Tag: Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The filmmaker, the writer and the queer

Posted on by Paul Risker

Lithuanian director Romas Zabarauskas’s beautifully reflective fourth feature The Writer (Kirjanik, 2023) is a conversational piece, which hits upon themes and ideas that land with a weighty delivery. The director came out as gay in 2011 when he premiered his first film Porno Melodrama. He is likely the most prominent LGBT filmmaker of the Baltics.

Thirty years ago, Russian born Kostas (Bruce Ross) migrated from Lithuania to the United States, leaving behind his lover, Dima (Jamie Day), who he met during their mandatory service in the Soviet army. Following the publication of Kosta’s new book, 1990, Dima arrives in New York under the pretence of a job interview. The real reason he’s travelled to the United States is to discuss Kostas’ latest work. The film is predominantly two characters talking in an apartment. Zabarauskas and his co-writers, Marc David Jacobs, Anastasia Sosunova and Artūras Tereškinas, invite the audience to eavesdrop on their private and intimate conversation, first in public, then in private, when Kostas invites Dima back to his place for dinner.

Throughout the concise 85-minute running time, they discuss immigration, sex and work, their nationalities, families, and relationship. This infuses the film with an insightful and introspective energy. The film’s driving interest is the idea of how we’re defined by our choices, for better or worse, but it’s effectively supported by broad themes and ideas. One such idea is how we carry our pasts with us, even as we build our future, and to understand our own story requires us to understand the story of those dearest to us.

Speaking with DMovies, Zabarauskas discussed a trilogy of films about queer male couples, how he’s drawn to political dilemmas and is open to different ways of interpreting his films.

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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?

Romas Zabarauskas – I don’t really see filmmaking as a means of creative expression, because that would seem to imply that an artwork is an extension of the inner world of its creator, which I don’t think is necessarily the case. For me, cinema is a form of art and entertainment rather than creativity. There wasn’t a particular moment that inspired me, but I did watch a lot of great movies in a local library as a teen, fascinated by the diversity of their visions.

PR – What was the seed of the idea for The Writer, and would you agree that there are three versions of a film – the one that is written, the one that is shot and the one that is edited?

RZ – No, I don’t agree with that. There is only one film, and how it was made is simply a question of the behind-the-scenes. In my case, writing the script is like creating an itinerary, but it would be foolish to follow the map blindly when going on a trip. If I see something beautiful on my way, I’ll stop by.

PR – How do you compare and contrast The Writer to your previous films?

RZ – I’m truly grateful for all the opportunities I had to make these films, each a unique challenge. The Writer will form a trilogy on queer male couples in different political circumstances, preceded by The Lawyer (2020) and to be followed with The Activist, which we also shot this year. The Writer stands out as my first fully English [language] film, a co-production with the United States, and a SAG-AFTRA signatory. It was also an opportunity to explore the art of the dialogue to the fullest. I think all my films have a similar approach of focusing on complex political dilemmas and lush visuals.

PR – The premise of The Writer contextualises it as a voyeuristic work. Would you agree?

RZ – I didn’t really conceptualise it this way, but I’m always fascinated to learn about any possible interpretations. For me, one of the unique qualities of film is that you can feel what the characters are thinking, thus allowing for the dramatic qualities to be experienced in a special way.

PR – Kostas and Dima don’t talk like people in a film talk and it feels as if you’re merging the film and theatrical forms.

RZ – Well, I don’t think there is a single way that people talk in films. That said, yes, I love theatre and the theatre tradition in Lithuania is very strong, although to be honest it’s a lot more experimental than The Writer’s approach. If you think I’m merging the film and theatrical forms that’s fine by me. I don’t – I just think that a large part of cinema continues a timeless tradition of drama-based work, in unique ways that don’t diminish the cinematic experience. I was inspired by filmmakers like [Alain] Resnais, [Eric] Rohmer, [John] Cassavetes, but also American classics shot on soundstages (Hitchcock, Wilder, etc.), and sitcoms.

PR – One of the enthralling disagreements the pair engage in is over the legitimacy of choice. Does either Kostas or Dima align with your own views on this subject?

RZ – My views are closer to Dima’s. I’m an optimist, and while I think it’s important to admit one’s privileges and societal obstacles, it’s equally important to strive for personal and political progress. But some of my co-writers would likely disagree with me, which is awesome, too.

PR – What do you think the appeal is of stories like The Writer that are predominantly a conversation between characters?

RZ – To be honest, I don’t think that such a format itself is a winning or losing proposition – it depends on the film. In our case, it allowed us to truly delve into intimacy as well as complex views of the two characters.

PR – In The Writer, you explore how ideas are malleable, how they’re filtered through the subjective gazes, and the messy, non-linear nature of relationships.

RZ – Sure, but it wasn’t my goal to somehow show that everything is subjective and so nothing can be true. It was important to me to represent two different people with often opposing yet nuanced political views, clearly disagreeing but still staying civil about it.

PR – A British filmmaker called Carol Morley once told me: “You take it [a film] 90% of the way, and it is the audience that finishes it. So the audience by bringing themselves: their experiences, opinions and everything else to a film is what completes it.” Would you agree that there is a transfer of ownership? Is making a film a transformative experience?

TZ – I agree, in a sense – during our premiere in Tallinn, it truly felt like the audience’s reactions made the film happen. There was a lot of laughter, and after the screening I kept hearing about different ways the audience members connected to our film. However, it’s important to be careful with any metaphors when describing cinema. Ultimately, it’s a film, a work of art and entertainment, for people to watch, enjoy and discuss. It doesn’t need to be renamed in different ways – cinema is already a magic experience, and people know it.

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The Writer played in the Baltic Film Competition of the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Just click here in order to read our exclusive movie review.

Romas Zabarauskas is pictured at the top of this interview, snapped by Arcana Femina. The other image is a still of The Writer.

Lucky Girl

Posted on by Paul Risker

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Ukrainian director Marysia Nikitiuk lands an impactful blow with Lucky Girl (Я, Ніна). It’s the type of filmmaking that doesn’t so much drag us into the physical world of the character, as into their internal world – not to suggest that the physical world of Nina, played by psychologist, pole dancer and theatre actress Ksenia Khyzhniak, making her film debut, isn’t immersive. The film has an aesthetic and visual presence that effectively submerges the audience into the psyche of a woman plunged into a survival horror.

The spotlight is receding for popular TV talk show host Nina Sokil. When we’re first introduced to her, it’s easy to see why the film might have been given its title. Despite her success, Nina is cutthroat and her lover even tells her she has a “beast” of a personality. She vindicates her unpleasantness through the belief that she’s an agent of truth, using her TV platform and social media to expose the truth, and hold others to account. When she receives a shock diagnosis of bone cancer, her glamorous and celebrity lifestyle crumbles.

Nina is a character that appeals to our interest more than our sympathy. She has an air of authenticity, which isn’t surprising considering the story is inspired by the experiences of producer, Yanina Sokolova, who underwent a similar ordeal, and the nuanced skill of an actress who understands performance and human psychology.

It’s difficult to describe Lucky Girl as an enjoyable or entertaining experience. The film has a grim aura, and like Nina’s lover, who loves her even if his feelings are not reciprocated, we’re repulsed and yet we’re drawn to her. While she’s symbolic of what we dislike about the cult of personality and celebrity culture that are suffocating society, Nikitiuk’s skill is in the subtle art of seduction.

Gradually, we begin to feel sympathy for Nina, not because we’re positioned to identify with her, but to see her as the victim. Her point-of-view, her thoughts and feelings are the emotional heart of the film. If cinema is an empathy machine, we see its power here – Nina’s diagnosis and the fall from her celebrity peak lessens the emotional indifference we feel.

We see her as a part of wider systemic problems in the media and society. Once her colleagues learn of her cancer, Nina quickly sees herself being replaced. The promises of a return to the spotlight once she has recovered are suspiciously disingenuous, framing the media industry as a cannibalistic entity. It makes a statement about how we’re all replaceable, and no matter how high we rise, we simply become these replaceable cogs in the machine. Perhaps worse is when we need to be vulnerable, we need to protect ourselves by hiding our vulnerability – afraid to share it with others.

Lucky Girl echoes the body horror sub-genre as Nina’s physical transformation synchronises with her emotional transformation. There’s something about watching cancer humble this iron lady that inevitably provokes our sympathy, but it could be that we intuitively sense the transformational journey beginning – not necessarily of redemption, but someone finding a new and better version of themselves. It’s here that the story explores the idea that we have to grieve and come to terms with a loss of identity before we can move on. It frames grief in a different context to the traditional way we think about loss.

Nikitiuk has created a deeply humanist film that encourages us to find and express empathy for a challenging character, and to embrace her transformational journey. Cinema is about emotion, and the director offers us the gift of an emotionally impactful and rewarding experience that should be treasured.

Lucky Girl has just premiered in the Official Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Solastalgia

Posted on by Paul Risker

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Watching the German hybrid documentary-fiction feature Solastalgia, I found myself thinking about this past summer’s oppressively uncomfortable heat – worryingly the ongoing escalation of the effects of climate change.

It was obviously the roar of mother nature, an unconscious response to the man-made climate crisis. I stress the words “unconscious response” because of how prone humanity is to paranoia. How often have you heard hurricanes or tsunamis spoken of as though they were the actions of a being with free will? If you listen to enough people talk, there’s the belief that nature is out to get us.

Humanity is adept at projecting our own consciousness onto nature. Instead of confronting the crisis that’s accelerating the inevitable catastrophe, that will deny current and future generations a future, we reverse the roles of protagonist and antagonist. We absolve ourselves of our hostility towards the planet, and fail to see the crisis for what it is – a violent act of self-harm. It’s fitting that Munich and Berlin-based freelance director, writer and cinematographer Marina Hufnagel’s film is playing in competition, in the Rebels with a Cause strand at this year’s PÖFF. A vital and urgent film that wears its activist ideology on its sleeve.

The plot sees activist Edda, played by actress Marie Tragousti, seeking refuge on the North Frisian island of Pellworm, the real-life home of Sophie Backsen, a young farmer who is suing the German government for her right to a future. It’s no coincidence that Edda chose this island off the northern coast of Germany. Distressed by the realisation of the inevitable destruction of the planet, she seeks solace or a connection in a place directly under threat from rising sea levels. Archival footage of activist protests, a virtual press conference with Sophie and others are married with Ebba’s fictional presence to create an hybrid and experimental work of documentary and fiction.

Solastalgia is not driven by narrative intentions, instead it’s Hufnagel’s intent to create a space for her audience to enter the film and reflect. The intriguing question that looms over the film is what does Ebba represent? Has she given up? Is seeking refuge on Pellworm a retreat? The answer is that Ebba and Sophie are two sides of the same coin – thought and action. One represents activism through action, the other contemplative and personal activism by initiating change, and honouring one’s ideology.

The narrative threads of these two women seem to disappear and reappear as though we’re watching the tide come in and out over the sand. It’s an impression created by blurring fiction and documentary, where the audience are positioned as a pendulum, in what seems a back and forth motion between reality and fiction. The truth is that throughout it’s a narrative work. Sophie and others sue the German government, and a landmark ruling is a direct result of their efforts. Meanwhile, Ebba’s tense and distanced relationship with her sister offers a familial dramatic arc. Yet the film’s captivating touch is that it transcends an awareness of narrative.

It can be seen as an ethereal experience within the cinematic form, an extension to how reality and narrative are intimately woven together. After all, are activists not the authors of the movement, or the story to protect the rights of a generational future? Hufnagel, herself a former activist, turns to art as a necessary tool to cultivate an informed conversation around the climate crisis. She dredges up uncomfortable truths about the immediate future, reminding us that we’re standing on a precipice. We cannot afford the cost of failure through human ignorance or indifference.

Addressing how the climate package by the German government at the turn of this decade was not enough, and the necessity of an international combined effort with impactful targets, she exposes the irony of the crisis. How can humanity, preoccupied by a fear of death, be so neglectful, and worse still, indifferent?

It’s a question she attempts to answer in Ebba’s voiceover narration, but it’s not so much an answer she offers, as an acknowledgement that compels anguish – a realisation that the planet deserves better than humanity could ever offer.

The heart of the film exposes the detrimental effect of capitalism – the avarice of humanity, and our unwillingness to compromise, to sacrifice the way we’ve lived for a sustainable future. This is emphasised in Ebba’s conversations with and reflections on the relationship with her sister, who symbolises a detachment from the crisis, and the resistance to rethinking how we live to create this sustainable future. In one evocative moment, Ebba is sat against a picturesque backdrop and her voiceover laments, “The 20th century seems like a series of questions to which we have given the wrong answers. We are following “business as usual”, instead of pausing for a moment to figure out what the future could look like. “Business as usual” won’t bring us any solutions. Nobody wants to live like that. At least, I don’t.”

Solastalgia is a treatise on humanity’s orchestration of its tragic demise. A captivating experimental work of art, it’s an equally important warning about the fast expiring choice humanity has to preserve a future. It just premiered in the Official Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Quake (Rappumine)

Posted on by Paul Risker

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Hear the word “quake”, and you immediately think “earthquake.” The shake or tremble experienced by novelist and mother Saga (Anita Briem), is not from the fright of buildings being shook, but an epileptic seizure, and the emotional, physical and psychological tremor from a hidden memory.

The catalyst for the drama in Icelandic director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir’s Quake (Rappumine), adapted from Audur Jonsdóttir’s novel Grand Mal, is when the recently divorced Saga, suffers a seizure while in the park with her six-year-old son, Ívar (Benjamín Árni Daðason). The episode results in memory loss, but during her recovery, repressed memories from her childhood begin to surface. Setting out to solve the origins of these mysterious glimpses into the past, she learns about herself and her family’s unspoken pain.

At no point does the economical storytelling labour under the weight of indecisiveness. One is struck by the impression that you’re seeing a director in total command of her craft, shown by her approach to the characters and narrative exposition.

Saga confides in her best friend about her’s mothers secretive nature, who isn’t surprised, and hints that Saga herself has a side she guards. Entering the transition phase between conflict and resolution, Hrafnsdóttir knows how much to show, exercising a visual and verbal subtlety. She prefers to frame Saga’s face, focusing instead on emotional expression instead of having a detailed scene play out for her audience. This serves to offset the intimate storytelling with a distance, allowing the characters to choose how much they are willing to share with the audience and when.

Featuring shades of a mystery, its predominantly a story about a woman’s fear. Saga is under pressure to turn in her latest manuscript, and her amended four-week deadline still looks to be inadequate. She lives in fear for Ívar’s health, obsessing over his bedroom window being shut at night, that frustrates her ex-husband, who has insisted that he look after their son until she’s recovered. The director uses this scenario to instil in her audience a suspicion, if not an expectation that the story will lean into the beginnings of a custody battle. It’s an effective use of narrative shades that complement one another, and in its three act structure, Hrafnsdóttir knows how to feed them into one another to conclude it in an emotionally satisfying way.

Listening to Saga’s conversation with her father about how she used to suffer “after-quakes” following an epileptic attack, Quake offers an intriguing metaphor for how we can view our minds. We’re the product of our collective experiences, those we can remember and those we’ve forgotten. The mind is a series of tectonic memory plates, built up over time that occasionally come into contact, and the friction results in emotional, physical and psychological quakes.

Saga’s a character we come to care for because she effuses a resiliency that is admirable and aspirational. Hrafnsdóttir invites us into an anxious chapter of her protagonist’s life, and delivers a positive message. As broken as we are, and we are all damaged, there’s hope. We must learn how to leave the past behind us and create a future that’s not trying to amend past decisions, but create new experiences. We can honour the past because it’s a part of our life story, but sometimes we need to remember calmly and quietly.

Quake (Rappumine) plays in the Current Waves section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Estonian Dispatch: The First Feature Competition Round-Up

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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

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

Other Cannibals

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

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

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

Other People

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

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

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

Alice, Through the Looking

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

Killing the Eunuch Khan

Posted on by Paul Risker

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It seems that Iranian director Abed Abest’s sophomore feature, Killing the Eunuch Khan is without a story. Or there’s some semblance of plot that surrenders to abstraction and the dreamlike.

Set during the Iran-Iraq war, a father leaves his two daughters home alone. In his absence there’s a bombing raid, and when a bomb lands in the garden of their house near the border, reality is torn apart.

The easiest way to describe Abest’s film is to compare it to the space between the conscious and semi conscious state, when strange sequences of images are constructed in our mind. We are aware that they make no sense, and unsure of their origins. In this context, Killing the Eunuch Khan is trying to tap into an ethereal kind of energy, but at an 110 minutes, the director forgoes brevity and his film becomes a test of one’s patience.

Part horror, it recalls the scene of blood flooding the lobby of the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Whereas horror often uses the shadows to represent danger, Abest’s film is haunted by a stream of red blood. The colour however, connects it to other works in the genre, for example Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977). The recurring stream of blood that stalks the characters and encroaches on their space is one of the memorable parts of the film.

The strength of Killing the Eunuch Khan is its aesthetic, the director showing his technical skill with lighting and cinematography. The execution also possesses a theatrical staging, where characters are heard talking offscreen, scenes are framed in a single wide shot. Similar to live performances of plays and opera, it asks the audience to be active collaborators and see the staging not for what it is, but what it wants to represent. It’s weakness however, is that it risks being received as indulgent filmmaking.

A question in this critique is where do we draw the line between indulgence and what cinema can be? It’s a relevant question because the current form of cinema represses this type of film. The mainstream propagates the desire for stories as neat and tidy three act constructs, that abstract, experimental and dreamlike cinema subvert.

The eventual question is whether Abest is pushing at the boundaries to expand the potential of the film form, or has he been seduced by the dream aesthetic to his detriment? The beauty of David Lynch’s surreal, dreamlike and puzzle box films, is that there were ideas and themes, but here there seems to be none. It’s a dream that could only seem real if we were the dreamer, but we’re not. A deeply subjective work, Killing the Eunuch Khan in moments showcases a seductive aesthetic, but its lack of substance leaves it a challenging film to engage with, beyond superficial admiration.

Killing the Eunuch Khan plays in the Official Competition section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The Wedding Day (Wesele)

Posted on by Paul Risker

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Polish director, Wojciech Smarzowski’s The Wedding Day (Wesele), centres on morally bankrupt Ryszard (Robert Wieckiewicz), who should only be concerned with his daughter, Kasia’s (Michalina Labacz) big day. However, with a business vulnerable to financial collapse, and a blackmailer extorting him over compromising videos of what goes on at his pig farm, he’s distracted. As the debauched celebrations unfold, Ryszard’s father Antoni (Ryszard Ronczewski) remembers the persecution and murder of Jews in the Second World War, and his love affair with a young Jewish woman.

The past rarely rests in peace, nor should it be allowed to when violent events create generational trauma. The Nazi persecution of the Jews in the Second World War is something that haunts civilised humanity, exposing the darkest nature of man. Smarzowski, with a reputation for controversy, reminds us of the horrors that were perpetrated by the Jewish pogroms in the Eastern European countries, that the opening text tells us were inspired by the German Death Squads.

To describe The Wedding Day as an uncomfortable experience is to downplay the upsetting imagery it exposes its audience to. The director is never gratuitous, he treats the material with respect, giving us an insight into the xenophobic violence.

A thought that has always struck me is how with age, this horrific chapter becomes more unbelievable. I’m not saying that I don’t believe it happened, instead unbelievable in the sense that I struggle to reckon with such a capacity for cruelty. Smarzowski presents visceral images that deepens this despair.

As I come to write this review, it occurs to me how the past relates to our present day. The UK continues to pursue a nationalistic agenda and America elected a White Supremacist in Donald Trump, who exploited divisions in American society. Much of the world lives under patriarchal and misogynistic traditions, and there’s a palpable xenophobia towards other cultures. The division and hate, the fuel for our shadow complex to inflict suffering still exists. We should not forget, pre and post-WW2, genocide has been a part of human civilisation.

Space is created to ease this unsettling part of the story, embracing lighter comedic tones along side the debauched antics of the wedding party. It lends the drama a humorous energy, but the shadow of the past is never far away, and Ryszard, his wife Ela (Agata Kulesza) and the newly weds, are a portrait of repressed misery.

Smarzowski’s skill is to not rudimentary cut between past and present, instead he bleeds the two into one another. We see Antoni as an old man amidst the horrors of the past, and the young boy appears in the present day. Antoni is still the young man in an adult body. An evocative expression of the story, that latches onto the audience’s empathy, is realising the sights and sounds a generation has carried with them. It’s difficult for one’s focus not to drift and try to comprehend the capacity for such cruelty as Jews are burned in a barn, as we witness men, women and young people complicit in the violence. Inescapable also is the danger of man’s interpretation of religion and application of ideology, that victimises by identifying people as “the other.”

Absent are the extreme images of the past, but the adversarial social, cultural and political rhetoric is still present in our contemporary world. We have not liberated ourselves from our capacity for extreme persecution – it still beats in us. Patriarchal traditions and authoritarianism, continue to deny people their basic human rights. The director suggests the racism and hate that still exists towards Jews and people of colour, and ideas of white supremacy between some of the wedding guests. The humorous beats aside, Smarzowski’s film is deeply unsettling for anyone sensitive to hateful rhetoric.

An interesting observation in The Wedding Day, is how we are simultaneously haunted by the past and ignorant of it. Within this idea the director weaves a criticism of capitalism, which is an ignorant and carnivorous force. Ryszard is told that his pig farm is built on the site of genocide by his father, but he’s indifferent. It’s difficult to reason with the ontological truth that we habitually move forward, driven by our survival instinct. It addresses how we ritualise acknowledgement of past trauma through art, education and social acts of remembrance. What’s troubling is how the cries and screams fall silent outside of these brief moments.

The Wedding Day (Wesele) plays in the Official Competition section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The Red Tree (El árbol rojo)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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The richer you are, the easier travel becomes, the number of available options quickly multiplying. But for the poor, looking up long-lost relatives can become something of an epic task. Eliécer (Carlos Vergara) learns this the hard way when he is tasked with his accompanying his half-sister Esperanza (Shaday Velasquez) half way across the country; spanning the tranquil Colombian seaside to the hustle-and-bustle of Bogotá.

We first meet the middle-aged Eliécer playing the traditional gaita instrument, a type of flute made from bird feathers and a hollowed cactus stem. He is tied to his small, remote, seaside community, with little need for interruptions in his life. Yet, when his far younger sister Esperanza turns up, asking for help to find her mother after her father has died, he is tasked with making the arduous journey towards Bogotá, made all the more complicated because they don’t have enough money for the bus ticket. The odd-couple becomes an even more mismatched gang-of-three when joined by the proud and slightly combative Toño (Jhoyner Salgado) who has dreams of becoming a boxer. The resultant trip both explores the concept of makeshift families and the way the nation is progressing along the way.

Road trip films can be quite liberating for filmmakers, as once the essential journey is in place, the genre itself can double-up as an exploration of the country or countries its set in. In fact, if a road trip film didn’t provide any local colour, it wouldn’t be much of a road trip at all. Colombian society and traditions are expertly explored here, covering everything from the local music to the ongoing civil war. This is a country rich in both hospitality and danger, where every stranger you meet could be a charlatan or a samaritan with a heart of gold. Even worse, you could meet either side of the conflict itself, both sides seemingly carrying the threat of violence. For Eliécer and Toño however, this is the only world that they know, with almost everything accepted as just a fact of life. There are no grand statements here, only everyday people, acutely observed.

The best scenes take place away from the road however, with Eliécer and Esparanza almost working together to create a composite picture of a father neither of them knew very well, as well as forming the type of connection that only siblings can have. Adapting his own screenplay alongside Ivan Sierra S, Joan Gómez Endara doesn’t use any flashy techniques to get his story across, neither does he look to diagnose the issues at the heart of his movie. While this downplayed approach often means the story lacks urgency, it is finally made up for by its affecting, if a little straightforward, ending. The final product is a touching, quiet film that provides both national detail and solid character study in equal measure.

The Red Tree plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.

Immersion (Inmersión)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

A taut and smart Chilean thriller that blends societal unease with pure genre pleasures, Immersion is a gripping experience right from the start. The kind of clever, compact feature often missing in official festival competitions, it might also be the one with the best chance of commercial success.

Ricardo (Alfredo Castro) is divorced, taking his daughters Tere (Consuelo Carreño) and Claudia (Mariela Mignot) on a boat trip to see his brother’s house. His rift with his more spunky daughter Tere is rather pronounced from the beginning, drawing his ire when she decides to bathe topless. Then he spots three men on a boat quickly filling with water. Instead of helping them, he drives away as quickly as possible.

It’s obvious the story doesn’t end there, Tere goading her father to return to help these men; leading to a fascinating game of wills that keeps the tension constantly rising. There is an obvious racial element to proceedings. Ricardo and his daughters are white, while the fishermen are Mupache. Ricardo initially says he didn’t want to pick up them up simply because he doesn’t like their faces. He is a deeply paranoid man: he obviously believes that they will rob him, setting the scene early on when telling stories of houses being burned and looted by the locals. No mention of whose land it was in the first place, of course…

Immersion shows that you can do so much in a thriller just through suggestion and foreboding, and how paranoia can often be the most dangerous emotion of all. While some of the twists can feel quite contrived, including Ricardo’s constantly changing mindset, Castro is able to embody privilege, loathing and self-righteousness with immense ease, selling us on each further plot development.

Even if the film’s premise is an exceptional circumstance, it actually plays on one of the most relatable of issues: the impossibility and stress of making decisions on a family holiday. As they scramble across the lake to come to a final decision, each solution naturally ends up frustrating someone. What’s even more impressive is that even while Ricardo is a reprehensible person, we can’t help but feel sorry for him. Trying to tell your daughters what to do on holiday is already a nightmare for most people.

It’s amazing how much action takes place just on the boat itself, without ever losing our interest. The white sailboat (tellingly powered by motor) becomes a deeply claustrophobic place, the surrounding water always suggesting a sense of danger. In fact, it’s the kind of simple high concept thriller premise that American producers might be angling to remake. Of course they won’t need to. Immersion already does the job incredibly well. This is the kind of smart thriller that knows that it doesn’t need to do much to be a success, while also making you think about race and class dynamics in the process.

Immersion plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.

Memoria

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

With Memoria, Thai legend Apichatpong Weerasethakul is basically trying to do the impossible: use the cinematic form to depict the vibrating, mysterious connection between all human beings. A dreamy, strange, addictive and loopy dream-like journey through Medellin and the Colombian jungle, his first non-Thai film is the best film of the year.

Tilda Swinton, the patron saint of all things weird, stars, in an unusually downbeat turn. She plays a woman from Scotland travelling to Medellin to visit her sick sister. Her sister’s husband suggests her sickness has been caused by her research: investigating a tribe in the Amazon that purposefully choose to stay hidden. She could be cursed. Like with Weerasethakul’s previous films, one suspects ghosts or malevolent spirits might be involved.

The film starts in typically slow fashion, a long pan of Swinton waking up in a dark room, then suddenly punctuated by an ominous banging sound. Considering how Weerasethakul’s films always make people fall asleep, these bangs are equivalent to Joseph Haydn’s “Surprise Symphony” in the way they can jolt the audience back into alertness. They come and go throughout the film, suggesting an otherworldly presence constantly lingering outside of the frame.

I did nod off in the beginning (not a criticism), but thanks to these bangs, I didn’t completely succumb to sleepiness; the film connecting with me on a strange, visceral level thanks to its epic long takes and strange, static mise-en-scène — whether it’s car alarms going off by themselves, a jazz band playing for upwards of ten minutes, or the epic finale featuring Tilda conversing with a man who has never left his village because he remembers everything and believes that “all experiences are harmful.” Swinton is completely on the wavelength of the director, making for a great combination of artist and subject.

It’s hard to say what it’s about, although clues abound throughout the movie, which is far more playful than any description could give it credit for. What’s more impressive is the way that Weerasethakul invites you into his completely original world. Memoria is like a feature-length version of those YouTube videos which can transport you to any soundscape in the world. Only playing in cinemas in perpetuity in the United States as part of an experimental run, the 360 degree sound mix gives a clear reason why this film should ideally be seen in the cinema. Whether it’s the humming of birds or the sounds of city life, Memoria embraces you into its vibe, making for a genuinely unique experience. Conversely, if it ever makes it onto your laptop screen, it would make the perfect calming soundscape to work alongside. I could easily imagine it having it on while going about my day job.

Memoria played in the Current Waves section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas Friday, January 14th. On various VoD platforms in June.

Memoria is in out Top 10 dirty movies of 2021.

Blind Love

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

A blind man and a deaf woman fall for each other in Blind Love, a Kenyan slice-of-life comedy-drama with oodles of oddball charm. Injecting great humour and verve into its depiction of disabled life, it enlivens and surprises the audience right until the final scene.

Brian (Mr. Legacy) is unable to see. His seeing dog has just died, unceremoniously run over by a car. Abel (Jacky Amoh) is deaf, and is tasked with taking him home one day. Despite their disabilities, they find innovative ways to communicate, empathetically and intuitively portrayed by both Legacy and Amoh. Brian then realises that if they drink a magic spirit, they are able to communicate unhindered in their dreams, caught in black-and-white fantasy sequences. But the liquor is as much a gift as a curse, resulting in many unintended consequences.

Director Damian Hauser directs, edits, shoots and composes the music, keeping a close authorial control of the film’s tone; which appears to freewheel along while underpinning the narrative with a much darker narrative pull. As it uses such poppy filmmaking method to tackle serious themes, Blind Love almost runs the risk of trivialising what it wants to portray, but eventually brings it all together in the shocking finale. It’s even more impressive when you realise that Swiss director Hauser was born in 2001.

It shows that violence begets violence, spurred on by ignorance, jealousy, lust and copious amounts of liquor. Neither man (alcoholic, ignorant, unfaithful) or woman (jealous, scornful, scheming) come out of it well, the film even ending with a postscript asking why people continue to have children when there is so much suffering in the world. Sprinkled in with a little black magic, it asks whether people are in control of what they do or if they become possessed by their emotions. This is not the hipster capital Nairobi, as seen in Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu, 2018), but a place seemingly lost in time, with little government help, as seen when people take justice into their own hands.

It’s not a pretty depiction of rural Kenya, but the filmmaking has a vital feel at odds with its themes, mixing widescreen with academy ratio, long, detached pans with frantic handheld shots. It finds plentiful ways to move between past and present with ease, as well as smartly switching between plot and subplot before finding a truly tragic way to bring these two together. The non-actors and countryside setting keeps an authentic vibe, with Hauser able to coax out great performances that just feel like people living their own lives.

It’s great to see more sub-Saharan African stories making it to major European film festivals and that co-productions with countries like Switzerland are making them happen. Blind Love is the kind of small yet affecting film you want to find at a fest; surprising, unconventional and filled with a fine personal filmmaking touch.

Blind Love plays in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12-28th November.