (2012 Australian director Catriona McKenzie’s fourth feature.

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MT

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