Launched in 2002, DokuFest is now firmly established as one of the most important film events in the Balkans, and the largest one in Kosovo. American filmmaker AJ Shnack recently described it as one of best international documentary festivals in the world.

It includes a diverse programme of documentaries and short films from every corner of the world screened in theatres and impromptu venues in the Medieval city of Prizren (pictured above). There are green rolling hills and a majestic fortress quietly overlooking the film action and industry buzz.

Prizren is a multi-ethinic city where languages, culture and religions have existed in harmony for centuries, as a symbol of tolerance for Kosovo and the region. Located on the slopes of Sar Mountains in the southern part of the Republic of Kosovo, Prizren has a major cultural centre throughout history, already mentioned Byzantine and Ottoman times.

This year marks DokuFest’s 15th anniversary. What was once a small initiative quickly grew and became a catalyst for cultural and cinematic revival, and a hub for documentary films in the Balkans, attracting filmmakers from all over the world. Perhaps more significantly, DokuFest is a platform for human rights, environmental protection, cultural heritage and taboo breaking. It has built solid bridges between the peoples of the Balkans and the rest of the world.

Kosovo’s new face

Until recently, people thought of Kosovo as a warzone. Not anymore, and DokuFest played a major role in changing this perception. It has given film professionals and visitors the opportunity to experience a beautiful, safe and fast developing country, alive with culture.

The festival tends to focus on small groups, causes and communities without a voice. The organisers carefully shape the event according to films being shown, with numerous support activities – such as workshops, panels, master classes, and a photo exhibition. Previous strands of the festival included migration, political change and activism, and they have consistently encouraged the discussion religious, sexual and social taboos. This year the main strand is corruption, a very large problem in the country.

This year’s programme is divided into Competition and Special Programme. In the competition section, films are grouped in Balkan Dox, International Dox, Human Rights Dox, Green Dox, International Shorts, and National categories. Sections of the Special Programme include ‘View from the World’, ‘Power, Corruption and Lies’, ‘Europe, we love her’, a tribute to Abbas Kiarostami, a homage to Chantal Akerman and much more.

.

The dirty lowdown

It’s very difficult to select from a pool of more than hundred documentaries and many more short films, but here we have come up with a few recommendations for you.

Depth Two (Ognjen Glavonic) is a story of corpses and death, of war crimes and survival in Kosovo and Serbia. The subject matter of the film is so powerful and universal, that there is no real necessity to be familiar with the geography and history of the Balkans in order to follow its riveting narrative. The film won the Open City Documentary Film festival in London earlier this year, and DMovies wrote a 5-splat review of the movie – just click here in order to read it.

We also recommend keeping an eye on The Awaiting (Roland Sejko, 2014) The documentary reflects on Pope Francis’ visit to Albania in 2014 and country’s 50-year forced atheism. Footage from Albania’s dark past is contrasted against the country’s less oppressive present.

Our dirty pick from the Special Programme ‘Europe, We Love Her’ is The Great Wall (Tadhg O’Sullivan), a very lyrical analogy between the Great Wall of China and the symbolic wall that separates modern Europe from Africa. It uses a short story by Franz Kafka as a narrative backdrop and questions the nature of power. Click here for our film review.

Irish photographer Seamus Murphy returns to the festival to launch the exhibition “The Hollow of the Hand”, a collaboration between him and rock musician PJ Harvey. The project features a collection of poetry and photographs from their trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC (in the US). In addition to the pictures, there will also be three videos documenting their artistic collaboration.

The festival kicks off this Friday August 5th for nine days. It will wrap up on August 13th with a concert by Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan. So why not take this opportunity to visit a thriving new nation and see the best documentaries from around the world?

Click here for more information about the event, Prizren and how to get there.

A film “that reeks of reality and smells of dream”, this is how the enfant terrible of Brazilian cinema Cláudio Assis sums up his latest movie. He has previously directed the sexually frank and very provocative Bog of the Beasts (2007) and Rat Fever (2011), and he is often described as one of the most audacious filmmakers in the country – click here for our review of his previous movue. Assis has now toned down the strife and controversy, and created a much more tender and soothing movie, if still very offensive to the sense of smell.

The film follows the footsteps of the adolescent Xico (Rafael Nicácio), who has a passion for poetry. His alcoholic and abusive father Francisco (Matheus Nachtergaele) disapproves his tendencies, dismissing them as symptomatic of vagrancy and homosexuality. Francisco works with his lorry Big Jato high pressure cleaning septic tanks in the fictitious town of Stonefish, supported by his son most of the time. The boy has a a role model in his bon vivant uncle Nelson (also interpreted by Nachtergaele), who spends is always partying with friends, or immersed in music and literature.

Claúdio Assis has teamed up with DOP Marcelo Durst in order to create his most visually astounding film to date, with strangely vivid colours of the Brazilian semi-arid hinterlands, blurry visions and technically daring camera movements. The beauty of the images is in stark contrast to Francisco’s repulsive job: unclogging pipes and cleaning up faeces. Cinema’s technical inability to convey smells ensures that the film remains pleasurable and easy to watch. The result is a an oneiric experience which will linger with audiences for a long time. Here, even the dirt looks elegant and attractive.

Big Jato also delves a very Brazilian affair: the relationship between the hinterlands and the sea. The town of Stonefish is a reference to the fact that the area was under the bottom of the sea, with abundant fish fossils. Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha epitomised the matter in his film Black God White Devil (1964) and famously prophesied: “the hinterlands will turn into sea, and the sea will become the hinterlands”. Xico too longs for the sea, and his poetical coming-of-age is akin to a country in constant mutation, just like its landscape.

In other words, Xico has two choices. He can either leave his family behind and run after his dreams, perpetuating the cycle of life and the cycle of culture. Or he can stay at home, stuck in shit, and end up fossilised – just like the ancient fish.

Above all, Big Jato is an ode to artistic freedom, minus the shock elements of Assis’s previous pieces. An urgent film made during a dangerous time when very reactionary forces in Brazil and the world are rising, a strong reminder that only culture can stop the clocks from turning back, and only art can liberate.

Big Jato has been shown is festivals across Brazil and the world. It won four out of the five main categories at the Brasília Film Festival in September including the Candango trophy for best picture, best actor for Matheus Nachtergaele and best actress for Marcélia Cartaxo. The film also won the trophies for best screenplay and soundtrack. It will premiere in the UK later this year, so stay tuned for more information.

You can watch the film trailer (in Portuguese) below:

.

JT LeRoy was one of most influential cultural icons of the US in the 1990s. He was supposedly friends with Madonna, Winona Ryder, Courtney Love, Shirley Manson, Liv Tyler and Gus Van Sant. His books detailed his life within a dysfunctional family: he was the son of a truck-stop prostitute in the South of the US. Their family landed in San Francisco streets in early 1990s. Except that he wasn’t a he. In fact, he wasn’t even real. LeRoy was an avatar for Laura Albert, who conned everyone, including swathes of artists and readers. Laura Albert is the real author behind the fabricated sensation JT LeRoy, at least apparently.

Dr. Terrence Owens, a therapist at the McAuley Adolescent helped to concoct JT Leroy’s early stories, unaware of his patient’s real identity. Maybe he was the only person capable of deciphering the personality of a writer who has never existed in the first place. Dr Owens has refused to discuss Mr LeRoy’s identity, citing patient confidentiality, but admitted in 1990 that most of their sessions were conducted over the telephone. Is Dr Owens too an invention?

Many authors routinely use aliases, but this was a literary hoax scandal. Writing as somebody else gave Laura the freedom to talk about her experiences with drugs and sexual abuse. The problem is that she was soon invited to book signings and talk, as a natural consequence of her commercial success. So she devised another strange solution.

In 2001, Laura Albert asked her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop to assume JT Leroy’s identity, now identified as a female. Savannah represented Laura not only in literature events, but also as the singer and songwriter of the band Thistle. Laura Albert was always around in the concerts of the band pretending to be someone else. Eventually her stories were accused of implausibility and she was unmasked.

The documentary sets Laura Albert as the main character. She is on stage explaining her choices and finding reasons to assume other identities – she also used the alias Jeremy Terminator. Other people involved in her stories do not appear in front of the cameras. Testimonies of Courtney Love, and Gus van Sant, who wanted to adapt to book ‘The Heart is Deceitful above All Things’ to the screen, were recorded instead via telephone.

Laura Albert described a supposed love affair between Savannah Italian actress and director Asia Argento, but this also comes across as highly suspicious. Is this also the byproduct of a fantasist’s highly creative mind?

The film was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival early this year. Probably Feuerzeig thought it would be a goldmine, following the success of the books ‘The Heart is Deceitful above All Things’ and ‘Sarah’. JT LeRoys’s story generated a lot of gossip in the media in the 1990s, suggesting the collapse of literature and the rise of celebrities. The news were the fantastic and luxurious lifestyle of an author, not the literary work itself.

Compared to William Burroughs and Jack Kerouak, who also had a marginalised lifestyle in the US, Laura Albert’s literature is very vanilla. Drugs were not used in order to enhance the creativity and spontaneity, as with the Beat poets. And free love was described as a sinful lifestyle, different to the non-judgmental and libertarian tone adopted by Burroughs and Kerouak.

In fact, Laura Albert has created so many stories and devised so many identities that she now raises one fundamental question. Is she too a concoction of someone else’s mind?

Author: The JT LeRoy Story is out in cinemas in the UK and other countries this Friday. Watch the film trailer below:

.

“The years of brutal oppression and fear are coming to an end. Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people. The spirit of friendship and goodwill will prevail”, this is the message that Tony Blair delivers to the Iraqi people following the country’s illegal invasion in 2003. The outcome was rather different: more than one million deaths, widespread sectarianism and violence. Up until this day, Iraq is a very dangerous place to be, and few would dispute that life was much better under Saddam Hussein.

It is also clear that Tony Blair was lying through his teeth, and manipulating the country’s public opinion with the support of his chum Rupert Murdoch (nicknamed “the Sun King”). This extremely insightful documentary produced and mostly narrated by former Labour MP George Galloway reveals that Tony Blair is the brainchild of Margaret Thatcher. When he entered No 10 in 1997, people expected a new type of politics, but instead they saw the same sleaze, cynicism, belligerence and lack of ethics as with the Tories. No wonder Maggie once described Tony Blair and New Labour as her “biggest legacy”, the film reveals.

After destroying Iraq, Tony Blair became Peace Envoy in the Middle East, which Galloway described as “the most absurd appointment in History since Caligula anointed a horse in Senate”. He is supported by interviews with American philosopher Noam Chomsky, filmmaker Stephen Fry, Tory MP David Davis and Tony Blair’s own sister-in-law Lauren Booth, none of whom very sympathetic views of the former PM. There seems to be a general consensus that Tony Blair is utterly dishonest and greedy.

The film also reveals that Tony Blair has unabashedly used his political influence mostly for profiting. He trades his lobbying and spin abilities with the most reprehensible (and often far more oppressive than Saddam Hussein) regimes in the world, including Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Lybia and Egypt, in exchange for money. He is “very popular in the court of headchoppers”, and never ashamed of siding with torturers and dictators.

He has used creative investment routes in order to conceal his real wealth, and it is virtually impossible to say how much he is worth. What the film does ascertain with vehemence is that Tony Blair has become one of the most despicable politicians in the world, and that he will never be able to walk down the streets of his country without security. Many – including Galloway and Booth – intend on performing his citizen arrest as soon as they have the opportunity. He is now “a pariah in his own land”.

The Killing$ of Tony Blair reveals how a single politician destroyed Iraq, destabilised the Middle East and imploded the foundations of his own Labour Party at home. At times the film has traces of Michael Moore, with colourful charts and maps and some banter. At one point, Galloway knocks at Tony Blair’s door to no avail, similarly to what the American documentarist does to the subjects of his films. Overall, however, the British film has a much more serious tone. Perhaps that’s because Galloway is an insider (he was an MP until last year) and the film was crowdfunded by 5,000 pundits in the UK, perhaps ensuring that it remains less jaunty and whimsical.

It is unfair to describe The Killing$ of Tony Blair as one-sided and sanctimonious, as some of the British media have. In reality, the film is a very urgent statement against the media bias and political spin that drive most successful politicians in this country, New Labour and Tory. Most of the left-wing media in this country are sympathetic to Blairites, and only grudgingly recognise that Tony Blair should be held accountable for his crimes. Galloway’s honest and candid views on this unpunished and unrepentant war criminal are a much needed breath of fresh air.

DMovies hazards a guess that making and showing this film has been an uphill struggle – just like holding Tony Blair accountable for his crimes. We therefore urge everyone to watch this movie.

The Killing$ of Tony Blair is out in cinemas across the UK this Friday. You can watch the film trailer below:

.

Dostoyevsky and Hitchcock meet up in this stylish Tamil thriller. M. Manikandan returns to the London Indian Film Festival after his hit Crow’s Egg (2015), telling the story of Ravi, a hard-working young man who is turning blind. He lives in a murky and rancid condominium in India, similar to a shanty town, where he constantly watches a young female neighbour receiving male guests. One day he decides to knock into her door only to find out that she’s been mysteriously murdered. He suspects of two men and sees an opportunity for making some money by blackmailing them. It all seems ok because after all he needs money for a “noble cause”: an eye transplant.

Crime is Punishment is a fitting example of current state of Indian cinematography. India is the world’s most prolific film market, but few films have global appeal. There is a big internal market, that reflects domestic reality and tastes. Quoting two big influences in literature and cinema could be a formula to reach American and European audiences. If only Manikandan avoided the moral principles Dostoyevsky and Hitchcock followed, and portrayed Indian society as it is, in other words, deeply corrupted, then he would have created a subversive film. It is not the case. Crime is Punishment instead conveys a strong sense of morality – which may disappoint global audiences used to more subversive messages.

In Dostoyevsky’s novel, the author condemns Raskolnikov’s actions. Raskolnikov sees the system of 1860s Czarist regime in its totality. He understands both aspects of the Marxist dialectic and uses his personal beliefs and values in this regard. The Russian character wants to promote change by assisting the marginalised and confronting the powerful and wealthy individuals that threaten his family or his sense of decency. But by the end of the novel, he is not a mere and cruel murderer; he is instead a victim into his honesty and morality. He cannot subvert the order because his consciousness doesn’t allow him.

Hitchcock’s films also explore the terrible potential that the abuse of power has to destroy human life. Authority figures in Hitchcock’s films, such as police officers and doctors, that also appear in Crime is Punishment, are seen either as sinister or ridiculous. In Vertigo (1958) the authority figures are concerned with the perils of seductive pleasures. In this Indian picture, police discovers Ravi’s sight problems and does not question whether he is keen or not to identify the murderer. The doctors, in turn, accept bribes in order to put Ravi at the top of waiting list for the eye transplant.

Hitchcock’s influence on this film is revealed in some other aspects too: the soundtrack that changes the minute Ravi gets suspicious of his neighbour’s lover. In fact this sudden change is strange, as there is no previous hint that the film is a thriller. The second aspect is the way the cinematographer shows Ravi’s sight problems. He sees partially as if his sight was reduced into a small circle, which is pretty much similar to Jeff’s (James Stewart) view behind his lenses in his flat (in Rear Window, 1954).

There is a interesting twist at the end of the movie, which reveals Ravi’s real motivation. He is not intrigued by the crime, as Jeff was; he is only worried of his own health condition. The disclosure is a reflection of Ravi’s cynical behaviour, as well as a punishment for his lack of morality. It follows the Hinduism law of karma, which is represented in the film by the dragon. A friend of Ravi gives him a dragon made of glass – in India, dragons often have a religious connotation.

Crime is Punishment was exhibited in the London Indian Film Festival, which ended yesterday. You can watch the film trailer below:

.

Constantly treading the line between documentary and fiction, The City of The Future veers from tragic memories of the past to new perspectives of the future. This vibrant and delicate feature deals with the forced removal of the population from five small towns for the establishment of a hydroelectric power plant and the third biggest artificial lake in the world, the Sobradinho Dam. This took place during the 1960s in the semi-arid hinterlands of the Brazilian Northeast, in the state of Bahia. This sets the basis for the introduction of the film’s narrative.

The golden age of theatres is now gone. With the advent of technologies in the past 40 years – such as DVD and VHS – people now are far more inclined to watch films and entertainment at home from the comfort of their sofa instead. Many of the glorious theatres from the 1970s – for both cinema and theatrical exhibition – are now completely abandoned, and have fallen beyond disrepair. The result is a strange mixture of glory and decadence, with a singular allure that writer and photographer Julia Solis has captured with her camera lens.

DMovies talked to Julia about how it all started, the meaning of these pictures to her, the most bizarre experience, her future plans and much more. Julia has been photographing abandoned theatres across the US for several years, and she has also published a book with the images. Check out the interview and below some of our favourite pictures especially selected for our readers.

DMovies – How did you start photographing abandoned cinemas? Where did the idea come from?

Julia Solis – I have spent a good part of my life exploring neglected and abandoned spaces and noticed that many larger facilities, no matter what their function – hospitals, hotels, schools, churches, jails, military barracks, amusement parks – have interesting auditoriums. They’re the soul of the institution and while some are lovingly decorated with little means, others may be a grim reflection of the disciplinary mentality underlying the design. A theatre may offer delightful escape in one place and punishing reinforcement of constraints in another. Photographing only the crumbling stages themselves and contrasting them with each other really brings out the uniqueness of each place.

DM – Please tell us about the strangest experience you’ve had?

JS – There’s an abandoned modern cineplex outside a vacant mall in Michigan [pictured at the top] – a concrete block with three theatres inside, completely ravaged by weather. The seats were mostly gone and the ceiling tiles were pulverizing on the floors, while the pits before the screens had flooded with water. A very J.G. Ballard landscape. The main cinema had turned into a surreal beach while the two smaller ones in the back were pretty swampy. We set up a tiki bar inside and had a Beach Blanket Bingo/Creature from the Black Lagoon event that featured a seance with a male Annette Funicello rappelling from the projection booth while spraying glitter from his bra before running off with the swamp creature. That was probably the best and strangest experience.

DM – Was gaining access to these cinemas difficult?

JS – My book contains about 160 theatres and access has ranged from wide open doors to difficult climbs or spending hours trying to convince someone to let me in. There were a few theatres where the access was so unsafe that I might just have a minute or two for the shot. The photo quality kind of reflects where I had a lot of time (sometimes a whole day to let it soak in) or where I had to rush. For example parking outside a wide-open theatre in East Saint Louis, we talked our way out of getting carjacked before we had even gotten inside, so as soon as the guys crossed the street I ran into the lobby, took one shot of the stage and ran back out to the car. Stupid but obsessed.

DM – What do these photographs represent to you?

JS – They’re snapshots of the drama that continues to unfold behind the decaying curtains. The strange landscapes that evolve as the deterioration progresses, the scrappers, squatters and animals changing the stage sets, the plants and rain creating backdrops for tropical fantasies, the curtains drifting like ghosts down the aisles, those are all elements in fascinating narratives that I hope to explore and evoke.

DM – Are you planning to to do more pictures in the future?

JS – Always. I still go into every abandoned theatre I can access and often the same ones. But there aren’t as many. Most of the ones I’ve documented have been renovated or demolished. I’m happy that there’s a growing preservation movement to save these glamorous old spaces. But I’ll take a ruined theatre over an active one any day.

.

.

You can see some of our favourite pictures above, and you can find out more about Julia, her images and her book by visiting her website entitled Stages of Decay – just click here in order to accede to the landing page.

Did you know that Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam!” in the classic Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)? It is a misquotation that became famous worldwide, but the only way to check it is if we play the old movies again. Cinema Rediscovered, a new international archiving & film event taking place in Bristol (in the Southwest of England), from July 28th to 31st, will give you the opportunity to do just that.

Taking inspiration from the pioneering Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, Cinema Rediscovered celebrates cinema going as an event, giving audiences an opportunity to discover or indeed re-discover new digital restorations, film print rarities of early cinema and contemporary classics on the big screen.

Il Cinema Ritrovato turned 30 this year. They welcomed an enormous crowd of 100,000 spectators in Bologna just a few weeks ago. Gian Luca Farinelli, the director of the Cineteca di Bologna, said: “We have demonstrated that it is possible to combine high culture with big numbers. We’re delighted to see this British offspring of Il Cinema Ritrovato, on our 30th anniversary. We’re particularly happy this is happening in Bristol, a city which already has a strong reputation of presenting the history of film.”

.

.

The lowdown

Programme highlights include the world premiere of the newly restored British historic drama The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968), courtesy of Studiocanal. Based on James Goldman’s play about treachery in the family of England’s King Henry II, the film is an intense and personal drama with outstanding performances of Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn.

Fists in the Pocket (1965) is the directorial debut of Marco Bellocchio and another must-see. Bellocchio’s importance to Italian cinematography is akin to Ken Loach’s to British films. Bellocchio made a big impact on radical Italian cinema in the mid-sixties, and still today brings to discussion themes such as euthanasia – in Dormant Beauty, 2012 – and corruption in politics and in the Catholic Church – in Blood of My Blood, 2015.

There will also be a special presentation of the a restored Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. The part-English language BAFTA-winning film by Japanese auteur Nagisa Oshima stars David Bowie (pictured above) in one of his finest and most haunting performances. The movie is about a clash between two cultures — the British and the Japanese. Late acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert points out that the film is “awkward, not because of the subject matter, but because of the contrasting acting styles. Here are two men trying to communicate in a touchy area and they behave as if they’re from different planets”. Oshima picked his actors well.

.

.

A new lease of life

Cinema Rediscovered wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the restoration of classics and dirty movies. Every restoration brings a new life to the work of art. The long-term storage and preservation of original material remains a key challenge for any cinema archive, always constrained by the limitations of the various technologies from the different eras. Bringing a traditional Italian film festival to the UK requires very intense and continuous communication between both countries.

Restoration is much more than a technical process: those involved need to study the filmmaker, understand his intentions and reconcile that with the colours, lighting and the sound. Such understanding is only possible if professionals from different areas and cultures join their forces, despite their differences. Cinema Rediscovered is a statement of unity, and of resistance to Brexit.

DMovies will be live at the event next weekend unearthing the dirt from their theatres and archives. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and stay tuned!

Rat fever is an expression from the Northeast of Brazil meaning ‘losing control’ or ‘going insane’. This is often triggered by extreme heat, and people soon start behaving erratically, shedding their fears and inhibitions. This is the case with Cláudio Assis 2011 films Rat Fever, where a community of artists in the Brazilian city of Recife disregard most social conventions and live freely, in an intoxicating mixture of poetry and sexual experimentation. Click here in order to read our 5-splat review of the movie.

The British capital also experienced rat fever this Tuesday, as DMovies screened Cláudio Assis’s movie to an enthusiastic crowd of approximately 100 cinema lovers, who braved the very intense summer heat wave outside to come the Brazilian Embassy in Trafalgar Square. The weather reached 31C, making it the hottest day on record in London this year.

The debate about artistic and sexual freedom that followed the film was equally heated. Brazilian congressman and LGBT activist Jean Wyllys shared his views about personal freedoms in Brazil and the impact of sudden political shift to the right on Brazilian cinema and arts. The programmer at BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival Brian Robinson discussed his experience with LGBT films from the tropics, and the perceived sexuality of Brazilians. Professor of Film Studies at the University of Reading Lucia Nagib inserted Rat Fever in a much broader political and cultural context.

Very special guests were in the audience, including the Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission Academic, Cultural & Political Affairs Ana Maria de Souza Bierrenbach, Cultural Attaché Hayle Gadelha and the prominent Australian-born British LGBT activist Peter Tatchell. These are all pictured below.

.

.

The debate was moderated by Victor Fraga, director at DMovies. A full video of the event will be made available online on our website, Facebook and YouTube in the next few days. So stay tuned!

DMovies would like to take the opportunity to thank the Brazilian Embassy – in particular Hayle Gadelha and Fernanda Franco – for the continuing support and commitment to groundbreaking Brazilian cinema.

One of four people in the world will suffer from mental illness at some point of their lives, with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as one the most common problems. Currently, less than 10% of people with OCD is under treatment. How is cinema reflecting these statistics?

In general, we see two genres of movies that touch on the issue of mental illness. A comedy, in the model of As Good as It Gets (James L. Brooks, 1997), in which Jack Nicholson plays an unsociable character fit into a conventional formula that drags toward the happy ending. Or a tragedy, like Still Alice (Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland, 2014), in which Julianne Moore plays a linguistic expert who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Despite Moore’s outstanding performance, the film is a dramatised lecture on the cruelty of Alzheimer’s, and very painful to watch. Curiously Moore herself has developed a mild OCD. She is obsessed by not getting caught in red lights in the traffic. Her OCD led her to leaving her house at certain times so she would face more green lights than red.

Dirty Yellow Darkness stands somewhere in the middle of comedy and tragedy, and it is much closer to real life. Life is not as dark as in Still Alice, and as it’s not as lighthearted as in As Good as It Gets. The main character Vishwa has a chronic condition. He is afraid of his own urine. In his mind, “it [the germs] transfers from place to place, but others don’t see it”. Every time he urinates, he has to take a shower. As a consequence, he loses his job and his wife.

Audiences hardly see Vishwa speaking. He is living in a silent mystery that no one is able to comprehend. Vishwa washes himself with loads of soaps and also detergents. He washes his mobile, the banknotes he receives, even his ID documents. He doesn’t pick up anything that falls on the floor, afraid he could become contaminated. He sets fire to his own mattress because he has urinated on it. Eventually he realises he cannot deal with the illness alone, and then goes voluntarily to a mental hospital.

One of the locations of the film is a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, including a detailed picture of the conditions of the facilities. There are many tribulations during the treatment. Vishwa visibly makes a big effort because he wants his love back. His wife doesn’t have the support of her parents, who question why she married him in first place.

Under this verve of Asian romantic relationships in Bollywood style, the film flows into a territory of sentimental flashbacks guided by melodramatic and at times borderline mawkish Indian soundtrack. The sweet atmosphere clashes with the harshness of the treatment. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) involves exposure and response prevention, or in other words, in this case: urine!

Dirty Yellow Darkness is part of the London Indian Film Festival taking place this week – click here for more information about the event.

Watch the film trailer below:

.