Disabled people have sex, get over it! This is the central message of this extremely candid and moving Spanish film. Antonio (Antonio Centeno) is a paraplegic writer. Here comes the SHOCKING PART: the man has a libido! Who could’ve imagined it? Disabled people too want to have sex. Obviously the only immoral thoughts in here are with those who think that people with disabilities should refrain from having naughty fun.
Antonio has a habit of hiring prostitutes in order to satisfy his urges, including the beautiful and affectionate Laura. She looks very comfortable at what she does. In many ways, she come across as a loving nurse who puts all of her heart into what she does. And Antonio goes a step further: he turns his very own flat in Barcelona into some sort of brothel where other physically and mentally disabled people too can hire “sexual assistants”. The moments of sexual interaction are very beautiful and sexy, supported by strong performances and meditative a dialogue. There’s absolutely nothing ugly and cringeworthy about sex with those who do not fit the norm. In fact, this is very liberating experience.
Not everyone shares my views, of course, including Antonio’s carer Arantxa (Arantxa Ruiz). She has a very close and intimate relationship with him: she changes his clothes, hoists him in and out of bed, changes his pee bag, and so on. Yet one day she pops in without warning and bumps into him having sex with a prostitute. She later explains that she feels uncomfortable with his “modern life style”. Antonio notes that she’s implying a “higher moral ground” than the sex worker, and comes out in defence of the prostitute: “If it wasn’t for the whores, maybe I wouldn’t have any pleasure”.
Parallel to Antonio’s story is Pepe’s (Pepe Rovira). He was recently released from a psychiatric hospital for stealing taxis in order to work and make money, before returning them to the very same spot where he took them from. This unusual story is a reference to Jo Sol’s 2005 film Taxi Thief (also starred by Rovira). Antonio and Pepe become good friends, and apparently bond over their willingness to challenge the established normativity, even if in very different ways. Pepe is also a musician, and his fiery strings and emotionally-laden Flamenco lament infuse the film with passion.
It’s difficult to come across such level of sexual frankness in British cinema, which is used to sanitised bodies and sex. There is no prudery in Living and Other Fictions. It feels a lot like a documentary but in reality it’s fictionalised account of Jo and Antonio’s creative and political inclinations. Antonio himself co-directed two years ago a far more provocative film dealing with the same topic, with the far from subtle title Yes, We Fuck. His character in Living and Other Fictions explains that his body is “a pack of dynamite for the walls of normality”, and talks about Marxism through the “body revolution”. The message is clear: you’d be crazy to the embrace the orthodox “normality” and not to enjoy your irreplaceable and fascinating body, gorgeous and marvellous in its imperfections!
You can view Living and Other Fictions online and for free until December 17th, as part of the ArteKino Festival – just click here and turn the volume up!
Adapted from Yukito Kishiro 1990 manga comic series, Battle Angel Alita is finally getting a big screen adaptation from20th Century Fox. In their latest trailer for Alita: Battle Angel, 20th Century unveils producer James Cameron and director’s Robert Rodriguez’s clear eye for a piece of visual provocative cinema, a similar level of cyberpunk to this year’s Ghost in a Shell (Rupert Sanders), and a central love story which will act as a refreshing cleanser to the cyborg-on-cyborg action.
Focusing on Alita (Rosa Salazar), a cyborg created by Ido (Christopher Waltz), who consequentially becomes a cyborg bounty hunter, Rodriquez’s new film is clearly seeking to play to the summer blockbuster crowd, as it is scheduled for a July 2018 Summer release. Still, in the trailer, Alita’s distinct aesthetics are brought to the forefront in numerous close-ups. Blurring the lines between performance and CGI, the facial features of the character can feel a little jarring in a frame filled with actual human faces, such as Waltz’s.
Featuring the likes of Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali and Jackie Earle Haley, the cast of the film is not particularly bad, still it does feel as though this big budget sci-fi summer blockbuster will be a nice pay check for all those involved. One would expect its box office and public reception to that similar of Ghost in a Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), with similar whitewashing claims.
Alita: Battle Angel will be released theatrically in July 2018.
We regret to inform you that Pennywise has been uncrowned and also stripped of his title as the dirtiest clown ever. The accolade has been rightly claimed by Brazilian Bingo. The difference is that instead of scaring and killing children, his South American counterpart subverts childhood in a very unusual way. He infuses it with swagger, malice, sensuality and a dash of naughty humour. And he’s also a little Camp. Most Americans and Europeans would cringe at the teachings of this very unusual prankster.
The character is in based on the real story of Arlindo Barreto, the first Bozo (The American clown character, which never featured on British media) on Brazilian television, back in the 1980s – his name was changed to Bingo on the movie in order to avoid legal trademark issues, and also for the sake of more artistic freedom. Bingo: The King of the Mornings is a partly fictionalised account of how Barreto had to twist the American clown in order to fit in with Brazilian culture.
Instead of the well-behaved American presenter, his Brazilian franchise actively encouraged children to be naughty and used bizarre antics, which would be mostly frowned upon nowadays. He ordered children at home to engage in pillow fights, invited the Brazilian Bum Queen Gretchen to shake her booty, and occasionally challenged, mocked and even humiliated the small members of the audience of the TV show, which was transmitted live every morning for about four hours. At first, the producers panicked at the unorthodox practices, but the soaring rates mandated that they allowed Augusto to carry on.
This is a masterpiece of Brazilian cinema, blending nostalgia, sensuality and failed fatherhood. Vladimir Brichta delivers an energetic and profoundly moving performance as Augusto/ Bingo, a young performer keen to make it big in order to please his mother (an artist of yore who feel into oblivion, played by an equally touching Ana Lucia Torre), while also neglecting his own child. His son Gabriel regrets that his father has time for every child in the world, except for him. To make things worse, he’s not allowed to disclose his father’s job to his friends, as Bingo’s real identity is legally protected. The child actor Caua Martins also does an outstanding job, not particularly easy for a multilayered and complex role.
Bingo: The King of the Mornings delves with a topic familiar to Brazilians and the world: the hyper-sensualisation of pop culture in the largest country of Latin America. Brazilians exude passion, suggestiveness and even voluptiousness, and a children’s TV show is also game. The real-life children’s TV presenter Xuxa Meneghel had to adapt her sexy wardrobe once recruited for a American show, in a classic example of how Brazilian sensuality is often a no-go abroad.. The film doesn’t discuss this, except that it quickly alludes to Xuxa, replacing her real name with “Lulu”.
This sensualisation, however, is not synonymous with sexual freedom. Brazilians are not as sexually liberated as the world perceives. In fact, Brazil is a very conservative society, in many aspects. Augusto himself encounters such paradox when he tries to bed his beautiful producer Lucia (Leandra Leal). She’s an evangelical who refuses to have sex before marriage.
The second half of the film sees an abrupt change in Augusto’s life, as his relationship with his son collapses and another tragedy suddenly strikes. He quickly hits the bottle and also begins to snort copious amounts of cocaine, in preparation for his show. This is no laughing matter. Brichta’s performance is impeccable. He’s sexyand , he’s able to make audiences laugh and also cry. The trappings of fame and a sudden fall from grace will have a major impact on his life. Will Augusto have to abandon television? Will his character live on? You might be surprised with the answer. Go watch Daniel Rezende’s first film. It’s simply unmissable!
Bingo: The King of Mornings is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 15th. Stay tuned for our exclusive interview with the filmmaker in the next few days.
Cinema certainly has an association with a literal ‘need for speed’ and none more so than in Frédéric Schoendoerffer Fast Convoy. Offering a high-octane merge of zooming cars and an atypical hitman, its speed does not necessarily result in a riveting nature. Stylised to an inch of its life, through the six different men involved in trafficking cocaine and other drugs from Malaga into France. All accompanied by blacked out German cars and fine leather jackets, it’s a routine piece of European thriller that feels somewhat of a mixture between the Locke’s dialogue-based scenes in a fast moving vehicle and Luc Besson’s stories in the Transporter series.
Featuring Benoit Magimel, widely known for his role in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), the film reflects the kineticism of fast travel through constantly switching to different members of a convoy escorting drugs across southern Europe. Accompanied by undertones of an aspiring Islamic working class in France, who are forced to turn towards such criminality in order to survive, through Fast Convoy’s cinematic diversity, a touchstone of social and economic problems in contemporary France and Europe is revealed. Likewise, the racial identities of the police are rarely seen, adding to this political message increasingly so.
When two of the crew crumble under the press of a police checkpoint, Magimel’s Alex is forced to clean up the mess left by Elyes’ (Mahdi Belemlih) inexperience. Sporting a pair of 1999’s Matrix-esque (Lana/ Lilly Wachowski) sunglasses, a fast Porsche 4 x 4, he is clearly a man with a particular set of skills for a particular task. Still, in the final few fleeting moments, in the company of Nadia (Reem Kherici), a civilian who gets taken hostage when Elyes steals her car, gives a glimpse behind the emotional shield that Alex so constantly maintains. In the moments of dialogue he has, the character attempts to interact with Nadia, furthering this reading. Throughout, there is a sense of a brokenness relating to all the male characters, calling into question their place in this hyper-masculine environment of guns, drugs and fast driving.
Divided by a distinct colour palette in the first half of the film where the screen is filled with jovial conversations about the men’s favourite sex positions, the yellow ting which accompanies these scenes is a literal stark contrast to the deep bluish night time that closes out the piece. Granted, the characters are not as deepened as the cinematography of Vincent Gallot, who filmed taken, they still service the tense plot. Gallot is an indicator of the film’s aims in targeting the same audience as such Takenfilms.
Thankfully not as outlandish and gravity-defying as a different piece of car-related film (The Fast and Furious series), what Fast Convoy offers instead of flying cars is a solid piece of high-budget American-influenced French film.
Fast Convoy is available on all major VoD platforms as part of the Men on the Edge strand of the Walk this Way collection.
A Lithuanian man meets two Ukrainian men. But this is no ordinary meeting – the Lithuanian man has just narrowly avoided being shot at after almost driving through a military checkpoint in the Donetsk province (in Donbass, the predominantly ethnic Russian region of the Ukraine, central to the Ukrainian Crisis of 2013/14). Auteur Šarūnas Bartas’s tenth feature film Frost takes us on an 1,800 km road trip from Lithuania to eastern Ukraine. Along the way, it provides a gorgeously-landscaped meditation on the cold complexities of war and national identity.
The film opens with a brief street conversation between Rokas (Mantas Jančiauskas) and an unnamed friend. The friend has been voluntarily delivering humanitarian aid to Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbass conflict, but is unable to deliver the next batch. He asks Rokas to drive to Kiev and drop off the cargo with some other volunteers. Without much consideration, Rokas agrees and takes his girlfriend Inga (Lyja Maknaviciute) with him. They drive to the Polish-Ukrainian border, where a journalist Andrei (Andrzej Chyra) helps them to enter the Ukraine. After discovering that the Kiev volunteers have moved on, Rokas decides to take the long – and perilous – journey to Donetsk. Along the way, he stays with Andrei and assorted journalists in Dnipro, meets some sombre soldiers in the Donbass borderlands and finally arrives on the fractured frontline.
These three meetings are essential to Rokas’s intellectual development and the film’s broader commentary around war. The first meeting in Dnipro displays the worst excesses of international conflict journalism. In typical Bartas style, Rokas stays largely silent when Andrei introduces him to the group of war correspondents and photographers. However, his sullen suspiciousness indicates that he is ill at ease sipping wine and whiskey in an upmarket hotel, when there is a humanitarian mission to fulfill.
The second meeting in a makeshift Donbass military outpost is deeply moving and switches the mood into hyperreal docudrama. The scene involves an inquisitive Rokas talking to two weary Ukrainian men about the nature of war. The two men are soldiers, inasmuch as they wear uniforms, and are tasked with removing dead bodies – friendly and enemy – from the battlefield. The dialogue is expertly played in a way that throws up the utter moral dilemma of war, without being a preachy lesson in ethics. Indeed, the two men are not actors, but actual soldiers and this contributes to the striking authenticity of the conversation.
By the time Rokas is on his way to the final meeting, his inquisitiveness is starting to get the better of him. Rokas is now using his phone to film and take photos of the destruction of Donetsk province. It is initially unclear whether Rokas is transitioning from a naïve volunteer to a roving war reporter. However, his subsequent interactions with soldiers on the frontline suggest a morbidly voyeuristic fascination with the conflict. Ultimately, Rokas comes full-circle and is as much an out-of-touch tourist as the journalists he previously despised.
The film acts primarily as an exploration of war from the bubble of an EU perspective. This is both eye-opening and positively human, as each character displays an entirely familiar range of virtues and vices. It also broadcasts Ukraine and the Donbass crisis to an EU audience that have now largely forgotten about the fortunes of their largest European neighbours. Although Frostdoesn’t detail the experiences of the Donbass separatists, it leaves you with no doubt that the everyday allegiances of this war are arbitrary and ambiguous. Where documentaries such as Netflix’s Winter on Fire (Evgeny Afineevsky, 2015) are incredibly informative, yet brazenly biased, Frostgives space for the viewer to independently appraise their position.
In spite of this, the film can feel somewhat ponderous when Rokas and Inga are on the road. This is largely a result of Inga’s diminished role and Rokas’s unclear motivations. It’s possible that Rokas exists as a young, multilingual and rudderless conduit for Lithuanian national identity. It’s also possible that Rokas exists as a blank slate for the viewer to project their own interpretations onto. Nevertheless, the feeling pervades that developed dialogue between Rokas and Inga could have given a sharper narrative touch. Bartas is known for stripping his early films of dialogue and narrative. But in a film where other characters’ talk clearly drives the story forward, the silence between the central couple is decisively deafening.
Frost is a unique piece of cinema in 2017. It focuses attention back onto a divided region that has become absent from the popular European imagination. Likewise, it provokes meaningful reflection on the moral dilemma of war, without being overtly instructive. Its slight tendency for tedious travel is punctuated by powerful prose in the three key interludes. It ends on a low-key whimper, but one that will explode through your thoughts long after the end credits.
In the remote and bleak Vratsa, a Northeastern Bulgarian city, Gana (Irena Ivanova, pictured below) is a carer looking after elderly patients suffering from dementia. She steals their ID cards and sells them on the black market in order to feed her morphine addiction. She lives with mother, but their relationship is close to non-existent: the two women hardly communicate with each other. Plus her relationship to her car-mechanic boyfriend has become desensitised, and mostly hinged on their drug addiction. Every aspect of Godless is bleak. Menial life is excrutiating, and solidarity is an alien sentiment. Despondency, anhedonia and hopelessness prevail in every little moment of Gana’s existence.
The image of Bulgaria isn’t a very positive one. Corruption is endemic, people have no time for love and the city itself looks oppressive and soulless, despite the attractive mountains that surround it. The snow is neither beautiful nor comforting; instead it’s grim and muddy. First-time female director Ralitza Petrova wanted to paint a jarring and even misanthropic image of her homeland, it seems. Well, not entirely. Something suddenly happens which triggers a little humanity in Gana. She suddenly feels guilty for her reckless actions and their dreadful consequences. Tragedy forces her to reconnect with her sense of compassion.
Godless is a visually striking film. The images of poverty are neither sanitised nor fetishised. The dusty roads, the weedy pavements and the crumbling buildings are all real. The dementia patients look extremely realistic, and some of the sequences are very touching. A couple of times, such in the first sequence of a dog chasing a car, the film momentarily acquires an ethereal Tarkovskyan feel.
Despite the beautiful imagery and excellent acting, the film also has a few shortcomings. The plot is a little difficult to follow. Perhaps that’s because corruption is furtive and stealthy, and it’s not intended to be foregrounded, and instead to remain subtle and ambiguous, in the shadows. One way or the other, I wasn’t able to join all required dots and sometimes got a little lost in translation.
Ultimately, Godless is a study of human degradation with a twist of hope in the end. It’s an excellent first picture for a director, and we would hazard a guess that Petrova has a bright future ahead. It has deservedly received many international accolades, including the prestigious Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival (2016).
Watch Godless right here, with DMovies and Eyelet:
Many people think of Hollywood when they think of action movies, and they forget that Europe is also teeming with gangsters, bank robbers, crooks and all sorts of dirty criminals. These rogues are everywhere: in Southern Spain, on the roads of France, in the dark and derelict suburbs of Berlin and even in virtually “crime-free” Scandinavia. You just have to look! Thankfully, the Men on the Edge Collection, which is part of the Walk This Way initiative, is here to help us. Walk This Way is funded by EU Media (a sub-programme of Creative Europe) and is aimed at fostering and promoting straight-to-VoD European cinema.
We spoke again to Muriel Joly, Head of the Walk this Way, and asked her where the idea for Men on the Edge came from. She explained: “our aim is to create a collection of thrillers that would more embody the European film noirs in all their diversity. A typical genre carried out by a great tradition of famous authors and scenarists. Thriller is a genre for audience everywhere in the world thus this is one of the most successful Walk this Way Collection. We wanted to highlight the characters more than the genre, as all these films have in common to have heroes and plots that are intense, but each story is so different, as they take place in France, Scandinavia, United-Kingdom…”
She goes on to described how the films are compiled: “Since 2015, 17 films (including this year’s releases) have been part of the collection. Each film is available in at least three European countries and we ask for the movies to be also available in at least one of the three priority areas outside Europe: United States, Latin America and Japan. We select them on both editorial and sales criteria, thanks to our network of sales agents partners.”
So let’s now change this notion that European cinema can’t go fast, wild and dirty. Our men too know how to shoot and misbehave. Long live our robber, swindlers and racketeers! Click here for the full catalogue of the Men on the Edge collection. And check out the two latest releases just below, both from – dirty reviews of both movies will follow soon!
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1. Fast Convoy (Frédéric Schoendoerffer, 2016):
A “go fast” convoy shipping a ton of cannabis Malaga in southern Spain is disrupted following a shoot out that results in the kidnapping of a tourist. The picture at the top of the article in from Fast Convoy.
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2. Thank You for Calling (Pascal Elbé, 2016):
Biography based on the life of conman Gilbert Chikli who invented the “CEO scam” and was able to persuade bank and company officers to transfer money by simply ringing them and impersonating their CEO. He is now living in luxury in Israel. The second picture illustrating this piece was taken from Thank You for Calling.
By most accounts, 13 years of heroin addiction prepare you for an untimely death. Yet in the case of Jerzy Górski, protagonist of The Fastest, they spurred him on to compete in the Virginia Double Iron Triathlon. Director Łukasz Palkowski is back in familiar territory after 2014’s Gods, the biopic of a cardiac surgeon. But can he overcome his crowd-pleasing inclinations and deliver the incisive film that this real-life story necessitates?
The Fastest drops us straight into the action with an opening sequence that sets the scene for adolescent delinquency in a small southwestern Polish town. We are introduced to Jerzy (Jakub Gierszał), a rebellious young man decked out in leather and metal who commits petty crimes in order to fund his drug seshs with his disillusioned peers. Jerzy becomes romantically involved with Grazyna (Anna Próchniak), the daughter of a local Communist Party official, and soon encourages her to indulge in opioid escapism. The first third of the film sets up Jerzy and Grazyna’s escalating heroin dependency, before everything comes crashing down and he commences a brutal rehabilitation regime.
From then on in, we’re exposed to Jerzy’s gruelling physical and emotional development, as he latches on to the near impossible dream of training for a triathlon under the mentorship of a local swimming pool manager (Arkadiusz Jakubik). This is a remarkable true story that has little coverage both inside and out of Poland. It has the potential to be an eye-opening account of the diverse determinants and callous consequences of addiction, while also providing an inspirational elegy to those in a seemingly hopeless spiral.
Unfortunately, Jerzy’s troubled brilliance is doused in glossy cliché from start to finish. The use of montage has a long history in filmmaking and is not inherently bad. However, The Fastest seems to rely solely on multiple montages to represent Jerzy’s development, when there are surely other cinematic techniques available. Villains, heroes and love interests are all somewhat one-dimensional and can be spotted a mile off.
In addition, there appears to be little recognition of the complexities of the protagonist’s character. Jerzy’s long-term on-and-off relationship with his local sweetheart is constructed primarily as a battle against the injustices of her father. There’s a lack of acknowledgement that his paternalistic urges may actually be a justified response to Jerzy’s destructive recklessness. This sort of detailed characterisation is much better achieved across an array of other Polish biopics, such as ’90s hip-hop heavyweight You Are God (Leszek Dawid, 2012) and the morbidly fascinating portrait of Zdzisław Beksiński, The Last Family (Jan P. Matuszyński, 2016).
The film also uses a bewildering selection of musical reference points. It’s bookended by Steppenwolf and The Doors, which seems normal enough – if a tad lazy – until you remember that this is a Polish film set in the Communist era. Western music was undoubtedly available on the Eastern Bloc’s black market. However, there is a wealth of Polish rock and roll that was created in direct response to communism and speaks precisely of the listlessness that led Jerzy’s generation to seek solace in substance dependency. World cinema is often commercially successful and there is little evidence to suggest that domestic music alienates an international audience. So why the lack of imagination and relevance in The Fastest?
Even if we ignore the musical misgivings, Palkowski commits one of the worst cinematic crimes as the film’s heroic climax beckons. In an utterly bizarre move, the director rearranges the facts in order to make Jerzy’s achievements seem miraculously impossible. This is a baffling decision, as it’s impressive enough that Jerzy kicked a 13-year addiction, let alone competed in and subsequently won a double triathlon. The disappointment is particularly pertinent in a film that frames itself with archive footage and biographical facts, seemingly screaming out its ‘true story’ credentials.
In a nutshell, The Fastest ends up being the story of a one-time heroin addict who beat the odds and became Double Ironman World Champion with the help of four montages. Jerzy Górski’s athletic achievements are indeed remarkable, but Polish art has long found strength in subtlety and symbolism. By the fourth time you see Jerzy get knocked down and then get up again, you realise that this film is a Hollywood-esque mess. This is undoubtedly a dirty story and one worth learning about. Regrettably, in Palkowski’s hands it descends into a farcical parody of the biopic genre. There’s only one Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda, 1981) in Polish cinema. This isn’t it.
This a a golden opportunity to deep dive into the heart of the highly secretive and insular Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn, in New York City. Menashe (Menashe Lustig) is a kind and yet clumsy and socially inept grocery store clerk. His wife has now passed away and he wants to keep custody of his only child Rieven (Ruben Niborski), but he faces an uphill struggle from his very own ultra-conservative group, which does not approve of a single man raising a boy.
The topic of the young and blundering widower rediscovering life and in some ways behaving like a bachelor, unable to keep his house clean and cook for himself, is quite universal. At moments, I could almost picture a Hollywood comedy such as Mrs Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993). There is an enormous pressure for Menashe to remarry, and his attempts at finding a last-minute wife are funny and awkward. All decisions are ultimately made by the Ruv (a senior master), so Menashe has to come across as a presentable and viable father and citizen to everyone he comes across, lest they rat on him.
Ultimately, this is not a film about the religion, and the issues are relatable for people of most creeds and in mostcorners of the world. But the script isn’t entirely riveting. It lacks subplots, and the consistent focus of Menashe’s plight just isn’t effective enough from both a cinematic and a dramatic perspective The stoical attitude of the community sometimes borders the monotonous. Despite the universality of the topic, the movie often banal. It’s more interesting to watch as a peek into a hermetically closed society than a compelling drama.
Menashe is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, November 3rd. The film has previously toured the US and Europe, and showed at various film festivals. Out on all major VoD platforms in April.
This December you have an extra reason to stay at home. Even better: you have 10 reasons to stay at home. As if you needed yet more encouragement to trade the freezing temperatures outside for the comfort of your sofa and the company of dirty European film. The online platform for independent films Festival Scope has teamed up with the European culture channel ARTE and come up with ArteKino, a unique online film festival featuring 10 carefully selected films not available anywhere else for a limited period only. And it’s entirely free: there are to hidden catches and credit card numbers to be given out!
Each film can be viewed by 5,000 people between December 1st and December 17th on a first-come-first-saved basis, and they are available everywhere in Europe unless stated otherwise (see exceptions below). All films area available in the UK and Ireland, except for Chevalier.
These gems were carefully handpicked by Olivier Père, Director of Film at ARTE France and Artistic Director at ArteKino Festival. He explains “ArteKino is designed to be a 100% free digital event, the festival was born out of ARTE’s desire to strengthen its support for modern European arthouse films in an original manner by giving yet them greater visibility and wider distribution.”
He went on to explain how the event is curated: ” we have selected 10 films that represent the eclectic and daring trend sweeping across modern European film productions. Alongside the latest work from renowned filmmakers, we have decided to showcase new talent, with some directors’ first ambitious feature-length films that demonstrate the outstanding creative ability of the new generation from countries such as Romania, Greece and Poland.”
The amazing selection includes a Bulgarian story of lovelessness, corruption and addiction, with a twist, a Portuguese tale of sorrow and nostalgia, the life of controversial Polish surrealist painter ZdzisławBeksiński, before he rose to fame, and also a very dysfunctional macho game in Greece (pictured above), plus much much more. Check the full list just below, and visit ArteKino’s portal in order to view them RIGHT NOW!
Berlin-based engineer Michael must travel to Norway for his father‘s funeral. His sister is unwilling to go, and Michael is left alone with his 14-year-old son Luis, with whom he has always had minimal contact. Michael tries to bond with Luis while exploring the remote region of northern Norway for a few days. But their first trip together is much more difficult than expected. Daily interaction is unfamiliar territory to both, and Luis obviously holds a grudge because of his father‘s negligence. But during these longest days of summer, Michael is determined to break a bittersweet father-son pattern.
The film showed at the following festivals (and it took home the prize between brackets): Berlin (Silver Bear for Best Actor), Hong Kong, Buenos Aires and Taipei Golden Horse. It is not available for viewing in the following countries:Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Austria and Norway.
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2. Scarred Hearts (Radu Jude, Romania/ Germany):
During the summer of 1937, Emanuel, a young man in his early 20s, is committed to a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast for treatment of his bone tuberculosis. The treatment consists of painful spine punctures that confine him to a plaster on a stretcher-bed. Little by little, as Emanuel gets accustomed to the sadness of his new life, he discovers that inside the sanatorium there is still a life to be lived to the fullest. He makes friends and engages in conversations, he reads, he writes, he smokes and drinks, interacts with doctors, nurses and stretcher-bearers. Meanwhile, outside Romania doesn‘t have much to offer him, as it turn into an extreme right-wing society.
It showed at the following festivals (having snatched the accolades between brackets): Locarno Festival (Special Jury Prize), BFI London, Hamburg (Hamburg Producers Award), Haifa (Special Mention), Busan, Gothenburg and 11 more. Not available in: Romania, France, Germany, Austria and Luxembourg.
The image at the top of the article was taken from Scarred Hearts.
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3. Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece):
In the middle of the Aegean Sea, on a luxury yacht, six men on a fishing trip decide to play a game. During this game, things will be compared. Things will be measured. Songs will be butchered, and blood will be tested. Friends will become rivals and rivals will become hungry. But at the end of the voyage, when the game is over, the man who wins will be the best man. And he will wear upon his little finger the victorious signet ring: the “Chevalier.”
The movie showed at nearly 50 festivals (having won the following prizes), including: Locarno Festival, Toronto, IFF Rotterdam, SXSW, BFI London (Best Film), Sarajevo (Best Film), Gothenburg, Cartagena (Best Film), Thessaloniki (Audience Award), Goteborg, New York, Hamburg, San Francisco and 30 more. Not available for viewing in: Greece, United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, Portugal, Poland, Cyprus, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Estonia and Lithuania.
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4. Frost (SharunasBartas, Lithuania/Ukraine):
Rokas and Inga, a couple of young Lithuanians, volunteer to drive a cargo van of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. When plans change and they find themselves left to their own devices, they cross the vast snowy lands of the Donbass region in search of allies and shelter, drifting into the lives of those affected by the war. They approach the frontline in spite of the danger, all the while growing closer to each other as they begin to understand life during wartime.
Festivals where the movie showed include (having won the following prize between brackets): Cannes (Director’s Fortnight), Locarno Festival, Transylvania, Odessa, New Horizons, Haifa, Busan. Not available for viewing in: France, Portugal, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania.
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5. Colo (Teresa Villaverde, Portugal):
Struggling against the crisis in Portugal a mother doubles up jobs to pay the bills since her husband is unemployed. Their teenage daughter tries to keep living her everyday life even if the money’s running short and makes everything uneasy. Escaping from their common reality, they slowly become strangers to one another, as the tension grows in silence and in guilt.
This Portuguese film showed at the following festivals (having won the following prize between brackets): Berlin, Uruguay, Hong Kong, Indie Lisbon, Melbourne, Scanorama Vilnius and the BildrauschFilmfest Basel (Best Film). It is not available for viewing in the following countries: Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Portugal and France.
In a remote Bulgarian town, Gana looks after the elderly with dementia, while trafficking their ID cards on the black market of identity theft. At home, she provides for her jobless mother, with whom she hardly speaks. Her relationship with her car-mechanic boyfriend is no shelter for love either – with sexual attraction vanished, intimacy is reduced to an addiction to morphine. Things start to shake up, when Gana hears the music of Yoan, a new patient, whose ID card she has trafficked. A growing empathy for the old man unlocks Gana’s conscience. But when Yoan is arrested for fraud, she learns that doing ‘the right thing’ comes at a high price.
It showed at the following festivals (having snatched the accolades between brackets): Locarno (Best Film, Best Actress), Sarajevo IFF (Special Jury Prize), CPH PIX (Best Film), Reykjavik (Best Film), Toronto, Turin, Black Nights, Hamburg FF and 14 more. Not available for viewing in the following countries: Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway.
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7. Living and Other Fictions (Jo Sol, Spain):
The desire to have a full sex life becomes a vital, political option when Antonio, a tetraplegic writer, decides to set up a space offering sexual assistance in his own home. He who wants to live ends up having problems with life.
The Spanish drama Living and Other Fictions showed at the following film festivals (and won the following prizes): San Sebastian, Gothenburg, Munich, D’A Film Festival, Queer Lisbon (Jury Prize) and also Toulouse Cinespaña (Violette d’Or).
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8. The Last Family (Jan P. Matuszyński, Poland):
ZdzisławBeksiński, a Polish surrealist painter, is a cult artist who has portrayed decaying bodies and fantasised of hard core sadomasochistic sexual experiences. Known for his keen sense of humour, he is also scared of spiders and tending to his sick mother. His neurotic, suicidal son, Tomasz, is a cult radio DJ and translator, responsible for the Polish versions of Monty Python films. His wife, ZofiaBeksińska, a devout Catholic, endures these two eccentrics and glues the family together. As the parents try to prevent their son from hurting himself, their lives are defined by painting, a series of near-death experiences, funerals and changing trends in dance music.
The Last Family showed at the following festivals (having snatched the following prizes, between brackets): Cameraimage (Best Film), Locarno Festival (Best Actor), Molodist IFF (Best Fim), Sofia (Special try Award), CPH PIX, Reykjavik IFF (Best Film), Black Nights, Hamburg and 10 more. It’s not available for viewing in Poland, France and Monaco.
9. Soleil Battant (Clara and Laura Laperrousaz, France/ Portugal):
For the holidays, Gabriel and Iris return to a family house in Portugal with their daughters Emma and Zoe, irresistible six-year-old twins. In the heart of a solar landscape, between bathing in the river and their kids’ laughter, the couple’s past resurfaces.
The festivals where Soleil Battant showed include: Black Nights, Bordeaux, Arras FF, GardanneAutumn and the Auch Festival. The film is available for viewing everywhere except France and Portugal.
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10. The Giant (Johannes Nyholm, Sweden/ Denmark):
Rikard is an autistic and severely deformed man who tries to find his way back to his long lost mother through the game of pétanque (a form of boules) and using the help of a 200 foot giant. His fragile physique and a harsh judging environment makes everyday life tough for him. Convinced that his mum will take him back if only he wins the Nordic championship of petanque, Rikard tries to do the impossible.
The Swedish-Danish production showed at the following fests (and won the following prizes): San Sebastian (Special Jury Prize), Reykjavik (Special Mention), Warsaw (Free Spirit Award), Rotterdam, BFI London, CPH PIX and GardenCity. The movie is nort available for viewing in the following countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Sixty-five million people have been displaced around the world, more than any time since WW2. And, on average, refugees stay away from their home for 26 years. Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow is constructed upon these and many more figures, providing a detailed pictured of the life of refugees in various parts of the planet. The Chinese artist-turned director visited 40 refugee camps in various continents in order to come up with this jarring and emotional picture.
He emphasises the magnitude of the phenomenon and subsequent humanitarian crisis with his photography. A number of drones is used, making camps look like a dioramas and people look like ants. The insect comparison rings particularly true in the burning sands of the Syrian-Jordanian border. This is of not intended in a pejorative and demeaning way. Ants are social animals that live in large colonies and can not thrive on their own. Similarly, Weiwei wants to highlight our collective nature and the importance of solidarity. Just like the ants, we must help each other.
This is also a very political film. Weiwei does mince his words when making a statement: he calls the Iraq War “a US led-invasion”, and he describes the entire population of Palestine (at 4.2 million) as refugees, clearly suggesting that Israelis are occupiers. He also investigates the EU’s failure at welcoming refugees: for example, he goes to the Hungarian-Serbian border, where a fence has been erected, leaving refugees confused and despondent. He also takes a look at the Mediterranean, where thousands are drowning every year.
Interestingly, almost the entire film takes place in the Middle East and North Africa, bar a small segment in Afghanistan, Myanmar and the American-Mexican border. The doc Europe at Sea (Annalisa Piras), which came out just last Friday, described Europe as being surrounded by a “ring of fire”, referring to the displacement crisis. Weiwei’s seems to confirm the statement made almost simultaneously by the Italian filmmaker.
Human Flow feels like a punch in the stomach, a painful reminder of our failure to be solidary with our fellow human beings. A Mexican interviewee makes a powerful, succinct and very controversial statement: “immigration is a human right”. Ai Weiwei – a refugee himself in his earlier years and now an immigrant in Germany – seems to agree. As do we at DMovies.
Technically, this is a superb film. The drone images are breathtaking and there are also a couple of sequences from what looks like a falling parachute, which allows viewers to “deep dive” into this collective universe of refugees. The photography of chaos is fascinating in many ways. I wouldn’t call this poverty porn, but there’s definitely something riveting and even attractive in some of the images. Despite the abject poverty, lack of food, basic sanitation and healthcare in most of these refugee camps. Viewers sometimes might be left in the awkward position: am I intended to contemplate and to find this beautiful?
On the other hand, the film feels a little distant, almost like an art piece instead of a movie. This is because the director made the artistic choice to focus on the collective and he never delves into individual predicaments in too much detail. After all, ants move fast and don’t talk. There are a few interviews, but they are all very short and discontinued.
But there is a much bigger problem with the film: it lacks sources. I have no idea where the 65 million people and 26 years figures came from, and what calculations were used in order to achieve these numbers. Ai Weiwei states that 5,000 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in 2016, while Europe at Sea (which quotes its source) puts this figure at more than 17,000 just in the first eight months of the same year. In the age of post-truth and Donald Trump I cringe every time I see figures without sources, particularly when you are trying to make such a vital statement. I know Weiwei had his heart at the right place, but this doesn’t prevent him from sharing with us where his crucial data came from.
Human Flow was out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 8th, when this piece was originally written. This is not cheerful Christmas fun, but it will nurture you in many other ways. This is not your usual cold turkey. This is powerful food for thought. It’s out on all major VoD platforms on April 16th.
