Category: default

What to Look Out for at the 75th Locarno Film Festival

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The Locarno Film Festival returns once again for its 75th edition, providing its characteristic and eclectic mix of arthouse cinema and crowd-pleasing fare. Whether you’re an arduous cinephile or someone just looking for a good time, the cinemas alongside the Lago Maggiore — stretching from the magical Piazza Grande to more intimate indoor theatres — have a little something for everyone.

If 2021 was testing the waters within strict coronavirus protocols, 2022 promises to be even more relaxed, fully returning to the traditional hustle and bustle that characterises the joy and discovery of in-person film festivals. Giona A. Nazzaro returns as artistic director for a second year, providing a steady hand to an event steeped in tradition but still committed to pursuing new and exciting art forms.

Consider the contrast between the opening film and my most anticipated competition inclusion. The opening ceremony is yet another American action film, David Leitch’s unavoidable Bullet Train. Starring Brad Pitt as an assassin on a high-speed Japanese rail-line, I have been subjected to the trailer at least 100 times in cinemas; so many times in fact, that it gives off the impression that it simply won’t be very good.

Meanwhile in the Concorso internazionale, legendary Russian director Alexander Sokurov returns after seven years with Skazka (Fairytale) — pictured below. It’s a mysterious hybrid effort blending archive and newly-shot material that comments on both dictators and the fate of the planet. Rejected by Cannes due to political reasons, it sounds like a fascinating experiment that is sorely needed as the Russian state is slowly collapsing.

Skazka

If Sokurov is the big name on the arthouse scene, the other directors in the competition are unknown to me, stretching from Italy to Brazil to Indonesia. All promise fascinating perspectives: there is a COVID-19 immigrant drama in the form of Mahesh Narayanan’s Ariyippu; a study of toxic masculinity in Bowling Saturne (Saturn Bowling); sea-bound drama in Human Flowers of Flesh; and a look at modern faith in the Austrian Catholic boarding school film Serviam – Ich will dienen (Serviam – I Will Serve).

More populist efforts can be found back on Piazza Grande with the Daisy Edgar-Jones starring Where the Crawdads Sing (which I’ll save for streaming) and My Neighbor Adolf, which, yes, sounds exactly like its title suggests. For those more interested in cinematic history, Douglas Sirk’s exquisite Imitation of Life (1958) plays on 35mm (as part of a wider retrospective), while New Wave-heads can get their kicks with Laurie Anderson’s 1986 Avantgarde concert movie Home of the Brave.

It’s usually around the edges that a festival truly comes to life. (Last year, my most notable experience was a Peter Greenaway film that didn’t even play officially at the festival.) For first and second-time directors, Concorso Cineasti del presente provides a chance to discover emerging talents, while the truly out there Fuori concorso section promises a zone where cinema is set free from any expectations or tradition.

I never try to read too much into what is playing, enjoying the thrill of the new upon walking into a cinema with little idea of what to expect; making the Locarno Film Festival such a unique experience. I shall be attending between 8th-12th August to report from the frontlines, providing reviews and insights from one of the best film festivals in the world.

The Locarno Film Festival runs from August 3rd to August 13th.

The 21st Transylvania Film Festival implores us to make films, not war

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

This year’s Transylvania Film Festival, the biggest film festival in Romania, comes with a challenge: “make films, not war.” Representing a country that borders both war-torn Ukraine and close-friends Moldova — also under threat from Russian aggression — TIFF is deeply committed to showing off the best of cinema in extremely troubled times.

While cinema itself cannot offer the vaccine, it might be able to offer a balm; as shown by their prior success in putting on in-person events in 2020 and 2021 while other summer festivals switched to digital-only editions. Set in Cluj-Napoca — known as Romania’s second city after Bucharest, and often touted as its creative centre and an LGBT hub — the 21st edition of the festival switches its attention to the war in Ukraine, not through furthering division but by allowing the power of cinema to show off our common humanity.

Therefore, while Ukrainian refugees and citizens are given free access to films at the festival, and Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s Ukrainian Pamfir (pictured above) is a hotly anticipated title, Russian films aren’t completely cut off either. Kirill Serebrennikov’s 2021 Cannes film Petrov’s Flu plays, as well as Lado Kvataniya’s serial killer drama The Execution. The latter plays as part of the competition series, which focuses on first and second features, and has counted films such as Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, 2020), Oslo 31st August (Joachim Trier, 2012) and Cristian Mungiu’s debut Occident (2002) among its previous winners.

In fact, TIFF’s success has helped to put Romanian cinema on the map, often starting as a launching pad for its belated 00s New Wave, a movement that’s still going strong and situates Romanian filmmakers among some of the best in the world. It makes me particularly excited for Romanian competition entries A Higher Law (Octav Chelaru) and Mikado (Emanuel Pârvu). Over four days I’ll be digging into what the festival has to offer, providing dispatches from the front-line of cutting-edge world cinema. Follow our coverage on Dmovies

TIFF Official Competition 2022

A Higher Law (Romania, Germany, Serbia, Octav Chelaru)

Babysitter (Canada, Monia Chokri)

Beautiful Beings (Iceland, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson)

Feature Film About Life (Lithuania, Dovile Sarutyte)

Gentle (Hungary, László Csuja, Anna Nemes)

Mikado (Czech Republic, Romania, Emanuel Pârvu)

Magnetic Beats (France, Germany, Vincent Maël Cardona)

The Last Execution (Germany, Franziska Stünkel)

The Night Belongs To Lovers (France, Julien Hilmoine)

The Execution (Russia, Lado Kvantaniya)

Utama (Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Alejandro Loayza Grisi)

Pamfir (Ukraine, France, Poland, Chile, Germany, Luxemburg, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk)

Documentary Competition

You Are Ceaușescu to Me (Romania, Sebastian Mihăilescu)

Bucolic (Poland, Karol Pałka)

Excess Will Save Us (Sweden, Morgane Dziurla-Petit)

Chanel 54 (Argentina, Lucas Larriera)

Brotherhood (Italy, Czech Republic, Francesco Montagner)

Mother Lode (Switzerland, France, Italy, Matteo Tortone)

Ostrov (Switzerland, Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop)

The Plains (Australia, David Easteal)

Atlantide (Italy, Yuri Ancarani)

For A Fistful Of Fries (Belgium, France, Jean Libon and Yves Hinant)

Transilvania Film Festival runs from June 17th to the 26th, 2022.

The Munich Film Festival is leading Germany’s diversity charge

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Between March 25th and 27th, I had the privilege to attend Seeing and being seen: Representation in Film, a conference on the need for diversity in German cinema organised by the Film Festival Munich at the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing. Once again, I am reminded of how gorgeous the Bavarian countryside is, with the conference’s location, lying on the banks of the shimmering Starnberger See, offering the perfect opportunity for spirited discussions, inspiration and the possibility to find new solutions.

Having previously written an article on the topic for Exberliner, it was a pleasure to meet many of my interviewees in person, as well as see how seemingly-abstract discussions within the space of diversity can actually be translated into actionable goals. Artistic director Christoph Gröner and programmer Julia Weigl allowed for open and spirited discussion, including many disagreements and heated moments. Although everything remained civil, it showed that this is not just a one-and-done topic, but worth revisiting one again and again.

What really opened my eyes was the keynote talk by Mia Bays, director of the BFI Film Fund, who, alongside Head of Inclusion Melanie Hoyes (pictured below), reiterated the idea that diversity in cinema shouldn’t be seen as enforcing quotas, but an opportunity for better stories to be told. Their film fund, financed primarily by the national lottery, has already created a criteria which can help productions to be more inclusive, and by extension, more authentic.

Rocks (Sarah Gavron, 2020), the scrappy British film with a cast of young girls almost completely of colour, was displayed as a case in point. Not only does the film show a part of London life often missing on screen, but the funding came with the stipulation that mentorship, shadowing and learning opportunities would be offered throughout the entire creation of the film. It shows that creating diversity in film is not just about representation, but making sure that everyone gets equal opportunities when it comes to being in front of and behind the camera.

While there’s much to complain about in the UK, especially with regards to certain aspects of our cinematic productions, our commitment to diversity in film, although imperfect, does provide a roadmap for other countries to adopt. Germans from immigration backgrounds and Germans of colour seemed impressed with the British model, hoping that German production companies can adopt similar ideas.\

.

Making it happen

One notable film fund already looking towards using a checklist to get a better understanding of talent applying, and in my mind, already producing some great stuff, like FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET] (Nicolaas Schmidt, 2021) and No Hard Feelings (Faraz Shariat, 2020; pictured at the top), is the MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, heralded by Helge Albers, who was also in attendance at the festival.

Naturally, having the so-called decision-makers in the same rooms as the talent is crucial in order to see that there are thousands of stories just begging to be told. For example, director and actor Sheri Hagen (pictured below), who has been acting in German cinema since the mid-1990s, mentioned several fascinating projects she’s currently working on that she’s still trying to get off the ground. Her immense talent was already on show in the two German films screening as great case-points: sci-fi short film I Am (Jerry Hoffmann, 2021) and Precious Ivie (Sarah Blaßkiewitz, 2021). The British counterpoint, made with BFI money, was the BAFTA-winning short Black Cop (Cherish Oteka, 2022), showing the type of bold cinematic vision that can be created with public funds.

Having somehow interviewed all three directors previously, the choice of films felt rather serendipitous; and it was wonderful to see the two shorts, previously experienced on my laptop, on the big screen. Both countries can produce fine cinematic visions when the money and the talent align, with symposiums such as this helping to bridge the gap and allowing these types of diverse representations to occur.

Of particular interest to me, was finding out about the UK Global Screen Fund, where the BFI is looking for a minority stake in co-productions with other countries. While events like the Berlinale are often dominated by French-German co-productions, British-German co-productions are pretty are. The German talent in attendance were also particularly interested in the possibility of working with the British, especially as Brexit can often make us Brits feel further away. Here’s hoping we start to see some great cross-cultural collaborations coming up in the next few years.

The weakest Berlinale I’ve ever attended announces its winners…

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Trust my luck: despite having seen 15 of the 18 entries in the Berlin Film Festival competition, I missed Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s second feature and the Golden Bear winner. Congratulations to her, although I cannot possibly pass judgement on the victory considering I have not seen the film. Having also missed Synonyms (Nadav Lapiud) in 2019, Touch me Not (Adina Pintilie) in 2018, Body or Soul (Ildiko Enyedi) in 2017 and Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi) in 2016, I am obviously cursed.

Perhaps Alcarràs is a masterpiece, but the buzz around it didn’t suggest an unequivocal five-star film. In fact, throughout my entire foray through the Competition, there was only one film that will stay with me forever: Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini, a fantastic, multifaceted, debate-provoking work that naturally went home without a single award. I thought it might at least win best performance for Michael Thomas, who remains constantly compelling and larger-than-life throughout. But he lost to a worthy winner, the fantastic Meltem Kaptan, who simply transforms Andreas Dresen’s Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush (pictured below) through sheer force of personality alone.

Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush

It’s a strange year when, despite severe dialect differences between North Tyrol and Bremen, the two best competition entries are in the German language. Carlo Chatrian, in his third year as the artistic director, and generally doing a good job shaking the Festival up while sticking to its experimental roots, promised less politics and more love stories this year.

Despite this, the politically-minded tales were invariably more interesting than the preponderance of middling to bad French and Franco-German romances — films like Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade, Nicolette Krebitz’s A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love and François Ozon’s Peter Von Kant (pictured at the top of this article) -that dominated the competition this year. Occasionally, these safe middle-European choices resulted in Mikhaël Hers’s lovely Passengers of the Night (no awards, pictured below), but most of these picks would have felt more comfortable for the less provocative Special Gala section.

Further afield, francophiles worldwide have had a field day, considering that Rithy Panh’s Everything Will Be Ok (the rare entirely political film that fell apart in its ponderous narration), Ursula Meier’s The Line (feature image) and Denis Côté’s That Kind of Summer were also in French while being from Cambodia, Switzerland and Quebec respectively. Honestly, what’s left for Cannes?

Passengers of the Night

Along with an overall ARTE-sanctioned, EU-friendly aesthetic, whiteness, middle-age and heterosexuality was the name of the game: over and over again. I’m not usually the one to care too much about film festivals being diverse just for the sake of it, but I felt the lack of worldwide perspectives here in favour of a particularly played-out white, straight sexuality. Films that tried to do something a bit different like Isaki Lacuesta’s One Year, One Night, looking at the after-effects of the Bataclan attacks, barely interrogated the current political situation in Europe, aiming instead at pop-psychology and banal romantic drama.

In this respect, Rimini, which actively confronted the ugliness at the heart of the continent, or Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush, which forthrightly criticised the issues of American imperialism across the world and how that can even be felt in Europe, felt far more honest, and heartfelt.

The few Asian exceptions, like Indonesia’s Before, Now & Then (Kamila Andini), China’s Return to Dust (Li Ruijun) and Korea’s The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sangsoo, pictured below) were often more psychologically fascinating and aesthetically innovative than their European counterparts, but I can’t claim to even truly love those films either. Then from North and Central America was Natalia López Gallard’s indecipherable Robe of Gems and Phyllis Nagy’s Call Jane (which I missed), neither of which dominated critical conversation at the festival. Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, Africa and Australasia were completely absent.

It’s sad to say, considering how much I love the Berlinale, and how I actually consider myself to be rather generous, but this year was probably the worst I’ve attended. Perhaps the pandemic has made it difficult, perhaps the Franco-German alliance is a little too strong, perhaps I am particularly cynical this time round, but the festival might do well to ditch the love stories next year. Failing that, maybe they can just find better ones instead.

Hong Sangsoo

Full List of Awards:

Golden Bear

Alcarràs (Carla Simón)

Silver Bear: Grand Jury Prize

The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)

Silver Bear: Jury Prize

Robe of Gems (Natalia Lopez Gallardo)

Silver Bear for Best Director

Claire Denis (Both Sides of the Blade)

Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance

Meltem Kaptan (Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush)

Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance

Laura Basuki (Before, Now & Then)

Silver Bear for Best Screenplay

Laila Stieler (Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush)

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution

Rithy Panh (Everything Will Be Ok)

Silver Bear: Special Mention

A Piece of Sky (Michael Koch)

Bringing in the big hitters: a preview of this year’s Berlinale

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

If you judge a festival by the wider impact it had on the cinema scene, then last year’s bed-bound Berlinale seemed to break through its digital confines and become an unmitigated success. Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn (2021) had a fairly decent American release, Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) was a petite, tear-provoking miracle, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021) became the unofficial film of Euro 2020, and I’m Your Man (Maria Schrader, 2021) was a rare cross-cultural German hit. It’s a reminder that good films are still good no matter how you watch them.

This year the organisers seem keen to repeat their success, so an all-star Berlinale competition team have arrived. There’s Denis Côté with That Kind of Summer, perhaps promising something substantial after his last few amusing trifles. There’s Claire Denis with Both Sides of The Blade (pictured above), probably poised for a hit by reuniting with Juliette Binoche. François Ozon is gender-flipping Fassbinder with Peter Von Kant. Ulrich Seidl is returning to Austria with Rimini. And Hong Sangsoo is, well, making a Hong Sang-soo film with The Novelist’s Film.

While Claire Denis is actually a newcomer, there’s a whole host of repeat offenders in the competition, with editor Natalia Lopez Gallardo the only debutant in competition with Robe of Gems. France is well-represented with seven films; Germany with four; and there’s an American entry in the 60s feminist drama Call Jane (Phyllis Nagy). Further afield, there’s Dark Glasses from Dario Argento in the Berlinale Special, Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet in Encounters, and Alain Guiraudie is opening Panorama with Nobody’s Hero.

With a coronavirus-prevention regime that the Chinese Olympic committee would appreciate — three vaccinations, full FFP2 masking, daily tests, no parties (at least, I got no invites), booking your tickets in advance, and 50% capacity screenings — the Berlinale is actually going beyond the requirements of the QR code-happy Berlin state to promise a truly virus-free Festival. If your phone dies, it’s basically game over, so I’m bringing two charger packs.

The time has probably passed to write something like “cinema is back” — it actually never went away, it just got smaller. But Germany’s biggest festival is brave to mount anything in-person at all, especially as Sundance and Rotterdam succumbed to Omicron-inspired digital editions. I’m hoping for cinematic excellence, a dozen negative tests and a return to the kind of buzz and vibe that only a physical festival can bring.

The Berlinale Film Festival runs from 10-20th February. Follow DMovies for all the coverage you need.

Estonian Dispatch: The First Feature Competition Round-Up

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

There are few greater pleasures than watching new visions by debut directors: offering rough and ready versions of ideas that they simply couldn’t wait to get off the page and onto the big screen. The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival — celebrating its 25th year — offered all of this and more with its First Feature Competition, with 20 films from first-time filmmakers that have little in common besides a desire to make a strong mark upon the cinema stage.

With minimal sleep but plenty of company and even more coffee, I managed to see all 20 films in this debut stage in the small yet bustling city at the heart of Northern Europe. Braving the cold, rain, snow, sleet and slippery streets, and catching a mixture of cinema screenings and screeners — two experienced while waiting in airports — I can safely say that the programme featured a strong combination of crowdpleasers and arthouse experiences, showing off the next generation of filmmakers in style. As Festival Director Tiina Lokk told us in our podcast interview: “There could be mistakes, but you see the talent.“

Other Cannibals

Perhaps the best example of combining both broad appeal with an intense personal vision is the First Feature Competition winner Other Cannibals (Francesco Sossai, pictured above). Beloved by basically every British person I met in the festival, this German-produced, South Tyrol-shot black-and-white tragicomedy is a loopy journey exploring an unusual friendship with shades of the oddball humour of Ben Wheatley. It wouldn’t have been my first choice for the winner — that would’ve been the touching German drama Precious Ivie (Sarah Blaßkiewitz), exploring racism in Germany with great nuance and humanity — but its a deserved winner nonetheless with the potential to be a breakout hit.

The biggest commercial success is probably destined for Immersion (Nicolás Postiglione), a taut Chilean thriller that uses a simple conceit — man stuck on a boat with two strangers and his obstinate daughters — that could easily be remade on Michigan’s Lake Superior. Expect a streaming pick up for this one, which shared the Jury Special Prize with the French Her Way (Cécile Ducrocq), which boasted a brilliant, pick-of-the-fest performance from Call My Agent’s Laure Calamy as a sex worker raising funds for her son’s cooking education.

Often the most interesting visions win the critic’s awards, with the FIPRESCI prize going to Aleksandra Terpińska’s Other People (pictured below),which adapted the unusually-written rap novel by Dorota Maslowska to excellent effect; providing a panoramic portrait of Polish society which doesn’t shy away from its savage critique of unfettered consumerism. A perfect movie to catch just ahead of the Christmas holidays. Using a great array of cinematic tricks, it deserved to be joined by Lithuania’s Feature Film About Life (Dovilė Šarutytė) for its affecting blend of narrative fiction of home-video, but which failed to win any awards.

Other People

I’m broadly happy with the awards, but it is a shame that Asian efforts — from the incredibly well-shot black-and-white, dream-like vision of Chinese film Who Is Sleeping in Silver Grey (Liao Zihao, pictured in header) to the dour, depressing yet truly original Dozens of Norths (Koji Yamamura) from Japan to India’s whimsical The Cloud & The Man (Abhinandan Banerjee)— missed out on any awards. In fact, Immersion was the only non-European film to win an award in this section, making it a more insular, Euro-centric ceremony than it needed to be.

As a British critic, I’m often harshest on my own country’s efforts, which is why it was a shame that The Score (Malachi Smyth) failed to live up to the hype of its ‘heist-musical’ designation. A more un-categorisable entry was Adam Donen’s deeply idiosyncratic Alice, Through the Looking: À la recherche d’un lapin perdu (pictured below), a phantasmagorical journey through space, time, memory, filmmaking, philosophy and almost everything else you can think of. It was a film that didn’t really succeed, but it was deeply interesting nonetheless. Equally entertaining was our conversation with the filmmaker, which you can listen to over on Mixcloud.

Watching movies themselves is only one part of the pleasures involved in a film festival, especially one as egalitarian as Tallinn Film Festival. Where in Berlinale and Cannes access to talent is moderated through PRs, regulated meeting slots, and the dreaded roundtable, Tallinn allows you to easily share drinks, conversations and good times with the talent themselves, especially the debut directors and actors who are just as glad to be there as you. This kind of direct communication allows for the free transfer of ideas and debates about cinema and national character types, giving one the sense of truly being at the centre of the film world, if only for ten days.

Alice, Through the Looking

An excursion to Estonian’s second largest city of Tartu — which will be a European Capital City of Culture in 2024 — was also included as part of the festival’s hospitality package, expanding my understanding of the Baltic nation’s make-up. And whether it was the innovative, digital-first national museum, the melancholic ruins and bridges above the town, the bohemian river-side cafés and bars, or the pink-pastel buildings that suggest Wes Anderson’s next movie, it’s these types of small journeys that definitely expand what a film festival can provide: not just watching one film after another, but the opportunity to engage with a larger cultural context. Estonians don’t just provide cinema, they provide a true sense of unforced community. I simply can’t wait to visit my Baltic friends again this time next year.

Walking with Peter Greenaway — exclusive work-in-progress report

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Walking to Paris might be the most wholesome movie Peter Greenaway has ever made. Known for the provocations of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & her Lover (1989) and the dense tableaus of Prospero’s Books (1991), this late-career effort is simple, sweet, and a complete delight to watch.

It tells the story of Constantin Brâncusi (played by Emun Eliott, Paolo Bernadini, Jacopo Uccella and Andrea Scarduzio due to difficulties in shooting) who walked all the way from Bucharest to Paris in 1903 and 1904. We see, in typical Greenaway fashion, a travel list: Brâncusi packing a hammer, tobacco, empty writing paper, Romanian coins and notes and various other provisions. Soon he sets on a picaresque tale, meeting various women, farmers and animals along the way.

For someone who has constantly claimed to be against narrative cinema, Greenaway’s latest is actually one of his most straightforward tales, telling a clear story of one man’s journey from A to B. There is a certain playfulness in the second narrative layer, told from the perspective of Brâncusi’s son (Remo Girone), who helps to question whether or not this journey took place at all. And while many directors would choose to over-sentimentalise such an immense trip, Greenaway prefers to focus in on the details — the practicalities of travel as well as the way it bled into Brâncusi’s work, claimed here to be some of the most important of the 20th century.

This is not realism by any stretch of the imagination — for example, we don’t follow an exact map of the so-called journey, with Brâncusi seeming to go straight from Romania to Germany — but a walk recounted through memory and representation. In the end, Brâncusi’s walk becomes an ode to all economic migrants who couldn’t afford the train fare; his work just happened to be in the sculpting business.

I was lucky enough to watch the film at a closed screening in Locarno at an art gallery, where I talked to producer, gallery-owner, and friend of Greenaway, Arminio Sciolli, before and after the film. It was originally intended to premiere at Cannes in 2016, but it has been dogged by production issues for the last few years. It is sad that such a respected auteur has been unable to release what is one of his most mellow and enjoyable works in recent years.

The film is not totally finished, needing work on the colour grading, the editing at the end and certain shots of the Eiffel Tower. Nonetheless, it still shows off what a gift Greenaway is to cinema — whether it’s recreating classical nude portraiture, his contemplative conversations, or a stunning shot of the Eiffel magically perched in a Romanian field. Once it is finally ready, they are eyeing a festival premiere next year, potentially Moscow Film Festival in April. While not a major work, fans of Greenaway’s penchant for frames within frames, full-frontal nudity and a healthy, positive attitude towards sexual relationships will be in for a treat. Here’s hoping that the film can soon see the wider release that it deserves.

Locarno Film Festival 2021: a terrific Ticinese time

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

On the surface, a film festival is ostensibly a place where you watch films on seats of varying comfort. One writes about the films and makes comparisons between them. But a film festival is also about the location in which you watch them, the people that you meet and how you are feeling during that time. Naturally, my own reviews are influenced by my sleep, mood, comfort and hunger levels. There’s been many festivals that I haven’t enjoyed simply because there was nothing interesting surrounding the films that I saw or the vibe was just off. Even my first Locarno, despite the great films, was a little lonesome, as I had fewer surrounding experiences than I had this time.

After all, the second best thing about a film festival apart from the films is talking about the films, whether it’s over a beer, just after a screening or in a garden-party set straight out of the Finzi-Continis. It’s yet another reminder of the magical connections that can be made within a space where everyone is just as enthusiastic about film culture as you are. On the key metric of connections, conversations and cultural experiences, Locarno 2021 was just as good as a film festival can get.

Medea

One experience truly stood out: after hearing about industry lunches, I sent an email asking to be invited. I was graciously squeezed in and enjoyed a buffet meal featuring skewered chicken, glorious salads and macaroni pasta, all washed down with a few glasses of Merlot di Bianchi. Once there I heard from a Lugano-based journalist that Peter Greenaway’s unfinished Walking to Paris was being shopped around and looking for bidders (not an official festival entry). This led me to an art gallery perched on top of a small castle designed by none other than Leonardo DiVinci himself. One couldn’t ask for a better preview of Greenaway’s latest art-obsessed piece, telling the story of Constantin Brâncusi’s long journey from Romania to Paris.

The castle was designed to fight off the Milanese. The Swiss won. I asked the gallery assistant showing me around if he was happy to be Swiss instead of Italian. He replied that he was first and foremost Ticinese. It reminded me that the spaces that you live and navigate culture in matter. So do the ways in which you move from place to place. Taking the Alpine express from Zurich to Locarno was a particularly revelatory experience. One second the signs and announcements were in German. After emerging through a tunnel into Ticino, everything changed to Italian. It was like entering into a completely different world. Like Brâncusi, the longer trip made me appreciate the city in a whole new light.

Cop Secret

If the countryside and architecture feel timeless, the seemingly steadfast Swiss (slash Ticinese) are always open to trying new things, with Locarno opening itself up to wider audiences by embracing genre. Beckett (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino) and Free Guy (Shawn Levy) — both Hollywood-backed, large budget productions — made the headlines, but there was also a noticeably different genre entry in Cop Secret (pictured above). According to director Hannes Þór Halldorsson and the crew, who I had the privilege of meeting, the film, which aped buddy cop classics such as Tango and Cash (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1989) 48 Hours (Walter Hill, 1982) and Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1989), is a complete fantasy. No street cops in Iceland have guns. They rarely shoot up banks either. It is a purely cinematic kind of action-comedy, foregoing logic for the laughs and thrills instead.

Auteur Abel Ferrara took to genre too with Zeros and Ones (which won the best director award) ,ten times more serious than Cop Secret and about a hundred times more confusing. Ethan Hawke was tasked as the archetypal American hero to investigate a secret that could collapse the Catholic church. Here the New York director took the moral muddiness of Le Carré spy thrillers and turned it into a positive quagmire.

Zeros and Ones may have straddled the difference between genre and despair, but other films outright embraced the latter idea, creating films with deep, wounding voids at their centre. Medea (Alexander Zeldovich, pictured top) transformed the classic Greek myth to the modern Russian expat generation, telling the story of a woman who would do anything to reverse the effects of ageing. I found it to be a haunting epic with extraordinary power, buoyed by an exceptional Tinatin Dalakishvili performance. Likewise, Luzifer (Peter Brunner) took the void literally, with its continuous revisiting of a cave in the side of a mountain, supposedly the place where the devil may reside. But while Medea felt open and had the feeling it could go anywhere, Luzifer, despite an excellent Franz Rogowski performance, sadly had nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, The Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, pictured below), the blackest of comedies from Spain, and a special mention winner, used deadpan framing to portray the call of cult conspiracies, leading to a truly whacky experience. Judging from fellow reactions, expect this competition film to have the longest legs.

The Sacred Spirit

Quality can often be a question of ambition, with many truly ambitious discoveries found in Concorso Cineaste del Presente section, which focuses on first, second and third features. One can sense the effort the programmers went to in order to create a truly diverse programme, spanning from the standout Streams (Mehdi Hmili; pictured at the top), a breathlessly exciting investigation of contemporary and contradictory Tunisian culture, to Wet Sand (Elene Naveriani) — winner of the Best Actor award for Gia Agumava — a quiet plea for more humanity towards Georgia’s LGBT citizens. Other complaints against national culture included the Mexican Mostro (José Pablo Escamilla), an investigation of the underclass which combined experimental tropes with slice-of-life drama to ultimately middling effect.

On a purely formal basis, the most credit and appreciation must go to FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]. Set on the Hamburg U3 circle train, it shows director Nicolaas Schmidt commit to a simple conceit with truly poignant results. I watched that one on the way to the festival, my own train journey going by and making for a truly three-dimensional experience. It’s another reminder that films never exist in the void, but are innately tied up in the way that they are seen. While trepidatious on my way here, I leave feeling deeply excited about the potential for world cinema to show me new things while finding new ways of telling those stories. It reaffirms the Swiss (slash Ticinese) festival as one of the best in the world.

I can’t wait to go back.

Locarno 2021 preview: a return to the magic of in-person discovery

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Festivals are constantly evolving, having to adapt to new forms of cinematic languages and formats. I’ve covered London, SXSW, Berlinale and several short film festivals from the comfort of my own bedroom, all the while craving the intimacy and distraction-free nature of a proper event. While digital festivals are great for expanding accessibility, they miss the same sense of immersion and discovery, creating moments that stick with you due to the context within which they’re seen.

Newly-appointed artistic director Giona Nazzaro, previously General Delegate of Venice’s International Film Critics’ Week, has a huge challenge ahead to defend Locarno’s claim as one of the most fascinating international arthouse film festivals in the world.

It’s great to see that Locarno is screening over 200 films in cinemas perched on the gorgeous Lago Maggiore. Nazarro agrees, but to a more orthodox degree, telling DMovies that: “If a festival takes place online, it’s not a festival… a festival is an expression of the community.”

Locarno
Vortex, Gaspar Noé

And what a great community Locarno is — look past the extortionate prices and you see a cosy bustling town filled with cute cafés, homely grottoes and stunning vistas, all without the queuing stress typically found in a festival of this magnitude. It’s tempting to call it my first “post-pandemic festival,” yet this wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I’ll expect more vigilance, less handshakes, and a constant checking of vaccination documents. It’s an unnerving world right now, with international cinema caught between commerciality and artistic integrity, accessibility and glamour, safety and community.

Nonetheless, the flashy headlines of Cannes or the Oscar-bait of Venice or Toronto, Locarno still appeals to the more discerning cinephile. The Concorso internazionale is the main event, featuring the much hyped gay drama Cop Secret from Iceland, legendary Serbian director Srđan Dragojević (best known for The Wounds) with Nebesa, the return of Russian director Alexander Zeldovich after 10 years since Mishen with tragedy Medea, and Zeros and Ones, the new film from auteur Abel Ferrara starring Ethan Hawke that concerns, because of course it does: “A war between history and the future.”

For those really interested in cinema that breaks down conventions, Concorso presente is one of the most vital film programmes in European cinema. I was particularly impressed last time by those visions which expertly blended the line between documentary and fiction. While I can’t claim to know the names of any of the directors featured this year, this programme promises to provide new films that redefine the capabilities of what cinema can achieve, given past entries such as Space Dogs (Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, 2019) and Ivana the Terrible (Ivana Mladenovic, 2019).

Free Guy

Nazarro has also talked about expanding the popular aspects of the festival, with this year offering crowdpleasers in the form of the Ryan Reynolds-starring (and smirking) Free Guy (Shawn Levy, pictured above),everyone’s favourite shlock-auteur Gaspar Noé with Vortex and even reruns of National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Lanfis, 1978) and The Terminator (James Cameron, 1985) to provide those popcorn pleasures on the Piazza Grande screen (pictured at the top). Those looking for under-appreciated directors from ages past will enjoy the retrospective of the late Alberto Lattuada, a genre-hopping auteur described as a master of Italian cinema. Meanwhile, the three-year focus on Asian cinema continues with the Open Doors features and shorts, spanning films from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.

I am very excited, but due to a combination of lockdown, the Euros and an adorable new dog, I haven’t actually been to a cinema since February, making me a little trepidatious about jumping right in. In an attempt to reacquaint myself with the physicality and tactile nature of the cinema screen, I’m avoiding the soul-and-mind-destroying direct flight to Milan in favour of a slow train and bus journey via Baden-Württemberg, Austria, Liechtenstein and Zurich; my Berlin-accented Hochdeutsch becoming more useless with every further destination until switching to my non-existent Italian at the festival proper. I have absolutely no doubt that both trip and final destination will serve up a buffet of different cultures and ideas, with the new leadership more than capable of reaffirming the magic of in-person discovery. Forza cinema!

Dmovies will be at Locarno Film Festival from 9-13th of August. Check our page regularly for live reviews from the event.

Creating political art behind bars

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Ten people stand on a stage. They are all assigned a different number. Ruled by a mysterious man called Zero, they follow strange and mysterious rules in an intentionally artificial, play-like arena. An allegorical tale that could be applied to both modern Ukraine and Russia, it sees Oleg Sentsov exploring the nature of power in relation to belief.

He knows a thing or two about the way power can be distorted to hurt vulnerable people. The Crimean activist was placed under arrest in 2014 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sentenced to 20 years in prison under false charges of plotting acts of terrorism. After five years, he was released from jail in a prisoner swap.

Based on his own play, Numbers (Nomera) was co-directed by Akhtem Seitablaev under Sentsov’s precise jail-bound instructions. The film debuted at the Gorki Theatre in Berlin before playing at the Berlin Film Festival in the Berlinale Special section. We sat down with Oleg Sentsov to discuss the unique way the film was made, the therapeutic power of writing, and the ability of art to effect political change.

Redmond Bacon – You are still working as an activist. Could you tell us about this part of your life?

Oleg Sentsov – It’s a very important part of my life. I saw the necessity to become a human rights activist as soon as we started fighting Viktor Yanukovych. Afterwards Maidan happened, then the war started, and now many of our people are in prison. This is still going on. This war is still going on. The rest of Europe doesn’t notice it, especially now. We have over 300 of our people still in the Donbass region, sitting in Russian prisons. Until they are free, until the occupied territories are liberated, I won’t stop this civil rights activity.

RB – Are you more of an activist than filmmaker?

OS – Cinema is more important for me, at least for my inner spirit. I also know one day, when we have won victory over Putin, I can return to cinema. But as long as this war is going on, I’m going to carry on doing what I’m doing now.

RB – Your film is a blend between theatrical and film styles. How would you classify it?

OS – There are different things I work on as a writer. I write scripts. I also write novels and short stories. As far as Numbers is concerned it was written as a theatre play in 2011. I said, very consciously and very deliberately, that if it was going to be turned into a movie, it must be done in a theatrical style, otherwise this material, this subject wouldn’t work.

RB – Could you tell us a little bit about the process? About how it was made when you were still in jail?

OS – I only had two instruments at my disposal. I could receive and write letters and I could see photographs. Most of them were brought to me through my lawyer, who had access to me. When he was there he would show me letters or photographs through the glass pane that separated us and I would answer. The preparation for such a project takes a long time. I was not allowed to see video samples or anything, but I had talented guys who were able to visualise what I wanted to see and wrote to me what I needed to know so I could confirm.

RB – Did you feel hopeless in jail? Like you would never do another film?

OS – I never lose hope. There was never a moment where I thought I wouldn’t make another film. And there was never another moment when I thought I would not continue. I always believed I would be liberated one day.

RB – Did the process of making the film help to improve your mental health, and to keep you motivated?

OS – It helped me a lot. Because you can turn into someone completely different when you’re in jail in terms of your physical, mental, spiritual and intellectual state. You always have to take care of yourself. It is very easy to lose a sense of human value. What helped me not to turn into somebody who is completely lost was by reading and working a lot. This film is only one part of the work I did when I was in jail. I found many other ways to express myself. I brought lots of sheets of paper.

TB – Was the play itself inspired by any particular government? After all, it is quite a universal allegory?

OS – It’s a universal theme. But on the other hand it was motivated by the memories we had of the former Soviet Union. The slogans of the film are written in Russian, and in a Soviet Style.

It’s also a play that reminds you that any fight against the regime can end up in a situation that’s even worse than the one you were in before. We have very vivid examples of that. The Russian revolution brought about a worse regime. Likewise the French revolution ended up in terror.

RB – And what is your view on the future of Ukraine? Pessimistic, optimistic?

OS – Well, I’m neither optimistic or pessimistic. I’m a realist. But I believe in our victory. After all, Ukraine is a country that wants its independence. It is a democratic country with a Western orientation. We do not want to come under the same supremacy under Putin like in the Soviet days.

RB – And the world?

OS – You have to realise that he doesn’t want to have a light influence. Putin wants to completely control and subject us. He is going to do it via different ways and means. Be it an open war, a secret FSB-style war, or a hybrid war. This is what he’s doing not only in our country but all over the world. Take the example of Africa, Syria, United States, where he tries to influence. He also tries to influence Europe by supporting any radical group he gets access to.

RB – So Trump is an entertainment figure. And Zalensky, the President of Ukraine, was in a TV show, Servant of the People, about an average man running for President before actually becoming President himself. Do you think that art and cinema has the opportunity to change political structures?

OS – I always believe that art does and should have an influence. This is how people grow up. As children they start by listening to music, reading books, watching movies or going to the theatre. It is the task of art and culture in general to make people better. To bring them up and educate them culturally. This is a very slow process. It develops step by step.

There’s certain moments when somebody from the world of arts turns into a politician. Our current president is not the only example. I could mention Reagan, who was quite a good president, although his films were rather bad. He was better off as a politician.

The image at the top of this interview is from Oleg Sentsov, the other two below are from his film ‘Numbers’

Making a guerrilla documentary in ultra-homophobic Chechnya

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

You are unlikely to see a more important documentary made all year than Welcome to Chechnya. A work of investigative journalism depicting an undercover LGBTQ network helping gay men and woman escape from the barbarous Chechen regime, it is a breathtaking, invigorating and necessary work. We sat down with its director David France during the Berlinale, where it played in the Panorama Section, to discuss the making of the film, his thoughts about the region and whether the film may even be released in Russia itself.

Redmond Bacon –How did you gain access to Chechnya? This is a closed-off area…

David France – We had a cover story of why I was in Chechnya. It’s not a place that Americans go to visit or anybody goes to visit. But the World Cup was there so I posed as a wealthy American football fan, especially enamoured with the Egyptian team who had stayed in Chechnya. I hired these people to take me on a tour and they agreed because I was throwing money around. That was our story. I had to study up on football…

RB – What is the atmosphere in Chechnya like?

DF – I had never been in a place that is so closed. I felt watched and studied. There’s something in the air that I’ve never experienced before. I don’t even know how to describe it. I have done war reporting in Central American, Lebanon, Occupied Territories, Western Africa, but I never felt the kind of peril that you felt when you were there even though you didn’t really see it. There were no goons with guns and no military infrastructure in front of you, but you felt it anyway.

RB – What filmmaking techniques did you have to use?

DF – The two women who met with Anya were wearing hijabs. One of them was my DP, and she was shooting with a go-pro. I was across the restaurant with a cellphone, taking selfies or appearing to take selfies. It was guerrilla filmmaking.

RB – What kind of emotions did you feel? Did it feel dangerous?

DF – Not really. We had prepared very well with our security team. But we were detained briefly as we were leaving. That’s the scene in the film where they are reaching for passports. They were reaching for my passport and I had my cellphone between my legs and I was shooting that way. And when they called me out the car I just dropped the phone and walked out. I had a second cellphone that had all of my football fan tourism on it and they were shocked by the story we told them about me needing to come and see the Egyptian football in Chechnya. Eventually they were like: “this guy is way too crazy”. We were heading in the right direction out of the region anyway, so they just threw us back in the car.

RB – Can you talk about the danger for your documentary subjects? For them, this is life or death...

DF – It was especially dangerous for them. That’s why they wanted me there. The video would present an alibi if needed. “What are they doing there? Are they kidnapping this girl? Who are they? Is she consenting?” All of these questions would be disproved by whatever video we were shooting. In a way we were functioning as a failsafe for the activists and the work they were doing.

David France

RB – How did you initially establish contact with the LGBT network?

DF – I had read an interview with Olga Baranova, who is running the main shelter in Moscow. She had spoken publicly about her work. I was introduced to her and proposed that we make a documentary. She was interested at first, but there were the questions of security and protecting the identities of people within the shelter. We worked that all out quickly. Within three days I was there shooting.

RB – How did you come up with the idea to obscure their faces digitally while still allowing the audience to see their emotions? What was the rationale behind it?

DF – I had to make the argument to people who were on the run that we needed to see their faces in order to generate empathy. I needed to know what it was like to be them, to have been tortured so terribly, to have barely escaped, to be so dislocated from everyone, even your family, and to know that even your family has joined the hunt for you.

I promised everybody I would disguise them in some way although I didn’t know how yet. And yet they still agreed to let me do this. I had in my release form a question asking if they needed to be covered, or if they needed their voices to be disguised. And they would check those boxes and everybody on the run checked those boxes. I promised that I would return to them with my solution for their approval. I think they realised it was going to be a breakthrough film in this respect.

Once we began the work of research and development to find ways to cover them we began to worry very seriously that we had a movie that we would never be able to release.

Thankfully it worked and it’s been recognised as major new tool for documentary filmmakers. It gives back the power to people to tell their own stories. It gives them back their humanity.

RB – Did you worry that the film may have blown the network’s cover?

DF – They had a trade-off that they were weighing and that was their need to get the world to pay attention to what they’re doing. This was also the reason for the activists to appear with their real faces. Due to the increasing physical risk to them and to their safety, they believed that their notoriety from this film will add to their level of protection. David Isteev, for example, expects to do his work in some way. Of course, he’s not going to travel in and out of Chechnya after the film comes out. But he does believe that after passing that torch to others, he will be able to continue living the life he had before.

RB – What can Vladimir Putin do to successfully intervene in Chechnya? The region is volatile, and known for its two wars with Russia…

DF – Putin could tell Ramzan Kadyrov to stop it and Kadyrov could stop it just like that. Why isn’t he telling him? Because I believe that what’s happening in Chechnya is the extension of Putin’s policies for the last ten, fifteen years.

He has been systematically rolling back a cultural acceptance of the LGBT community in Russia. He did it by passing only one law. And that’s what they call the anti-gay propaganda law. This law makes it illegal to say anything in the presence of a minor that might be construed as suggesting the normalcy of LGBT folks.

It is legal to be gay in Russia. There are also no laws against gay sex in Russia, but there are no protections either. But Putin’s campaign in the last fifteen years is to create an appetite for traditional values and to rebuild the role of the Church in society after the collapse of communism. What he has done is weaponised homophobia to consolidate his power. And the logical extension of that is what’s happening in Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia, and numerous other republics in the South and creeping throughout Russia. We’ve seen other explosions of extreme anti-queer violence in Russia.

What shocked me the most is the fact that I didn’t think that homophobia could be weaponised again the way it was in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. I thought that would be impossible. In almost every society we have celebrities who are queer, we have politicians running governments who are queer, we have people who are out in the industry and we have people marrying left and right.

But we also currently have the first place and first time since Hitler that a top-down government-sponsored campaign exists to round up LGBTQ people for execution. This hasn’t happened since the 30s.

RB – How challenging was it for you to show these shocking images? What was the reasoning behind them?

DF – It was not a hard decision at all. This is an ongoing crime against humanity that no one is paying attention to.

Without knowing what this persecution looks like, it makes people in the shelter’s journeys dismissible. We wanted to show the grotesqueness of what is happening there and what they are escaping.

RB – Can you talk about the film as a work of investigative journalism. After all, reporting out of Chechnya is scarce.

DF – The biggest failure is the failure of the news media. It was a Russian-based independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, that broke the story.

They’re the only paper in the world that’s been aggressive about reporting this story. The news cycle throughout the world, and throughout the West especially, has become inexcusably shallow. The economy is not there to continue investigative research and reporting, especially the way we knew it in the past. I’m an investigative journalist myself, I came to filmmaking through that. This film is a piece of investigative work of the sort that newspapers should be doing.

The idea for the movie is to get the story back in the headlines. Then people in the news media can amplify a call for justice from the audience, which will put pressure on governments around the world to bring effective pressure on Putin. Currently the only global leader who has taken him to task on this is Angela Merkel. There’s been nothing out of the United States.

RB – I’m so glad the film also shoots scenes of the refugee Maxim Lapunov and his boyfriend together in the bath and then playing by the beach. Because those are such tender, lovely moments in a film which is mostly very harrowing. Did you feel that you needed to include those love scenes?

DF – I’ve realised very early on that this is a film about love. Not just romantic love, but love in a much larger way. I thought I was making a film about hate but having spent time in the underground network I saw a remarkable expression of love.

I spent so much time with those guys that we, as filmmakers, disappeared. We were able to watch them really without them having any sense of us watching them. But yes, when I crawled into the bathroom they did notice.

RB – Will it play in a few independent cinemas in Moscow or St Petersburg perhaps?

DF – We are in genuine conversations with people at the Moscow Film Festival, and there are additional conversations with another festival in St.Petersburg. We believe that we will be invited there. But in Russia, in order to show a film, it needs a license by the Kremlin.

So whether the Kremlin give a license for this film is certainly an open question. I’m not the one negotiating these deals. We have an agent for foreign sales, who did tell me last night that they are deep in conversation about official commercial distribution in Russia. Will it happen? I don’t know. But I would love to see it happen.

The picture at the top of this article is from David France at the 70th Berlinale, where this interview was conducted, while the other two are from ‘Welcome to Chechnya’