Raindance Film Festival Archives

Marcel! (2022)

Dir.: Jasmine Trinca; Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Maavane Conti, Giovanna Ralli, Umberto Orsini, Valentina Cervi, Valeria Golino; Italy 202, 93 min.

Cruelty to animals and their tragic deaths features in many indie and arthouse films underlining our important bond with these vulnerable creatures. This year dogs and donkeys bare the brunt of man’s callous behaviour and MARCEL! is not exception.

Actress turned director Jasmine Trinca;s debut feature is an absurd, surrealistic comedy in the style of Fellini, but with, literally, much more bite. The titular Marcel is a canine, obsessively loved by street performer Alba Rorwacher, much to the chagrin of her daughter Maavante Conti, who just wants to be loved by her mum, and not always parked with grandparents Giovanna Ralli and Umberto Orsini.

Told in ten chapters, the story of this dysfunctional family is grim as well as fascinating. As far as mothers go, Rohrwacher is a nightmare: not only does she neglect her daughter, but she lets her pet dog Marcel sit at the dinner table, feeding him carrots. She is also a fan of divination, throwing coins around with great gusto – and to add to her talents she acts as a medium. An elderly admirer brings her flowers, and attends all her performances in the town square. Her daughter is forced to watch, but not allowed to play her saxophone, which would certainly enhance her mother’s amateurish performance.

Marcel soon goes missing, And no prizes for guessing the outcome or culprit involved in his disappearance. Later, mother and daughter drive to a county fair, were the child has to act Marcel’s part, before discovering the the macabre reality. Not having had much success with their act, the two then travel to visit family; a cousin (Cervi) is well aware of Rohrwacher’s shortcoming as a performer. Proceedings are livened with one family member fancying themselves as a hunter with the whole living room full of stuffed animals, a wild boar being next prey on the agenda.

Rohrwacher is a wonderful eccentric, Trinca calling her a “Buster Keaton disguised as a panther”. But the main reason why this often unstructured script comes together is Maavane Conti, who can be wonderfully expressionless and unfazed by the most turbulent of circumstances. Her limpid blue eyes seem to be cast out of marble, and she manages to remain obdurate in deflecting the guilt her mother accusingly projects on her with grandfather claiming:”it was your father’s dog”. Said father is absent, presumed dead, having left some dark drawings which make the flat even more gloomy.

DoP Daria d’Antonia creates the right ambience for this madcap trip, the colours being as crass as the action. Director Trinca is already planning ahead, hoping that Conti will be her “Antoine Doinel”. At least she rely on the actors baling her out, because MARCEL! has even at just 93 minutes offers too little substance. Quirky it certainly is, but if only the episodically nature could be replaced by more cohesion. Still, a stunning ending shows that Trinca is not short of of ideas. AS

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Pamfir (2022) Raindance Film Festival

Wri/Dir.: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk; Cast: Oleksandre Yatsentyuk, Stanislaw Potiak, Solomiia Kyrylova, Yelena Khoknahlatkina, Miroslav Makoviychuk, Ivan Sharan, Oleksandr Yarema; Ukraine/France/Poland/Chile/ Germany/Luxembourg 2022, 102 min.

Pamfir may look like the typical gangster movie, but it turns out to be quite different from any other genre outing: a noirish fairytale Western where the Indians have been replaced by wild beasts from the past. It all unfolds during the folkloric Malanka festival in the wild and inhospitable western part of Ukraine’s Romanian borderlands around where the director grew up, .

Leonid (Yatsentyuk), also known as Pamfir – which means stone returns home to his village after a stint in Poland. His wife Olena (Kyrylova) and teenage son Nazar (Potiak) have really missed him and their re-union is emotional. But not so with his father Pamfir’s (Makoviychuk), who lost an eye after a fight with his son. Victor’s grandmother (Khoknahlatkina) tries, with the help of her younger son Victor (Sharan), to bring the feuding men together, but the feud continues.

It soon turns out the whole family have been involved in smuggling contraband to Romania, with Pamfir as the ringleader, earning the nickname of “Godfather”. He now wants to go straight but his attempt to reintegrate into mainstream society are scuppered when his son Nazar burns down the local church, destroying not only Pamfir’s documents bit making his father liable to pay compensation. Working with his sidekick , “The Rat”, he continues his illegal trading with Romania unnaware of being watched by another gangster who goes by the name of Oletsa (Yarema) and his men. Oletsa not only runs the smuggling operations, but also the church. Oletsa’s men attack Pamfir, asking the crimelord to do “one last run” to pay back his debts. But, as usual, there is a snag: the tunnel, leading to Romania is narrow, and only Nazar will be able to get through.

The focus then turns to Olena whose back-breaking job at her father in law’s factory, keeping the family afloat, also contributed to the loss of her first child. She now becomes more and more instrumental in ending Pamfir’s smuggling career once and for all.

DoP Nikita Kuzmenko’s heightens the atmosphere of terror that propels Pamfir in primal almost poetic journey. The camera is constantly on the prowl in long tracking shots through foggy woods encompassing vast widescreen landscapes and ancient forests that belong in a fairytale. And this is exactly what the director is aiming for: the villagers’ straw costumes during the carnival celebrations; their wooden masks, garishly painted, bring to mind the ghastly ritual of pagan festivals and the fear generated by The Wicker Man. The ghastly brutality of this atavistic festival resurges through Pamfir’s effort to liberate himself from the violence of the modern day. Gorgeous to watch, full of twisty revelations, PAMFIR is a stunning feature debut. AS

SCREENING DURING RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Winners (2022)

Dir/Wri: Hassan Nazer. UK. 2022. 85 mins.

Cinema Paradiso comes to mind and is actually mentioned in this sunny tribute to cinema and the Iranian directors past and present from award-winning filmmaker Hassan Nazer. It follows the adventures of a young film fan who comes across a shiny Oscar like statuette in the dusty wasteland surrounding his village in the remote desert of Kavir, and decides to trace its owner. The film also stars Mohammad Naji from Majid Majidi’s 2007 Song of Sparrows another delightful drama that also charmed the birds off the trees.

Iranians love their cinema so much so that there are no less than three newspapers dedicated entirely to the subject. And this delicate lyrical fable echoes with the spirit of Iranian cinema and filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi , Majid Majidi, and many who languish in prison. Hassan Nazer made the film in Scotland where he arrived as a refugee two decades ago.

It opens when keen cineaste and Afghan refugee Yahya (Parsa Maghami) watching Jafar Panahi’s 2015 Golden Bear-winning Taxi while his widowed mother is imploring him to go to bed. During the day he works for Nasser Khan (Naji hiding from the authorities) on one of Tehran’s scrapyards for a minimum wage. In the dusty rubble he then discovers the statuette which has already had a colourful history of its own, that started in the back of a taxi and finished in the middle of the road via the local post office. Nazer packs a great deal into his charismatic feature and the joie de vivre it generates makes it a success. MT

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE from 16 March 2023 | RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 26 OCTOBER – 5 NOVEMBER 2022

I Am Not a Hero (2019) *** Raindance Film Festival 2020

Dir:Pablo Diaz Crutzen, Stijn Deconinck and Robin Smit | Doc, Belgium

I Am Not a Hero offers a Belgian perspective on the Covid19 Crisis and a serene view of fighting the disease from the experience of the medical staff at the Belgian Centre of Excellence of the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels.

Filmmakers Pablo Diaz Crutzen, Stijn Deconinck and Robin Smit explore the pandemic from the March 2019 lockdown until the situation was well under control in late May. Probably not the most popular release at London’s Raindance Film Festival this November, the film nevertheless offers a contrast of sorts given the lessons learnt as the UK and other major European countries face some kind of renewed lockdown this Autumn.

Not surprisingly Belgium experienced the same issues as Britain, and one of the nurses erupts in total rage with her comments intended for the Belgian government: “Where are the masks and equipments they promised? How can we work in these conditions? Why are the aprons now so thin?” Yep, sounds familiar.

We witness a nurse speaking to the family of a very sick patient who has spent most of her treatment lying face down – hence the marks on her face – the situation looks optimistic, but it’s still early days. Another nurse shares a grim experience of having to deal with the body bag of a patient who died alone without their family – or anyone – for comfort.

Belgium is rather like Britain where hospitals are staffed by multicultural nurses and doctors who nevertheless all get on like a house on fire. And the atmosphere is for the most part cheerful if soberly so. The main commentator here is a ‘bubbly’ Moroccan nurse Meryem – who describes how she copes with having a growing family to look after, and the need to spend a few days with them now and again to keep everyone happy. There is also a pleasant consultant called Fabio who comments encouragingly. “Most of the patients eventually pull though” Those we do see (although faces are hidden) are white, middle-aged men.. But there is also an in-depth chat with a plump, white nurse who describes her symptoms as a dry cough, loss of smell, and she undergoes a really painful nasal swab.

Fabio does allow the family of a dying patient to visit in the final hours of life. And this is particularly difficult to watch as Fabio organises another visit for a man who will certainly die that night. He has been in the hospital for a month and the shock of his deterioration is clearly hard to accept for his nearest and dearest. Belgium is one of the few countries that have allowed these humane visits.

Filmed on the widescreen as the camera hovers over the hospital and impersonal close-ups on the ward and in the morgue, I Am Not a Hero is always respectfully – the focus is a random hand or the fleeting glance of a wheelchair going into an ambulance ensures discretion. As we leave Fabio and his team, the worst of the crisis is over with a jubilant patient leaving the ward and later arriving home, a little shaky but walking on air.

Maryam feels she has enforced her commitment to her profession and is looking forward to going back to ‘normal’. Sadly that ‘normal’ time is still to come as we face the Winter with our unwelcome visitor from China. MT

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 2020

Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance (2020) *** Raindance Festival 2020

Dir: Khadifa Wong

Khadifa Wong’s life experience as a dancer informs her lively if over-talkie debut feature about the origins of jazz dance.

Celebrating its international premiere at this year’s Raindance Film Festival, the film traces the roots of this expressive and iconically American dance form from its early history in the 19th century and through to the current day. And it all start during slavery – wouldn’t you know? Back then it was a vital form of protest, not just a way of expressing enjoyment. Well that certainly makes it a topical film with the current Black Lives Matter month in full swing.

Wong’s ground-breaking documentary also offers a political and social chronicle of the times, alighting on more weighty issues of racism, socialism and sexism while offering up a passionate and thought-provoking musical biopic.

The dancer and director has delved into the archives enlivening her film with cuttings and news footage. Over fifty experts offer up their valuable insight from choreographers to teachers and dancers themselves so it does occasionally feel overwhelming to have so much knowledge and opinion in the space of less than two hours. But the movement and dance elements are what really makes this a winner and Matt Simpkins’ camerawork captures the essence of bodies gyrating to great affect.

Curiously enough it was white men in the shape of Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins and Jack Cole who really emerged as the forerunners of the form. And one of the most engaging talking heads, dramaturg and choreographer Melanie George shares her thoughts about why these luminaries were so influential while Black innovators were often lesser known. And she discovers that their ability to codify the various forms of jazz dance with Hollywood and Broadway that gave it a different profile that took it above and beyond its roots and origins. The lesser-known artists also have their say, Frank Hatchett, Pepsi Bethel and Fred Benjamin Wong amongst them – although none is particularly famous to mainstream audiences.

Wong cleverly makes the point that jazz dance was actually a pared down version of the tribal form of communication for many Africans, and particularly slaves, enabling them to express themselves with their bodies in highly syncopated, exaggerated and meaningful ways – almost like silent film – relying on strong facial and body language – to make their feelings known. The Pattin’ Juba and Cakewalk were both dances that originated in the plantations of the Deep South where enslavement relied heavily on this kind of vital communication for protest, or even survival.

Eventually jazz became more sophisticated and sinuous moving through the bebop and hard bop years and we start to recognise names such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. There is also some impressive clips that show James Brown and Little Richard and really convey the seriousness of their political message – they were not just merely there to entertain.

A documentary about dance expression should always focus primarily on the dancing, and this is the only slight criticism that one can level at Uprooted. Wong has done so much research for her deep dive into the subject seems to focus on talking and commentary over movement and music. When we see Chita Rivera and Graciela Daniele doing their stuff the film comes alive — so their stories of segregation and racial alienation seem all the more poignant. There is a fascinating piece about Patrick Swayze’s mother Patsy, being the only white dance teacher in Texas to allow Black children into her school. If there’s one talent those entertainers have it’s the ability to move their bodies in magnetic and beguiling ways. And Black dancers have it in spades. MT

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2020 | 28 OCTOBER – 7 NOVEMBER 2020

The Waiter (2019) ***** Raindance Film Festival 2019

Dir: Wri/Dir: Steve Krikris | Cast: Aris Servetalis, Yannis Stankoglou, Chiara Gensini, Alexandros Mavropoulos, Antonis Myriagos | Drama, Greece, 93′

This deliciously dark and sardonic Neo-noir sees a lonely waiter fall prey to a ménage à trois that throws a spanner into his ordered life in modern day Athens.

Steve Krikis has already won a string of awards for his stylish Greek new wave debut, a crisply captured, elegantly framed affair that unfurls in an upmarket quartier of Greece’s capital. Beautifully balanced like a tray of martini cocktails and tinted with the same olive hue, it follows the day to day existence of plant lover and bar employee Reno (Aris Servetalis) whose routine is meticulously laid out in the opening scenes: the comfortable black leather shoes are polished; the white shirt pressed and pristine, the glossy black hair slicked black and ready for business. Every day follows the same pattern for his work in one of the oldest establishments in the city.

Then one evening while emptying the rubbish Renos finds a dismembered body the dumpster. And recognises it as his neighbour, Milan (Antonis Myriagos). The following night in the corridor of his modernist block he bumps into the neighbour opposite, a be-spectacled man with a leonine shock of red hair, known as “The Blond” (Yannis Stankoglou) who invites him in for dinner, a dinner which starts suspiciously with enormous pieces of osso buco (braised calf bone) followed by beef bourguignon. Renos is naturally alarmed. And from then on he becomes a sort of undercover detective enthralled by this macabre man and his surreptitious comings and goings. And so do we.

Deadly, dialogue light and mostly silent, apart from a bewitching soundtrack, The Waiter is an enthralling and seductive story that says as much about Renos as a character as it does about the enigmatic Blond, and his discretely unwilling female companion Tzina (Chiara Gensini). Clearly their perplexingly teasing relationship presses buttons for Renos in the sexual department, or lack of it. Renos also starts to question his own rather vacuous existence while wondering whether the couple are accomplices to a murder, and if he is the next victim. One particularly beguiling scene is set in an Athens dawn in a beautiful outdoor temple where Renos comes across Tzina suffering a bout of hiccups. He tries to explain to Tzina the medical reason for hiccups and she asks him if he’s always so calm. “Don’t you ever get scared” she says. Renos replies: “Fear disrupts the will”. Clearly he is a self-contained man with hidden depths, practising the art of being “in the now”. For the moment.

But ‘the now’ soon unravels for Renos as his placid routine gradually becomes destabilised by his sinister new friends. And the compelling denouement offers a surprise in a sultry wooded area at dusk, captured sumptuously on the widescreen by DoP Giorgos Karvelas whose immaculate camerawork has made this something of a visual treat. And we are left to contemplate the humdrum nature of everyday life. Often a desperate wish for change, can also ruin the status quo forever . MT

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 18 – 28 SEPTEMBER 2019