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pxrouge FESTIVAL REVIEWS I 49. ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2020 I DI GIOVANNI OTTONE I 2020

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2020

49th International Film Festival Rotterdam: Best Feature Films of all Festival's Sections

 

 

Di GIOVANNI OTTONE

"The Cloud in Her Room", Zheng Lu Xinyuan

International Film Festival Rotterdam

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Section Hivos Tiger Award

Cannes 2018

"The Cloud in Her Room " di Zheng Lu Xinyuan

 

Ta fang Jian li den yun (The Cloud in Her Room) (Hong Kong / China, 2020, w. p., 1°), 98’, by Zheng Lu Xinyuan.

The portrait of 22 year-old Muzi who returns to her birthplace Hangzhou for New Year and struggles to find her place in a city she barely recognises. Her parents are long separated, her childhood apartment lies vacant, the geography of the city is torn up and rewritten around her. She stays with her father, his new wife and their daughter. To her father, she is still a child to be chastised for coming home late. And to her mother, who has started associating with foreign friends she is a drinking partner and confidante. With her visiting boyfriend Yu Fei, her status is still to be decided. She spends time in her childhood empty flat, folding herself to slot into an empty alcove in the living room, but her unwieldy boots dangle out.

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Her way of navigating the familiar and the unfamiliar is to create a visual diary-fragments of memories, encounters with strangers and old friends, moments of privacy. Weaving together the shifting perspectives of Muzi’s phone footage and a more distant, observational lens, the feature is a shape-shifting collage-style portrait of a young woman exploring her space in the world. Muzi lives in limbo: just like that apartment, she has come to stand between past and future and she feels a bitter loneliness. As the Chinese New Year approaches, everything’s different, yet nothing seems to really change. Zheng Lu Xinyuan returns to her hometown of Hangzhou, a city that ballooned into one of China’s wealthiest metropoles in the 21st century. As a child of divorced parents, a descendant of the one-child policy and grown up in a China where everything changes staggeringly fast, Zheng Lu makes a melancholic, intimate and topical film about her generation and the society in which she grew up. She combines handheld documentary images, in which Muzi interviews people around her, with more detached camera work. Jump cuts flick through half remembered conversations, skipping over the painful bits perhaps, or just needling around the key events. The black and white photography is stylist. But the film is not very daring, because avoids to show the social contradictions, and sometimes looks like quite conventional. Good.


Best Film Award

Beasts Clawing at Straws (Soth Korea, 2020, w. p., 1°), 109’, by Kim Yonghoon.

A punchy crime drama-thriller full of dark humour, in which all characters are hell-bent on putting the others out of the game. A story of greed, revenge and other human shortcomings, that recalls, in some ways, Tarantino’s pulp cinema, set in the port city of Pyeongtaek. But it is also an intelligent portrait of the social contradictions in contemporary South Korea. The story revolves around cash-filled Louis Vuitton bag found one day in a locker at the public bath. For Joong-man, who recently has gone bankrupt, such discovery is life-saving. An object of desire is soon chased after by two other people: a customs officer with a huge debt at shady loan shark and a bar hostess, who lost all her money on the stock market.

 

Cannes 2018

"Clawing at Straws ", Kim Yonghoon

Trailer

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Stridently over the top in everything from the colour scheme to the performances to the violence, the film is divided in 5 chapters with convolute structure, but narration is quite exciting, until the final act brilliantly explains the whole plot. In spite of the at times cynical violence, Kim Yonghoon nevertheless evokes sympathy for the fates of his characters. A great cast, including Jung Woosung and Jeon Doyeon. In fact, this almost Coen-sian tale of ordinary folks undone by greed is a lot smarter than its occasionally crude execution would have you believe. Almost very good.

Special Jury Award

Cannes 2018

"Nasir " di Arun Karthick

 

Nasir (India / Netherlands / Singapore, 2020, w. p., 2°), 105’, by Arun Karthick.

A very interesting existential drama about Nasir, a gentle man in his 40s with a hard life: a Muslim in Coimbatore, a city in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Hindu nationalism has taken on ever more virulent forms in recent decades. He is a man who shows disarming sweetness and good-humour: he writes love letters to his wife and declaims his poetry. Arun Karthick is observational and unsensational in its approach: he tells a day in Nasir’s life. Captured in a boxy aspect 4:3 ratio which emphasizes the subtle sense of pressure from outside of the frame, life in the Muslim neighbourhood where Nasir resides has a easy rhythm. There is no incremental build of tension, just a generous and nuanced portrait of a simple, decent man scraping a living as a salesman in an old textile shop.

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His boss makes little effort to hide his contempt for Muslims. The customers treat Nasir as a doormat. In the meantime, Nasir starts worrying about his wife, who is out of town for a few days, and wonders whether he would be better off as a migrant labourer in Abu Dhabi. Violent nationalist propaganda constantly booms from loudspeakers everywhere in the public space and casual anti-Muslim sentiment spills out onto the streets. The toxic intolerance of Hindu extremists bubbles just below the surface of everyday life. The abrupt explosion of devastating violence, which closes the film, is unforeseen by both Nasir and the audience. But also, it is inevitable: an indiscriminate rupture to release the tensions stirred by right wing Hindu nationalist rhetoric. Very, very good.

NETPAC Award. Best Asian feature film

La Fortaleza (Venezuela / France / Netherlands / Colombia, 2020, w. p., 2°), 108’, by Jorge Thielen Armand.

An existential drama lyrical and raw, realistic and intimate. The film’s broken central character, middle-age Roque, is locked in a pattern of self-destruction. His parents cast him out from their home in Caracas and Roque returns to the Amazon and the derelict tourist lodge he built and ran in a previous happier life. His aim is to rebuild both the cabin and himself, quitting alcohol for good in the process. He meets old friends, now captivated by the gold rush. His desire for redemption conflates with an increasingly violent environment: the lawless jungle. He is drawn back into the thrall of Yoni, a slightly malevolent figure who acts as the physical manifestation of the temptation that tugs at Roque and constantly threatens to tip him off the wagon.

 

Cannes 2018

"La Fortaleza", Jorge Thielen Armand

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Yoni runs an illegal gold mine and, with his lodge in a worse state, Roque takes work there to fund the renovations. Venezuelan director Jorge Thielen Armand, who has emigrated to Canada, briefly references the crisis in Venezuela, but Roque’s quest is inspired mainly by the stories he heard from his father about his own battle to give up alcohol. Feature has strong moments and mix epic experiences, sparking violence and betray with gloomy visions that reflect the inner state of the protagonist, who is played by the filmmaker's father. It displays a condition of constant unrest and a feverish voyage of discovery through the hinterland between madness and salvation. It recalls, in some ways, both Werner Herzogs and Ciro Guerra’s films. Despite some dramatic excesses, when the lines between fantasy and actuality are blurred, Jorge Roque Thielen brings authenticity to this clammily intimate character study. Good.

Section Bright Future

Cannes 2018

"Los Fantasmas " di Sebastián Lojo

 

Los fantasmas (Guatemala / Argentina, 2020, w. p., 1°), 75’, by Sebastián Lojo.

An atypical urban drama-thriller that displays a quite convincing character study of a petty criminal. Koki is an handsome guy in his 20s who comes from a poor family: actually he lives with his mother in a crumble flat. He ruthlessly earns a living in Guatemala City winning people’s confidence, after which their possessions go missing. By day he is a tourist guide, but at night plies his trade, ducking and diving in bars and shady nightclubs. He befriends gringos tourists who are suddenly and suspiciously mugged. He seduces men and takes them to Carlos’ hotel, where they are robbed. Koki and Carlos are intertwined through their violent activities. Away from the daily grind of his claustrophobic workplace, middle aged Carlos has another string to his bow, moonlighting as a wrestler, disguised under a thick mask of make-up.

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One day, Koki is targeted by one of the men he stole from, leading Carlos to replace him with another good-looking young man. The shock of this sudden removal of his means of subsistence causes Koki to realise that his life is definitively messed up. Despite some discrepancies, Sebastián Lojo provides an interesting existential and social portrait of a country full of contradictions, with great use of the power of authentic locations, situations and characters. It is a world of deceit and violence where grifting is a ordinary choice and female characters remain in the background, weak and undeveloped, merely there to serve their men. The ambiguous characters and minimal dialogue keeps the tension taut. Good.

I Blame Society (USA, 2020, w. p., 1°), 84’, by Gillian Wallace Horvat.

A fascinating and funny dark comedy: an autofiction that comes across the limit of a clever provocation towards a very ambiguous horror game. Director Gillian Horvat, who plays a fictional version of herself, navigates the endless process required to get a first film off the ground when no one is taking her seriously.. She drives the audience inside a macabre escalation from an innocent initial concept – the perfect murder of the unbearable partner of one of her friends – towards full-scale madness. She is quite efficient in putting the doubt if she always a crazy person, relentless and brutal, or if this project makes her that way. Feature is an appealing meta-story about the camera as an excuse for abuse, artistic transgression and blurry boundaries. Losing more than her friends and loved ones, her obsession with authenticity leads her to lose sight of where creativity ends and madness begins. Special effects and makeup are amazing. There is a decent amount of gore and blood in the film and it’s all exceptionally well done: it looks like almost real. Almost very good

 

Cannes 2018

"I Blame Society", Gillian Wallace Horvat

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Cannes 2018

"For the Time Being " diSalka Tizian

 

Tal día hizo un año (For the Time Being) (Germany / Spain / Switzerland, 2020, 1°, W. P. at MAX OPHÜLS PREIS F.F.), 71’, Salka Tiziana.

Mature and convincing domestic drama, minimalistic and intimate, focused on three women cooped up in a small farm in southern Spain, during hot and lazy summertime. German 35-year-old Larissa and her nine-year-old twins arrive at their father's paternal home in the Spanish Sierra Morena mountains. Father's flight was delayed, but the guests are welcomed as a matter of course by Pilar, her mother-in-law and Amalia, her sister in law, who live together in the big country house. The women's routine existence, quiet in its remoteness, is interrupted by the children's energetic presence. 30- year-old Amalia looks after the land and sometimes goes out for hunting. Occasionally TV news tell the alarming wave of fires in the Sierra Morena, caused by high temperatures. The film is a touching family drama about three women and two children who learn to live together as the landscape around them alters them emotionally.

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Nothing special happens but step by step relationships become more open and conversation meaningful despite the language barrier. Spanish-German director Salka Tiziana was inspired by her own childhood memories of summers spent in the farm where her grandparents lived in the Andalusian Sierra Morena mountain range. Surrounded by majestic mountainsides full of sun-bleached crops and slow-moving livestock, cozy scenes of familial strangers play out within the walls of the home. The extreme heat, the fires, the scarce supply of water, the explosions emanating from a nearby military base and the omnipresent wilderness which encircles them (represented by the persistent chirping of cicadas) all add to the drama surrounding their confinement in this farm as they await the arrival of a man who will never show up. Approach is delicate and explore the spatial co-existence of human beings and nature, a cohabitation which is as physical as emotive. Narrate is calm and full of nuances. Mise-en-scene shows exquisite documentary sensitivity and a continuous work of intimate demarcation of characters, avoiding psychologism and didactic temptations. The result is a real mosaic of gestures and feelings held back, which becomes progressively plausible and exciting. Shot mainly on 16mm and featuring a cast of non-professional actors (with the exception of Melanie Straub) the film unfolds entirely within the interior space of the house and the vast lands annexed to the farm, which we observe via drone-recorded images. In this sense, the combination of analogical and digital formats plays a crucial role. Very good.

Moving On ( South Korea, 2019, 1°, W. P. at PUSAN F. F. 2019), 105’, by Yoon Dan-bi.

Pleasant family drama, intimate and quite realist, that, in some ways, reminds of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s films. 14-year-old Okju, her little brother Dongju and their father move in with the grandfather they hardly know at the end of the school year. After his divorce, their father is as good as broke and although grandpa's three-room apartment is pretty unsuitable, it provides temporary shelter to the family. Not long afterwards, their aunt, whose marriage is on the rocks, moves in as well. As the kids slowly begin to adjust to the new house and housemates, the grandfather’s failing health forces the two younger generations to make some tough decisions. In a series of unemphatic, yet acutely observed moments, Yoon Dan-bi explores the contemporary meaning of family and the development of new relationships during summertime. The irony that it was the failing of relationships, that of the children’s parents and the aunt’s marriage, resulted in the coming together for this family, is amusing. Good.

 

Cannes 2018

"Moving On", Yoon Dan-bi

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Best Film Bright Future Award

My Mexican Bretzel (Spain, 2019, 1°, W. P. at GIJÓN F. F. 2019), 72’, by Nuria Giménez. A surprising and fascinating film. A period video-diary totally made by assembling and perfectly editing real home movies but assigning the resulting existential itinerary to a fictionalized character who is telling her personal story through voice over that offers an intimate flow of commentaries and innermost thought. This text is perfectly matched to the images we see on screen, leading to a powerfully hypnotic effect. The idea for the film originated in 2011, when Giménez came across a few home movies made by her grandparents, Ilse G. Ringier and Frank A. Lorang, mid-way through the last century. Based on that rich material, which shows the couple travelling around the world (from Paris to New York, Majorca to Florence, between meetings with friends, excursions and lunches), the filmmaker set about planning a sophisticated and fascinating film structure: she wrote a diary on behalf of an imaginary character, Vivian Barret, recounting specific moments of her existence, her worries and her feelings. She then illustrated those words with material selected from amongst her forebears’ 50 reels of 16mm film. The film opens with black-and-white clips of pilots during World War II in Switzerland, subtitled with excerpts from the diary of Vivian Barrett. She talks about herself and her husband Léon, who partly lost his hearing in an accident with his plane and could no longer fly. The couple's glamourous life then unfolds in diary excerpts and footage shot by Léon, about whom we also learn that he developed a successful anti-depressant drug, which made him very wealthy, and had an obsession with many different forms of transportation. Vivian tells in voice-over her thoughts and observations, and more abstract visual material represents her fears, secret desires and tormenting dreams. She frequently quotes the non-existent Indian guru and writer Paravadin Kanvar Kharjappali, who keeps her going in times of uncertainty and emotional turbulence. Sound is used cleverly and with restraint, reinforcing the images or underscoring the emotions. This clever, creative and virtuosic exercise in storytelling and fantasy completely succeeds in portraying a wholly believable life with its uncertainties, its insecurities and, above all, its fleeting nature. Audience probably realise that the viewer is being manipulated, but to what extent only becomes clear at the end. In fact this very original feature is a fake documentary which depicts a universe in such vivid fashion that it’s hard for us to accept its ultimate inauthenticity. Very very good.

Found Footage Award The Trouble with Nature (Denmark / France, 2020, w. p., 1°), 95’, by Illum Jacobi. A charming period film. An unusual 18th-century road movie that displays an amazing caricature of a pompous thinker during the transition period between the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism. In 1769, rampant debt and a significant midlife crisis send Irish philosopher Edmund Burke fleeing from London to embark on an expedition through the French Alps. He brings along a servant on loan from his brother's plantation in the West Indies, a young indigenous woman named Awak. Together they set out to discover the sublime of natural world. Ill-equipped for the outdoor life, Burke whinges the days away while Awak carries all their supplies and makes sure his face is perpetually powdered. During the trip Burke writes some notes for his philosophical inquiry in the immensity of Mother Nature's beauty. Danish documentary filmmaker Illum Jacobi, who has a background in mountaineering and arctic expeditions, constructs each scene with a very clever sense of humour and a delicate frame, with ample snark and a masterful sense of natural light. Almost very good.

Hui nan tian (Damp Season) (China, 2020, w. p., 2°), 109’, by Gao Ming. Interesting existential drama about the complexity of a young couple relationship. Set in the big town of Shenzen, the story is happening during the “damp season”, a unique weather phenomenon in (sub)tropical southern China, when at the turn of seasons between spring and summer, in this interweaving of cold and warm airflows, the humid air is condensed into drops of water, like everything on earth is weeping. Focus is on two millennials. Juan is an independent young woman who works in a florist’s shop, Dong is an immature brooder, working as a security guard. Dong, has a feeling for Yuan, the woman who regularly walks by the lake that he supervises. On the other hand Juan, is attracted by Mr. Long, a rich man for whose house she delivers flowers. While the relationship between Juan and Dong has reached a dead end, the film focuses on the unspoken and the unfocused triviality of life, which then suddenly regains its course. According to the director Gao Ming “damp season” lies with the most unbearable days in a year and there is a particular connection between weather and emotion. He takes it as a metaphor to describe the interweaving emotional feelings between two men and two women, the four protagonists of the film. In fact, they all mirror each other. The characteristic hypnotic and clammy atmosphere is very stylist, mysterious and ambiguous, maybe too much. Almost good

En medio del labirinto (In the Middle of the Labyrinth) (Peru, 2019, 1°, W. P. at Lima Film Festival 2019), 65’, by Salomón Pérez. Fresh and vital coming-of-age film set in Trujillo, a peripheral old town in central north Peru, on the Pacific coast. Hanging out at the skatepark, studying videos of the trick he wants to learn (frontside tailslide), a punk show now and then: taciturn teen Renzo’s life is uneventful until he meets Zoe, a girl who hangs about just as vacantly and loves drawing antennas. Salomón Pérez’s returned to his home town after studying film in Switzerland and based the script on his own teen experiences. His promising debut is a slice of life. The disarming lead is shot as if in a documentary, in 4:3 format, which lends it something nostalgic, dreamy. Minimalistic, but full of energy, it shows a sincere approach to teen world without rhetoric and self-satisfaction. Good.

Nimtoh (The Invitation) (India, 2019, 1°, W. P. at MUMBAI F. F. 2019), 85’, by Saurav Rai. Nice and interesting coming-of-age film. Focus is on the relationship between a low class boy and a wealthy landowner. Set in Darjeeling, it tells the story of Tashi, a stubborn and uninhibited 10-year-old boy who lives with her grandmother in a mountain village. They are the poor tenants of a wealthy family who live next door to them in a comfortable two-story home in the countryside. They do odd jobs for the landowner, who is busy organizing a wedding for his city son. Despite Tashi’s diligent attitude to his chores, the old man thoroughly dislikes Tashi, but that does not prevent the enterprising boy from making every effort to get an invitation. A small incident has major consequences in this simple story of a boy who wants to attend the big event organized by the people he and his grandmother work. Saurav Rai recorded his debut film in the village where he grew up in West Bengal near Darjeeling, being inspired by his own experiences. The mainly non-professional cast even partly consists of his family members. Director displays the social and cultural context and characters’ relationships with intimate approach and calm realism, long takes and detailed observations. He sheds unexpected light on the feudal structure of modern Indian villages. Good.

Shell and Joint (Japan, 2019, 1°, W. P. at SLAMDANCE F. F. 2020), 154’, by Hirabayashi Isamu. Funny and quirky comedy-drama about the distinction between man and insect and the thin line between existence and non-existence. Nitobe and Sakamoto are both in their 30s and friends from childhood. They now work at the front desk of a capsule hotel. Nitobe has a particular fondness for philosophy and crustaceans. Sakamoto, meanwhile, is fixated on suicide: she has made multiple attempts herself. Deadly serious, she tells her colleague she blames it all on a bacteria that controls her mind. The capsule hotel draws a variety of guests. None of their lives ever intersect. Nor do any of the lives out of it for that matter. They exist, but never cross, like cells in a capsule hotel. The film comprises of a series of vignettes, where various character interact and a number of existential topics providing the connection among them. Short-film maker Hirabayashi Isamu’s feature film debut put together many narrative elements: surrealism, black humor, absurd but interesting offbeat conversations and different sequences. He portrays various characters at a Japanese capsule hotel in a series of absurdist sketches. With crustaceans as leitmotif, the themes of life and death are explored through a fragmentary view of the characters' lives. One moment puppetry insects philosophize about death, the next a bunch of men discuss erections in the sauna. Other sketches include a couple of beekeepers who talk about their marriage, sex and death, a number of people who move in and close to a river and a couple that has sex in a field. Probably the most impressive is a recurring sequence of three female dancers who perform inside a building bare-breasted, before they unleash a series of balls from their skirts in some stairs, probably mimicking insects in some way. Despite being too long, with too many short narratives, the film is full of creativity and good ideas and provides moments of sincere fun. Good.

San chi (Together Apart) (mid-length, China, 2019, 1°, W.P. at FIRST INT. F. F. 2019 in Xining), 52’, by Qu Youjia. Interesting family drama, intimate, realistic and poetically surreal at the same time, about a funeral. Chinese funerals require much preparation: a three-day wake and various rituals precede the cremation. In the opening shots the widow returns home drained and starts tidying up the house, only to encounter her deceased husband casually sauntering down the stairs. She soon readopts a familiar routine: dressing him warmly, measuring his blood pressure and bickering with him. This absurd premise soon develops when visitors from the afterlife are expected and the daughter starts getting involved. As she seeks to solve the impossible situation, grandson Jiajia seems to be the only one unquestioningly embracing grandad's return. All shot in long, composed takes, replete with understated humour and tender reflections on family, loneliness, memory and the passing of time. Almost very good.

Section Voices

Énorme (Enormous) (France, 2019, 4°, W. P. at FESTIVAL INT. DU FILM INDEPENDANT DE BORDEAUX 2019), 98’, by Sophie Letourneur. Very nice satirical comedy that shows a clever and sarcastic approach to marriage and pregnancy. It plays in unexpected, politically incorrect, strange and tender ways with expectations, gender and the dynamics of couples. Claire is a famous pianist whose life is fully coordinated by her husband Frederic, who also acts as her agent / coach / caretaker. The couple’s life revolving around Claire’s illustrious career and a marriage held together by a man trained to tend to his wife’s every need. This woman is so child-like and clueless that she needs to be led by the hand, making her an incredibly easy target for manipulation of any kind. Because of Claire's career, the two decided not to have children, also because she doesn’t exhibit any maternal instincts. But after seeing how a baby was born spontaneously, Frederic changes his mind. He messes with her birth control pills and Claire becomes pregnant. What starts when a disturbing film about toxic masculinity changes into a crazy comedy. Claire rediscovers her neglected body and with it a sense of freedom. Frederic does not exactly experience his wife's pregnancy from the sidelines: he arrives, takes courses for pregnant mothers and 'feels' her pain. The first half of the film is great: dialogues, acting and editing are very good. After that narrative becomes repetitive and the over the top slapstick of the father who wants so badly a baby and the clichés about pregnancy and mother instinct prevails over a convincing characters’ study, until a consolatory epilogue. Good.

The Evening Hour (USA, 2020, 2°, W. P. at SUNDANCE F. F. 2020), 156’, by Braden King. Quite convincing existential drama that displays a multilayered portrait of rural peripheral USA where economical crisis interweaves with tragic increasing of opiate addition, due to extended prescription of hydrocodone painkiller drugs and collateral narcotic trade, and moral incertitude. Set in Dove Creek, West Virginia, a post-industrial community in decline that was once a flourishing American mining town, feature focus on almost 30-year-old Cole Freeman who works as a nursing home aide looking after the elderly. He belongs to a generation who feel trapped by a toxic combination of existential fear, lack of opportunity and powerlessness. To support his grandmother (his own mother left when Cole was a child) he’s also a supplier of illegal painkillers, standing a stone’s throw from a slippery slope to dealing. Cole keeps to a personal code though, insisting that he can remain both drug provider and a good man. Through evolving relationships within his tight community, he must challenge both the brutal industry and his personal demons on his quest for redemption. Debut screenwriter Elizabeth Palmore adapted Carter Sickels' novel of the same name into an empathetic drama that spins many narrative themes. Despite some stereotypes and little rhetoric, Braden King brings this tale of redemption attempts with attractive mise-en-scene, intense atmosphere. Sluggish pace is not always effective. Good.

Fanny Lye Deliver’d (UK / Germany, 2019, 4° , W. P. at LONDON F. F. 2019), 110’, by Thomas Clay. Amazing and provocative period melodrama-thriller set in post-Civil War 17th-century England, which the director has dubbed a ‘Puritan Western’. It is about the birth of an idea of liberation from moral prejudges and of free individuality. In 1657, the era after Cromwell assumed power, England lived under a new tyranny with plenty of violence and intolerance. Fanny and John Lye live a modest existence with their young son, Arthur, on a remote farm outside of Shropshire. With John injured after his efforts fighting for the Parliamentarians in the Civil War, Fanny is responsible for most duties around the farm. It is a life of puritan rectitude. One Sunday after church they find two strangers, Thomas and Rebecca, who say they have been robbed, though there seems to be more to the story. Although deeply suspicious, John agrees to offer them shelter for the night; a stay soon prolonged, as the younger couple ingratiate themselves in the household. In an unguarded moment, Rebecca tells the devout Fanny that she and Thomas are unmarried and begs Fanny not to tell her patriarchal husband. But there is a secret: Thomas and Rebecca follow a self-made doctrine of sexual freedom and upended gender roles, proudly heretical to even the most reformist of Protestants (in fact the runaway couple belongs to the sect Puritans and Ranters persecuted by the authorities). The next day, two armed puritans guards turn up at the door saying there has been an orgy at a local inn. Clay has created an intriguing genre feature, opposed to the traditional genteel costume drama. It is an exciting film, with a very well-made characters’ study and principled sense of wanting to explore British history: a potent brew of sex, violence and political radicalism shown in a historical context seldom seen on screen. Filmed and projected on 35mm, it shows a very well-made characters’ study, convincing production design and great mise-en-scene. British thesps Maxine Peake and Charles Dance lead the cast, with newcomers Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds in supporting roles. Very, very good.

Así habló el cambista (The Moneychanger) (Uruguay / Argentina, 2019, 5°, W. P. at TORONTO F. F. 2019), 97’, by Federico Veiroj. Very nice combination of family drama, black comedy and thriller. And on background it displays a convincing political and social portrait of South American countries where, during the 1970s, corrupt regimes and right wing military dictatorships took the power. Feature depicts the crafty scheming and the sad private life of Humberto Brause, an unscrupulous moneychanger, as it delves into the historical and financial past of three countries: Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina. Brause is a bad father, an abysmal husband and, in turn, a financial genius who has made it big by taking advantage of the opportunities, economic crises and dictatorships of neighbouring countries. The story unfolds in Montevideo in 1975 and is propped up by a first-person narrative, in which Brause himself explains how he has managed to build his little empire in the field of currency exchange, through a detailed account of some key financial operations happened in 1956, 1962 and 1966. In the mid-1950s, Brause starts working in the bureau de change run by Mr. Schwensteiger. His boss – the most seasoned and highly respected moneychanger in Montevideo – teaches him all the tricks of the trade. Very soon Brause becomes a master: he starts his own company and marries Schwensteiger’s daughter, young Gudrun. In 1956 an “accident” about the illegal funds of a political party put him in jail for almost one year. But Brause never accepts to be an informer and earns more credit from its customers. So he decides to be ambitious and makes dirty hands to pay for his luxury life, through an escalation, marked by any sort of crimes, where there was no turning point. After 20 years he has become the most sought-after man among rich Latin Americans who wish to gain access to Urugauy’s tax haven. This mercenary moneychanger, who eschews ethics, has done business with any man or woman who shows up in his office, be they Uruguayan soldiers or politicians, Brazilian mobsters, or Argentinean military emissaries. Federico Veiroj’s film is a loose adaptation of the 1979 novel by Juan Enrique Gruber. Approach is clever and subtly satirical, mise-en-scene is carefully managed, camera work and art direction contribute to the macabre atmosphere and acting is very good, especially Daniel Hendler performance. Very, very good.

Khanaur (Bitter Chestnut) (India, 2019, 5°, W. P. at MUMBAI F. F: 2019), 100’, by Gurvinder Singh. An authentic coming-of-age story about17-year-old Kishan, a good boy from Bir, a village in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. He helps his grandma and mother, listens to his father and earns some extra money working in a restaurant for tourists. But he feels the call of the big, wide world. He knows that moving to the big city is not without risks from the stories of prison and abuse he hears from returning friends. Kishan’s family try to talk him out of his plans. His father's carpentry workshop offers a secure, albeit predictable, life. Despite the call of adventure, Kishan is still deeply rooted in his village, and this becomes ever clearer as the seasons slide by almost unnoticed. His life is like the fruit of the bitter chestnut tree from the title: according to tradition, it has to be washed for seven days in succession before being edible. The only other character we get a real sense of as a person is Monisha, who runs the café. If Kishan symbolises the youth who wants to move out, Monisha is the exact opposite: the English speaking city-dweller who has come to spend the winter of her life in the hills. Last year Guvinder Singh moved to Bir and started to run a café: he was making a film with the people of the place and now he considers it “an exchange between real life and fiction”. Feature is kind of low-key docu-drama: local, non-professional actors are playing themselves in a barely-fictionalized story set in real locations. It touches upon several important topics: migration to the cities, an existential threat to traditional village communities; culture; youth, expectations from life; rising consumerism; loss of traditions; etc. Approach is realistic, but also emphatic and romantic: Singh is clearly refusing to do anything dramatic and flashy. He doesn’t necessarily follow and one particular plot point, but carefully paints intimate portraits of those who intersect in this young man’s life. Mise-en-scene is simple but carefully managed, with serviceable camera work and straightforward sound design. There was a script, but the actors have mostly been allowed to be themselves in front of the camera. Almost very good.

A Dark, Dark Man (Kazakhstan, 2019, 7°, W. P. at SAN SEBASTIÁN F. F. 2019), 130’, by Adilkhan Yerzhanov. An ironic and knowing transposition of urban crime thriller archetypes characterizes this provocative, unusual, staggeringly controlled but grim drama-noir. In a rural village in Kazakhstan, detective Bekzat's lazy, cowardly superior assigns him to kill a suspect for the case of a poor boy’s murder: a common occurrence in this fearful, corrupt society. This ‘routine job’ is ruined by fearless journalist TV reporter Ariana, coming from a big city, who insists the case be properly investigated. In fact she believes that the crime is linked to the murders of several other unwanted orphans in the area. All of those cases were also “solved,” when a handy suspect was apprehended, who then, even handier, “committed suicide” while in custody. 40-year-old Bekzat, caught in a mafia web of bribery, blackmail and intimidation, sets out with a curious entourage and the necessary reluctance. Gradually the story take a sinister turn for Bekzat, who has to do his job for real for the first time in his life.. In the guise of a twisted anti-Hollywood action movie, with plenty of dark humour, the film reveals how a despotic society is based on a vicious circle of fear and greed that can only be interrupted by desperate courage and insight. The endless plains and barren cornfields, decrepit police offices and run-down barns provide the backdrop for scenes of ambiguous beauty, for bizarre conversations, extreme violence and developing emotions. Who is actually responsible for the deaths is of less interest to Yerzhanov than the corrupt institutions and compromised individuals who cover for him. So the plot, featuring cops, criminals, politicians, henchmen, gamblers and gangsters between whom the lines of morality are blurry indeed, is wildly convoluted. But the film offsets the confusion with the clarity and originality of its imagery enhanced by the moody cinematography. The mood of escalating menace is countered by a mischievously heightened sense of the absurd. Even the gory final showdown is shot wittily, its grand, redemptive drama contrasted with the messy physics of grappling with an adversary in a slippery, blood-slicked corridor. Excellent.

Fidelity (Russia, 2019, 3°, W. P. at OPEN RUSSIAN KINOTAVR F. F. 2019), 82’, by Nigina Sayfullaeva. An interesting psychological drama about a woman rediscovering her sexuality. A beautiful woman, 30- year-old Lena works as a respected obstetrician-gynecologist in a plush private clinic, in a peaceful western Russian coastal town. Husband Sergei works as an actor in a drama theater. But their relationship is stuck in a passionless, sexless marriage: Then one day she begins to notice serious changes in his behavior. So she reads one of her husband's text messages and she is convinced he is cheating on her with an actress of the theater company. The lack of sexual attention from her husband eventually drives her to a series of one night stands with handsome strangers in an effort to satisfy her pent up natural urges in the summer heat. For Lena, a new world unexpectedly opens up, filled with passion and incredible erotic emotions. Constant betrayal is becoming an integral part of double life. She could not have imagined that parallel existence would become no less real, from which danger was literally blowing. Even after learning that, most likely, Sergei did nothing of the kind, she is not able to stop, which gets hopelessly out of control. Nigina Sayfullaeva focus on themes like the role of sex, power and vulnerability in relationships. She is openly in favor of her protagonist and depicts in detail her irrational, impulsive actions and the underlying, complex psychology, while the men in the latter’s life seemingly don’t have a clue how to deal with her desires. The approach is explicit with passionate sex scenes in soft, muted colours. Despite some stereotypes, the film shows some convincing characterisations and avoids didacticism. Almost good

Emilia (Argentina, 2020, w. p., 1°), 97’, by César Sodero. Convincing existential drama about a young woman’s crisis both sentimental and sexual. And, at the same time, a quite authentic anthropological and social portrait of peripheral Patagonia. Following a bust-up with her girlfriend Ana (audience only have clues through some evasive conversations by phone between the two women), 28-year-old Emilia returns from Buenos Aires to her birth place, a small town somewhere in Patagonia. Her mother is used to live alone and isn't overjoyed about this return, always because she dislikes Emilia’s surly attitude. The relationship between mother and daughter is tense, but full of nuances. Emilia tries to decide how she wants to carry on with her life and is confronted with people and feelings from her past. Bored and frustrated, or just looking for intimacy, she spends a lot of time with Lorena, her best friend from childhood. But she is in pain because it happens to be trapped in a secret coming back: an occasional sexual relationship with Emiliano, her ex lover from adolescence and now Lorena’s husband. Then Emilia falls in love with 17-year-old Rosario, an attractive student at the school where she teaches gym. Emilia is confused but self-aware that it is time to make new choices. César Sodero comes from Sierra Grande, in Rio Negro province, the film’s location, and shows a lot of confidence and original sensibility in portraying Emilia’s inner restlessness. His screenplay is very well written and avoids heavy psychological investigation and didacticism to concentrate on feelings, emotions and behaviors. Mise-en-scene is well managed, using images of impressive landscapes, natural dialogue and telling non-verbal communication. Very good.

Only You Alone (China, 2020, w. p., 2°), 90’, by Zhou Zhou. Strong female-centred story: an amazing portrait of a marginalized courageous young woman with a sensitive soul. Since her grandfather died, 30-year-old Chi Li has lived alone in the house of an aunt who is abroad. She has no contact with her parents and her father is a problematic person. It is a lonely life, but Chi Li is doing fine. She is an usherette in a cinema theatre and no need for a sentimental relationship. She protects herself this way because has epilepsy. In north-eastern China where she lives, this means she simply isn’t marriage material. Her main concern is to save money in order to give a new graveyard to her grandfather remains. When her colleague at work, a nice guy, nevertheless shows interest, some warmth seems to penetrate her shielded existence. However, a romantic trip to a dance performance painfully reminds Chi Li of her past as a dancer. She was prevented to pursuit this professional career because of her disease. Despite her condition the relationship with the young man blossoms. But her future mother-in-law, a overprotective mother to her son, declares opposition when Chi li tells that she doesn’t want to give birth to a child. So Chi Li decides to break up with her companion. Meanwhile her aunt comes back and tells to Chi Li that the flat will be sold. The end of the film is open: Chi Li is waiting to undergo a delicate brain surgery in order to radically cure the disease. Chi Yun, who co-wrote the script with director Zhou Zhou, plays Chi li with an outstanding performance. Mise-en-scene is perfectly controlled in order to displays integrity and affliction of the protagonist without any emphasis and didacticism. Almost Excellent. FIPRESCI Award. Best feature of all world premiere in Bright Future.

Synapses (Taiwan, 2019, 10° , W. P. at TAIPEI GOLDEN HORSE F. F. 2019), 119’, by Chan Tso-chi. Convincing melancholic family drama. When Xiao Meng, a young woman in her twenties, is released on parole from prison, her father Zhang Junxiong and son Ah Chuan don’t recognize her: the former due to Alzheimer developed during her six-year prison term and the latter because he was only a baby when she was arrested because of her dodgy boyfriend Ah Wen involved with juvenile gangs. The little boy is restless and naïve: he tries to hatch a turkey's egg. On the other hand, the onset of dementia causes dad to attempt to capture memories by taking photographs with no film in the camera, as the intangibility of time's progress imposes itself. Xiao Meng’s return meets with indifference of her mother Wang Feng, who has been exhausted looking after the family. During raining summertime Xiao Meng struggles to reconnect with her illegitimate son and her loose-cannon ex-boyfriend. While the family members try to regain their balance, their vulnerable interrelations are acutely observed and carefully described without moral judgement. Taiwan film auteur Chang Tso-chi comes back with tale about amnesia, intricacies of memory and identity. Once again he explores topics of fatum, extreme emotions and family marked by the past. Synapses is his first full-length feature after serving time in prison for the rape of one of his co-workers. Such returns are extremely difficult and it is inescapable that the film might be interpreted and judged through the perspective of this experience. Nevertheless it might also offer interesting clues on identity politics in contemporary Taiwan, especially in the crucial times of presidential elections in January 2020. Very good.

Nasipse adayiz (You Know Him) (Turkey / Serbia, 2020, w. p., 1°), 103’, by Ercan Kesal. Interesting satirical drama about a respectable physician who decides to enter in politics in order to serve his fellow citizens with new ideas and projects. Set in Istanbul, it gives important clues about the role of lobbies and parties’ rituals and hierarchy in political life. It also focus on urban middle class and male and female identity in contemporary Turkey. Doctor Kemal is head of a private hospital. He is efficient and ambitious and has the best intentions for the residents of Istanbul. In his opinion he is the best candidate for mayor of the Beyoglu district, in downtown Istanbul. But this opinion is not shared by his sceptical ex-wife; nor by the voters who come to eat and drink at his expense; nor by the party leader, who even after several meetings still thinks he's an architect rather than a doctor; not even by his faithful chauffeur. Anyway he makes any effort to reach his purpose, in order to be chosen to become the stronger candidate supported by the party that he has joint. Campaign is not easy: Kemal must be very careful with every details, accept compromises and strange advices, endure some humiliations and waste a lot of money. The slogan 'the doctor has the cure' might be catchy, but Kemal has little clue how sick the climate of political nepotism really is. One day in the life of aspiring city administrator Kemal becomes a sobering political tragedy, dressed up as tragicomedy. As he waits for the eagerly anticipated blessing from the party leader, he is stripped to the bone, financially and morally. It turns out this man with the look of a relentless bloodhound is much too naïve. There is no room for his concrete ideas in a system driven entirely by opportunism. Ercan Kesal is a talented Turkish actor, regular in Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Tayfun Pirselimoglu films. In ordinary life he is also a doctor and runs his own private clinic. He wrote his debut feature in which he plays the leading role (very different compared with his usual performances). Despite characters’ study not very accurate and some feeble-mindedness in the dramatic pace, the film is sincere and avoids stereotypes and didacticism. Good.
27) Sound of Metal (USA, 2019, 1°, W. P. at TORONTO F. F. 2019), 130’, by Darius Marder. An ambitious but frank melodrama tells the complicated itinerary of a tortured musician to rebuilt his individual’s identity, his way of life and his vision for the future, after sudden hearing loss. 30 something year old bleach-blonde Ruben is a metal drummer, a reformed addict turned health-nut,. He lives a happy gypsy life in an RV with his girlfriend and musical partner, Lou, a French singer with a history of self-harm. The two comprise Blackgammon, a grunge metal duo that enjoys niche recognition during a permanent tour around USA, driving by day and playing sets in the evenings. Sound means everything in Ruben's life. Starting with friendly jazz as he gets up, it amps up to the intense drumming he does every night. During one fateful performance, the sound of Ruben’s thrashing cymbals and propulsive drum rolls fades into a dull roar: a simplification of the hearing loss process as a snap occurrence, but nevertheless a terrifying expression of an altered reality. Soon afterwards, Ruben is diagnosed with severe, irreparable hearing loss, but word of an expensive surgical procedure he’s convinced will reverse the damage keeps him in maddening denial. This tragedy unbalances the precarious, nomadic rock life of the couple. Lou sends Ruben to a secluded community for the deaf, a peaceful, countryside haven where the bulk of the film takes place and where the protagonist is tasked with “learning to be deaf”. Joe is a weathered but gentle lip-reading war vet who runs the rehabilitation community and becomes a sort of surrogate father figure to Ruben as he rebuilds himself as a deaf man. Screenplay by Marder himself and co-writer Derek Cianfrance provides effective characters study and truthful sense of drama, allowing Ruben the space to regress and advance, grow and self-sabotage without diminishing the scope of his tragedy with overly precise emotional beats. Depicting Ruben's dilemma – miracle-cure cochlear implant or accepting his fate – is always underpinned by emotion. Despite some moments of generic pathos, mise-en-scene is perfectly managed and immerses the audience entirely in Ruben's struggles. Sound design is extremely incisive and creative: its acoustic recalibrations and distortions allows Marder, rather ingeniously, to manipulate narrative through shifting points of view in terms of hearing. Riz Ahmed plays Ruben with great acting. The result is a film of mourning and rebirth with surprising emotional resonance Very, very good.

The History of the Kelly Gang (Australia / UK, 2019, 4°, W. P. at TORONTO F. F. 2019), 124’, by Justin Kurzel. A cruel, 'punky' coming-of-age story about a vengeful, troubled rebel that has to end in a visually spectacular confrontation, with a great cast, very good acting and an intense and bizarre grotesque finale. And, at the same time, it offers a not conventional presentation of the cruel condition of Australia during British colonial time and of the painful birth of a new nation. This fictionalized portrait of legendary outlaw known as Ned Kelly in 19th-century Australia is a dark, sparse and excited melodrama, divided into three equally stark parts: the boyhood, adulthood and finally rebirth of the criminal bandit. After his father’s death, the infamous bandit grows up as the man of the house, and repeatedly clashes with the British authorities. The trauma and neglect from his coward father and downtrodden mother mould his troubled identity. The Kelly's live in abject poverty and hate the corrupt law. This distrust is reinforced by the father-like figures that enter Ned's life. The elements of the raw and primal Victorian Australian outback also help shape who he becomes. The dark cloudy skies, dirt and muck also inform the prose, as Ned Kelly narrates his life in poetic, nihilistic and disturbing language. How the Kelly Gang form is fascinating however and possibly a full subject in itself as this film depicts them howling at the night, forming a primal connection. One bolstered by lady dress attire, rebelling against conformity in the 1850s. This farcical demythologizing is countered by the sudden and gritty detailed violence. Focusing less on bank robberies and chases, the film concentrates on power relations and ambiguity of Ned Kelly in terms of family relationships, moral attitude and confused motivations. Feature put together various controversial aspects in Ned Kelly existential itinerary: the anti-colonial Robin Hood resisting the British oppressor, the anarchist in a dress and the violent and almost mad criminal. These topics are all examined in the lead performance by George MacKay, who channels Ned Kelly admirably, constantly on the verge of bursting out of his sinewy body. Based on the fictional Peter Carey novel of the same name, is a far-flung reimagining and mythologising of the legacy of the armoured outlaw. Anyway it is perfect entertaining as a film, and also touches on both classism and conflict as its final dulled point. Justin Kurzel confirms his vision consisting in a strong and bitter depiction of human behaviors in difficult social and cultural environment, performing naturalist representation of violence with creepy and visceral elements. He sees mainly causes in Kelly's dysfunctional youth – dismal early teenage years dominated by a difficult relationship with his mother and toxic masculinity – and argues that his deeds are at least as attributable to nurture as to nature. Almost very good.

Uncut Gems (USA, 2019, 3°, W. P. at TELLURIDE F. F. 2019; distribution worldwide online by Netflix on 31 January 2020 ), 134’, by Benny & Josh Safdie. Set in New York, in 2012, is a compelling and grisly pulp crime thriller, with also a corrosive satire about Jewish American diamond sellers, their families and way of living. Antiheroe Howard Ratner is a wheeling and dealing jeweler whose shop is located in Manhattan, close to Diamond District. Once a successful gems dealer, his gambling addiction has left his family and career in shambles, and him constantly chased by hundreds of thousands creditors. He’s living on the edge and he just can’t resist the urge to get one over on fate. He has polyps, benign or otherwise, in his colon; a mistress stashed in his Manhattan apartment; kids and a disillusioned wife at home. Howard is no gangster; he wants to live a good life in the eyes of family and friends. But he has to deal with any kind of persons, including some violent mobsters associated with a member of his family clan to which he owes a lot of money. One day he thinks he finally hit it big when he gets hold of a extremely rare uncut rock of Ethiopian gems. Actually he’s paid out 100 grand on the strength of a YouTube clip and finally he has it in his hands. But he gets himself into big trouble when he loans the uncut diamond to celebrity NBA basketball basket player Kevin Garnett. His problems stack up like in a cliff-edge game with himself, until he can see no way out. With absolutely everything at stake, he takes one last desperate gamble to avoid ruin. Josh and Benny Safdie return to their beloved New York City for an intense, jittery comedy-thriller populated by remarkable characters. Adam Sandler plays a ‘serious’ dramatic role, the cruelest and funniest of his career. As independent American filmmakers, the Safdie Brothers follow in the footsteps of Cassavetes and Scorsese (in fact Scorsese has an executive producer credit here), with a touch of both Abel Ferrari’s Bad Lieutenant and Peter Farrelly’s crazy comedies, here presenting a tour de force of gags and memorable dialogues, mixing quirky, kitsch and hard-boiled elements. Narration is dazzling with an highly tense, propulsive, bebop beat. Despite being too long and repetitive, especially in the second half, the film is very nice entertainment. Almost very good

Section Perspectives

El Diablo entre las piernas (Devil Between the Legs) (Mexico / Spain, 2019, 29° , W. P. at TORONTO F.F.), 145’, by Arturo Ripstein. A startling, confident, complex and entirely bold depiction of the very specific sexual impulses and activities of a married couple in their 70s. Beatriz and 'El Viejo' (the Old Man) have been together for decades. Time has turned them into the same flesh, the same guts. They destroy and need each other: they share demons, memories, resentments. After decades of spitefulness, they seem to know one another inside out, but this doesn't prevent further escalation and infidelity. A retired homeopathic pharmacist, the Old Man now divides his time between their Mexico City home, where he shuffles around in his housecoat, raging against Beatriz, and secret visits to his slightly younger mistress. Beatriz, when not bearing the brunt of the Old Man's tirades, sneaks out to take tango lessons and to proposition her less aged dance partner. The Old Man lives on his grudge. Despite embarking on his own affair with a local hairdresser, his jealousy regarding her sexual past manifests itself as wild accusations of infidelity and violent outbursts. Beatriz lives on feeling desired and desirable. They have spent many years like that. They are intimate enemies. They live in a harmony of hate. Gradually audience learn their preferences and psychological quirks, grow to understand why they stick together rather than having separated long ago and see that the ways they can grate on and repel one another go hand-in-hand with the ways they mutually, and perversely, gratify. With their children having grown up and abandoned them long ago, the only person left to witness the aging couple's ever-escalating routine is Dinorah, the young maid who’s been with them long enough to know all their dirty secrets and will eventually take matters into her own hands. And that is when fate catches up to the old couple. Shooting in stunning black-and-white, Ripstein focuses on sexual, psychological and geriatric entanglements within the private quarters of this elderly married couple. The interaction between active libido and aging, floundering flesh leads to an occasionally hilarious, uncomfortable but also poignant masterpiece. Visual approach is seamlessly voyeuristic without ever seeming to be so. Ripstein’s camera moves through the couple’s house like a ghost to underscore the complexity of their relationship. Running the gamut from uncomfortably cruel to pleasingly transgressive, Beatriz’s suffocating sadness bleeds into senescent eroticism in this alluring tale of geriatric desire. Working as usual with his scenarist wife Paz Alicia Garciadiego and with lead actors with whom he’s collaborated before, Sylvia Pasquel and Alejandro Suarez. Both Pasquel and Suarez are playing dumpy, unkempt and decidedly unappealing characters. Daniel Giménez Castro as Beatriz's tango partner, Greta Cervantes as the servant and Patricia Reyes Spíndola (a favorite Ripstein’s actress since decades) as the Old Man’s mistress, are equally impressive. After almost 60 years of career Ripstein is considered the best Mexican director alive. Many of his films are related with an unique subject: the loneliness of souls. So, his style reflects his main concerns. Mise-en-scene and direction of the actors are fluid and perfectly managed in this somber, claustrophobic, slow but vital, credible and daring film. Excellent.

Nos ili zagovor netakikh (The Nose of Conspiracy of Mavericks) (Russia, 2020, w. p., 2°), 89’, by Andrey Khrzhanovsky. An extraordinary film essay that put together animation, footage and fictionalized scenes set to the score of ‘The Nose’, Shostakovich's eponymous 1920s opera. Legendary Russian veteran auteur Khrzhanovsky, a master of animation genre, brings audience on his stridently post-modernist path of narrative anti-drive, all digression with nary a plot, all cheek and panache. He mixes styles and techniques, ideas, anecdotes and even some insights into the human heart carefully disguised as jokes. Khrzhanovsky creates a gem from the future and the past, a groundbreaking requiem for the Russian avant-garde. Feature is a gorgeous potpourri that combines animation and opera to chronicle the Russian 20th century. On the plane, classics of Soviet cinema unspool on the monitors, while two gentlemen discuss Gogol's proto-surrealist 1836 novella’ The Nose’ and what it means to be civilized today. Anyway, beside the stylist surrealism and clever satire of Soviet Union era there is also a strong political focus on Stalin’s crimes, with a lot of information about thousands and thousands of innocent people sent to the Gulags or executed by shooting after being forced to confess what they never did. In fact the film shows truthful statistics of victims occurred after Communist Party leaders were given numerical quotas of "enemies" to be turned in, arrested and mostly killed, during late 1930s. Excellent.

Frantsuz (A Frenchman) (Russia, 2019, 6°, W. P. at OPEN RUSSIAN KINOTAVR F. F. 2019), 128’, by Andrei Smirnov. An outstanding existential drama, vital and melancholic, about a French exchange student's adventures in late 1950s Moscow, during Nikita Khrushchev’s era. It openly portrays the tragic lack of freedom, activity of informers and spies and poor condition of ordinary people, even after the famous 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet which denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. In 1957, a French student Pierre Duran arrives in Moscow for an internship at Moscow State University. Here he falls in love with the Bolshoi Theater ballerina Kira Galkina and meets her friend, photographer Valera Uspensky. Thanks to these acquaintances, Pierre is immersed in the cultural life of Moscow, not only official, but also the underground scene. For a year, Pierre has lived in Moscow for a lifetime, completely unlike everything he knew. But internship and acquaintance with different aspects of the life of Soviet people is not Pierre's only goal. He is looking for his father, a white anti-Bolshevik officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the late 1930s and deported in different Gulag in various regions of USSR. Veteran Andrei Smirnov was one of the best and brightest cinema auteurs to emerge from the Soviet 1960s. After directing 4 features he couldn't stand constant harassment from the authorities anymore, and at the end of 1970s he quit cinema direction for good. He only stuck around as a screenwriter and actor. But then, after 32 years, he returned with Žila-byla odna baba (2011). A Frenchman is a masterpiece, marked by a genuine humanistic approach that helps to avoid rhetoric and didacticism. Characters study is amazing, mise-en-scene is fluid and effective and acting is great. Smirnov proves to be discrete, educated, good-humoured, politically poignant while never dogmatic. Excellent.

One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (Canada, 2019, 4°, W. P. at TORONTO F.F.),113’, by Zacharias Kunuk. An amazing adventure tale that displays the cultural clash between Inuit people and white Canadian people. Set in Kapuivik, north Baffin Island, the film hinges on a pivotal 1961 encounter on spring sea ice between community Inuit leaders and a government emissary. At that time Noah Piugattuk's nomadic Inuit clan live and hunt by dogteam, just as his ancestors did when he was born in 1900. 'The Boss', a Canadian civil servant brought sugar and biscuits. An interpreter relays the actual message to the eldest of the hunters, Noah Piugattuk: in order for them to get an allowance for their children, Canadian law will force every Inuit to live in a settlement. During a painful dialogue, the Boss makes it clear that they will have to relinquish their nomadic lifestyle to move to the prefab village of Igloolikn. The filmmakers' collective Isuma, comprised of Inuit from Igloolik, shot this powerful film from the Inuit perspective in order to shape their own history. Director Kunuk employs approaches he used in his previous films. His multilayered film language combines myth, history, and folklore. But there are also elements of cultural comedy in the contrast between pragmatic Inuit and the odd, incomprehensible expectations of the government agent. The real Noah Piugattuk was born in 1900 and lived to be 96 years old. In that time he saw the decline of traditional practices that had persisted for thousands of years and the creation of a new relationship with the Canadian colonial state. Very good.

Documentaries

Panquiaco (Panama, 2020, w. p., 1°), 80’, by Ana Elena Tejera. A poignant film that bleeds narrative and documentary forms into reverie. It offers a very interesting portrait of a middle aged man who, after many years of work abroad, in Europe, tries to recover his own cultural identity in Central America. Cebaldo, a poor indigenous from Panama, left his family to immigrate in Portugal, where he became a fishermen's assistant in a fishing port in the north of the country. He suffers of nostalgia. In his loneliness, memories takes him away from his daily routine, immersing in a journey back to his village in Guna Yala, where a botanical doctor confronts him with the impossibility of returning to the past. He begins an intimate, philosophical reflection on personal and cultural homesickness, memory and identity. Ana Elena Tejera’s debut documentary is a hybrid movie that mixes documentary with fiction. The film was born from an investigation of oral history, myths of indigenous characters before colonization, and forgotten figures of Panamanian history. In fact for many native groups, the meaning of the sea goes much further, the sea is the place of origin, what we are and where we come from. Audience is brought along on a journey of an indigenous story of creation through a funerary ritual to the celebration of a political uprising. Cebaldo returns to Panama, where tradition lives on, but his youth is gone. There is a passing reference to Panquiaco, the man who showed Spanish conqueror Balboa the way to the Pacific. Poetic texts are mixed with strongly cinematic images to set the tone, which was partly inspired by director’s research into pre-colonial stories and myths. Very good.

Suzanne Daveau (Portugal, 2019, 3°, W. P. in Portugal on 22 October 2019), 115’, by Luísa Homem. An intimate portrait of a courageous French geographer from postwar period, during 1950s, to new millennium, and of her love story and marriage with a Portuguese colleague. Suzanne Daveau, now 94-year-old, knew early on she was destined for adventures in nature. At the end of World War II, when she was about to graduate in geography, she set off into the big wide world searching for suitable subjects for scientific study. Her hunger for knowledge took her to countries such as Africa and Portugal, where she spent many happy years with her Portuguese colleague geographer, historian and anthropologist Orlando Ribeiro, who became her husband. This documentary portrait covers all the themes of Daveau’s rich life: from her field research and private life to feminism and the influence of the modern age on family relationships and science. A University lecturer in Paris and in Lisbon, Daveau speaks with unadulterated love and respect about Ribeiro, an esteemed academic who is considered the renovator of research studies on Geography in Portugal. Documentary filmmaker Luísa Homem depicts in detail her protagonist’s passionate life through an inexhaustible series of stunning archival photos and home videos recorded by Daveau herself, who speaks openly, extensively and full of wonder about life and the world around her. Very good.

Tierra adento (Inland) (Panama, 2019, 1°, W. P. at HABANA F. F. 2018), 70’, by Mauro Colombo. An interesting trip to one of most intriguing and dangerous area in Central America. A political film that gives a full presentationn of Darién Gap, a dense and mysterious jungle that divides Panama and Colombia. At the porous and treacherous border between these two countries, guerrillas, immigrants, indigenous people, farmers, drug traffickers, local police, and wild animals cross paths. In his documentary feature debut, Italian filmmaker Mauro Colombo who currently lives and works in Panama, approaches the jungle and its characters from an anthropological perspective and records the deforestation of this area, which highly affects the people living there. He transports the audience to the heart of the conflict and allows to experience the intensity of the jungle itself. He focuses on finding meaning in this no man’s land, as a metaphor for the wildness within us. Good.

A Rifle and a Bag (India / Romania / Italy / Qatar, 2020, w. p., 1°), 89’, by Isabella Rinaldi, Cristina Hanes and Arya Rothe. An interesting and accomplished portrait of ex-Naxalites guerrillas that focus not only on ordinary life but also on human rights and striking contradictions in the institutions of the rule of law in contemporary India. Based in a Maharashtra’s village, Somi is in her twenties and pregnant with her second child. Together with her younger husband she prepares for this new phase of their parenthood. It means that their son has to go to school, but as an ex-Naxalite that is tough to achieve in contemporary India, where people like them are third-rate citizens. They lack the certificates and an opaque bureaucratic process doesn't help. Once, Somi and her husband were communist rebels fighting for the rights of Indian tribes. However, to safeguard their family's welfare, they surrendered to the government in exchange for marginal compensation and simple accommodation. Naxalites are far-left radical communists, supportive of Mao Zedong's political ideology. Their armed groups fight a controversial guerrilla in about 20 states of Indian Federation. Their origin can be traced to the split in 1967 of the ‘Communist Party of India (Marxist)’ following the Naxalbari peasant uprising, leading to the formation of the’ Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)’ two years later. Initially, the movement had its epicentre in West Bengal. In later years, it spread to less developed areas of rural southern and eastern India, such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana through the activities of underground groups. Independent sources tell that Naxalites are forcing local tribal population to serve in their armed groups. Italian Isabella Rinaldi, Romanian Cristina Hanes and Indian Arya Rothe concentrate on Somi's close family ties, depicting an intimate portrait of simple people with a new hope to live in peace and avoiding rhetoric. Very good.

On a le temps pour nous (Time is on Our Side) (Belgium / Burkina Faso / Senegal, 2019, 3°, W.P. at FESPACO F. F. 2019), 67’, by Katy Léna Ndiaye. A committed documentary about a new step in democracy process in African Burkina Faso. The democracy that the first president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, introduced was followed by almost three decades of dictatorship under Blaise Compaoré. This regime was ended after a pacific popular insurrection in October 2014. With the inauguration of Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in 2015, Burkina Faso finally has a democratically elected president again. Rapper, poet and activist Serge Bambara, a.k.a. ‘Smockey’, Bambara records socially-conscious rap in line with his political activism. He is the leader of ‘Balai Citoyen’, a group of young militants who were protagonists of the fight against Camporé’s regime. But his country is now in a transitional period and working democracy is still fragile and must be consolidated. Uncertainty awaits Kaboré's presidency and Smockey monitors it all. Documentary director Katy Léna Ndiaye realizes a full portrait of Burkina Faso context through interviews to activists and ordinary people and images of both political meetings and demonstrations and Bambara’s artistic performances. Trough the recording of Serge Bambara’s words, during public meetings and informal reunions with friends, she tries to politically inspire, engage and mobilize Burkina Faso's citizens to collectively achieve their democratic ideals. Good.

Shut Up Sona (India, 2019, 1°, W. P. at MUMBAI F. F.), 85’, by Deepti Gupta. A challenging portrait of famous 43-year-old Indian singer, music composer and lyricist Sona Mohapatra. She has performed in concerts across the world and has been featured in albums, singles, concert webcasts, music videos, Bollywood films and advertisements. The film revolves around her journey as a rock star, her brand of music, love for her country's roots and culture. In her music and performances she fights against sexism and the patriarchy and has become symbol of hope of a larger movement. A lawsuit for blasphemy is the least of singer Sona Mohapatra's problems. She is being sued by a religious community because her musical interpretation of an 800-year-old poem is too Western, vulgar and provides a poor example to the young. She receives death threats. Trolls insult her on social media day and night. In addition, she is barred from performing lucrative gigs at universities because she accused a powerful promoter of excluding female artists in an open letter. But Sona won't stop drawing attention to abuses. However loudly the machos and misogynists bay for her to shut up. In her documentary feature debut cinematographer Deepti Gupta realizes a a no-holds look into the life of singer Sona Mohapatra who takes on India's deep-rooted patriarchy while also fighting for gender equality in the music business. Deepti Gupta followed the rebellious Sona for three years, resulting in an intimate portrait that tells of Sona's uncomfortable relationship with her country. It shows how tough the fight for equal rights is in a country with such strong patriarchal traditions and a history of violently suppressing women. Very good.

Women According to Men (Iran, 2020, w. p., 1°), 90’, by Saeed Nouri. An amazing film essay about the portrayal of Iranian women between 1932 and 1979, made up entirely of film clip from National Film Archive of Iran. And, at the same time, it includes footage that resume of all the laws in favor of women rights before 1979. Before the Islamic Revolution in Iran, women's lives were strongly determined by two contradictory factors: the traditional patriarchy and the shah's modernization policies. This film-excerpt collage starts in 1932, the year the first Iranian film with sound was made, and ends in 1979 revealing how, during this period, women were depicted by generally male film directors. But there were also films directed by women and leading film stars who weren’t allowed to thrive in their fields. Melodramas on love and deceit, arranged marriages and polygamy alternated with thrillers about independent women, social dramas that critiqued the degradation of women and moral comedies in which, for instance, amended family laws that gave women the right to divorce their husbands drove the plot. The compilation ends with images of a strong, combative woman from The Ballad of Tara, by Bahram Bayzai, which was released in 1979 and immediately banned. Saeed Nuri sifted 10,000 hours of film in order to highlight women's film roles in Iran cinema between 1932 and 1979. Very good.

 

 

49. ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2020

22 / 01 - 02 / 02 / 2020, Rotterdam

Film Festival Rotterdam

 

Film Festival Rotterdam

Film Festival Rotterdam

Film Festival Rotterdam

Film Festival Rotterdam

Film Festival Rotterdam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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