IFFR Films (The good ones first...)

Here are the descriptions of the movies I saw. I used the official descriptions of the festival en added my comment ... sometimes.

Troubled Water (NO/SE 115')
Jan Thomas has just been released from prison, where he served eight years for murdering a child. He finds a job as an organist in the church, where he becomes involved in a relationship with the pastor Anna. She is the single mother of Jens, an eight-year-old boy who has a stunning likeness to the boy whom Jan Thomas is supposed to have killed eight years ago. The chance of making up with a loving father role is jeopardized when Jan Thomas is recognized by the mother of the victim. Then Poppe shows the viewpoint of the mother still dogged by grief (a fantastic Dyrholm), who has now adopted two girls with her husband. She starts stalking Jan Thomas.


Frozen River (US 97')
When she gets up one morning just before Christmas, Ray discovers that she is a single mother. Her husband, a gambling addict and Mohican Indian, has run off with the down-payment on their new mobile home. Ray sends the children to school and says that she is not even going to go and look for her husband. But she does anyway.
In the Mohican reservation, she finds his car just as it's being stolen by the Mohican Lila Littlewolf, but she doesn't find her husband. Ray is all on her own and a new mobile home seems impossibly distant. A strange twist of fate is that Lila, the car thief, offers a solution. Ray and Lila can smuggle illegal immigrants over the river between Canada and the United States. The loopholes in the law of the reservation are big enough for that, even though it's not without risk.
Frozen River is effective thanks to its grim social realism, but the power of the film is in the casting of the actress Melissa Leo, who plays a stubborn woman branded by life. When she shoots a hole in Littlewolf's mobile home, she's just as convincing as when she serves popcorn for breakfast. The film won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi (US 84')
A reporter who comes to a foreign country, seldom speaks the language and is often unfamiliar with the culture. Even for an experienced journalist, it is difficult to understand the finer points of local morals. For that, one has the so-called fixers. Often they are also journalists who literally and figuratively know their way around and know when something is wrong.
Ian Olds (1972) followed the American journalist Christian Parenti and his fixer, the Afghani journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi, for the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. The film is open-hearted and intimate, but also tragic and moving, because from the very first scenes, it's clear that 24-year-old Naqshbandi is no longer alive.
In 2005 Olds directed with Garrett Scott the film Occupation: Dreamland, about a group of very young American soldiers in Iraq. After Scott died suddenly, Olds made Fixer. The film was intended as a glimpse behind the scenes of the approach of a news reporter, but during shooting, a nightmare scenario emerged. During his work, Naqshbandi ended up in an ambush. He was kidnapped alongside the Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. The Italian was freed, Naqshbandi was not. Olds' both intelligent and committed film sketches a depressing picture of the future of Afghanistan, but is at the same time a homage to the 'best fixer in Afghanistan'.

Pranzo di Ferragosto (IT 75')
Giovanni is fifty and the only child of his mother, a widow with whom he lives in an apartment in Rome. It's mid-August and hot in the city. His mother has a fairly demanding nature and so Giovanni spends as much time in the local bar as in his apartment, where he does a lot of the household chores.
Ferragosto, the traditional free weekend in Italy (Assumption) is coming up and Giovanni receives a visit from his landlord: Can he look after the landlord's mother for two days? In view of Giovanni's rent arrears, it's a request he cannot refuse. A little later he receives a visit from his family doctor with virtually the same question. It's then up to Giovanni to organise a good lunch on a holiday...
Gianni di Gregorio wrote and directed with verve this appealing, heart warming feature début, Pranzo di Ferragosto, in which he also plays the leading role of Giovanni. The construction of the story, the interaction of the old ladies, the refinements of language use and eating habits, yet also all kinds of other small details together yield a minor masterpiece that was a kind of surprise hit at the recent Venice film Festival. The peculiarities and charms of the old ladies are especially beautifully portrayed.

The Higher Force (IS 80')
After having made quite an impression in 2008 with The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, the story of a Filipino transsexual, Olaf de Fleur Johannesson situates his next film in his own country, Iceland. Here the small, amateur good fellow and wannabe poet David wrestles with life. A car accident that killed his little brother, who shared his love of kung fu, continues to haunt him. He earns his living collecting debt for an amateurish Mafia gang in which he is the fall guy. The only solace in his grey life comes unexpectedly from his landlord Harald. David thinks he recognises him as the driver who killed his brother. As revenge, he suggests to the gang members that this lonely man is a mysterious crook who disappeared in Mexico.
Olaf de Fleur does little to make the characters credible. On the contrary, he allows David to rise in the pecking order of the bizarre group of Mafiosi in a series of events. Combined with stubborn faith in their own escapist fantasies, that turns The Higher Force into an unashamedly offbeat comedy filled with droll fake pretense, miscommunication and plot developments that can't be taken seriously. The addition of producer Stefan Schaefer as a talkative German crook and Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) as Mafia boss heighten the implausibility of this crazy story in which the pleasure of film making transcends all.

The Hungry Ghosts (US 105')
Hungry ghosts refers to a concept in Eastern religions for dead people who cannot say farewell to the living. The term is often a metaphor for people who do not realise that it is increasingly painful and difficult to find happiness if they continue to believe in their illusions. In this feature début by actor Michael Imperioli, his characters float as spirits through life, looking for happiness, looking for the fulfilment of a desire. Imperioli has been an actor in, and scriptwriter for, The Sopranos and played in more than 30 films, including ones by Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese.
In The Hungry Ghosts, several narrative lines run together. There's a rundown radio presenter (a beautiful role by Steve Schirripa, also from The Sopranos) who keeps on his feet using drink and pills and quarrels with his ex-wife on the phone about their son who has gone off the rails. There's a young woman who is fleeing her life and visits girlfriends and ex-boyfriends looking for a place to sleep. In the course of the film, set in and around New York in the period of 36 hours, it becomes clear and inevitable that the narrative lines will come together. The film is reminiscent of the best TV dramas, thanks to the subtle directing of the actors, the rapid sketching of situations in a character's life and the creation of space through clever moments of non-activity.


Flashbacks of a Fool (UK 114')
The story starts as the mess is cleared from the luxury beach mansion of Hollywood actor Joe Scott, in whom we recognise the present James Bond actor Daniel Craig. But this is a different kettle of fish. Scott is on the bottle, squabbles with his housemate about a mutt she's picked up and that he regards as too much of a pansy and during lunch he's dumped by his arrogant agent.
Then he walks into the sea and the story goes back in time to the 1970s, to the East Coast of the USA. A girlfriend introduces the young Scott (Harry Eden) to the world of David Bowie and Bryan Ferry. But the energetic seductive art of the mother of his best friend throw a shadow over this tender love.

Schattenwelt (Long Shadows) (DE 91')
Long Shadows starts with the early release of the RAF terrorist Widmer, who has to find his way in a changed German society after 22 years in jail. Sentenced for the murder of a businessman and his gardener, he bears the burden of a heavy political heritage. He gets an apartment beside another client of his lawyer, the young Valerie, whose son has been taken into care because of a single case of abuse by his mother. The two do not seem to be more than average neighbours, but their first encounters quickly make one suspect a different scenario.
Long Shadows is not another classic RAF drama, but focuses without idealisation or sentimentality on the scars left by the deeds of the RAF on the second and third-generation victims. The composed rhythm of the film hides the complex psychology of a young woman who wants to avenge the death of her father and the desire of a terrorist to see his son, with whom he has never had contact since his detention. The director increasingly allows their worlds and those of the lawyer and an investigator to become entangled, until there's a new and violent climax with another innocent victim. Guilt, revenge and liberation acquire an under-cooled layer in Long Shadows that, told chronologically, keeps adopting new, unpredictable dimensions right up to the end.

Pandora's Box (TR 112')
Nusret’s adult children - daughters Nesrin, Güzin and son Mehmet - live separate lives in Istanbul and have all come to terms differently with the monotonous void in their urban existence. After hearing that their mother is not well, they trek to their hometown near the Black Sea. Finding Nusret unconscious yet physically fit, they take her back to Istanbul, the city that Ustaoglu regards as a 'Pandora's Box'. The burdensome situation reawakens old conflicts between the siblings. They quickly notice that Nusret is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Nesrin and Güzin first take care of their mother. But the task proves to be too difficult for the quarrelsome sisters: they not only can’t cope with their mother’s decline, they can’t deal with their own alienated lives. The headstrong Nusret abhors the concrete city with its insincere modern relationships and just wants to return home. But unexpectedly she forms a close bond with her rebellious pothead grandson Murat. The film is a profound study of loss, estrangement and familial tensions, but above all it is a critique of a contemporary society that has de-familiarized itself from its roots, its 'Mother Nature'. Pandora’s Box won several prizes in 2008, including the San Sebastian Best Actress Award for protagonist Tsilla Chelton (1918).

Der Architekt (DE 93')
When architect Georg Winter accepts a prize, he explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every realised building against the rightness of his original idea. Which also reveals the theoretical framework of Ina Weisse's feature début about a middle-age man who is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life.
Der Architekt is an intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg Winter's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. In this unexpected isolation, several proverbial skeletons emerge from the cupboard to throw new light on the past but also on the present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.
Weisse's first feature has many classic aspects but also allows the actors to leave the beaten path. The smooth surface of the model family hides sexual intrigues and unhealthy dependencies. Weisse plays these beautifully against each other in charged scenes in which the characters do not as much reveal factual details as psychological characteristics. Against the background of the virgin white winter landscape of the Tirol, the director repeatedly adds new accents to bring to the surface unfulfilled desires, falsely agreed compromises and profound insecurities. Choices must be made. The only question is: who's going to make them?

Delta (HU/DE 92')
Made by a hungarian filmmaker and set in the beauty of the delta of the river Danube, this is an exceptional movie about intolerance and hate . A young man comes to the village where his mother lives with her new lover and his sister, that he hadn't seen for many years. The moment the man meets his sister you see that the two of them have a kind of understanding, while at the same time the new partner of his mother doesn't like him. The son decides to live in the old fishing hut of his father and to built a house of his own at that spot. After a fight between the new partner of the mother and and his sister in which stepfather rapes his stepdaughter, she runs off to live with her brother. The family and villagers don't accept that and the tension rises to a climax.


Of course I don't feel ashamed by anything (not true). Well, have fun at my expense.

IFFR 2009 (the higher middle range)

Involuntary (SE 98')
What is the influence of a group on the individual? How can we avoid group pressure? In Involuntary, the second feature by Ruben Östlund, we see five separate, familiar stories all taking these questions as their point of departure. For instance, Olle becomes unwillingly involved in the sexually tinted games of his old mates. Villmar is injured at his own party, but doesn't want to ruin the mood and so he carries on bravely as if nothing is wrong. And the girlfriends Linnea and Sara go out wearing sexy clothes but are not able to predict the effect in advance.
This successful Swedish mosaic film is fortunately occasionally very funny, but the camera continues to run soberly and relentlessly, when even the voyeuristic viewer doesn't really want to know what happens next. Östlund chooses his subjects with an eye for the sharp sides of Western freedom and attainments. Licentiousness (awoken by alcohol and lust), power abuse and bourgeois dissatisfaction put the characters into difficult situations .
Is in their own fault or are they the innocent victims of circumstances? That's only the start of the question. Because there's only one person who decides what we see and what we don't, or how long a scene lasts, and that is the director. A conclusion that often seems a cliché, but is here essential for the power of the film.

Pomegranates and Myrrh (PS 95')
Pomegranates and Myrrh is a multiply layered love story depicted against the background of everyday issues in today's Ramallah. It is quite unique to see footage of Palestinian reality being used not for a TV news report but for a creative drama (the wall, checkpoints, the confiscation of an olive farm, heavily armed Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets, etc.). A strong and mature début by a promising film maker.
Zaid (Ashraf Farah) and Kamar (Yasmine Al Massri) are Christian Arabs; the film begins with their marriage in East Jerusalem. Their happiness as newly weds does not last long though, for soon after the wedding a conflict about the confiscation of Zaid’s olive farm ends up with him being put in prison for an indefinite period of time. Kamar is a strong and modern woman, and to survive this difficult period, she decides to pick up her love for dancing again and joins a group of traditional Palestinian folk dancers despite her new family's disapproval.
A new choreographer, the Palestinian returnee Kais (Ali Suleiman) joins the dance group and brings a fresh breeze to the group and to Kamar. Her life is thrown into turmoil as she becomes increasingly attached to Kais and is caught between her desire to dance and not breaking family and social taboos about the role of a prisoner's wife, while life under occupation rages on…

Los Bastardos (MX/FR/US 95')
After Sangre (2005), supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, The Bastards is the second feature by Amat Escalante. The young Spanish-Mexican director has remained faithful to his stylistic principles. He has again engaged an amateur cast, as well as his Mexican colleague Carlos Reygadas, with whom he worked on Battle in Heaven (2005). Escalante now aims his securely observing camera at two Mexican brothers, Fausto and Jesus, who live in Los Angeles as illegal day labourers.
The Bastards describes 24 hours in their lives. A day that starts like all others: finding work - whatever work - is the most important issue. Forcefully and in matter-of-fact way, but also with humour, The Bastards shows the vulnerability of their existence. Alongside the continuous threat of deportation, we see unreliable employers who want to haggle about everything and drunken racists in the park where they seek rest. In the evening, the brothers break into an American woman's house whose husband has hired them to kill her.
Some similarities with Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) then emerge. What are the brothers going to do with the defenceless woman, who herself has several surprising problems? It's not primarily about the role of the viewer, but about the confusion, the ambivalence and the banality of life and the violence that eventually - you have been warned - still comes as a surprise.

The Stength of Water (NZ/DE 86')
The northern coast of New Zealand in the Hokianga region forms the backdrop for a story set in a small Maori community. The film maker chose to work with people from the community instead of professional actors. Thanks to this, but also to the harsh location, the film looks very authentic.
The little boy Kimi Kaneha is suffering greatly after the death of his twin sister. He doesn't really accept her death. For instance, he eats for two and hence becomes very fat, all in order to keep her spirit with him. He almost always drags a chicken round with him, one of the thousands from the family farm, as a kind of furry toy. He isn't taken very seriously, but does seem to have more insight than everyone thinks. His strange way of coming to terms with his sister's death might just work.
The film focuses on Kimi, yet he still remains an outsider. In the end it is more about the lives of the adults around him. They are forced to lead a harsh and frugal life and don't spare each other.

Nana (Maid) (CL 93')
A south American movie about a maid who served a family for 20 years but lately she can't do all the work any more. The family hires different maids to support her, but she works them out of the door one by one. All that leads to some funny situations. I would say that the film is about the importance of family and the value of friendship.

IFFR 2009 (the middle range)

The Storm (TR 156')
For eighteen-year-old Cemal, being accepted to the University of Istanbul is more than just an opportunity to continue his studies, it is his big chance to leave his remote Kurdish village in Southeast Turkey once and for all. Getting off the bus, he is overwhelmed by the grandeur of the big city, but the historic campus is a whole different story. This is the early 90s; radical student activities are at their peak and cops patrol the grounds. Our naive protagonist quietly attends classes and keeps his head down, but soon, Queen Bee Helin will cajole him and two other Kurdish classmates, Orhan and Rojda, into joining her anti-system revolutionary group. This is a precious time for self-discovery. The three friends start questioning the status quo and embracing their cultural identities. They form new friendships, fall in love, read Marx, talk about their dreams and get carried away anticipating the revolution. But all isn’t rosy; conflicts rise within the group and the police encircle them like vultures. Kazim Öz, known for his captivating documentaries of Kurdish life, presents a masterful second feature in the form of an epic that realistically depicts the social uprising and urgency of Turkey’s student movement of the past decade. Hardcore and heart-wrenching, The Storm has already started to gain cult status among young audiences in Turkey.

Unspoken (BE 97')
Unspoken is a character study of few words - or better, of a lot of unspoken words - about the inability to communicate of the parents of a daughter who disappeared without trace five years before.
The mother, played by Emmanuelle Devos, who is nearly bursting out of her seams from pent-up emotion, regularly sees a girl in the underground who looks a little like her daughter. And the father (played by Bruno Todeschini), who is wasting away from self-torment, receives mysterious telephone calls that may point towards the girl. Until the father/husband disappears without trace too. From that day on, the mother/wife is all on her own twice over, which may seem less lonely in some ways.
Fien Troch made her feature début in 2005 with the prize-winning Someone Else’s Happiness. Her second feature is about coming to terms with a loss that can't really be coped with, because there is no certainty about the nature of the loss. It's not about unravelling the fate of the daughter, but the question of what the loss does to those left behind, who after a time are confronted with people in their surroundings who expect them to have come to terms with the loss. This hidden tension cuts through the soul like a scalpel, not lastly through the delightful play with depth of focus by cameraman Frank Van den Eeden.

Bronson (GB 92')
Michael Gordon Peterson has published 11 books, writes poetry, is an idiosyncratic and talented painter and does 2,500 push-ups each day - in prison, where the most violent prisoners of England are held for life, even though he has never killed or fatally wounded anyone. He was sentenced in 1974 to 7 years at the age of 19 for a raid on a post office and has become the longest serving prisoner in the United Kingdom. With a history of hostage-taking and violence against prison personnel, the incredibly strong 'Bronson' - a nickname he earned during his short career as a free fighter in the very brief periods he was a free man - spends most of his time in isolation.
Nicolas Winding Refn allows Bronson to tell his life story, dressed as a variety artist. But it isn't a literal biography: Refn, who as a Dane was unfamiliar with Bronson's status, is more interested in his personality. The actor Tom Hardy, responsible for the spectacularly intense leading role, had been fascinated by Bronson for years. He also provides an amazing performance: as an actor and as a trained sportsmen.

Élève Libre (BE/FR 105)
An élève libre is someone who receives private lessons. But the title has layers, because what is ‘freedom’ for Jonas? He is kicked out of school after failing his exams. Game stress puts an end to his hope of professional tennis. His parents are divorced and have largely disappeared from sight (Flemish actor Johan Leysen has a bit part as the father); Jonas is staying with friends of his mother. A friend of theirs offers to give him free private lessons for an exam which will help Jonas to catch up three years. He has to spend some time with the man, and they talk about algebra and literature, but also about sex and relationships. Like the couple with whom Jonas lives, the man is outspokenly direct. When Jonas talks about his first time, they ask him all the details. ‘Did she suck you ?’ ‘Is she vaginal or clitoral?’ ‘And inside, is she tight?’ At first their 70s openness and his blushing butchness are funny, but the sexual candidness gradually shifts to uneasy territory. The lady of the house wouldn't mind demonstrating a blow job - and otherwise he can watch her and her boyfriend? Jonas is especially confused by his private teacher.
Lafosse adopts a modest approach. With little music and a registering camera, he avoids imposing judgement. His film asks: where is the boundary between teaching and forcing something on someone, in word and deed?

Black Dogs Barking (TR 88')
Restless and young, best buddies Selim and Çaça live a meagre existence on the outskirts of Istanbul. Their neighbourhood's view of the city's gigantic business towers accelerates their ambitions. By day they grow pigeons on the roof, by night they drive their pimped-up car, 'My Orange Angel', and roam the mean streets with their entourage. The two buddies want to open up their own parking-lot business near a gigantic mall, and they just might get lucky, since they’re supported by the local mafia boss. But everyone wants a slice of the cake and the mall’s dodgy security contractor, Sait, is not so willing to let his 'turf' slide to these up-and-coming lads. Plus, the cops are on the boys’ tail to gather evidence against the mafia’s now 'legalized' activities. It isn’t long before Selim and Çaça’s dreams will be shattered when they find themselves in water over their heads. This sizzling début feature from Mehmet Bahadir Er and Maryna Gorbach, shot in a verité style, captures a verisimilitude representative of the many unemployed young Turkish men who just want to make a better life for themselves. Submerged in poverty and the prevailing macho culture, it is no surprise that they become victims of violence. Bustling with energy with its in-yer-face attitude, Black Dogs Barking proudly takes over On Board's (1988) legacy of the working class anti-heroes.

Dogging: a Love Story (GB 103')
In the north-east of England an ensemble of characters united by amorous misadventure search for love in all the wrong places. Dan is a university graduate who, having so far failed to secure work as a journalist, sleeps on the sofa of his cousin’s plush city centre flat. He investigates the phenomenon of dogging (sex in cars) via the Internet. While browsing the chat rooms he makes the acquaintance of ‘HORNY GEORDIE LASS’ and finds himself pretending to be the dogging expert that he clearly is not.
His career-minded girlfriend Tanya is tired of his lack of ambition. Dan's cousin Rob is an overconfident estate agent who boasts of dogging experience and, like Tanya, takes great pleasure in ridiculing the Internet approach to journalism. Convinced that Dan needs to ditch Tanya and start living, he wastes no time in suggesting he experience the dogging scene for himself. Rob’s current partner Sarah also enjoys carefree, al fresco sex. Living nearby with her over-protective father, Laura lives an exciting life via Internet chat rooms as ‘HORNY GEORDIE LASS’. She is meanwhile pursued by Jim. Charismatically persistent, he thinks nothing of haplessly approaching girls for a phone number and maybe a kiss or a cuddle.
Dogging: A Love Story is a quietly comic take on sex, danger, jealousy and 21st century romance in the great dark outdoors.

Autumn (TR 106')
Autumn is an intricately woven inner journey covering the insuppressible past, the fleeting present and the lack of a promising future. But despite all, it is the hope for change, which once drove, and still drives, the characters to firmly grip their lives. Such is Yusuf: in 1997 he was a politically active left-wing student; in 2007, he is a disillusioned misfit. After a decade of imprisonment for his lost cause, he returns to his native village in the eastern Black Sea region. His widowed mother is more than happy to welcome him, but the overbearingly beautiful mountains of his homeland only deepen his self-doubt and isolation. One day, meandering in a tavern with his childhood friend Mikail, Yusuf encounters a similarly wounded soul. She is the ethereal Eka, a Georgian prostitute who yearns for the day she can reunite with her daughter across the border. These kindred spirits will help each other to confront their darkest fears.
Autumn is one of those long-awaited, magical yet brutal films that acutely tackle the issues of forsaken young generations in Turkey whose struggle for social change has cost them dearly - physically and emotionally. Alper’s evocative and sublime images of the present, mixed with intense raw footages of the recent past, brings to life a riveting reflection of a man in search of his deepest core.

33 Scenes from Life (PL 95')
Julia has everything one could dream of: a great and warm home, a loving husband, good parents and a successful career as an artist-photographer. But all of a sudden her world collapses when her mother becomes sick with cancer. In the following months she struggles with her mother's illness, the continuity of her career and the absence of her husband, who is also successful. The sickness and death of Julia's mother are very different and more absurd from a close perspective than one would expect. As if all of this weren't hard enough, her father can't deal with his wife's death and drowns himself in alcohol. Julia looks for comfort in the arms of an unexpected person...
A valuable film with high artistic quality, this is about the ridiculous turns that life can unexpectedly take, about loosing the people dearest to you and becoming a part of the adult world. Malgoska Szumowska has excelled in presenting not a tear-jerking drama but a true mirror of the vulnerability of life. Human, intensive, realistic. Tragic and sometimes funny, with a lot of cigarettes and booze. A film that will stay with you forever and make a place for itself in international film history.

Among the Clouds (IR 83')
Among the Clouds is a first feature film by the Iranian director Rouhollah Hejazi that was shown and awarded at the Fajr Film Festival in Teheran in 2008. The story takes place at an Iranian-Iraqi border and presents an unforgettable picture of this far-away world.
Malek is a teenage boy who earns extra money carrying luggage for tourists and religious pilgrims at the Iran-Iraq check-point. One day he spots the beautiful young Iraqi woman Noura, who earns her living helping Arab pilgrims from Iraq cross the border and find their way around in the nearest Iranian city. Malek cannot keep his eyes off Noura and regularly looks for ways of catching a glimpse of this beauty. He does this while he is working, trying to keep his feelings private.
Noura takes advantage of Malek's naivety and his emotions and asks him for help: Can he carry some bags for her clients? Malek does not hesitate. But this is only the beginning of Noura's plans. The boy embarks upon the dangerous activity of smuggling things (and people), which could get him into big trouble. When Noura disappears, he decides to go search for her in Iraq, in the town closest to the border. Dangerous situations and sobering discoveries follow.

I Sell the Dead (US 85')
Glenn McQuaid was fascinated as a child by British horror costume films made by Amicus Films and Hammer Films, in which genre stars such as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were gloriously sanguine. This début can also be regarded as a homage to these production houses.
I Sell the Dead is a genuine buddy movie, but then about grave robbers, body snatchers and living dead. The story is situated on the misty and grimy 19th-century British Isles. Thanks to McQuaid's background in post-production and special effects, the fact that this low-budget film was shot on location around New York cannot be seen.
Partly because of the comic-strip adaptation of his story (made by Brahm Revel) McQuaid attracted a star cast. Ron Perlman (The Name of the Rose, Hellboy) is on fine form as a very unconventional priest and Dominic Monaghan, well known as Charlie from the TV series Lost, plays the sympathetic body snatcher Arthur.
When Arthur waits in a dark dungeon for the execution of his sentence, he receives a visit from Father Duffy. Arthur's buddy Willie ended on the scaffold and he awaits the same fate. So it's high time to confess to Father Duffy. While enjoying a bottle of whisky, Arthur describes with delight how the business of grave robbing works. Father Duffy is extremely interested, especially in the part about bringing the dead back to life...

Un Autre Homme (CH 89')
The third feature by Lionel Baier is an intellectual satire on the profession of film critic through the entertaining adventures of an aimless young man. François moves with his respectable girlfriend to Vallée de Joux, where she teaches at a secondary school. He finds a job as film critic with the local paper, where he thinks he can raise the level of reporting by writing film reviews with a high level of analysis. In reality, he copies them from a highbrow Paris magazine and is guilty of plagiarism. Then he meets Rosa, a celebrated film reviewer with a respected newspaper who is out to get the newcomer. An erotic game starts in which Rosa is the manipulative spider spinning a merciless web for him.
Baier, who says that this film is his most personal, resorts to film noir, but gives his own turn to this game of desire and deception. Inspired by a book by the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton about an art critic annex murderer, he is primarily interested in the harsh, insensitive sides of desire, which are expressed in the film in sharp contrasts between city and countryside, truth and lies, lust and love. In the end, he has the young man travel to Paris in order to meet as apotheosis Bulle Ogier, the queen of French cinema.

IFFR 2009 (the lower range)

La Mujer sin Cabeza (AR 87')
A middle-aged woman is driving on the highway. She becomes distracted and runs over something. It could have been anything. A dog, a child or something else. Shocked, she drives on, but on the days following this incident, she fails to recognise the feelings that bond her to things and people. She just lets herself be taken by the events of her social life. One night she tells her husband that she killed someone on the highway. They go back to the road only to find a dead dog. Friends close to the police confirm that there were no accident reports. Everything returns to normal and the bad moment seems to be over until the news of a gruesome discovery again worries everyone.
With her unusual talent in dissecting suppressed emotions and their social context, Martel focuses on an event that makes a crack in the existing world, in a manner of speaking. With a frighteningly intimate, formal approach and above all through the stunning soundtrack, the viewer is slowly but surely introduced to a life in which something goes gruesomely wrong. In the beautiful details of the world around the protagonist, hence in the out-of-focus background, the worrying social message of the film can be read. Because somewhere, someone has to pay the price for denial, silence and repression.

Better Things (GB 93')
After two prize-winning short films, Duane Hopkins made his début as a feature director with Better Things (previously a CineMart project in Rotterdam), with which he pursued a long British tradition of cinematographic social realism. At the same time, he gives his very own take on it.
Hopkins shows three relationships of inconspicuous lovers who are all in a crisis. There's a schoolgirl who is pestered by her jealous ex-boyfriend. There's the older married couple who are still tormented by an event from the past they cannot discuss, living in a permanent state of cold war with each other. And there are the two young lovers who are in danger of succumbing to their inability to resist the seduction of hard drugs.
Hopkins avoids melodramatic or politically charged class consciousness. He does not tell a story from A to Z, but zooms in on the moments that are decisive in life. With determined precision, he seeks in each of his characters the emotional price that is paid for deeds of which they have not estimated the impact in advance. The observations do not seek a classical climax, but form more of an unprejudiced 'close study' of mutual dependence and the lack of an individual course. And is it far-fetched to compare the heroin intoxication of some of the protagonists with the languid, subtle, warmly photographed style of the film?
Outside of the UK, this movie can not be prize-winning without proper subtitles. My god that English was non understandable.

Tony Manero (CL 98')
The beautiful and gritty film takes its title from John Travolta’s character in the worldwide hit Saturday Night Fever (1977), and is a critical, occasionally gruesome, yet also very funny film. (Personally I think this isn't true at all).
Santiago, 1978. A Chilean TV show organises a contest for a local Tony Manero, while anyone who reveals a contrary opinion is arrested, tortured or murdered by the Pinochet regime. The poor Raúl (beautifully played by Alfredo Castro) is convinced that he'll win this contest as the only real Tony Manero. Certainly if he can have a dance floor with flashing lights under the tiles. Armed with this obsession and the aggrieved tunnel vision of the putdown loser, the immoral opportunist Raúl wants to realise his dream in front of the whole Chilean people .
Tony Manero shows that Chile, about 20 years after the end of the dictatorship, is still coming to terms with its past. Larraín's film does not focus on the dictatorship, but with its idolisation of Tony Manero provides a parallel with today's Chilean society. According to Larraín, the country has forgotten its original culture and traditions, and Chile now functions entirely in America's wake.
The story sounds funny, but I didn't think the movie was catchy or funny at all.

Zara (CH 85')
In an expanse of stony Turkish landscape, two women roam around looking for the village of Zara. The Kurdish Mirka is returning to her birthplace after 12 years, accompanied by her ignorant German-speaking blonde girlfriend. On the way, reality, memory and fantasy increasingly become entangled as they are confronted with people and nightmares from the past.
Zara - literally 'birth of the road' - portrays Mirka’s quest to find the right way back to a wild past she hasn't come to terms with, and, she seems to hope, to a bearable present. Her Western companion wants to mirror her own traumas in those of Mirka and that's why she came with her.
This début by Ayten Mutlu Saray is a poetic meditation about the deep grievances of exile and the history of the Kurdish community that was forced to give up its own language and roots. Not only does the landscape seem to be filled with metaphors, the director shows important rituals and myths that underline the bond between the Kurds and their homeland and express his historic convictions. The gap between East and West turns out to be irreconcilable. Mirka’s companion dies, and burying her Western girlfriend turns out to be the first step on the way to the catharsis Mirka was hoping for. This serves to break through part of the isolation.
I was hoping that I would learn more about the history and the present problems of Kurdistan, but for me the movie was a big disappointment.

Liverpool (AR 84')
Liverpool starts on board a large ship on its way to the Argentine Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world. One of the sailors is Farrel, who tells the captain that he wants to take some leave there in order to visit his mother, whom he hasn't seen for 20 years. He disembarks and, like earlier heroes in Alonso’s films, sets off on his journey. On foot or in the back of a truck, he treks deep into the freezing mountains of Tierra del Fuego. The alcoholic Farrel keeps himself warm with booze - lots of booze - and falls asleep occasionally in strange places. Once he arrives in the hamlet at the end of the world, he finds his mother needy and dying, and he turns out to have a daughter too.
Liverpool has a rather more complex narrative structure than Alonso’s earlier films. The film doesn't end when Farrel reaches his destination. Nor does it end when the protagonist leaves again. And the sketch of the microcosm of the remote village is very hectic in Alonso’s terms.
It is apt that in the case of the apparently minimal narratives of directors like Lisandro Alonso, an endless amount can be written, said and, even better, thought, about issues that are not answered or shown - or not explicitly at least. Where is the daughter's mother? What does the title mean? Where does Farrel end up?
Though the story could have a lot of potential, I think that the movie is rather boring. The characters are way too far from my imagination. The pictures of the landscape are nice but for me that isn't enough for a good movie.

OV-chipkaart

James came to join me at the festival on Friday evening. Though I had seen him the day before I was so glad he was there again. It seems that I have difficulties to be with out him. We saw two movies together (later more about those), and then I could use my OV-chipcard (a chipped credit card format plastic card to travel in Public transport in The Netherlands) for the first time. I'd uploaded € 30,- on my card and bought a new card for James. I must say that it was very unreal to travel with the card. You have to check in and you have to check out, without knowing exactly what the ride will cost, since you do not know how many kilometers you are travelling. When you check in you pay € 0,75 start fee, each kilometer you travel costs € 0,115. That might be more expensive then the old “strippenkaart” (a paper card that we use for paying for public transport right now). When you change busses or trams you have to check out first from the public transport you came from and you have to check in again in the new mode of transportation. Rotterdam was the pilot area to kick off the OV-chipcard a few years ago, so it is the first city that kicks out the strippenkaart in the subway now completely.

black days

Today was a strange day. I should be off because this was my first day at the International Filmfestival in Rotterdam. But because I couldn't get everything done yesterday evening that needed to be done before I could go, had to log in at my work account this morning to get the rest done. So I started out with work. Then I packed my stuff and loaded the car and I drove to Rotterdam. On my way here I thought that I heard something strange. And yes I did: it seemed that the muffler was lose and needs to be replaced. (As I learned from James, the muffler had come of completely by now.) Add that to the rust I saw at one of the windows and you could say that the car is in a bad state, not to mention the costs. And speaking of costs did I write something about my dishwasher yet? No? Well, it seemed to be broken since it was leaking water and it wouldn't stop pumping. Well when the technician came the problem seemed to be over. He saw that there had been a problem and that I didn't make everything up, but he couldn't find the cause. Well it seemed we had caused the problem ourself when we didn't load it right. So the steam exhaust got blocked, pressure was building up in the machine and water was pushed out of it.

The Time of the Year

Yep, it's the time of the year again that I pack my suitcase and take off to the International Filmfestival there. My friends Elly and Jaap are as excited as I am. They will host me for the next 9 days and they go to the festival as well. James will accompany me for 2 days in the first weekend. The poor guy has to work (since he had to use some of his vacation days for the intensive Dutch course, he is following right now. He is a little bit behind with his work, and has to catch up.)
I will try to post regularyly on the blog about the films I have seen. I have some good experiences with direct blogging in the last years. A few months ago I even got a reaction of one of the filmakers from last year, who commended on my entry about his film Men's Group.

Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin, ...

I'll start this entry off on our way back to Zwolle. James and I spent the last four days in Berlin and are now heading back home. We are off for more then a week now and enjoy our time together.
Christmas we spent with our friends Arjen, Jos and Yaser. We were eating goose, something that has become a little tradition now. It was nice to spent the holidays at home, after I had one of the most stressful periods at work just the weeks before.
On Sunday after Christmas we took the train to Berlin. Pino and Frank were waiting for us at the platform already and when we got to Pino's house Christian had already prepared a wonderful meal (“happy meal!”) for us.
On Monday we took a stroll to the Potsdammer Platz, the city's center back in the 20's and 30's, and the Brandenburger Tor (with the new American embassy). James and I went to the Pergamon Museum while Christian, Frank and Pino did their own stuff. It's years ago since I was in the Pergamon Museum, but I still remember the most impressing artifact back then: the Istar gate of Babylon. And it made a deep impression on me again, but this time I was also amazed by the big section of Islamic Art. Some of the exhibits reminded me of the things I had seen at the Islamic Museum in Istanbul. The difference here was that many exhibits had images of humans, something that I hadn't noticed that much in Istanbul. In the evening we all had some pizza at the Prenzlauer Berg before we headed off to the Prinzknecht.
On Tuesday James and I explored the city on our own. We drove S-Bahn to Spandau and walked around in the old center. After that leisurely start we did some “hard history”. We went to the commemoration at Plötzensee. About 3000 opponents of the Nazi regime were brought to death here. We got some good insights on how life was back in the 30's and 40's. While waiting at the bus stop we met an old lady. She said she was 85 years old. She asked if we came from the commemoration, and then told us more about her experiences during the war. From Plötzensee we went to the former Checkpoint Charlie. History was covered there for the period right after the war till the unification of Germany. Of course the accent lay in the period of the cold war. Though we didn't visit the Mauermuseum we got a lot of information on the panels that were installed along the Friedrichstrasse, the street on which the checkpoint was situated.
To end the day on the sunny side we went shopping at the Alexanderplatz and headed home where an other wonderful meal made by Christian and Pino was waiting for us.
On new years eve we bought some bottles of Rotkäppchen sekt (sort of champagne), walked around the Kurfürsten Damm (the former center of West-Berlin) and visited the Gedächtniskirche, before we headed east to see the town of Köpenick. After a little detour we arrived home again where we were resting to be fit for the night. In the evening Krijn, Jan-Willem, Ollie, Andreas and Maurice arrived and all together we went to the bear-party in Moabit. Though all the bears were moaning and complaining about the party on the next day, James and I had a really good time there.
I end this entry with some words about the weather in Berlin. I must say that James and I were freezing our asses of when we were walking around the city. So we enjoyed every possibility to warm up in public transport.
Special thanks to our friends Cristian and Pino for their hospitality! I hope we'll meet again soon here in Zwolle.