Tag: war

The Woman King

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Outside of the Greek myth of the Amazons, we don’t really think of armies as being made up of women rather than men prior to the last few decades, yet historically this actually occurred in a West African country, the Kingdom of Dahomey (further info: National Geographic; Wikipedia) between the middle of the 17th and the end of the 19th centuries. These warrior women are the subject of this film, which takes place in 1823.

A prologue shows a small unit of the women in action under their General Nansica (an unforgettable Viola Davis) as they attack and slaughter a unit of (male) soldiers from the neighbouring Oyo kingdom who have invaded one of their villages. These women are fearsome indeed and fly in the face of the representational norm female or military.

After this compelling, action-packed opening, the narrative shifts to follow rebellious, young Dahomey girl Nawi (Thusu Mbedo) whose traditionalist father attempts to marry her off to an older man. She takes an immediate dislike to this proposed husband and refuses the match. So her father instead takes her to the king’s palace to become a slave to King Ghezo (John Boyega). At least, that’s what you assume her fate will be, but once inside the gates she and numerous other newcomers have the option to train as soldiers for Nansica who puts her under a trusted lieutenant Izogie (Lashana Lynch, the black female 007 from No Time To Die, Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021).

Following the template of Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987), the film observes the training of these women into full-fledged fearsome fighting machines (even if this episode doesn’t quite equal Kubrickian rigour in its execution). There is also much introspection on the part of Nawi whose independence gets her into trouble with Nansica’s chain of command but whose initiative (in the manner of so many characters in individualism-oriented, Hollywood films) ultimately proves an asset.

This is the time of the slave trade, with black nations selling members of their neighbouring countries – those captured in war, for instance – to profiteering white westerners. It would be tempting to try and paint Dahomey as not taking part in this, and indeed much is made both of the warrior women freeing slaves and of a Westernised, black man travelling with the slavers forced to come to terms with the evils of the trade. This may be a case of playing fast and loose with the truth.

This is a story about black people, specifically women. This means that, without relying on the often ridiculous, historical inaccuracies of colour-blind casting, it provides black actresses (most of the cast) with some spectacularly good parts and enables their delivery of some memorable performances. Moreover, the extraordinary women depicted here actually existed in history; the fact that a halfway decent movie has been made about them is a cause for celebration.

The Woman King is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 7th.

Watch the film trailer below. (Please note that the irritating, ill-judged pop soundtrack is not representative of the film):

Sermon to The Fish (Balıqlara xütbə)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

Even if you win a war, what do you gain? Many soldiers have died, the economy is adversely affected and the remaining people have to live with survivor’s guilt. This is the question Sermon to The Fish, an Azeri film set in the aftermath of the war with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, grapples with, a sincere arthouse attempt to depict the way war rots you from the inside, both figuratively, and also quite literally.

It’s a slow and static film, shot in the mountain and the desert, filled with silence, foreboding landscapes and characters taking their time to move from A to B. The oil fields are still pumping, but the lakes are drying up; the fish of the title seem to have disappeared alongside most of the men Not much happens in between, director Hilal Baydarov taking a contemplative approach in depicting his protagonists mired in endless stasis.

Davud (Orkhan Iskandarli) has returned from the war. If he was happy about the victory, he never shows it on his face, which is set to permanent resignation. His sister (Rana Asgarova) tells him that everyone else in the village has completely rotted, a metaphor for the way war impacts even those who claim to be victorious. She is equally sad, narrating the tale in a somber tone, the film infused with a religious, reverent feeling. As it progresses, she slowly covers up more of her body, the tenets of Islam interacting with a sense of self-loathing to an interesting degree, the subtleties of which may have been lost on me.

As a technical exercise, there is a lot to enjoy in this feature. The use of surround sound evokes memories that aren’t there but cannot be escaped, from the chatter of now dead soldiers to the bombs and gunfire of battle. We are immersed in the world of these characters, often shot The Searchers-like (John Ford, 1956) through windows, tiny shafts of light against an otherwise compressed and black frame. But beauty and craft alone cannot power what is often a repetitive and uninteresting text, relying entirely on its poetic framework to carry the experience. The long takes, especially the stunning final shot, are highly impressive, but there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been told in a more compact short film.

Baydarov has created a brave, critical film, scrubbing away nationalism to see what is left for day-to-day people after going through such difficult experiences. It will probably never play in Azerbaijan itself, but should have a modest festival run. Nonetheless, the inertness of the characters certainly seeps into the film itself, which shows little signs of life. While the characters often stay fixed in frame, like they are posing for a life drawing, a dog bounds in and out of the frame. Whether he has been trained or is simply reacting like a dog to the events of the film, he is the one source of animation and emotion that kept me invested in the film’s long, static stakes. Perhaps it helps that he doesn’t know about the war.

Sermon to the Fish plays in the Concorso internazionale section as part of the Locarno Film Festival, running from 3-13th August.

How I Learned To Fly (Leto kada sam naucila da letim)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TRANSYLVANIA

A pre-teen comedy in the vein of Diary of a Wimpy Teenager (Thor Freudenthal, 2010) or Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (Gurinder Chadha, 2008) that also manages to talk about the Balkan conflict in the 90s, How I Learned To Fly is a perfectly enjoyable film from Serbian director Radivoje Andric that tackles both serious and lightweight themes with ease.

Apart from the rocky beaches (I prefer sand) and the annoying British (myself included) and American tourists, there are hardly any better places to spend a summer holiday than the Croatian island of Hvar. For Serb Sofia (Klara Hrvanovic) however, she’s devastated that she’s not able to go camping with her best friend and her brother, who she has an immense crush on. Instead, she is saddled with her grandmother Marija (Olga Odanovic), who is returning to the island for the first time in 25 years. Odanovic plays the part well, constantly nagging the poor child to put on sun cream and wear appropriate clothing.

Sofia’s dreams and desires — kissing a boy for the first time, finding a crew to hang out with and avoiding her pestering “hitman” grandmother — are represented in an extremely broad style, with endless selfies, wipe cuts and whip pans, dream sequences, dodgy CGI insects and animated text overlays. It’s the kind of hyperactive style that seems in vogue today, with little separating it from the recent Ms Marvel (Bisha K. Ali, 2022) series. It’s fine for kids, and funny at times, but I found it mostly overwhelming.

Hrvanovic plays the part well, mixing voiceover and physical reaction comedy to convey the well-spring of emotions that pre-teen girls can feel, slowly coming to terms with both the world around her and her own intense maelstrom of feelings. Yet she remains more or less oblivious to the real reasons her grandmother moved to Belgrade all those years ago — or why she still refuses to talk to her brother, who remains on the island. From the perspective of a child, the conflict seems absurd; for her grandmother, these are old wounds she finds it intensely painful to re-open. For all the silliness, Andric manages to find a subtle way of navigating the pain of war without making it seem trite in the process. Playing here as part of the EducaTIFF programme, its the perfect introduction to this topic for young children.

Given how broad the comedy was, I’m easily the wrong demographic for the film, which is highly unlikely to play over in the UK. But judging from all the laughs from the children around me, this definitely has the potential to be a breakout hit in the Balkans (it’s already topped the Serbian box office) and other regions of Eastern and Southern Europe.

How I Learned to Fly plays as part of the EducaTIFF programme at TIFF, running from 17th to 26th June.

The 21st Transylvania Film Festival implores us to make films, not war

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

This year’s Transylvania Film Festival, the biggest film festival in Romania, comes with a challenge: “make films, not war.” Representing a country that borders both war-torn Ukraine and close-friends Moldova — also under threat from Russian aggression — TIFF is deeply committed to showing off the best of cinema in extremely troubled times.

While cinema itself cannot offer the vaccine, it might be able to offer a balm; as shown by their prior success in putting on in-person events in 2020 and 2021 while other summer festivals switched to digital-only editions. Set in Cluj-Napoca — known as Romania’s second city after Bucharest, and often touted as its creative centre and an LGBT hub — the 21st edition of the festival switches its attention to the war in Ukraine, not through furthering division but by allowing the power of cinema to show off our common humanity.

Therefore, while Ukrainian refugees and citizens are given free access to films at the festival, and Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s Ukrainian Pamfir (pictured above) is a hotly anticipated title, Russian films aren’t completely cut off either. Kirill Serebrennikov’s 2021 Cannes film Petrov’s Flu plays, as well as Lado Kvataniya’s serial killer drama The Execution. The latter plays as part of the competition series, which focuses on first and second features, and has counted films such as Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, 2020), Oslo 31st August (Joachim Trier, 2012) and Cristian Mungiu’s debut Occident (2002) among its previous winners.

In fact, TIFF’s success has helped to put Romanian cinema on the map, often starting as a launching pad for its belated 00s New Wave, a movement that’s still going strong and situates Romanian filmmakers among some of the best in the world. It makes me particularly excited for Romanian competition entries A Higher Law (Octav Chelaru) and Mikado (Emanuel Pârvu). Over four days I’ll be digging into what the festival has to offer, providing dispatches from the front-line of cutting-edge world cinema. Follow our coverage on Dmovies

TIFF Official Competition 2022

A Higher Law (Romania, Germany, Serbia, Octav Chelaru)

Babysitter (Canada, Monia Chokri)

Beautiful Beings (Iceland, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson)

Feature Film About Life (Lithuania, Dovile Sarutyte)

Gentle (Hungary, László Csuja, Anna Nemes)

Mikado (Czech Republic, Romania, Emanuel Pârvu)

Magnetic Beats (France, Germany, Vincent Maël Cardona)

The Last Execution (Germany, Franziska Stünkel)

The Night Belongs To Lovers (France, Julien Hilmoine)

The Execution (Russia, Lado Kvantaniya)

Utama (Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Alejandro Loayza Grisi)

Pamfir (Ukraine, France, Poland, Chile, Germany, Luxemburg, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk)

Documentary Competition

You Are Ceaușescu to Me (Romania, Sebastian Mihăilescu)

Bucolic (Poland, Karol Pałka)

Excess Will Save Us (Sweden, Morgane Dziurla-Petit)

Chanel 54 (Argentina, Lucas Larriera)

Brotherhood (Italy, Czech Republic, Francesco Montagner)

Mother Lode (Switzerland, France, Italy, Matteo Tortone)

Ostrov (Switzerland, Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop)

The Plains (Australia, David Easteal)

Atlantide (Italy, Yuri Ancarani)

For A Fistful Of Fries (Belgium, France, Jean Libon and Yves Hinant)

Transilvania Film Festival runs from June 17th to the 26th, 2022.

The Natural History of Destruction

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM CANNES!

The Natural History of Destruction asks a simple question: is bombing civilian populations justified in the name of war? It seems to be the only question in the film, asked again and again and again, as Sergei Loznitsa shows us endless images of the mechanics, banality and brutality of war: leaving endless, merciless destruction in its wake in search of a bigger cause. Ostensibly about the allied bombing of Germany — which is estimated to have killed between 350,000 to 635,000 people while crippling the country’s armaments production — the film’s timely premiere resonates in the current moment, with Russia’s campaign of terror demolishing cities in Ukraine as this review is being written.

Created exclusively with archive footage courtesy of both British and German collections, Loznitsa’s latest is a WW2 film that feels contemporaneous, mixing black-and-white observational footage with painstaking re-recordings to show us the total dehumanisation of war.

We start with sketches of everyday German life, people out and about in town, heading to biergartens and cafes, singing songs and going to work. Evening arrives, the picture zooms out and these scenes are reduced to momentary lights in the ground, strikingly light up by the advent of cluster-bombs.

I didn’t just see Rostock, Lübeck, Cologne and Berlin while watching this film. I saw Mariupol, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Further back, it evokes NATO campaigns in Baghdad and Belgrade, or Putin’s levelling of Grozny, all committed in the name of the “greater good”. No matter who is waging war and who is on the so-called right side of history, the final effects are the same: dead people, flattened buildings, the complete vanquishing of hope and humanity.

Occasionally the silent-film-like images are punctuated by speeches. One British army official asks the German population to simply leave the cities and camp out in the countryside, a simplistic solution that betrays the reality of living in a country during the war. He goes on to say that although a campaign of bombing on this scale has never been tried before, it will make an “interesting experiment.”

And while war historians might agree that the bombing itself was justified in that it ground German production to its knees, allowing Soviet Union and American forces to sweep in and take Berlin, absolutists can claim the moral high ground: no victory could possibly be worth this much death and destruction. But Loznitsa avoids any editorial process — no talking heads, no narration, no moral grandstanding — and allows us to come to our own conclusions; starting debates instead of finishing them.

It’s this complexity, as well as seeking the humanity in a people that overwhelmingly supported the Nazis, that make him a complex figure. Only recently was he kicked out of the Ukrainian film academy for his ties to Russia and for speaking out against a widespread boycott, while at the same time, many of his fiction films have also been accused of Russophobia. In my view, this controversy is probably the sign of an independent filmmaker.

One thing you can say about Loznitsa is that he’s both a deep thinker and a prolific filmmaker (this is his third documentary in two years). Nonetheless, clocking in at just under 110 minutes long, his images are exhaustive and enervating, at once deeply terrifying and rather monotonous. His documentaries, like Victory Day, which stretched to over an hour despite only having enough material to justify a 20-minute short, has the habit of just making the same point over and over again. While the intention is to conclusively batter home the horrors of aerial warfare, the length and duration of certain images, which repeat themselves without revealing any new layers, struck me as unnecessary. The deeply-felt moral question the film raises is a highly important one, making it even more disappointing the finished product makes this such an alienating picture to sit through.

The Natural History of Destruction plays in the Official Selection as a Special Screening at Cannes. No UK release date yet.

Inner Wars

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

As Inner Wars reminds us in its final post-script, Ukraine has been at war with pro-Russian separatists since 2014. It is a war without end, without resolution and without many resources; occurring in a far corner of Europe that is easy for people in the West to forget about. The Donbass region has experienced endless death, squalor and misery, with at least 13,000 people dead.

Many images of this war paint it as a male endeavour — think the unforgettably bleak images of Sergey Loznitsa’s Donbass (2018)— but hundreds of women have also made their way to the front lines. Once there, they face two enemies: the pro-Russian separatists and the patriarchal structure of the Ukrainian army.

Both an urgent and brave piece of war journalism — one scene literally capturing the filmmaker encamped in a cramped house under shellfire — and a contemplative look at the survival of femininity within a harsh, masculine world, Inner Wars uses its three protagonists to paint a broad and affecting picture of Ukraine’s female fighters.

They are the chain-smoking and cheery Elena, nicknamed The Witch, who followed her lover to the battlefield; Lera, a mortar commander, protesting against the dreadful conditions of her camp; and Iryna, a veteran who lost two of her legs and one of her eyes in a mine accident. They might be bound by the same struggle, but their relative levels of command within the military shows off the multifarious nature of war.

As the title suggests, the focus isn’t so much on the battle against the Russian separatists, but the internal struggle these women face for acceptance in a patriarchal society. Unlike the all-female squads that exist in Kurdistan, captured in Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun (2018), these women are usually one of a few within a male battalion, working twice as hard to command the same respect as men. We don’t hear contemporaneous male perspectives at all (a lot of the time their off-hand comments aren’t even subtitled), a useful and moral choice that puts these women’s experiences front and centre.

Director Masha Kondakova immerses us in the battlefield — while we don’t see any action itself, we get up close with the resistance forces existing within such a depressing world. But it’s in Kyiv itself where the documentary finds its most combative moment: a distraught and bitter Iryna challenging Kondakova about her true intentions behind the film. It’s fascinating that this combative exchange is kept in, showing an ethical messiness to the documentary form that other filmmakers might choose to smooth over.

The prioritising of portraiture over projecture gives the film its steady power, buoyed by intimate handheld frames and a minimalist synth score. While the larger war is likely to carry on for some time yet, Inner Wars shows that at least some progress can be made by honouring the contributions and bolstering the leadership roles of some of its most dedicated combatants.

Watch Inner Wars online and for free during the entire month of December only with ArteKino.

Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love & War

Posted on by Paul Risker

In 1928, a boy by the name of Harry Birrell was given a cine-camera. He’d spend the rest of his life filming his friends and family, and documenting his time spent away from home in India, Burma and Nepal during the Second World War. Incorporating recently discovered entries from his diaries by his granddaughter Carina Birrell, director Matt Pinder edits together footage from over 400 of Harry’s films. The result is the story of one man’s remarkable experience of the 20th Century, a romantic and captivating adventure of a bygone era.

In Bombay, he commanded a Gurkha battalion in the Indian army. In the jungles of Burma, he went behind enemy lines, mapping the country during the Japanese invasion. Fittingly titled, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love & War, it’s a vision of happiness and sadness, of love, friendship and loss.

The shadow of death haunts Harry’s vibrant life even as a young man living a free and spirited existence in the 1930s. His own father was killed in action in the First World War. Like his father before him, he prepares to follow in his footsteps and serve. Richard Madden narrates one diary entry in which Harry beautifully articulates life’s impermanence, of how moments shared with friends could be their last. It’s a moment that reminds us of the intimate closeness of life and death that defined lives in this period.

One can be forgiven for coming to think of Harry as a friend. His pleasant nature and loyalty towards his men, forms an impression that if we’d have ever met him and his curious camera, we’d have become lifelong friends. By the end of the film, there’s a feeling of loss that the story of this remarkable person had to end. To see him credited as director of photography on a professionally produced and distributed film is a fitting full stop on Harry’s life, for who film was one of his great and enduring love affairs.

Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love & War, offers us the simple pleasure of sharing in someone else’s experiences. Harry’s recordings bring history alive, or rather they keep history alive. His films and this documentary are invaluable to us in the present and the future, and should be shown in history classes to impress wisdom on the minds of the young.

We cannot appreciate the experience that generation went through. Pinder’s documentary allows us to get as close as we can to the past, and the trauma that made it difficult for veterans to talk about their experiences. The film culminates in an emotional crescendo, a moving tribute to an interesting man and his unexpected adventure, that we’re privileged for it to be shared with us.

Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love & War is on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday, June 28th.

Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

America has superheroes. Essex has hard boys. Very hard boys. They would wipe the floor with the Avengers. Despite being the third film after Pat Tate’s (Craig Fairbrass) untimely demise at the end of Rise of The Footsoldier (Julian Gilbey, 2007)— part of a real gangland murder that has been mythologised, Batman-like, in three different movies — Rise of The Footsoldier 4: Marbella dives even deeper into the backstory of the most popular character in the franchise (and perhaps all of Essex). While never remotely coming close to the gangster-in-paradise heights of either The Business (Nick Love, 2005) or Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000), Marbella is an undeniably entertaining Essex-lad romp that even further blends black comedy with cartoonish violence to a gleeful fever-pitch.

It starts with our hero Pat Tate finally out of prison, sometime in the mid-90s. He walks into his Southend club and automatically notices there’s no pills left. He moves out to Marbella to look for Frank Harris (Larry Lamb), the man who double-crossed him. Sadly Frank has died (literally shagged to death) yet another lad, Terry Fisher (Andrew Loveday) has taken his place. Although sceptical to work with the successor to his traitor, he accepts the job as Fisher’s bodyguard in exchange for a huge shipment of pills. Things get more complicated however, when another gangster appears on Fisher’s turf, leading to an inevitable bloody showdown.

This is the Essex gangster distilled to its most essential form. British gangster film regulars, and fine actors when they want to be, Terry Stone and Roland Manookian, play the Rosencratz and Guildenstern to Tate’s Hamlet, two hapless fools charged with getting the cash to Marbella before getting back in time for Nigel Benn’s big boxing match (a real-life tie-in only men over 40 will understand). Taking a connecting flight in Amsterdam, they spend a reckless, prostitute-and-weed-filled night in the Red Light District, soundtracked to Corona’s Rhythm of the Night. It’s completely stupid, but I laughed throughout. By rarely taking itself seriously, and by holding itself to no standards whatsoever, the expletive-ridden, casually misogynistic and callously violent Marbella achieves a kind of comic-book purity.Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella

The strange success of the movie — which at a basic plot, acting and writing level, is quite flat— is embodied by Craig Fairbrass’ go-for-broke performance. Tate is the quintessential anti-villain of gangster cinema, a terrifying caricature with few redeeming features. He makes Joker look like a soppy mug. There has never been a problem Tate couldn’t punch in the face. Often coked up to his eyeballs, he is brash and impulsive, moving around like an early 90s Steven Seagal but with the same man’s current day physique. This is a guy who beat up a waiter in the original Rise of the Footsoldier for leaving him his bill before he asked for it. Who slits a restauranteur’s throat with a pizza cutter for refusing to give him the toppings he wanted. Here the ante is turned even further up, mauling his enemies with forks, golf clubs and other assorted instruments. It’s all completely ridiculous, but Fairbrass doesn’t blink, single-handedly holding the entire film together and somehow making it work.

As its the same coterie of actors that appear in almost every direct-to-DVD British gangster film, it feels like hanging out and having a few drinks with old friends. Your mileage might vary. It will play perfectly to its target audience: balding men in their 40s and 50s who wear leather jackets with blue jeans. Men who support either Chelsea or West Ham. Men who only listen to New Order, The Stone Roses and Oasis. Men who pay £30 to watch boxing on Sky. Men who think going to Continental Europe means either Amsterdam, Prague or the South of Spain. You know the lads. It will work best in a big group of them. Bring them around and drink every time Pat beats someone up. You’ll get drunk quickly.

Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella is in cinemas and digital on Friday, November 8th.

For Sama

Posted on by victorfraga

Waad Al-Kateab is a young female journalist in East Aleppo. She captures the war with our own camera during the course of five years, as the city grapples with the devastating war combined with the sheer neglect from the outside world. Just as the situation begins to deteriorate, she marries a local doctor called Hamza and gives birth to the titular Sama. But instead of fleeing her hometown and country for the security of her own family, Waad decides to stay and fight. Her weapon is her camera. She has to contend with the rebels attempting to seize East Aleppo by hook and by crook. She claims that her resolve comes from her young daughter.

This is a documentary successful at portraying the horrors of war, extreme human resilience and boundless altruism. Eight out of nine hospitals of East Aleppo have been destroyed. The only surviving institution has moved into an unidentified building in order to avoid shelling. This is where the non-salubrious environment where the doting Hamza works round the clock, with virtually no medication and medical equipment to hand. Dying patients are brought in daily, and a copious amount of blood can be seen on the floor. There are corpses, living bodies riddled with bullets, severed limbs and gaping wounds everywhere. Makes Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) look like Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964).

Yet For Sama does not feel exploitative. Waad – who never even knew whether she would survive the war – wished to compile a register of the horrors of the Syrian War for a mostly complacent world. In one of the film’s most harrowing and portent moments, a mother with her dying son on her arms begs to be filmed (presumably because she too wants the world to feel her pain, and grasp the gravity of the conflict). Harrowing images that will linger with a you for a long time. This is a film that you won’t easily forget. It’s painful to watch. It feels like a punch in the stomach.

Yet this is not a perfect movue. Firstly, it lacks contextualisation. We learn virtually nothing about the historical and political conjecture of the Battle of Allepo, which took place between 2012 and 2016. The military confrontation pitted the Syrian opposition (the Free Syrian Army and other Sunni groups such as the Levant Front) against the Assad Regime, (supported by Hezbollah and Russia). We know that Waad has little sympathy for the Assad family, who has ruled the country since Waad’s grandfather “was just 10 years old”, but otherwise we have no understanding about her allegiances, and the nuts and bolts of the conflict. Also, the movie is a chronologically incoherent, confusingly zigzagging back and forth in time.

At one point, Waad Waad raises a very important moral question: was it worth going back to Syria at the height of the conflict, after the family left to Turkey in order to visit a sick relative? She understands that her decision to return was extremely dangerous and questionable. Some will see it as brave, others will see it as selfish and foolish. She explains at the end of the movie that she did it in the name of “a greater purpose”. But I’m not entirely sure what that purpose was. Was it democracy? Helping the wounded? Making an investigative documentary? Vouching for her child’s right to grow where she was born? Waad motives are a little oblique, as is the film’s final message. Still, highly recommendable for its rawness and bravery.

For Sama won the Prix L‘Œil d’Or for best documentary at this year’s Cannes Film. It is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 13th. Watch it on Channel 4 on demand for free.

The 12th Man

Posted on by victorfraga

Despite the blockbusters of today often climaxing with fictional wars, the war genre itself is perhaps out of favour. Perhaps in our mollycoddling superhero culture, war movies seem too real. Well 12th Man is a film of fantasy and fervour that’s ultimately very accessible and as thrilling as anything that climbs the box office charts. Who would have thought then that the director of high-style kids films Agent Cody Banks and The Karate Kid (Harald Zwart, 2003 and 2010) would come through with a solid World War II thriller? Clearly, the Dutch director is happy to slip away from the frontline in order to deliver what the film needs. So it’s fascinating to see how he handles a more personal story.

Beginning with the claim that “the most incredible events are the ones which took place”, 12th Man is a survival epic about Jan Baalsrud, the one survivor of a Norwegian resistance boat sunk by a German warship, who begins a dramatic escape attempt from the Nazis in hopes of getting to neutral Sweden. As much as this is a historical reenactment, 12th Man takes joy in being a nostalgic boys own adventure, with ski chases, gunfights, and Baalsrud running from a fighter plane.

But Baalsrud is far from James Bond. Early on his gun is jammed by the frost and he sustains a horrendous injury that forces him to rely on the good-natured folk he meets. Thomas Gullestad as Baalsrud delivers a great, steely performance, showing the Leos of the world that you can depict determination and creeping madness without actually sleeping in an animal carcass . There’s a great scene where Baalsrud keeps waking up from nightmares, which turns into a horrifying dark night of the soul as he suffers from gangrene. His character reminded me of Boris Plotnikov’s hobbling martyr in Larissa Shepitko’s snowy resistance masterpiece The Ascent (1977). That film casts a long shadow over 12th Man, Zwart paying homage with a few visual nods. The atmosphere of the film strikes an icy tone that puts across the sub-zero temperatures. One early, extended shot has Baalsrud swimming away from camera and into the total darkness of the fjords, the water lit to convey sheer forbidding.

A surprise to see Jonathan Rhys Meyers showing up as the mad, vindictive SS officer Kurt Sage, who heading up the chase is timing himself in ice water. There’s no way anyone could have survived, he is told. But Sage hunts after the ghost anyway. This dynamic shows promise in the first act, but it never gets fully fleshed out. It’s a thankless role of a man who’s always a few steps behind. His inability to get up close to Baalsrud stops the men, from really learning about each other.

This is hardly the first Nazis in the snow movie to emerge from Norway (does anyone remember Tommy Wirkola’s 2009 Dead Snow?) and it’s one which uses Baalsrud’s perseverance as a national symbol. The northern lights are used in symbolic and literal ways as a sign for the characters, and there’s a real emphasis on members of the villagers and resistance fighters who helped Baalsrud on his journey.

Zwart lays on the inspirational messaging a little thick, the individual stories of the resistance fighters are probably the least interesting part of the film, because we’ve seen it all before. POWs singing in defiance, young children imparting wisdom beyond their years. The sentimentality really holds up the pace of the film, which, when it’s moving, has clear, motivated action that doesn’t let go of its audience. It’s a little too long to be a great action film, and isn’t quite bold enough to break free of its genre trappings. 12th Man remains a solid and well-told film with an action style movie.

The 12th Man is in selected cinemas across the UK and also on VoD on Friday, January 4th.

The Fortress (Nam Han San Seong)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

From its title you might assume that this big budget Korean offering was primarily a period war action epic more interested in spectacle and entertainment than anything else. In fact it’s an adaptation of contemporary writer Kim Hoon’s latest bestseller which explores a specific episode of history. The Fortress takes place in 1636, when King Injo of the Joseon Dynasty (Park Hae-il from The Host/Bong Joon-ho, 2006) was trapped in the mountain fortress of Namhan along with his ministers and court. It was winter and his army was suffering from exposure. To the South was the expansionist enemy Qing army advancing into territory hitherto under the protection of the Ming Empire.

At the start Kim Sang-hun (Kim Yun-seok), later revealed as Injo’s Minister of Rites, has a ferryman take him safely across the frozen river which is the route to Namhan. The old man bemoans his lack of payment for guiding others along the same route and wonders if the Qing will pay any better. After Kim kills him to safeguard the route from the enemy, the man’s blood seeps out slowly over the solid ice. This act will later come back to haunt Kim when he takes in a small refugee girl who turns out to be the dead man’s granddaughter, a child character given a fair amount of screen time and whose plight is heartbreaking.

In the meantime, there are more pressing political and military matters. The King must listen to his ministerial advisers before making decisions. Minister of the Interior Choi Myung-kil (Lee Byung-hun from The Age Of Shadows/Kim Jee-woon, 2016 and The Magnificent Seven/Antoine Fuqua, 2016) urges negotiation for peace with the enemy who outnumber them ten to one in marked contrast to Kim’s belief that they should stand and fight. The Prime Minister shares Kim’s belief, but is out of touch with the common people whereas Kim takes the trouble to talk and listen to the troops on the ground, represented primarily by the character of savvy, local blacksmith Seol Nal-soi (Go Soo). Thus, when the latter suggests the men be supplied with straw bags as protection against the cold, Kim is able to raise this idea in court and get the King to agree to it. The Prime Minister is disgusted with this since he thinks soldiers should simply endure the cold.

As they speak, ministers frequently suggest that if their suggestions are unworthy, their heads should be separated from their bodies. The Fortress has its share of beheadings, but it never seems to be the politicians who suffer this fate – it’s rather the enemy, one or two of whose heads are displayed to remind the troops of victory, or a hapless Lieutenant who is being punished for the failures of his political masters. The times may have been more violent and barbaric, but politicians have scarcely changed.

The machinations of the ministers and the court and the weight of office upon the King as he seeks their counsel before taking important decisions are compellingly portrayed with a real attempt at conveying all sides. Less effective is the portrayal of the common people who are pretty much reduced to blacksmith Nal-soi, his country bumpkin brother Chil-bok and the young girl in Kim’s charge. There are enough well-staged scenes of big battles or incidents such as Nal-soi travelling cross country through enemy lines to deliver a message to friendly forces to make you buy this as a big budget, period war spectacular, yet the core of the proceedings takes place in the King’s court.

The Fortress sets itself some very difficult tasks and for the most part pulls them off effectively. The central theme of a country trapped between two rival empires undoubtedly strikes a chord for contemporary Korean audiences given their country finds itself trapped between China to the North and U.S. forces to the South. The film also boasts an impressive Ryuichi Sakamoto score although many of the court scenes work very well indeed without any music at all. Highly satisfying film making. This excellent choice of opening film bodes well for London East Asian Film Festival 2017.

The Fortress opened the London East Asia Film Festival 2017, which runs from 19-29 October 2017.