AFRYKAMERA 2023
SIRA
Recommended. First it presents strikingly colourful life of Sahel nomads - beautifully shot, enchanting. Next comes a brutal kidnapping, a poignant scene of a rape, the ensuing partly-realistic partly-adventure story is griping. Women collaborate with Boko Haram. Other than a ban on singing, there's no Islam in it - that's juxtaposed with one of early scenes where the nomads prey.
SHIMONI (THE PIT)
Watchable. A Kenyan movie about a childhood sexual abuse trauma where the protagonist is a man who's served 7 years in prison for killing his pregnant wife - it's never explained why he did it. While the contact with the former abuser develops the story, each scene is overlong, they just cut too late each time.
بنات ألفة (FOUR DAUGHTERS)
Watchable. I got to the screening minimally late. The documentary is meant to be therapeutical for the protagonists so they enact parts as a drama with actors. The result is personal, thorough, but overtalked. Little else is shown, only very brief and few news excerpts. All these young women are strikingly beautiful. It's interesting to learn how women were scared into wearing hijabs, how helpless households without a man are in Tunesia, how women perpetuate the oppression, especially uneducated ones, how 15-year-old unqualified girls married terrorists from Daesh. All those accounts, however, don't fully explain the girls' motivations. The documentary doesn't quite cut it, it's thorough, detailed, but presents a limited perspective of uneducated women. It could do with a wider context, an expert commentary, e.g. by a psychologist. What are the actresses for, if the story comes from the family anyway? Even if it's therapeutical for the women, the actresses are needless for viewers.
وداعاً جوليا (GOODBYE JULIA)
Recommended. Pierre de Villiers' excellent cinematography, محمد كردفاني's (Mohamed Kordofani's) direction and everyone's convincing acting create a gripping drama of deceit, guilt, atonement, patriarchy, as well as the relations between the Sudanese North and South. The director dedicates his movie to his father, Cpt. Kordofani.
MON PERE, LE DIABLE (OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL) AND Q&A WITH DIRECTOR ELLIE FOUMBI AND ACTRESS BABETIDA SADJO
Recommended. A former child soldier and rape survivor regains control. Wonderfully shot. A posh chef is the protagonist - you don't expect the twist. Psychologically true.
The director is from Cameroon but lives in New York. Her father worked for the UN in Rwanda. She's also an actress and she put herself in child soldiers' shoes. In the actress' face she saw she had lived through things, she didn't do anything, "there was just so much going on through her face". The actress says you have to give yourself when acting. The actress tried to stay connected to Marie's emotions in the love scene. "When you have access to love, you can't make war" so that's how "the soldier let down her weapons". All played by the script, no impro - both the director and the actress felt it. The director whispered to the actors so that their acting partners wouldn't know those directions. She was protective of her actors and technicians. The crew was aware of the importance of the issues. The director had interviewed 40 rape victims for another project in the past - they had been research for a film she had co-written and had been to co-direct but which never happened - and their answers had been all the same. A psychiatrist after a screening said she got all those symptoms right. The director built on the colour palette of the town. The lighting was mostly natural, even in interiors. She's thinking of making some movie here in Warsaw, Poland. The actress has just finished a short film. Now both the director and the actress are working on a sci-fi horror and a thriller on an ending marriage.
STRZEPY (SHREDS)
Watchable. Why are they hiding meat in the snow if they're there to take photos of herbivores? Why is she using the toilet right next to the bath her partner is in? That's gross! The grandfather enters the room when the couple are making love - pathetic. No idea what the dog subplot is for. Then the ill old man pees in the lecture room where he's teaching - gross again. Why does the action suddenly jump a few months forward? And avoids informing viewers of the diagnosis doing so? Even though it's dynamic, It's a typical Polish drama in the sense it's not always clear who does what, let alone why. The ending's shocking. But the whole movie is a horrifying and unsettling picture of what Alzheimer's disease (or whatever it was since the diagnosis is never given) is like.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
AFRYKAMERA 2023
AFROSHOSHORTS: DIASPORA AND Q&A WITH "HEMATOMA" DIRECTOR/ACTRESS BABETIDA SADJO
TEJU'S TALE
Recommended. A powerful tale of what African nurses had to go through a few decades ago - the racism was unbelievable.
HERE ENDS THE WORLD WE'VE KNOWN
Watchable. The story of the unity of fate of Indians and Africans in the Antilles under the French rule in Guyana is original, brutal, only marred by the Indian woman's wooden acting. Hard-hitting anyway.
PEMA
Recommended. Colourful outfits and lives of a family clash with the black clothes and constant tiredness of a depressed member. What lies beneath are the cultural approaches to the issue: white and black ways of treatment differ too.
SET LAM
Watchable. Visually breathtaking but with tiring narration, hard to focus on the story.
HEMATOME (HEMATOMA)
Watchable. Not entirely clear but wonderfully acted by Babetida Sadjo, with quality music and with mesmerising cinematography by Matthieu Fabbri which don't overshadow the topical issue: sexual misconduct, not rape, suspended sentence.
The actress Babetida Sadjo, born in Guinea-Bissau, at the age of 12 moved to Vietnam and at the end of her adolescence to Belgium. Now she's living in Brussels with her 2 kids. She used to be very poor, she suffered famine in childhood, but people would sit and tell stories. The actress provided her interpretation of the story. The father character is not scary because people "never saw it coming", "really him?!" It's the stepfather so he can be white. Judith's braid was made like Medusa's. The victim is condemned till the end of her life but has short time to report the crime.
GIRL
Watchable. Excellent cinematography, decent music - the end credits song is wonderful - make a Glasgow housing estate almost fairy-tale like, especially that a friendly school girlfriend and neighbour are fabulous goodies. The story, a bit stilted at times, is about a trauma - the past incident is never shown, emphasis being given on fear rather. Mother-daughter rituals and the mother's panic attacks repeat, which is tedious film-wise. Lack of clarity of the cause deprives the movie of its meaning.
NEXT GOAL WINS
Recommended. It's not just big names like Taika Waititi, Michael Fassbender or Elisabeth Moss. All the Samoans are acted even better - perfect in comedy, they make the movie. The enchanting landscapes are Oahu ones, it wasn't shot in American Samoa but is so sunny, positive, often hilarious e.g. when a Samoan says the coach is like a white kid lost in a mall, including the post-credit scene where the narrator attempts to walk on water and swears when he falls in, it's all great fun. Without the need to know anything about football. It also makes you want to take on any challenge and achieve.
君たちはどう生きるか (THE BOY AND THE HERON)
Watchable. Typical for Studio Ghibli animation with a typical for 宮崎 駿 (Hayao Miyazaki) storyline where the human protagonist must set out on a journey to a fantasy land. The story is oneiric. If you delve into the meanings, it's about heritage, doing what's right, being decent, but also dealing with mourning and issues of power. Annoying birds of all sorts mar the movie. Of course, their unpredictability is original but they're kind-of-scary, the boy attacks the grey heron from the start, before we and he even knows how nasty the creature is, so it's not a fairy tale. A quiet, calm movie but nothing truly captivating in it.
MOTSTANDAREN (OPPONENT)
Watchable. First nearly an hour of moral preaching about how hard refugees' journeys and attempts to get the status in Europe are and "Brokeback Mountain" with the difference the men are wrestlers, not cowboys, but the pattern is the same, even if the enaction in not quite in its class: leaving a family from time to time to stay with a man. Then moral preaching on refugees is intertwined with a gay movie. The eponymous opponent is in turns Swedish, Iranian and for the whole time his own alter ego. The refugee layer becomes a serious condemnation of the asylum system which keeps people waiting endlessly and wasting their professional skills. Not everything is clear in the movie though, but that's because of an unknown timeline or the order of events, while most appears to be linear, some fragments don't make sense, unless they go back in time occasionally. Swedish winter and reindeer are sparsely served but compelling. Still, this wrestler is not fit for an Oscar.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
SOUND OF FREEDOM
Recommended. Life imitates art, as Oscar Wilde would say. The riveting action is so movie-like, it's hard to believe it's based on a true story. You learn of the scale of child trafficking operations, why they're so successful and state institutions powerless. The story about a guy who went the extra mile opens with angelic music. Next comes a shocking twist of action, already before the opening credits. Each scene is evocatively shot, intense, gripping. Top-notch cinematography enhances the climate. Bill Camp as Vampiro and Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard stand out even among the all-superb adult and child cast. It's probably the most incredible movie of the year 2023. A shock follows a shock throughout the plot, e.g. it's a fact Miss Cartagena Kelly Suárez was charged with pimping and pandering minors to pedophiles. The final shock is the statistics given in the ending.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
KONSKI OGON (THE HORSE TAIL)
Director Justyna Łuczaj says she found the male lead on the street and the female lead on the Internet and spent 2 years persuading her to act in it.
Walked out. Amateurish cinematography, make-up (especially men's eyes and faces), location choice and set decor mean everyone and everything looks ugly. The sound, though clear, is weirdly recorded. The lack of plot is exacerbated by occasional bizarre visual or sound effects. And when you think it couldn't get any worse, you get a pornographic picture of a spread eagle and a horse's penis. A whole team of people worked on it and obtained funding. So why does it look like someone has defecated this film? It's pathetic, revolting, just appalling.
SAINT OMER
Watchable. The beginning, with a literature lecturer, is lacklustre. The court case starts more promisingly, especially since the accused admits committing the crime but doesn't know why she did it. What follows, however, is droning on and on about her life, little to do with the actual murder. And the story within a story - the lecturer and book author listens to the court proceedings, then replaying recordings in her room - is double dull. Protracted and disappointing. Overtalked. Instead of a courtroom drama, blabbering about depression and absent fathers. Men's indifference to their lovers is the underlying cause. The final speech of the counsel for the defence is special. The very ending, though, is bland.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
USKYLD (INNOCENCE)
Watchable. A documentary on army service in the eyes of Israeli children and teenagers. The picture that emerges is similar to what we had in communist Poland when army service was obligatory and many youngsters didn't want to waste years in the army, some opposed killing. The difference is Israel is in permanent war. And they feel like pawns because it's not up to them. What's more, some of them are killed, even during training, e.g. accidentally shot. On the other hand, Israeli army appears to be of high quality, with commanders demanding but supportive to the learners so they come out physically fit and mentally well-organised. As for a documentary, it's not very informative, poetic rather.
Seen courtesy of Canal+.
THIS IS GOING TO HURT EP. 2
Recommended. This time the doctor confesses disastrous mistakes ruining patients' health or subjecting them to extra pain and risks - shocking. On the other hand, patients' health offers great twists of action.
EP. 3
Recommended. Brilliant dialogues. An official's visit when everything goes wrong. And a violence alarm. Riveting.
Seen courtesy of Canal+.
ARTEKINO FESTIVAL 2023
LADYBITCH
Watchable. The German drama is about preparing a theatrical play but the twist is the director subtly harasses the women sexually and that's the main development. So realistic at first I thought it might be documentary. Towards the end, when a female supervisor fails to take action, the troupe rebels. Gets you thinking if that is the solution: the group needs to speak out.
.DOG
Switched off. The Cypriot drama consists of very masculine pastimes which is boring and a man shoots a dog which is highly disturbing. I just couldn't stomach it any more.
3 JOURS MAX (ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT)
Recommended. Hilarious from the opening where, among other blunders of the special agent trainee, the protagonist forgets to take the bomb he was supposed to drive away. But even before that and later throughout the film, gags abound: at least one hilarious act per minute. Superb comedian cast from "Alibi.com" in the main roles ensure acting perfection. Tarek Boudali has written, directed and appeared as Rayane. Cervoni - the chess champion in the movie - in reality is the surname of one of the producers. In one scene Franck Gastambide, a Vin Diesel lookalike, steals the show. The action takes you to Abu Dhabi and Mexico. Lots of Easter eggs for movie buffs of various generations provide extra entertainment. The whole script is just supersmart.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
