Month: September 2018

Faces Places (Visages Villages)

Posted on by victorfraga

This is as close as you will get to freestyle filmmaking. Signed by the legendary 90-year-old French director Agnes Varda and the elusive French graffiti artist JR (whose real identity and age remain unknown), Faces Places feels like a breeze of fresh air. It’s fun, it’s gentle and it’s also rejuvenating to watch.

The highly avuncular nonagenarian and the young man with hat and sunglasses attached (he never takes them off; they are an integral part of his mysterious persona) form a very peculiar and adorable couple. They seem to get on extremely well. And so they embark on a journey across the French countryside in a van packed with large flyposts and paint.

They engage with the local people and then turn the most unlikely locations (cracked walls, derelict buildings, a factory, ship containers and even a huge ruin on the beach) into an explosion of images and colours by applying the flyposts containing photographs of the locals (which they just snapped with their camera). In fact, JR does not like being called a graffiti artist. Instead, he describes himself as a photographer, and the outdoors as “the largest art gallery in the world”.

Agnes Varda and JR twist perspective to an extreme. This is pure metalanguage. A multitude of media are used: the movie cameras, mobile phones, walls, tablets and – most importantly – the random surfaces picked by the unlikely duo. This is an image within an image within a film. They recreate the locations that they visit in ways that the locals would never expect. A shy woman sees herself printed on a gigantic wall in a small countryside town, and soon becomes the biggest local attraction – forcing her to face her very own inhibitions. Dockworkers see their wives printed on a giant pile of coloured containers at the shipyard.

These people see a much larger version of themselves or someone they know in a plush and vibrant monochromatic version. The angle is often distorted and the images are permeated with plants, with gaps, with punctures or anything else that happens to be on the chosen surface. The subjects must feel incredibly honoured to be part of this doc.

Face Places is also tribute to spontaneity and ephemerality. This is a film-as-you-go documentary. The images won’t stay there forever, and erosion, the rain or even the sea (in the case of the beach) will soon wash them away. Maybe overnight. Maybe in a few days. Maybe in a few months. One thing is certain: nothing lasts forever, and that’s ok.

The film is punctuated with anecdotes not necessarily related to the images, and the two artists also visit places that they do not intend to paint. For example, they attend to the graves of photographers Guy Bourdin and Henri Cartier-Bresson. A twisted photography of a late photographer might be a step in the wrong direction, they probably thought. Maybe a photographic sacrilege.

The film has a very moving ending, that brings Agnes Varda to tears. She attempts to visit her old friend Jean-Luc Goddard in order to reminisce about the past and – presumably – to paint his image on a wall somewhere inside or near his Summer house. But Goddard has a dirty trick in store for Agnes Varda. After all, he’s just a “dirty rat”, she laments.

Faces Places is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 21st.

Lucky

Posted on by victorfraga

What is your definition of being lucky? For the protagonist of actor-turned-director John Carroll Lynch’s debut feature, he’s lucky because he had an easy job while in the navy: he was a cook. The adjective soon became his nickname. But now his accolade has acquired a second meaning and a also different dimension. Lucky (played by the legendary Harry Dean Stanton, who passed away last September shortly after the film was finished) is very fortunate because he’s still alive at the age of 90.

Or is he not? Lucky has outlived all of friends and relatives, and conducts a demure and lonely existence in a house somewhere in the dry hinterlands of the US. He never had a wife and children. Perhaps that’s not such a happy predicament after all. Lucky raises some pertinent questions about very old age. How do you find a purpose when all of your loved ones are gone? Is it worthwhile fending for yourself on your own until the curtain drops? And should younger people get more actively involved in the lives of the elder, even if they are not actively asking for it?

Being very old means being very slow. A tortoise is a central character and clearly an epitome of Harry Dean Stanton’s character. They both keep moving despite having no clear purpose and destination, the film seems to suggest. Being old also means being frail. Lucky opens with the protagonist putting his clothes on, with an extreme close-up of various parts of his body. His skin is extremely wrinkly and saggy, with the unforgiving signs of senescence. But it’s still fascinating and beautiful, as is Lucky’s determination to put his clothes on and face yet another day.

Lucky is stoical, laconic and defiant: “there’s only one thing worse than awkward silence, and that’s small talk”. He has a few acquaintances, and the nearest watering hole is his usual social hang-out. Elaine (Beth Grant), Fred (Tom Skerritt) and Howard (David Lynch) are amongst his friends. Howard is desperately seeking his missing tortoise, which Lucky insists in calling a turtle instead. Despite David Lynch’s presence, this is not a very Lynchian film. The characters here are far less creepy, and also more human and realistic. Important note: despite sharing a surname, David and John Carroll are not related to each other.

This is a movie about the ephemerality of life. “Nothing is permanent”, cries out Lucky. He often questions the meaning of “truth” and “realism”, as if seeking a deeper meaning to his existence. Both the life of a cigarette and or a turtle will come an end, even if one is much shorter than the other. All in all, this is a moving ode to those who refuse to give up their joy to live even as the twilight dims.

The film also includes a sequence in which Lucky delivers a song in Spanish (Harrya Dean Stanton was also a remarkable singer). It’s delight to listen, even if the premise feels a little disconnected from the film narrative.

Lucky is in UK cinemas on Friday, September 14th. It’s available on all major VoD platforms from Monday, September 24th.

The Man who Surprised Everyone (Tchelovek Kotorij Udivil Vseh)

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There is so much to discuss and also a lot cannot be written without spoiling this movie. Be prepared for a number of twists and surprises. Be prepared to become shell shocked. The Man Who Surprised Everyone feels like a punch in the stomach and a slap on the face, both at the same time. The action takes place in a small village in Siberia where co-director Natasha Merkulova grew up and came across the ancient parable that inspired the film, the story of how an ordinary Russian resisted death. Said village is located in the middle of the woods in the remote and sparsely populated region of Russia. It’s foggy, it’s muddy and it’s humid, a bit like the villagers.

Egor (Evgeniy Tsiganov), the protagonist, fits in into this environment extremely well. He is a forest guard of the Siberian Taiga forest, married to a woman fully devoted to him. They have a small boy, who is much cherished by the locals. The is Russian alpha male. All seems well, until the day he finds out he’s afflicted with cancer and only had two months to live. There is not apparent cure for the unforgiving malaise. Then something unexpected happens, and viewers embark on a rollercoaster of horror and confusion so that they can understand what is really going on with Egor.

The script is entertaining and provocative. The narrative is complex and fragmented, and audiences are left to gradually pick up the puzzle pieces, and to reflect about the rationale and the identity of the protagonist, and how a certain secret can turn the world upside down. The character development is very thorough, maximising the impact of the revelations. Animals are an integral part of the story. Ducks, Pigs, Birds are conspicuous, and they are the only ones who don’t really care about Ergo’s gender identity. Humans have something to learn from them!

The two directors explained prior to the film: “Egor embraced the identity of a female in order to fight the horrific disease”. We’re left to question what exactly they mean. There’s a touch of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, except that the monster is a cross-dresser. How would this aberration be perceived in modern Russia, a country that recently implemented the infamous “gay propaganda” laws? Considering that any allusion to LGBTQ+ themes can be deemed illegal, how did the directors get financing and even authorisation to make the film? Perhaps because the film is inspired on an ancient parable? There are many questions about this extremely dirty Russian-French-Estonian co-production.

The Man Who Who Surprised Everyone premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival in 2018, when this piece was originally written. The UK premiere was in September 2019, as part of the Raindance Film Festival. It’s showing on Barbican Cinema on Demand/ New East Cinema during the month of December – just click here for more information.

Reinventing Marvin (Marvin ou la Belle Education)

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There’s a clue in the opening title. Flames sparkle down the screen. It’s a fiery film, passionate in character and introspection, visceral in choreography, elegiac in self-discovery. French-born star Finnegan Oldfield is excellent, brining varied realities and nuances that benefits a film of surreal posturing. Through a journey from village to city, the cameras swirl with the delightful kitsch it needs, stamped with the epicurean appearance from Isabelle Hupert herself (playing herself, no less).

Huppert is the mentor and icon Marvin needs to truly become Martin, a metamorphosis transformation he intends to perform through a grand show. He meets her through an older man he is escorting, interweaving pasts and presents. The story delves between the child taunted and bullied in a homophobic town and the adult who lets his demons out on a stage. There is something viscerally hallucinatory in a scene where young Marvin finds himself distracted by the viperous sounds of a fairground, the lights and neons a choreography of visual insanity, in a tale that cuts from past to present in an uneasy (but intriguing) manner.

This is the latest in Anne Fontaine’s eclectic range of films (Coco Before Chanel, La Fille de Monaco, Comment j’ai tué mon père) and while the film is decidedly over-long, there are enough moments of interest within the story. A scene in which young Marvin sits uncomfortably with his overweight, chip-munching, loudmouthed parents is a particularly harrowing one, as dark as the frequent clips of a bare-chested Oldfield are decidedly sensual.

Grégory Gadebois, Catherine Salée and Vincent Macaigne are strong and stable in their performances, but it is the two leads, (Jules Poirer as boy, Oldfield as adult) who truly cement the film. Poirer gives a haunted performance, cerebral in his wish to run from the hateful, homophobic Vosges to find himself in the similarly lost adult he has become. Oldfield has some great lines, but it is his bodily acting that steeps with grace and loss, helpless, he falls into Huppert’s arms.

It’s a tale of an underdog, an artist looking for subjects to paint, reflecting himself through stealth, through dance, through fire.

Reinventing Martin is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 14th.

Searching

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The third film this year produced by Timur Bekmambetov after Profile (directed by Bekmambetov himself) and Unfriended: Dark Web (Bruno Vaussenat), Searching follows a widowed father as he investigates his daughter’s disappearance using her recent online activity. The Russian-Kazakh filmmaker has coined the term “screen life” movies to describe the subgenre that he created, which consists of action and horror stories that take place on a desktop.

In his latest film, which was directed by Aneesh Chaganty, it all plays out over smartphones and computer desktops, with instant messages, video clips, FaceTime calls, and Google searches flooding the cinema screen like pop-up advertisements in order to keep the story moving.

Before she disappears, daughter Margot (Michelle La) and father David (John Cho) suffer the loss of matriarch Pam (Sara Sohn), who passes away after a battle with lymphoma. The first-time director delivers this backstory by way of a very inventive opening montage, with music and editing designed to tug at the heartstrings. In a way, this is similar to how viral videos of animals recovering from abuse are put together for maximum emotional impact. It’s simple, and maybe a little cheap, but very effective nonetheless.

The closeness of Pam and Margot in this opening montage highlights the distance between David and Margot after Pam’s death; once Margot disappears – her late-night calls to her father going unanswered – David is forced to confront the fact that he never really knew his daughter. This dynamic, together with Searching’s novel visual style and a solid lead performance, is enough to overcome the film’s obvious inadequacies.

Treading a well-worn, abduction-thriller path, the film conveniently ignores realism in favour of shock and sentimentality, especially when it comes to its major twist, but it’s admittedly difficult not to want to discover what happened to Margot. The inclusion of Twitter trends #FindMargot and #DadDidIt, along with the hastily-written, inconsiderate tweets that accompany these hashtags, adds social commentary that, while not achieving the same degree of thematic exploration of technology and media hysteria as, say, David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014), is never overbearing.

The ending is heavy on exposition, with Debra Messing being made to channel her inner Dana Scully in order to spell out the sequence of events that led to Margot’s disappearance. However, judging by the overwhelmingly positive critical response to the film, the peculiar denouement successfully draws attention away from its lapses in logic. The healthy box office numbers of Searching, and Unfriended before it, suggests the found-footage inspired style of ‘screen life’ isn’t going anywhere for the time being. Whether ‘screen life’ lends itself so well to other genres besides horror and thriller (a rom-com maybe?) remains to be seen.

Searching is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 31st.

Under The Wire

Posted on by victorfraga

Being a journalist can be a thankless task. You spend hours and hours on a subject, making sure every single detail is right, only to paid far less than nearly any other profession (if you have a full-time contract at all). Consider a poor thought for war reporters then, who do all this hard work with the added anxiety of imminent death hanging over their head.

Under The Wire celebrates the bravery of photographer and writer duo, Paul Conroy and Marie Colvin, who infiltrated the Syrian city of Homs at the height of its shelling by Assad’s forces. Told through a mixture of reconstructed images, talking heads and surviving video footage, the film works both as a condemnation of the barbarity of Assad’s leadership and a demonstration of the power of journalism. Coming at a time when trust of the news media is lower than ever and the Syrian Civil War still tragically rages on, Under The Wire is a truly essential film.

At the centre of the story is legendary war journalist Marie Colvin, who died in Homs and is described in the film in hushed, reverent tones. A Sunday Times Journalist, the word “hero” truly applies to her. Her eyepatch — picked up in Sri Lanka in 2001 — was so iconic that it even inspired the fictional French journalist in Eva Husson’s Cannes bomb Girls of the Sun. But whereas Husson’s creation Mathilde (Emmanuelle Bercot) is seen as a soft and caring mother, the real Marie Colvin had no time for niceties. She is described by one photographer as causing more stress than the war itself, and was told to have dumped another for looking too “metrosexual”.

Yet, her heroic reporting really did change lives — such as in East Timor in 1999 when her steadfast coverage, taking place when all other journalists left, saved the lives of over 1,500 women and children. Likewise her final dispatch from Homs describes the plight of over 300 civilians huddled in a basement in an attempt to avoid Assad’s relentless shelling.

She is a great character, her work truly mesmerising. In our age of superheroes, here is a real life Wonder Woman, someone who gave everything in the service of others, defying even her own editor to stay put and bear witness. Conroy, who survived when Marie didn’t, is a fantastic narrator (it helps when the person telling the story is also a journalist): breathlessly telling of how they snuck into the city, sneaking across borders, dodging sniper fire and even trudged through a seemingly endless tunnel to make sure the besieged people’s stories would make it out.

A faithful retelling of a true story, it seems perfect for a fiction remake. The documentary reconstructions are a little wobbly, and any true suspense feels limited by the talking heads form. Additionally, not enough emphasis is put on why journalists go to such lengths in order to tell their stories. More psychological rigour would’ve deepened the story, making an action adaptation actually seem perfect for this material. Nonetheless, as it stands, Under the Wire is a fitting tribute to those who go to any length to tell the stories of those who otherwise would go unheard.

Under the Wire is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 7th.

What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?

Posted on by victorfraga

They have been neglected and abused throughout the past five centuries. They are men and women of various generations and with all types of professions, and they share the same burden. The government and the society intended to protect them instead scorns them. They have been hunted down by neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. Their walls have been graffitied with the N-word, swastikas and calls for ethnic cleansing. But they’re still alive! Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini captures the apocalyptic scenario that many Afro-Americans from the Deep South have to confront daily.

What you Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? is shot in black and white using with an Arri Alexa camera with a large depth of field (deep focus). In other words, the images in the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus. In a way, this is reminiscent and nostalgic of the neo-Realism aesthetics. A smart choice. This makes the images more palatable and the lives of people such as Ronaldo, Titus, Judy, Michael, Krystal and several members of the New Black Panther Party more bearable to watch. Otherwise, the whole experience could become excruciating.

Minervini allows race issues to prevail in a nice and smooth way by shifting from one character to the next and observing their daily lives. Sometimes the movie seems to suggest that white people are responsible for the mess young black males such as Ronaldo and Titus are in. Yet, this is no white man’s mea culpa. Mostly, this is a visual study of racial oppression. Minervini established a deep bond with several of his characters, mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi. This allowed him to gain access into neighbourhoods and communities that are off limits to most white people. Such intimacy allowed the director to deep dive into the private lives and uncover delicate and fascinating stories. He also investigates watershed events in the history of Afro-Americans, such as and Hurricane Katrina (2005) the killing of Alston Sterling (2016) and the lynching and decapitation of Jeremy Jerome Jackson (2017).

You will become acquainted with surprising and moving individuals, as their reflect about their lives, dreams and limitations. There are plenty of useful soundbites, word puns and calls for action: “We don’t get justice, we get just for us”, “nowadays people don’t fight they shoot!” and the film title itself. You will cringe and perhaps ask yourself: are our Afro-American brothers and sisters in the Deep South any better off than their ancestors hundreds of years ago? Often, their very own resilience and will to live are all they have in their favour.

What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire showed in the Official Competition of the 75th Venice International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK as part of the BFI London Film Festival taking place October 1oth- to 21st (2018). It’s in cinemas on Friday, October 18th (2019)

King of Thieves

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The Brits love a majesty. It could be a ruling monarch, a thespian or even a thief. Or a combination of any of the three. King of Thieves tells the real story of the infamous Hatton Garden heist, an incredibly audacious and unusual burglary that took place in 2015 in the heart of London. The “king” in the film title refers to 77-year-old gang leader Brian Reader, a cold and calculating crook. By extension, it also refers to the actor delivering the role: 86-year-old Sir Michael Caine.

The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit burglary confounded and perplexed Britain for many reasons when it took place just three ago. Firstly, because of the sheer amount of money taken: the goods stolen – mostly diamonds, gold, jewelry and cash – may have had a value of up to £200 million. Secondly, because London is the surveillance capital of the world, and few would believe that such crime could take place under the purview of the umpteen CCTV cameras on every corner and corridor of nearly every street and building in town. Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, the crime was carried out by a geriatric gang where the minimum age was 57 (except for one member, as man in his 30s known as Basil).

King of Thieves is a romanticised reconstruction of the robbery. Not that all men are painted as kind and generous. Some of them – particularly Brian Reader – are portrayed as selfish and aggressive males mostly concerned about how they will splash the vast amounts of money they are about to rob. Others are painted as kind and affable, sweet old men who find a slightly unorthodox way of making ends meet. The film almost seems to suggest that their actions are justified by the financial crisis. Plus, the whole ordeal is painted as exciting and adrenaline-inducing. Like a football match. To boot, Reader is so smug and confident that he seems to bask in the attention he gets for being a grey-haired bandit. This is a film that celebrates recklessness at old age, instead of challenging it.

In addition to the adrenaline, King of Thieves is intoxicated with a further hormone: testosterone. This is a lad’s film in almost every conceivable: the parlance, the jokes, the ambitions, the inhibitions. Overall, it wouldn’t perform very well on the Bechdel test! That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but does render the narrative a little Manneristic and tedious.

The humour isn’t entirely effective, either. The old-age jokes are mostly predictable (farting, incontinence, insulin injections, useless testicles), there are a few slapstick elements (particularly as the clumsy old men attempt to operate the heavy machinery required for the heist). Despite the obvious comparisons, King of Thieves is nothing like the Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951). Not just because of the age of the criminals, but primarily because it isn’t as funny.

Also, there is virtually no room for character development. We hardly learn about the background and the motives of the elderly criminals. Instead the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the nuts and bolts of the actual crime and its aftermath (the police investigations).

Michael Caine is very comfortable in the skin of an arrogant and insensitive old man. His recent remarks about Brexit and criminality suggest that the actor has a certain disdain for the poor, and is entirely out-of-touch with the reality. He’s therefore a natural for the role.

The music is catchy and groovy enough. The score consists mostly of strings very much à la Pink Panther, in an attempt to make the entire predicament very elegant and cool. Plus there are a few indie and pop songs thrown in. And yet another majesty comes along, and this time it’s a “queen”. Shirley Bassey delivers the final note as it becomes increasingly clear that justice is inescapable. But which song is it? Diamonds are forever? Or maybe Goldfinger? I’m afraid you will have to watch the film for the answer!

King of Thieves is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 14th. On VoD on Monday, January 14th (2019). On DVD and Blu-ray on Monday, January 21st. For a far more effective, humane and meaningful heist movie, watch American Animals (Bart Layton).

Deva

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM VENICE

The Biennale College Cinema is being held for the sixth consecutive year in 2018. Deva is amongst the micro-budget films to premiere at the 75th Venice Film Festival as part of the initiative. Petra Szocs had previously showcased her short films in film festivals such as Saravejo, Clermont-Ferrand and Cannes. Now she steps up to the feature film territory, for the first time. In Deva, she transposes her real-life experiences with a three-year-old albino girl in the eponymous Romanian city onto the silver screen and the fiction world.

Szocs had previously published two poetry books, and her lyrical style is pervasive in the film narrative. Carefully crafted frames and compositions, dreamy metaphors and a vibrant colour palette impregnate the story arc. The skin of Kato, the albino girl, delimits the colour spectrum.

Deva concentrates on a peculiar episode that took place during Kato’s (Csengelle Nagy) early teen years. This is a film that revolves around the young female and, more broadly, orbits around the female universe. That’s because Kato lives in an orphanage entirely run and inhabited by females. This is a fine example of how sorority can function entirely devoid of competition and invidiousness. The only conflict here is internal, as Kato to has face her coming-of-age upon meeting a new volunteer called Bogi (Boglárka Komán). The masculine is kept at a distance, and sometimes perceived as a threat.

The director uses a deft narrative device in order to trigger and to illustrate personal change. Kato becomes empowered by an electric shock (both in the metaphorical and the literal sense). Her childish fantasies morph into personality traits of a grown-up woman. She sees herself as a superhero.

At one point, Kato is snapped by a male photographer. She believes that the man is interested in the eccentric qualities of her eyes and of her skin. This feels like a personal confession made by Szocs. Both artists – the female movie director and the male photographer in the film – are fascinated by the unusual beauty of their subject. Strange texture, strange colour, strange fruit. Hanging from the Romanian tree.

Deva is showing at the 75th Venice International Film Festival taking place right now. You can also view Deva from the comfort of your very own home as part of Festival Scope.

Hurricane

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

It’s too easy to take most British WW2 movies (e.g. Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) and claim they bolster the idea of Brexit – Britain alone against the world, defeating the dastardly Germans and so on. Hurricane is different. Its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots are refugees from the Polish Air Force, wiped out by the Luftwaffe in a mere three days and kept on ice by Britain’s xenophobic War Office following their arrival in England. When they’re finally allowed into the air, these Poles turn out to be much better fighter pilots than the majority of Brits who are being slaughtered by the enemy at an alarming rate. Indeed, it’s the Polish pilots that turn the Battle of Britain around.

Hurricane is named after the RAF’s most widely used fighter aircraft and those portrayed here, at least when flying, are computer generated. Much of the CG work has been carried out in India (nothing wrong with that) on the cheap. The aircraft looks like computer models partly because no-one’s bothered to dirty them up and partly because there’s no attempt at reflecting the weather on their metal surfaces as real flying aircraft surfaces would do. Consequently, the flying sequences have an air of unreality about them which a little more budgetary spending in the right places could easily have fixed.

Other elements more than compensate for the cost-cutting CG, however. The dogfight sequences are well put together and grippingly paced. The main characters are efficiently written and the film covers a lot of historical ground. The pilots speak Polish with subtitles when they’re alone together while the Brits speak English. There’s more than enough aerial combat to satisfy audiences, yet the scenes on the ground prove equally compelling – interaction between cocky Polish pilots who know they’re up to the job and members of the British command convinced the bloody foreigners are not, Poles fraternising with the native women and scenes in the air command bunker with personnel moving tokens representing groups of aircraft round a large table.

Welshman Iwan Rheon (from Game Of Thrones) else makes a fairly convincing Polish lead, but the surprise outstanding performance comes from decidedly carnal, command bunker girl Stefanie Martini who spends much of her free time pursuing pilots including the Poles. “A few years ago, I’d have been called a tart, but today I’m just a good sport.” she says enthusiastically.

If the film doesn’t make a big thing of British racism, it’s present nonetheless. Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) celebrations are overshadowed by the British government’s swift moves to send the Poles back home following a survey claiming 56% of Brits wanted this. That’s set against other, less racist images when Jan (Rheon) is helped down from dangling by his parachute from a street lamp by an old couple who invite him into their home, discuss their own son’s death in the conflict then feed the airman a thick and tasty sandwich. If the British establishment doesn’t like Poles much, the ordinary Brits pictured here get on perfectly well with them.

That’s a far cry from some of the anti-foreigner sentiment and the ascendancy of the far-right seen in this country since the Referendum. The suggestion here that immigrants to Britain can make a valuable contribution is refreshing indeed in the current political climate.

Hurricane is out in the UK on Friday, September 7th. Watch the film trailer below:

A 12-Year Night (La Noche de 12 Años)

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM VENICE

This is a film that’s both striking and necessary. A 12-Year Night is based on a true story, taken from Mauricio Rosencof and Eleuterio Fernadez Huidobro’s memoirs Memorias del Calabozo. The narrative is built around the 4,323 days when three leftwing urban guerrilla members (Tupamaros) lived in confinement in Uruguayan prisons. This is a superb visual story about persistence and resistance. The script adaptation is both surprising an captivating.

Some people might assume that A 12-Year Night is a conventional political drama about a small South American country with which few people are familiar. They are wrong. This is a deeply sensory experience. You will feel every emotion as if you were one of the film characters. You will get goosebumps, profound emotions, and feel plenty of revolt and indignation. You will also learn a lot about the military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay from 1973 to 1985.

Helmer and scribe Alvaro Brechner’s third film reconstructs an dark political chapter in Uruguayan history without resorting to tawdry political propaganda. His focus is on the individuals rather than the nuts and bolts of Uruguayan politics. The narrative allows audiences to connect to the dilemmas of the protagonists, and their intense suffering. The empathy is immediate. The sounds and the visuals are very effective, particularly in the hallucinations and cross-cell communication by the means of knocking on the walls. The military regime does not intend to annihilate the three men: “as we can’t kill them, let’s drive them mad”, a prison ward clarifies.

Mauricio Rosencof is played by the rising Argentinian star Chino Darin (the son of Ricardo Darin). Later in life, Mauricio became the culture secretary for Montevideo. Fernandes Huidobro, El Ñato is delivered by Alfonso Tort. Pepe Mujica is convincingly interpreted by Antonio de La Torre. Mujica became the 40th president of Uruguay and governed between 2010 and 2015. He was affectionately described as “the poorest president in the world”, given his demure and down-to-earth lifestyle. He’s the subject of another film premiering right now in Venice, Emir Kusturica’s El Pepe, A Supreme Life.

The movie does not investigate the political landscape of Uruguay, but instead raises awareness of the methods used by the military in order to remain in power. It’s a powerful reminder of the importance of international human rights laws, and how their disregard could lead to perverse and inhumane – even diabolical – experiments. The director uses both humour and poetic devices in order to illustrate the darkness of an authoritarian regime.

Above everything else, this is a wake-up call to the threat to democracy that many South American countries – such as Brazil and Argentina – are experiencing right now.

A 12-Year Night has just premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival. Below is a video of the standing ovation it received, as captured by our dirty writer Tiago Di Mauro.

And here is the film trailer: