It’s not easy being a woman in India, let alone a transsexual one. The male-to-female transgender community has existed in the country for centuries, and their members are commonly described Hijras. Unfortunately, they are still outcasts even today. It is virtually impossible for them to find a job, and they almost inevitably have to resort to either begging on prostitution on the streets of a large city.

Inspired by a real story, Madesha (Sanchari Vijay) is an educated and effeminate boy from rural Karnataka – they speak the Kannada language, little known to Europeans. From a very young age, he cherishes his female persona and gorgeous saris and bindis. His sister enjoys his natural flair and joy. After completing his studies, he moves to Bangalore in search of acceptance and a castration surgery known as Nirvana. He is undaunted, despite knowing that the options for transsexuals are very limited. Not long after the sex change, Madesha – now called Vidya – decides to return home despite knowing that there too she will face enormous obstacles towards acceptance, work and social integration.

Naanu Avanalla Avalu is a technically accomplished film, with exuberant photography of both rural and urban India. The make-up and the costume of the all-dancing Hijras also help to lift up the spirits of this tragedy of social exclusion. The girls are very camp, jolly and lively, despite the adversities that they consistently face. The film also has a lot of music, and the acting is overtly melodramatic and extravagant, in good old-fashioned Bollywood style.

The energetic rhythm of the movie is well-suited to the trans girls because cross-dressing is so intimately connected to dancing, fancy and flashy clothing. It’s also a suitable tribute to a highly marginalised community, that only received legal recognition in 2014 when the “third sex” became established in Indian law. Paradoxically, the sex-reassignment surgery is still illegal. Vidya’s Nirvana is performed in a backstreet clinic with the walls covered in graffiti, litter on the ground and a sink full of blood – making the surgeries of the “Danish girl” Lili Elbe seem ultra hygienic and high-tech.

Westerns audiences used to very audacious and graphic LGBT movies may this film a little timid: the girls never engage in romance and not even a singled kiss is featured. Their sexuality seems strangely devoid of sex. The boisterous Bollywood-style narrative could also be awkward to those not used to the fanciful pulse of such movies.

Naanu Avanalla Avalu is part of the London Indian Film Festival taking place this week – just click here for more information about the event.

You are probably reading this article on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. Consumers now live off IT devices. The digital revolution had a massive impact on how we live and communicate. We all know how attached we are to our devices and that this could become a vice. What you probably do not know is that this revolution has a even darker side. Death by Design reveals the dirty secrets of our digital addiction.

Director Sue Williams challenges the notion that electronics is a “clean” industry by investigating a number of environmental and health catastrophes caused by production of our beloved gadgets. From early poisonous practices in Silicon Valley to China’s ongoing dumping of chemicals, this secret cannot be hidden anymore. The process of fabricating electronic devices is dirty and dangerous.

Big corporations like IBM, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Google, which have their headquarters in Silicon Valley (in California, US), have caused widespread environmental damage, having often exposed their workers to toxic substances, particularly hard metals (such as mercury, benzene, cadmium and lead).

The film investigates the former IBM workers who went to court about “cancer duster” in early 1990s. People started to get sick in California because they were exposed to lead. As an inhabitant of California states in the film: “Workers were dressed to protect the products, not people”, referring to chemical protective clothing. The court decision favoured the workers and IBM paid a compensation to their families. Big corporations prefer to be fined rather than addressing the root of the problem, as the indemnity is often just a slap on the wrist.

With more strict labour legislation in place in developed countries, the large corporations to outsource their services to countries with more lax laws, thereby keeping their hands “clean”. China is often their preferred location.

One of the largest Apple suppliers, Foxconn, is located on the banks of Yangtze river. A 23-year-old female worker for Apple supplier explains: “There is a lot of pressure. If a tiny mistake goes down the line, our boss really swears at us. Once I told the supervisor I didn’t want to work overtime. He said there weren’t enough people on the assembly line. He wouldn’t let me leave. I had to stay. It’s really too long, you get so tired.”

Driven by high demand, factories across the electronics supply chain often ignore basic worker safety. This explains recurring accidents and explosions, often killing hundreds and injuring many more. There were two explosions in Foxconn in just six months. Workers’ pay is so low that labour barely makes up for 1% of the cost of your average smartphone.

Recycling is also very dangerous and hazardous for workers. People handle hard metals from your disposed smartphone with hardly any protection in the Guiyu e-waste recycling. And it’s not just people that suffer. The ruthless IT industry is also taking its toll on the environment, as 20% of arable land in China is already contaminated with highly toxic heavy metals.

There is still light in the end of the tunnel. Death by Design reveals that there are new business focused on sustainability. It is the case of iFIXIT, a private company in San Luis Obispo, California, that sells repair parts and publish free online repair guides for consumer electronics.

And you can do your part, too. Visit the film’s official page and learn how to maximise the lifespan of your gadgets, and locate a recycling center near you. The map includes Canada, Mexico, Republic of Korea, United Kingdom and United States. Just click here for more information.

I was living in Rome and studying Film Studies close to Cinecitta Studios in 2007. I had quit my job and my solid career as an editor and translator in São Paulo in order to live a glamorous student life in the Italian capital. I tried my luck as a playwright in Italian, mixing cinema and theatre and using the films of Hector Babenco and Rainer Fassbinder as inspiration. I had the student accreditation for the Rome International Film Festival and I was looking forward to the talks with Francis Ford Coppola and Mike Nichols. So why not try to do my first film interview and publish it in Brazil?

I got the go ahead from a newspaper editor in São Paulo. “Yes, do it! You are surrounded by interesting actors and filmmakers”. But the case was that I only had a student accreditation, not a press one, and I couldn’t go to the specific events for press. So I decided to gatecrash into the forbidden territory, all in the name of art and cinema, of course!

Babenco went to Rome for the screening of his latest movie The Past (with Gael García Bernal), which was in the event official competition. So I entered the screening room and showed just the string of my accreditation card to the security, hiding my student photo under the coat. It worked. I was getting closer to my objective. Next step: where should I sit? Close to his Babenco’s girlfriend actress Bárbara Paz, of course. We soon became friendly and so she took me backstage, where I could finally reach my much-coveted destination: the filmmaker Hector Babenco.

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At the holy grail

Babenco was very tired, exhaustion showing in his eyes. He hadn’t watched the film: “I cannot stand watching my film again. I had booked some interviews during the screening and came to the end [for the standing ovation]”. So we agreed on a phone interview the following day.

Great! I had more time to watch again Carandiru (2003) and Pixote, the Law of the Weakest (1980). I already knew everything about Kiss of the Spider Woman, the 1985 classic with Sônia Braga, William Hurt and Raúl Juliá (pictured above). Set in Brazil, the plot consisted of two prison cell inmates – a stereotypically gay man imprisoned on morality charges and a political prisoner – had intrigued me for years, triggering to study Latin American history.

I also had to find out whether there was a way of recording our call. Sadly there wasn’t. I just had to take notes on paper very fast,

Babenco sounded very happy on the telephone. He had just come from São Paulo International Film Festival, the city where he settled in 1969. Babenco was an Argentinian gaucho of Ukrainian origin naturalised Brazilian. He used to boast loud and proud: “I am Brazilian!” in Portuguese with a strong foreign accent. No one would deny it. Babenco won international acclaim telling the story of a young Brazilian boy caught up in a hellish underworld of crime and police corruption (in Pixote).

But I wrote “sounded”. Babenco changed his mood suddenly after I compared a scene in The Past to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Both scenes showed the protagonists taking their loved one to the cinema.“Hey, I don’t remember this film! In my film it is totally the opposite! It is a moment in which the couple is happy with their kid. There is no information that establish any dialogue with Scorsese. I chose it due to the atomic rubbish, because it is trash!”. And then he exclaimed: “You don’t know how to do an interview!”

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The cat is out of the bag

I freaked out. It’s almost as if Babenco knew this was my first interview with a major filmmaker. So I smoothly veered the interview by changing to a less controversial topic. We spoke about the Brazilian actor Paulo Autran, who was also in The Past, nicknamed ‘Lord of the Stage’. Babenco said “Paulo Autran is a very important actor who gave his very best to his small part in my film. Before shooting Autran told me there was not such a thing as a small role”.

I corroborate to the fact that Babenco was a difficult person. He could sting like a venomous spider. His movies, likewise, can sting and kill. They expose the cruel side of Brazil no one wants to see. On the other hand, Babenco proves the necessity of bitterness in art. We cannot promote real change in our society if we are too saccharine. Good-bye, bitter Spiderman, you will be sorely missed!

You can watch the full movie Pixote, The Law of the Weakest entirely for free below:

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Frankly speaking, we all go a little crazy sometimes. Who doesn’t have one or two decomposing corpses in their flat, with whom you debate your fears and desires, and who can cheer you when you feel sad and lonely? They are far more loyal and reliable than living humans. Clearly, that’s something we all do, and Frank – the protagonist of the eponymous movie – is of course no exception to this rule.

Frank is a lonesome and disturbed young adult, played by Darren Beaumont, who lives in a small flat in a grey coastal town somewhere in Britain. He suffers from OCD, which sees him tiptoe down the street, and step home in a highly ritualistic geometric fashion. He has virtually no contact with the living, except for the occasional visit from his elderly mother and – to his despair – his intrusive child neighbour who often confronts him about his unusual habits.

Tidiness and cleanliness are not Frank’s forte. The flat is dirty and derelict. He preserves vegetables (or are they perhaps body parts?) in large jars as well as in his bath tube, and snails are also a constant presence. His decomposing corpse friends are not particularly good with personal hygiene either. He has a habit of gradually cutting Fidel (Con O’Neill) open, removing his organs and stuffing him. He looks a lot like Twiggy Ramirez from Marilyn Manson with the scales and make-up on his face.

Lucky for Fidel, the corpse of the suicidal bridal Polly (Con O’Neill) washes up on shore, and Frank promptly invites her to live with them. The two dead people quickly become very intimate and develop a sexual connection. Frank is once again an outcast, even amongst his faithful and departed friends.

Despite stuffing and talking to corpses, Frank is not Hitchcock’s Norman Bates. He’s not evil and manipulative. In fact he’s very weak and fragile; he often walks around town in his underwear, a strange reminder of his vulnerability. He’s also naive, clumsy and yet highly likable. He epitomises the little bit of eccentricity and insanity that we all have inside us.

Film director Richard Heslop toys with death, decomposition and snails in a way not dissimilar to Peter Greenaway’s Zoo: A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), just much more lighthearted. Frank is an elegantly dirty and repulsive ode to lunacy, with an outstanding cinematography (the film is technically immaculate) and riveting acting. You’d be mad to miss it!

You can watch the entire movie Frank online and for free here:

By 1995, six million people had died of HIV-related complications worldwide. At the time, Aids was still a fatal disease, and virtually a death certificate to the infected. Since then, new drugs have been developed, and living with HIV is now a completely different experience. These people have their bodies damaged and their lives profoundly stigmatised, but they no longer die straight away. The disease is now described as “chronic”, instead of the previous “fatal”

The impact of HIV on the lives of these people is enormous. As the virus mutates, so do their lives. Many stop working and go on disability benefit instead. Plus they migrate. These gay men are mostly in the fifties when they move to the idyllic Palm Springs, in the heart of the Californian desert. They are looking for a peaceful place to retire and die, however imminent or distant the end of their lives may be.

Desert Migration at times feels like a modern-version of the Japanese classic The Ballad of Narayama (Shōhei Imamura, 1983). In the movie, once a person reaches the age of 70 he or she must travel to a remote mountain and die; they climb the mountains in back of their children. In Desert Migration, it is a strange mixture of social anxieties, clinical depression and the search for a community feeling that transports them to the remote location where they too can die. Waiting for death is the central theme in both of the films.

One of the men in the film explains why he feels such sadness and despondency: “All relationships come to an end: dog, friends, lovers”. They has seen many of the their dearest friends perish to the virus throughout the decades, and ironically the only thing that has remained constant in their lives is the HIV and all the problems associated with it. Living in relative isolation from their past, they can now reflect, contemplate nature and find spiritual healing in the arid landscape.

The various subjects of the film have a different take on life. Most of them live mostly in isolation and are deeply pessimistic about their role in life and their future. One of them complains: “our society has no role models for gay men in their fifties”, and mentions Madonna instead as a reference. Another one says: “Age is the new Aids”. A more optimistic one remarks: “HIV brought me so much nurture from family and friends”. There is also a polyamorous man who is very comfortable in his own skin, delighted to embrace his unconventional lifestyle. The spectrum of human sentiments and self-confidence is very broad amongst these people.

The director captures very intimate moments, ranging to a post-coital emotional outflow (while still wearing a condom), to massage sessions and spicy confessions of the sex adventures. The film is supported by a painfully monotonous soundtrack – and perhaps precisely for that reason very effective at highlighting the lingering anguish in the lives of these people.

These older gay man live in a sanitised bubble, it seems. However sad some of them may be, their lives are still remarkably comfortable, particularly if compared to HIV-sufferers in other part of the planet such as Africa. Their challenges would sound probably very petit bourgeois to those who do not even have access to the exorbitantly expensive HIV medication elsewhere. The film, however, never makes investigates such contrasts. Despite opening with a worldwide figure (the six million deaths), its message is much less universal. It’s a film about a small group in relative isolation, and their story may not resonate with most people outside the bubble.

Desert Migration was shown last month as part of the Open City Documentary Film Festival in London. Find out more about upcoming screenings worldwide by clicking here.

And watch the movie trailer below:

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Can a woman live in two different realities at the same time? Olmo and The Seagull tells the story of Olivia and Serge, who are rehearsing a theatrical production of Chekhov’s play The Seagull in Paris. The couple first met on the stage of Theatre du Soleil and theatre rules their private lives. The opening scene is a spinning dance in costume design and it is exactly this spirit of dizziness that lingers throughout the film.

The troupe has received some good news: in six months time they will be heading to New York and Montreal, but Olivia, who plays the aging actress Arkadina, is pregnant. At first she thinks she can have it all but she suffers an unexpected setback that threatens her pregnancy. So the film turns into a journey through Olivia’s mind and her unbalanced thoughts of who she is now. She is not anymore an actress and yet she fears how to be a mother.

It is significant that Olivia plays herself and also Arkadina. It is as if her character is speaking for her: “Am I then so old and ugly already that you can talk to me like this without any shame about another woman? Oh, you lost your senses! (…) You are my pride, my joy, my light. (…) You are mine, you are mine!”, says Arkadina in The Seagull. In fact, Olivia is jealous that her lover Serge is still in the troupe and planning to travel abroad. Will he leave her? Is the other actress better than her? In the film, she confesses that she doesn’t recognise the aggressiveness within her. Is it due to the hormones or is she becoming another person? Maybe she will go insane, just like Nina in the play…

The two female filmmakers beautifully capture the transformations in Olivia’s body, in minute detail. Olivia has to sacrifice her career for the sake of her baby’s health. Her new routine is a sort of sublimation: instead of taking care of the props on stage, she is now assembling the craddle. The film comes and goes into those two worlds: the theatre and Olivia’s house. But it is still a lot heavily pregnant theatre rehearsal – neither the play not the baby are out yet.

Serge is caught in the middle. It is a clash for him too, as he has to work, pay the bills and still comfort Olivia. On the other hand, the rite of passage entirely belongs to Olivia: the changes are in her life and in her body. A woman is a mother from the minute she is conceived; but a father is a father only when he sees and recognises his child.

There is a timing difference in nature. There is a delay caused by this adaptation to motherhood. The film translates this delay into a very French cinema: much talk, inner voices and few actions. As a whole, the film sheds new light on Chekhov’s works and innovations. The Seagull is considered the first of his four major plays. In contrast to the melodrama of mainstream 19th-century theatre, characters speak in ways that do not address their issues directly, and the message is often subliminal instead.

In Olmo and The Seagull, Olivia decides to promote a party for her friends at home. Maybe her old friends will remind her of whom she used to be, allowing her to move on. The film ends up as a question mark: does reality begin where acting ends? The result is a hybrid cross between documentary and fiction.

American actor and screenwriter Tim Robbins is the executive producer of the film. Together with his former partner, actress Susan Sarandon, Robbins has supported women’s rights in the US. Zentropa – the Danish production company founded by Lars von Trier – is also involved. In fact, this international co-production includes professionals from the US, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy and other countries. The film itself is spoken in various languages, more prominently, French and Italian. Last year, it inspired a pro-choice campaign in Brazil.

Olmo and The Seagull was presented in London as part of the Open City Documentary Film Festival last month. It will likely feature in other festivals across the country and the world soon. Click here for more information about the film, including distribution rights and upcoming screenings.

And don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:

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A Bigger Splash was conceived as a remake of the The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969), in which Alain Delon and Romy Schneider play the happy couple Jean-Paul and Marianne, whose peace is shattered by Marianne’s former lover, Harry (Maurice Ronet). It is a film about personal rediscovery during a holiday break, and a murderous adultery is the catalyst. Whilst in the original version, Marianne was an actress, in Guadagnino’s film, Marianne (now played by Tilda Swinton) is a singer who lost her voice.

The word “infant” comes from Latin “infans”, and it means incapable of speech. Symbolically speaking, the circumstances force Marianne to travel back to her youth, a time with few responsibilities and also when she dated Harry (Ralph Fiennes). Harry was her music producer and the one who introduced her to Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). Harry is what Italians would call “solare”: a boisterous, extrovert and funny man, who regrets losing his lover to his friend. He becomes a persona non grata in their house.

The filmmaker constructs his movie in a way so that weather is to blame for the mood changes. Characters announce that the sirocco (a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara) will soon invade the island of Lampedusa, where they are spending their holidays. The sirocco is a harbinger of tragedy. In Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), it brings plague and death to the main character.

In the original The Swimming Pool, the tension between the three grown-ups quickly reaches boiling point. It is a much darker and unbearable atmosphere than in this new version. The swimming pool is an insightful symbol of the vacant life of the bourgeoisie, while here it is more a site for relaxing. Don’t get me wrong, Fiennes is a overheated male and he spectacularly wild while dancing Rolling Stones’s ‘Emotional Rescue’. But indeed there is no emotional rescue. The movie is a mere escape to the deep woes of the wealthy.

Dakota Johnson plays Penelope, Harry’s daughter. There is a light insinuation of incestuous relationship here, but again Guadagnino prefers not to deep dive. Instead of providing the audience with a diving suit, which would surely offer a much bigger splash, the filmmaker chose a snorkel equipment.

More contemporary issues, like the African immigration to Italy, are just heard in the background. A new and more audacious touch to the original film is missing. Perhaps touching on the large waves of immigration to Lampedusa would work.

A Bigger Splash galvanises a partnership between Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton that has started in 1999, in Guadagnino’s debut film The Protagonists. She makes an unusual appearance as a sexy and exotic woman. The British actress spent nine years of her career working with Derek Jarman and has now moved to a more mainstream cinema, bringing her androgynous charm to it.

A Bigger Splash premiered in Venice last year and it was already presented in UK cinemas. Studiocanal released it on DVD and Blu-Ray on June 27th. DMovies is giving away three Blu-rays (or DVDs) of A Bigger Splash, as a courtesy of Studiocanal. Just e-mail us at info@dirtymovies.com and answer the following question: “A Bigger Splash is a remake from which 1969 Franco-Italian erotic movie”? The winners will be announced in August on our Facebook page – follow us by clicking here and stay tuned. UK only.

Watch the film trailer here:

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The year was 1959. American classics such as Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder), Ben-Hur (William Wyler), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) and Suddenly Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) were just out. Presumably, reviewing those titles, Americans then were interested in mainstream entertainment: variety theatre, Roman adventure, suspense and Gothic. Yet no one seemed very concerned about what was going on with ordinary, everyday American.

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk) was an exception, with a stronger social message about racism. And finally there was John Cassavetes, the most audacious filmmaker then. The difference is that Cassavetes preferred the natural, life-like flow, not an imitation – unlike Sirk, who was the father of melodrama. Shadows has an abrupt and open end, with titles explaining: “The film you have just seen is an improvisation”. This means that there was no script, and the production would remain independent throughout. John Cassavetes is the spiritual father of American independent filmmaking.

Shadows is Cassavetes’s directorial debut. The story follows the life of black jazz musicians, poets inspired by the Beat Generation, white dancers, gamblers and outsiders. Lelia (Lelia Goldoni) is a young mixed-raced woman who is attracted to Tony (Anthony Ray), a white womaniser. Lelia is an opinionated independent romantic woman, who is used to listen to other women’s speeches on existentialism and Simone de Beauvoir. She likes Tony and sleeps with him in their first night. When the couple meet again, Lelia introduces him to her brother, a black jazz singer.

Tony promptly makes an excuse to leave, in a clear example of cordial racism. The silent exclusion. This kind of racism is the most dangerous, because it is hidden. It is easy to point out the racists when they scream out loud or carry out hate crime. It’s more complicated when the threat is wrapped up in sheets of a social system. Nevertheless, Shadows is not a political, activist movie.

Cassavetes was a white fellow. He describes the years he spent pounding the pavement in New York as a young unemployed actor unable to get a job. Like his characters, he is passionate about life and art. His financial struggle gives him strength to create a new film language grounded in authenticity which would heavily influence directors such as Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch and Lars Von Trier.

Shadows has no the epic moments, expensive and gigantic sets, like in Ben-Hur. Instead, Cassavetes penetrates his characters’ souls with the close-ups.

His dialogues are not elaborate, as in Suddenly Last Summer (based on a screenplay by Tennessee Williams). This conversation takes place at the Metropolitan Museum:

– What’s that?

– It is a statue.

– I know! What kind of statue?

– Oh, you ignorant. It is not a question of understanding. If you feel it, you feel it. Art is it.

This kind of authenticity and humour was missing in the cinemas then – and perhaps today still.

Shadows had a permanent impact on American cinema. It is frankly about sex as it is intoxicated with youth. It opens with a rock band and people dancing and then it progressively moves into a jazz soundtrack, composed by Charles Mingus. It is mundane. Its coherence is knit by chiaroscuro photography; in other words, shadows.

John Cassavetes’s first film was restored from three original celluloids into a new, high-definition digital restoration, and it is now available with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition. You can also watch it online for free, if you start a trial membership with the BFI – just click here for more information.

Watch the original film trailer below:

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“Every day is hell and hell is me” says Mallory, the Czech female protagonist of the eponymous doc. This brilliant piece of work from filmmaker Heleny Trestikove portrays the improvements in her life after deciding to quit drugs. We follow the life and dilemmas of this fascinating character from 2002 until present days. From drug addict to social career in just a decade, Mallory tells a true story of overcoming hard times and dealing with a society that isn’t ready to support homelessness, addiction and mental disorders.

It’s fascinating watching a documentary which took so long to be completed, and to such great results. Helena Třeštíková had to grapple with the ups and downs in Mallory’s life for what felt like eternity. How many ends this film could have had? Overdose, suicide, or continuing addiction? No. Mallory’s story ends up to be very successful if compared to countless unhappy endings for many heroin addicts. It’s an inspirational tale of persistence and determination.

Mallory’s story is set in a gloomy and junky Prague, and exposes some underground societal illnesses. Audiences should not expect any conventional beauty in its images. Living in an old car with a boyfriend for years, she faces insecurities about the future, risks relapsing and suffers from the absence of a son locked up in a mental institution. The beauty in Mallory is her finding strength, love and hope in the most horrific situations. Filmed with a very restless, nervous and curiously handheld camera, the films tries to capture colour amidst chaos.

Even at her lowest, Mallory is a believer, and it’s the relationships with the people around her that trigger her survival instincts. Such as when she meets famous Czech actor Bartoska in a moment of despair and promises him to overcome her addiction. Or her constant search for a permanent dwelling, and to win back the custody of her son Krystof. There is synergy between Mallory and the film director, as Třeštíková joins the battle to reintroduce dignity into the life of her subject.

The documentary also denounces the deficiency in the homeless support and social care system in the Czech Republic; it exposes the many obstacles people need to overcome in order to find government support. This subject matter resonates with this year’s Palm D’or winner I, Daniel Blake, by British filmmaker Ken Loach. Both films expose the humiliation ordinary people have to face whenever unemployed or without a home to live. Mallory could help many to find hope in the dark corners of addiction and dire finances. It is an optimistic scream of faith.

Mallory is available for watching online in some countries on dafilms.com – click here in order to find out more.

Watch the film trailer below:

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Europe is a continent in crisis. It’s being attacked by a strange and mostly invisible enemy, and a man is willing to sacrifice everything that he owns in order to restore peace in his country. His pledge to God ” I shall destroy my home, give up my son. I shall be silent, will never speak with anyone again. I shall give up everything that binds me to life, if You will only let everything be as it was before, as it was this morning, as it was yesterday: so that I may be spared this deadly, suffocating, bestial state of fear.”

The man is called Alexander and the country is Sweden, but this could be any man in any European experiencing “the fear from the outsider” – in this case an perceived nuclear disaster. A large and distorted map of Europe from the 17th century is a central element of the film, reminding viewers that this continent is in constant mutation, and that borders and national projects are very fragile, and just as fluid as time.

Alexander picks his saviours very poorly. He has sex with the perceived “witch” Maria convinced that this will change the fate of his home nation and continent. Once peace is apparently restored, he proceeds to carry out his remaining commitments with God, and promptly burns down his house (pictured above).

Fearful people often become delusional. They vigorously embrace makeshift and flawed heroes and passionately engage in deranged and fruitless action, misguided by the belief that their “audacious” demeanour – the “sacrifice” in the film title – will change the course of history.

This Swedish film was directed by the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in 1986, shortly before his untimely death to cancer. The film opens on the birthday of Alexander (Erland Josephson), an actor who gave up the stage in order to work as a journalist, critic, and lecturer on aesthetics. He lives in a beautiful house with his British wife Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), stepdaughter Marta (Filippa Franzén), and young son, “Little Man”, who is temporarily mute due to a throat operation. The impending fear of a nuclear holocaust soon disrupts their peace and drives Alexander to the brink of insanity.

Curiously, the British character in the movie is the first one to break down. Adelaide panics and wails neurotically at the prospective collapse of Europe. There is no doubt that her erratic behaviour has a strong impact on her husband, who soon after embarks in his superstitious crusade to save the Old Continent.

The Sacrifice remains a very modern film about fear and madness. Fear that destroys, in the name of salvation. Madness makes you set fire to your own house, destroy everything you possess and go silent in the name of a strange salvation from an enemy that perhaps never existed.

The film is showing this week in cinemas across the UK as part of the major retrospective of the Russian filmmaker Tarkovsky – click here for more information.

Watch the film trailer below:

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I wanted to be a filmmaker when I moved to the UK at the age of just 19, in the mid-1990s. I was very disappointed because I couldn’t pay for a film school. So I decided to study film theory instead. But I’m not a frustrated wannabe, who settled for a “lesser” career as a journalist. That’s because Abbas Kiarostami taught me how to pretend to be a filmmaker, and thereby rekindled my love for cinema.

I watched Kiarostami’s Close-Up (which he made in 1990) shortly after moving to London. This dirty gem opened my eyes, revealing the universal power of benevolent manipulation. This docudrama tells the story of the real-life trial of the cinephile Hossain Sabzian. He impersonated the also Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, conning a whole family into believing they would star in his new film. it features the people involved, acting as themselves. The film is a celebration of mistaken identity, living life through the eyes and the achievements of someone else. The sweet illusion of pretending to be something your’re not, and thereby becoming a masterful artist.

The film’s narrative is deliciously deceitful. Reality and fiction fuse together, and it is never entirely clear what has been concocted by Kiarostami, Sabzian or us the viewers. I then realised: if Kiarostami could manipulate communication and events to such outstanding results, so could I. The difference is that I do it with a pen (or a computer keyboard) instead of a film camera.

Kiarostami experimented with language in the most trivial and yet unexpected ways. There is urgency in the simplicity of his filmmaking technique. Throughout the years, he continued to hone and reinvent his tricks, first in Iran, then abroad.

He won a Palm D’Or for the frank and apparently artless Taste of Cherry (1997) – about a man driving through a city suburb looking for someone to bury him after he has died. He also won widespread acclaim with the minimalistic experimentalism of Ten (2002) – depicting conversations on explosive topics such as religion and divorce between a female driver and various passengers as she drives around Tehran.

More recently, Kiarostami has spread his wings outside Iran. In 2010, he directed Certified Copy, set in the Italian region of Tuscany, and starring the French actress Juliette Binoche and the British opera singer William Shimell. This film quickly became my Kiarostami favourite. It tells the story of two strangers who meet during a literary event and decide to pretend that they are lovers, just for the sake of it. They are soon so absorbed in their experiment, that it is difficult to tell whether they are strangers pretending to be lovers, or rather lovers pretending to be strangers pretending to be lovers. Nothing is as simple and straight-forward as it seems in Kiarostami’s world, and allowing us to join the pieces at our own accord is part of the reason why watching his films is such a personal and intimate experience.

His last film was the Franco-Japanese Like Someone in Love (2012), which has remarkable similarities with Certified Copy. University professor Takashi (Tadashi Okuno) pretends to be Akiko’s (Rin Takanashi) father, when in reality he is a client of the young sex worker. The difference from Certified Copy is that Takashi has a practical reason for pretending: he is helping Akiko to conceal her job as a prostitute from her jealous boyfriend.

Kiarostami’s cinematic move to Europe and then to Japan and his continuing experimentalism with mistaken identity suggests that the director was still at his prime, thriving with an unfathomable creative streak. The film of his life has prematurely finished at just 76 min… years! I’m sure he could have delivered another 10 or 15 minutes, and perhaps an unexpected twist at the grand finale.

Kiarostami’s legacy to the world of cinema is enormous, and he has profoundly affected me. When I write, I can now pretend that I’m British, Brazilian, Spanish, French or Japanese. I can also pretend that I’m educated, that I’m in love or that I have simply lost the plot, and then twist the narrative back. Pretending is a healthy survival exercise.

Let me now reveal the truth: I have never seen any of Kiarostami’s films and I had never even heard his name until his death was publicised yesterday. I just picked up information about his life and films on Wikipedia, reimagined own my life and then wrote this article accordingly. I feigned my love for Kiarostami. In fact, I don’t even know what came first, whether it was my love for cinema or my passion for writing. Perhaps I don’t even like cinema.

Likewise, Kiarostami hasn’t died. This is just his latest cinematic experience, his most radical one. He is teaching us how to value art in its entirety, and that it is perfectly ok to deceive viewers. Right now, he is smiling at us from Heaven, skillfully directing still, knowing that his legacy remains universal and indelible.

Thank you so much Kiarostami for hanging with us for the entire duration of this 76-minute docudrama!