Nisimazine Tallinn 2013

Nisimazine Tallinn 15th November - 1st December 2013

Interview Luc Déry Index Page 34 - 35 I’m the same I’m an Editorial Page 36 - 37 Other Human Architecture Whitewash Kami’s Party Page 38 - 39 All Musicians are Finsterworld Page 40 - 41 Bastards + Two Mothers Karnaval Home Above Dark Waters Page 42 - 43 Page 44 - 45 Mother, I love you + The Double In Focus Page 14 - 15 Iranian Cinema Page 46 - 47 Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear 3 Page 16 - 17 Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear 1 Page 48 - 49 Of Horses and Men Blue Ruin Page 18 - 19 Pluto + Bluebird Page 50 - 51 Page 20 - 21 Lisa Limone Page 52 - 53 Hide your smiling faces + Hotel Page 22 - 23 Northwest Page 24 - 25 Before Snowfall + Life Cheap Thrills Feels Good Page 54 - 55

content

Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 - 5 Page 6 - 7 Page 8 - 9 Page 10 - 11 Page 12 - 13

In Focus

Page 26 - 27

Schools of Terror

In Focus

Page 56 - 57 Body in Cinema Page 28 - 29 Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear 2 Photo Reportage Page 58 - 61 Black Nights in Pictures Page 30 - 31 3 Many Weddings Interview Tiina Lokk Page 32 - 33 Sanctuary + My Dog Page 62 - 63 Credits Killer Page 65

editorial Organizing a festival in Northern Europe at the end of the year takes some courage, to say the least. While most events battle to find their place under the sun in the festival circuit calendar, the Black Nights Film Festival went, unashamedly, for a different option.

Obviously this could only make sense in a country where there is such a thing as a White Night. For me, a Southern European more used to white days and black nights, this all gets very confusing.

However, I would be lying if I would not confess that it is incredibly charming as well.

Black Nights is not only a great title, but it adds that little something extra to this ritual of jumping from screening to screening we all love.

Most important, the mysterious nature of the title and concept of Light Vs Darkness is also reflected in the impressive and all inclusive program the festival managed to compile this year.

This is more than just a yearly review of the films that coloured programs around the year, even if most titles are not exactly novelties. Don’t get me wrong, the opportunity to catch up with films we missed all year is more than welcome. Nevertheless what is vital to point out is that the festival programmers have managed to hide many gems and come up with several premieres as well. All of it forming a seductive recipe to attract and please the crowds that flocked to the theatres for two long weeks. These

humble pages that follow are an attempt to prove something else though, that in the Nisimazine world is all important to make a film festival worthwhile. In Estonia there is no lack of interest in bringing a spotlight on new filmmakers, contributing, to a great extent, to the all important renewal of ideas and perspectives in the international film industry.

So buckle up and be ready to discover the hyperactive vision of modern Germany by Frauke Winterwalder, in the brazenly called Finsterworld (page 8); or Estonia´s attempt at 3D animation with Mait Laas´ Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story (page 20); among many other phenomenona. In the midst of reviews and interviews we even found the time to take a deeper look into the effect of the digital revolution in Iranian Cinema (page 14); engage in an immensely interesting conversation on Canadian Cinema with Quebequian superstar producer Luc Déry (page 34); analyse the “fetish” for horror in high school corridors (page 26); and share some thoughts on perceptions of the body in cinema (page 56).

As if all this was not enough, be also ready to be blown away by a daring visual coverage of the event.

All in all, more than enough reasons for you to find a cosy corner and lose yourself in what follows. Have fun!

by Fernando Vasquez

Kami’s Party

by Ali Ahmadzadeh (Iran) Official Competition EurAsia

Iranian cinema has been constantly on the radar in recent years, due to both the quality of the films, but also the courage the filmmakers display.

Discussing topics uncomfortable to Iran’s convervative society has become common place. But with Kami’s Party, Iran seems to have reached a new daring feat.

Did you suspect your film would be banned in Iran? Maybe that was purposely an advertising plan?

Yes, I suspected it would be banned. There is a type of people who are not shown in films or pictured anywhere, I love this kind of people and I took the risk to show them. The cinema industry in Iran generally is a risk.

The main actresses are very well known in Iran, but they do support independent film makers while taking less money.

What is the framework of censorship? As there is nothing openly provoking in your film, what are the forbidden topics?

Even censorship has its limits, so you have to play with it. The line I have crossed is not threatening me with arrest, as I haven’t shown pure sin or this kind of stuff. The movie won’t be shown and that’s it. Maybe for you it seems there is nothing to be banned, but the people shown in the film, the way they dress, the way they talk, their interpersonal relationships come from their will to ignore the regime. This is an underground film showing underground people that’s why the government doesn’t want them to be shown.

Are they the aristocracy or new rich or what are they?

This is the young generation, they are very mixed – they can be very rich and have some unclear relationships, they are very commonly affected by depression so they want to party all the time. We couldn’t film the party but we could talk about it. I have attended such parties myself. There are some parties in Iran you can’t even imagine.

Your background is architecture and mu-

This road movie revolves around two young women, Negin and Farnaz, who belong to the Tehrani upper class. Negin drives her fancy Toyota to their common friends’ party. Everything is fine, except the women don’t know that something horrible is in the trunk. Apart from this detail, that the two aren’t aware of – and that allows for one or two suspenseful scenes, – not much happens plot-wise: the women are chattering, gossiping and making acquaintances on the road. A European viewer, however, will learn a lot from this idle talk. Westerners tend to imagine Iranian society as radically Islamist, but Negin and Farnaz don’t quite conform to that stereotype – they are as easy about partying, smoking, drug use and casual relationships with men, as many of their counterparts in this part of the world.

sic. What led you to make a film? Was it the fact that some messages cannot be shared in other artistic formats?

Cinema was always my interest, though I think a filmmaker should know about different things. For example music helped me a lot to understand it deeper. Filmmaking is the best way to express my world view.

What is your target audience?

I don’t aim for a certain effect on certain people.

Films have an international language, although here there are some messages very clear to Iranians but invisible for you. Small details correlated to the culture, for example in the film they carry a bottle of mineral water, but everyone knows there is alcohol there.

A curious question: what is the role of the dead body?

His name is Omid, which in Persian means hope.

The action is very much constricted to the Toyota, which narrows the possibilities for cinematic invention – the DoP employs a small set of camera angles (and can’t avoid reflections of the camera in sunglasses). It also narrows the big picture – what stays outside the Toyota and stays out of the film as well.

No wonder the rich can afford themselves some libertine pleasures and are less affected by the restrictions of the society and the regime. They usually are. Kami’s Party can’t compare to the work of Jafar Panahi – the acclaimed Iranian director who shot the documentary This Is Not a Film on a small digital camera, after he’d been banned from the profession. His latest, Closed Curtain, smuggled to Europe illegally, is showing in Tallinn as well. Where Panahi transmitted the idea that a spirit will always find its way – “the wind bloweth where it listeth” – Ahmadzadeh is fine with showing us that rich kids can have fun even in Iran. A decadent overtone that the director is trying to put in (and that is what the abhorrent content of the trunk stands for) seems out of place: if these people enjoy themselves – good for them.

interview

review

One of many advantages that digital cameras brought into the world of cinema is the emergence of a radically independent type of filmmaking. This effectively means that almost anyone can finance their own movie, but for those filmmakers who work under authoritarian regimes oppressing the freedom of speech, it may also be a way to express themselves freely. This is the case with Ali Ahmadzadeh, whose debut work, Kami’s Party, is banned from release in Iran.

review by Andrei Kartashov // interview by Vaiva Rykštaitė // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 7

Finsterworld

by Frauke Finsterwalder (Germany) // New German Films A solitary man who loves nature more than people; a quirky pedicurist visiting an elderly lady; students marching in to tour a concentration camp; a police officer with his egocentrical girlfriend; and a rich Germany-hating German couple. They all have their eccentricities ranging from just plain weird to “batshit” crazy. And all their stories interconnect in this highly enjoyable ride through Finsterworld – a feature debut imagined, co-written and directed

by Frauke Finsterwalder.

A recluse picks up and carries a wounded raven back to his solitary shed where he gently splashes the bird with water. This gives an excuse to indicate the fuzzy warmness felt inside with an aww, almost immediately overwhelmed by a prolonged mmm as you reach the heights of esthetical pleasure thanks to the cinematography of Markus Förderer. Lots of beautiful scenes that last long enough to be enjoyed: the alluring landscapes, the attractive close ups, the beautiful lighting and warm colours. And all of this accompanied by the equally ear pleasing soundtrack.

But before you get a chance to answer the puzzled looks of other viewers with an explanation for all the sounds of enjoyment, the film moves on to telling another strand of the story, introducing us to the middle-aged wife (Corinna Harfouch, star

of Downfall) and her overprotective husband. While the skilful editing connects the colourful array of stories well, leaving no time for any meaningless scenes, though some of them do feel a bit dragged out in the second half of the film.

The pedicurist and a lonely client sharing cookies together are both hilarious and absurd. But the laughter fades and absurdity is replaced by sadness, as the young student verbally expresses the director’s criticism of modern Germany. The point is emphasized not only by the constant visual reminders of the old Germany, but also by the last two Finster-characters. The relationship between the policeman and his girlfriend shows us that it’s not the bats in the belfry, but utter loneliness and inability to communicate that drives them to their eccentricities.

This is the Finsterworld where precisely crafted coincidence connects its lonely inhabitants in an ambitious but very much needed wake-up call. In our days, when more and more people are left unsure how and where to look for love and acceptance, this film does make a strong point, shouting through every scene that even if it’s German, fury has claws and needs to be loved.

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary // 7

review by Saulius Kovalskas // Nisimazine Tallinn // 9

Karnaval

by Can Kılcıoğlu (Turkey) Official Competition EurAsia

The international première of the first full length feature film of Turkish director Can Kılcıoğlu, took place at this year´s edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Before the screening we had a chance to talk with the director about the experience of a feature début.

What is the situation of Turkish cinema nowadays? Is it hard for young directors in Turkey to make movies?

It is always difficult to make films, and it is especially not easy in Turkey. But there are lots of young directors who are making really good films, who are winning a lot of awards at international films festivals like Cannes, Venice, so the situation of Turkish cinema is developing. For me it also wasn’t easy, but it was enjoyable. Making movies is always a big adventure. Four years ago I started to write a script and now we have the film.

The film is about a young man’s relationship with his parents. Is it common

in Turkey for people to leave their family home as late as he does?

Yes, but it is not always like that. In this film Alis, the protagonist, is 36-years old, he lives with his family, because he is dependent on it. He didn’t find a job, or didn’t have someone to marry, so he didn’t leave his house.

Actually, I have a lot of friends living like that, but the film is not about living together with your family, that is not the issue here. In Karnaval the problem is love violence. If your parents love you too much, they don’t let you go anywhere, so the film is about protecting.

When parents try to protect you, they harm you, so I would call this film a growing up story.

Where would you place Karnaval in the context of Turkish cinema? How it is different?

The style of the film is not common in Turkey. There are not many black humour comedies. We have comedies, tragic drama films, but we don’t have that many combined genre films, so I think it will be interesting for Turkish cinema. The first screening of the

review

Unfortunately some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. One cannot fully understand another if one keeps things to himself and is not willing to explore.

The most usual problem between parents and children, which has been widely analyzed in film history, is once again present in Karnaval, the first feature film by Turkish director Can Kılcıoğlu, although the child here is a thirty six year old man.

Karnaval tries to depict a man’s maturation through discovering the magic of the first love, though as soon as the viewer is introduced with the character and his lifestyle the end of the story becomes clear, making you lose all the interest. The main character, Alis, lives in a car near his parent’s house and works as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Suddenly he meets a girl and you can guess what happens next. Even flashes of light humour and soft subtle music are not working in favour of this film, which resembles more a bad soap opera than a meaningful story worth watching.

is no effort in trying to go deeper into it. In the scenes important to the narrative, the viewer’s attention unnaturally focuses on secondary details, such as a horse on the street or a black cat wriggling between the legs. For the audience it is explicitly funny to see a vacuum cleaner which looks like the robot R2D2 from Star Wars, being taken everywhere by Alis. The instrument becomes his friend, more willing to change then the character himself.

On the other hand, Serdar Orçin´s acting is creditable and deserves applauses.

There is a strange feeling that there are missing parts to this puzzle, and no matter how hard I try to build a relationship with the film nothing helps. The characters lack connection, the story is obvious and banal, and the film doesn’t impress stylistically. The acting may be an exception, but the message of the film is too simplistic: people are different and have different lifestyles, which can’t be judged or criticized. However it is worth mentioning Karnaval definitely has an audience, and will be an interesting experience for easy romantic film fans.

film was at the Istanbul film festival and the reaction was very nice. I think it is because the film is about us all, about our families. We don’t see a lot of people like Alis everyday or if we see them, we pretend not to, but they are still there.

Do you think the black comedy genre is the only way to express this theme?

For me, no. But I feel good when I tell the story in a humoristic way. It is enjoyable to me. It is something that I use in my short films. It is something about my style, I want to make people laugh, without forgetting the main issue.

Was your goal to change something in the general mindset of Turkish society with Karnaval?

I just wanted to show that there are situations like this. And as we know that there are people like Alis, we have to understand them; we shouldn’t eliminate them from society. They are not other people, they are like us. We should also try to understand why they are like that, we should not be angry at them; it’s a big social problem. We all have mothers like the one shown in the film. The situation is similar to us.

interview

In Karnaval the relationship between parents and their introverted son is revealed in a too general way. There is a mother and father who control their son´s life, but there

review & interview by Ugnė Česnavičiūtė // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 11

Above Dark Waters

by Peter Franzen (Finland) // Tridens Competition Although Aki Kaurismäki remains the reference point for Finnish cinema, there have been a handful of next generation filmmakers coming through, whose works bear comparison to their more famous Swedish and Norwegian counterparts.

For example, Klaus Häro with his deeply moving dramas- Mother of Mine and Letters to Father Jaakob- and Jalmari Helander with the utterly ridiculous, and, in equal measures, viciously funny Rare Exports. Peter Franzen, a well known actor recognizable for roles in movies such as Aleksi Mäkela’s Bad Boys and Mika Kaurismäki’s Road North, now seeks to make his mark with a directorial debut.

Above Dark Waters is based on Franzen’s own semi-autobiographical novel. It tells the story of a boy growing up in NorthernFinland. While mostly immersed in what can be called a typical childhood under the guidance of a loving mother and grandparents, he faces the increasingly violent behaviour of his paranoid father. While the opening shots of the picturesque Finnish nature already establish a likeable Nordic setting, the negative tendencies often associated with Finnish men creep in - alcoholism and depression never seem far away from everyday life.

ment in an idyllic way. Of course, this also makes the darker moments, the doubts and the fears, hit even harder, since through the eyes of a child they seem even more out of place. This is probably easy to connect with for most audiences. It’s a nice enough, if not unremarkable, premise which makes the film likeable pretty much on its own. But there’s not much else to catch the eye or fascinate the mind. Neither the camera work, not the storytelling nor the characters stand out - it’s all okay, but just okay is also too close to a little dull.

The film is full of bright colours and sentimental scenes. It’s not very subtle. It’s not very original either. It probably doesn’t even mean to be, since it’s still a very human story easy to empathize with. The thing that bored me most is that it never establishes an identity of its own, often playing out as a long episode from a TVseries. This is even more frustrating in the context of a film festival where there are dozens of brilliant films around. A decent and easily relatable film, but far from exceptional.

Although there’s quite a few serious topics involved, the film mostly remains warmhearted and shows much of the environ-

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary////13 7 review by Andrei Liimets // Nisimazine Tallinn

In Focus

Iranian Independent Cinema in the Digital Age Despite being a country where the powers do their best to control culture, Iran boasts one of the biggest and most influential film industry in the Middle East. There are hardly any big European festivals these days that don’t have any Iranian films in their programme; Tallinn’s Black Nights Festival was no exception with three productions coming from this country on its schedule.

The reputation that Iranian cinema has been enjoying through the last two decades, is made possible not by virtue of the country’s government, but in spite of it. Due to the systematic bans and oppressions, acclaimed directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farhadi now work abroad, whereas the other pioneer of independent Iranian cinema, Jafar Panahi, was legally banned from the profession and put under home arrest. Three Iranian films screened at 2013’s edition of Black Nights Festival are prohibited to be shown in the Islamic republic.

“Iran has two film industries”, explains Majid Barzegar, the director of the successful Parviz, a film that had been screened at thirty-odd festivals before it arrived to Tallinn. “One part of it is official, state-backed cinema. Another part is independent. Basically, you can produce anything, if you have the money, but the problem is to get permission for distribution from censors, which our film failed to do.”

Apparently, the censors are unhappy with any film that shows an unvarnished version of everyday life – there’s nothing overtly critical in Parviz, a character study that follows a fifty years old man who takes a revenge on his father after the latter gives up supporting him. Much more obvious is the controversy of Ali Ahmadzadeh’s debut film

Kami’s Party, that enjoyed its world premiere in Tallinn. The film spills some light on the invisible part of Iranian life: if you know the country from the news only, you won’t suppose that Tehrani nightlife is no less wild than European.

Kami’s Party is made on a tight budget, and shot on a simple digital camera, as well as Jafar Panahi’s latest film Closed Curtain. The technology is especially important in the latter case: it’s only the advent of digital that allowed the dissident director to make films without stepping outside of his house and despite the ban implemented on him. Forced to work in this conditions, Panahi manages to make fascinating cinema in only one interior and with no budget, the film being as twisted and inventive as the filmmaker’s earlier work. Closed Curtain was shot on an amateur camera and partly on iPhone, and was famously smuggled through Iranian border on a USB drive hidden in a cake.

“Independent is only a small part of Iranian film industry, but it’s been growing very fast,” says Ali Ahmadzadeh. “Digital made everything easier, that’s for sure. But with the new government things might get better. It’s not clear yet, though, and we’ll have to wait.”

Interestingly, the Islamic revolution of 1978 started with a ransom of a movie theatre that screened a crime drama considered non-Islamic by the anti-Shah protesters. Expecting that a new change will be provoked by cinema would be too much, but one might hope that Iranian powers will soon realise that in the modern world the old police state methods that they employ prove to be obsolete and do not work at all. text by Andrei Kartashov // Nisimazine Tallinn // 15

Pluto

by Su-won Shin (South Korea) // Just Film

A handsome young boy stands in the midst of a forest waiting for someone. Somebody, maybe the person stalking him from behind, smashes the boy’s head. An investigation of a murder begins. Interestingly, the police starts to look for the killer amongst the schoolchildren dressed in Harry Potter-like uniforms.

Soon detectives reveal the entire teenage universe of competition, jealousy and ambitions equal or even greater than those ruling the minds of grown-up career rat racers. The fight for good grades at the prestigious high school is the core theme. There is also an underground organisation, and the supposedly (add this word in your mind to every objective) terrifying game called ‘’rabbit hunt’’. Rumor has it there used to be a torture room in the basement, and one girl committed suicide last year.

Yet the sterile environment and bright young faces didn’t give me a shrill even once. It had all the ingredients needed to make a mind-blowing film, however, the fear of being misunderstood led its creators towards a naïve, over-explanatory direction.

Take the flashbacks, for instance – to make our job easier to distinguish ‘then’ and ‘now’ the protagonist goes to the bathroom and dyes his hair blue. So now we know, no confusion, let´s move on.

Nisimazine Tallinn // 18 // review by Vaiva Rykštaitė

The film attempting to be a thriller leaves an impression of kids trying to mock adults. Their facial expressions and dialogues could be called pretentious, only in case they weren’t obviously pretending. Nothing wrong with that, but the kids just take themselves too seriously. The exaggerated drama lacks the ease usually characteristic to films about children, coming short of the strenght needed to be called. School children trying to kill each other and threatening to explode the entire school with DIY bombs (at least you can be sure they have attended chemistry classes), I mean, really? And the police cannot stop them?

It drags for too long, despite the experimental music and the random poetical story about the song of the planets (hence the name of the film), failing to surprise, let alone keeping the viewer interested.

And yet there are two things you can learn from this film – one, it actually has a few fresh ideas how to bully others in school.

And second – it reveals the tremendous pressure and competitive nature of kids of statistical prestigious high schools, where every teenager is concerned not about being cool but about his distant future.

Bluebird

by Lance Edmands (USA, Sweden) // North American Films

Guilt, remorse, overwhelming sadness, and tragedy are such delicate feelings to try to grasp in depth and in their core, but Lance Edmands manages to do it with such poetical naturalism, that it almost makes you feel the warmth of the sighs of his characters.

Set in a frozen white winter, the natural balance of a small town is shattered when a school bus driver, Lesley, is distracted by a bluebird and doesn’t notice a child sleeping in the back of the bus, locking him inside. What comes after is an avalanche of emotional unravelling and introspections subtly intertwined in this beautiful directorial debut.

Edmands proves to be a skilful storyteller, also being the writer for this feature, by how he doses everything, not falling in the trap of making the film gritty or dramatic either. The setting of the story, a nature protected god fearing town that resonates with his inhabitants, gives the feeling of timelessness, the feeling that somehow balance will be restored and tragedy is a small part of life.

beauty shots that lean more towards a fantasy feel to captivatingly disrupt the otherwise naturalistic look and she is perfectly synchronizing with the sound design, that doubles the image and the feel, but in its advantage.

The editing gives it an indie feel combined with the creation of portraits resembles Sear Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, and as a result Amy Morton, Louisa Krause, Emily Meade and Margo Matindale all won Best Actress in this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Ending on a good note after a poetic portrait of the town made through some shots that describe everyday actions, the film gives a very unusual feel of hope. It leaves you believing, or wanting to believe, that the characters are protected and that they will eventually get to a better place. The rareness and peculiarity of this feeling is another proof of the ability of Edmands to create, to generate and manipulate, personified in the song choice- Tragedy by The Fleetwoods.

Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes plays an undeniable role in creating this atmosphere and scatters here and there some

review by Andra Gheorghiu // Nisimazine Tallinn // 19

Lisa Limone & Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story

by Mait Laas (Estonia) Tridens Competition & Animated Dreams

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story� is a landmark in Estonian cinema, after all, it is not every day you see a 3D animation from the Baltic. We could not let this opportunity slip through our fingers, so we met up with the director, Mait Laas, to discover the details behind such an unusual adventure.

Why did an Estonian animator choose the topic of a Moroccan- Italian juicy relationships?

Actually the theme is emigration. 7 years ago, when the idea to make this animation was born, it seemed like a great topic, but we had the feeling it was so far away from us. Now us Estonians also look for porridge mountains and milk rivers abroad, and Vietnamese are coming to us, so this topic becomes more and more relevant.

It took 7 years to make it. Why so long?

The actual shooting took 3 years. It is quite

normal for an animation, especially considering that very few people were working on it. The 3D factor also makes it longer, but it was very important for the content, as 3D creates the impression you are in the cinema looking for the theatre, and theatre is cinema again. And then you can see a TV in there, like a story within the story.

The tomato, first seen as a main presenter, later turns into ketchup. What is its role in this story?

The film is full of irony. It is very ironical when we think about our own history. For instance the revolution in 1917- one moment you are nothing, the next moment you are the ruler. We are close to each other in a circle, thus the beggar can become the king and the king can be the beggar. So the tomato man is the survivor, in the sense he is the Mephisto governing the current story.

Is your audience mainly kids? Why do

review

Deemed the “fruitier version of Romeo and Juliet” (according to YellowAffair), the world’s first 3D animated opera tells the story of a group of orange-shaped immigrants who flee from Africa headed to the promised land of Europe.

Only one of the passengers survives a terrible storm that hits during their travel and the heroic orange-boy ends up working illegally in a tomato farm. When he meets Lisa, part girl, part lemon, daughter of the rich businessman exploiting the immigrants, a love story is born.

brought to movement through a unison of individual particles! The director, who is used to creating alone or with only a few partners, wished initially to imitate the stormy sea and foamy water on the beach with hand made materials, but nothing seemed to work well enough and modern technology came in handy even to the director’s surprise.

The result of the filmmakers’ hard work is truly inspiring: a perfect visual ensemble of Styrofoam puppetry in a scenery of computer codes.

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange is many things at once. It is an adventure tale for children- they will sure have a laugh when they watch the detailed puppets singing. It is, at the same time, a film that treats the theme of immigration in a way accessible and appealing for a teenage audience.

Last, but not least, the film is an animation masterpiece for adults with a yearning for skilful arts and craft.

During the long years of work on form, the defining lines of the narrative were lost site of. The story behind the visible array is hectic, and the figures who die in the first act reappear in the next, just like in a real opera. At the Q&A session that followed the screening of the film in the festival, the director pointed this out himself and if this was his intention, he succeeded. The film is an awing piece of entertainment, the sets are designed with superb artistic value. But those looking for serious food for thought will be left hungry after this one.

you choose historical topics shown as animation?

It’s not pure entertainment, but it’s important to include children in the thinking process, they also need to see the death and blood. We showed the film in schools. Children are very clever, 13 year old boys raised the same questions as adults, and perceived metaphors very sharply. For instance they had their own version of the tomato man, as they saw ketchup as blood. At the end of the film a boy puts ketchup on macaronis, and the kids said this is the sacrifice for being free.

So what about oranges and lemons?

I chose fruits as main characters to show them not just as puppets but as living beings, in order to develop empathy for someone who is very different from us. Just like with imigration – we have to accept each other. Fruits are also a living metaphor in every shop in Estonia, where we don’t get much local produce but buy imported exotic fruit instead. What is our identity and what is the result of mixing two different fruit when two cultures meet?

interview

It took altogether seven years to complete the film-five of which were spent animating the puppets by three artists, and another two for over a hundred people creating the CGI effects. It was a painstaking process. Fluids are the hardest to recreate. Since a natural liquid changes position, on the computer screen water and the like are

review by Emilie Toomela // interview by Vaiva Rykstaite // photo by Laura Urbonavičiūtė // Nisimazine Tallinn // 21

Northwest

by Michael Noer (Denmark 2013) // Tridens Competition You can really get a feel of Michael Noer’s background in documentary filmmaking, as he is not a rookie in catching and decomposing a real life situation without brushing it clean, although a lot of the compelling energy of his new film comes from the two non-professional actors, brothers in real life, Gustav and Oscar Dyekjaer Giese.

Unsatisfied petty 18-year-old petty burglar, Caspar, from the infamous Northwest suburb of Copenhagen, upgrades to more serious crime, dragging his 17-year-old brother Andy alongside him.

The more possibly nerve racking violence scenes happen off-camera, which makes this gangster drama fit even for the more squeamish viewers, but it’s not necessarily in support of the genre, that calls for a more healthy balance between the realistic portrait of violence as part of life and the suggestion of it.

The focus is mostly on Caspar, a deadpan presence, but photogenic nonetheless, justifying the predominant close-ups that help build up the film’s silent tension and natural feel, capturing with the most professional acuity this unfolding social drama intertwining with complex aspects of coming-of-age.

Noer creates a healthy balance between Caspar’s family life and his work, just enough to stereotype him as the good guy that wants to look after his family and doesn’t really realize what he’s getting himself into, in contrast to his younger brother that seems more aware.

This is definitely a downside for the story, because it doesn’t help raise it above a good execution of a genre, making it lack fleshiness- a line of coke now and then and some club dance scenes won’t necessarily make Caspar different than the other guy waiting in line for a hit.

What does make a difference is Adam Nielsen’s electro-techno sharp editing and Kasper Janus Rasmussen carefully dozed sound design, also known for A Soap and Easy Money.In a very action-reaction thesis-like demonstration, the two most important moments are established by sound, a chocking stiffing gun shot.

The final demonstration, that Noer was not so subtly building up to, really gives that special sense that was needed, treating the tragic fate of Caspar like the most harmonious, natural and balance-establishing action. And that is where the film’s power really lies.

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary // 7

review by Andra Gheorghiu // Nisimazine Tallinn // 23

Before Snowfall

by Hisham Zaman (Norway, Germany) // Tridens Competition

Having directed only one feature film before, Hisham Zaman proves to be an amazingly skilful craftsman with a promising sense of dosing tension and creating atmosphere.

makes this film hard to digest. It repeatedly builds an emotional hook that brings you that one step closer, after almost making you abandon it without regret.

Wrapped in plastic, dipped in petrol, that’s how a young Kurdish boy, Siyar, starts his journey to find his sister in order to kill her for dishonouring their family.

Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen’s cinematography is one of the strongest points of Before Snowfall, making the most appropriate transitions in pointing the moments alongside the road, all from beautiful still landscapes to gritty rough urban descriptions and it is merging subtly with the sound design, except the music that doubles the moments in which we are cheaply forced to feel sad.

Also the set design is really proper, so proper that sometimes it actually contributes to the lack of authenticity.

Zaman really proposes a lot, but just manages to deliver a beautiful picture painted over a rancid wall.

There is no denying the director’s talent, the unravelling of the story is of almost mathematical perfection and in great harmony with the language chosen - even the flash-backs don’t disrupt this almost picturesque feature.

Still, it is hard to escape the feeling of artificiality and puppeteering of the characters and situations that they end up in. Siyar, played by a non-professional, adds a nice quirky layer sometimes and has a unique chemistry with Elvin, the girl-sidekick that ultimately redefines his view on costumes, honour and duty.

You can’t help but feel the inconsistency of emotion and successful transcript of reality blended with dry lifeless captures. This

Nisimazine Tallinn // 24 // review by Andra Gheorghiu

Nonetheless, Zaman brings us into a very interesting world, those appeals, but doesn’t manage to exploit it in creating genuine emotion.

Kudos for skill and craft, maybe if brushed of useless information and scenes it can come closer to what it aimed for and what this generous subject can take to.

Considering the artificialities used, the ending comes as a pleasant surprise and again brings you that one step closer.

Life Feels Good Life is beautiful. Life is good. Life feels good. How often do we hear it from a child unable to speak?

In his new film, Life Feels Good, Polish director Maciej Pieprzyca confronts his audience with such questions through a character who has cerebral palsy and does not speak. There is a saying- when you lose something, you realize how much that something means to you. But how can Mateusz understand his loss, or how can he compare two different lives, if the one he lives is the only one he knows?

Life Feels Good starts with a static scene, which sets the tone and atmosphere of the entire film. The helpless boy sits in his wheelchair facing four tough-looking judges. They will decide his fate for him. After all, they can’t ask the boy himself… Ant yet the viewer should not be deceived. Although Mateusz has cerebral palsy, mentally he is completely healthy, and it doesn’t take long for the audience to understand it. The story is being told by its main character.

The film retrospectively narrates the character’s life since 1987, when he was evaluated as a vegetable, until 2010, when he is re-evaluated. The film is divided into seven parts with one-word

by Maciej Pieprzyca (Poland) // Tridens Competition

symbolic titles. These divide Mateusz’s life into major events, revealing his approach to life. Even though others don’t understand him, the man keeps a sense of humour that helps him live on, this irony making the film both sensitive and serious. Although based on a true story, this is not a biographical film. And yet, we can’t stop asking ourselves whether the main character is an actor or a real person due to the convincing performance by non-disabled actor Dawid Ogrodnik. Low angles and closeups accurately illustrate his living conditions, although a regular audience can only have little knowledge and understanding of it.

A slow piano melody of Bartosz Chajdecki accompanies the images throughout the film, enhancing the emotional impression.

At the end of a two-hour life story we ask- what is the message of another The diving bell and the butterfly story? Is it that obvious that life feels good? Is it perhaps actually about raising more questions- about death, happiness, joy and love? Is that another reminder of the screen which we don’t see around us in reality? Even so, the film made my life feel if not God, then really good.

review by Ugnė Česnavičiūtė // Nisimazine Tallinn // 25

Schools o Trying to cope with the universal phenomenon of school of terror within a new generation of films.

When the program for Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival was announced, it immediately felt like a major topic was giving the space to heal its wounds: the terror within a school environment.

Bullying, the suicide of young people, killings, sexual exploitation, and rebellion are all themes that are covered and questioned in films like Class Enemy, The Dirties, Valentine Road, A Teacher, Harmony Lessons, and so on. Moreover, the topic is explored in Estonia´s biggest film success of the last decade, Ilmar Raag´s The Class.

I asked the Estonian director why the topic of violence within the school milieu is still that relevant today: “I am afraid that this is a pretty universal and eternal theme. I have been with Klass all around the world and everywhere I met people who said that they know the problem in their own country. In my opinion, we should talk about a culture change. It is not enough to help victims of bullying or punish those who bully. The centre of gravity is in the attitudes of all bystanders - those who watch and react. They form the community who can tolerate the violence or are willing to step up. If everybody would know that their own friends and small school community would judge their violent actions, than this is probably the best way to discourage them.”

“Come together, right now. Over me.” (John Lennon) Schools are the main environment for youth during the ages of obligatory education; because students are stuck in this highly diversly constructed community that is built on specific rules, it is not always easy to communicate in an effective way. Young people still have to learn how they can equip themselves with freedom of expression and they try to search for the boundaries of the self within a group.

In Focus

The peer pressure is enormous, as we see in films like Class Enemy. When the timid Sabina commits suicide, almost the entire class points the fingers straight at the new German teacher Robert, whose aloof and disciplined nature leaves the students stranded in the self-discovery of how to communicate in this grievous situation.

The film shows a vivid portrait of the different types of students rebelling out emotions in their own way within the context of the school setting. The screenplay by Nejc Gazvoda, director Rok Bicek and producer Janez Lapajne dives deep in the various

of

Terror

school typologies, while carefully addressing the fact that heavy words are easily bulleted out when not thinking clear. However, what struck me the most was the indifference of the grade-rubber Primosz, who just obeys the rules of the game without any personal emotional investment whatsoever, industrious.

‘Personal emotional investment’ is somehow the key term in this article. While Facebook, interactive video games, dating sites, and so forth are pushing communication in the virtual sphere which I am not going brand as evil, it is just a fact - there is no denying that this type of communication is not particularly helpful for real life interaction because the level of personal emotional investment is so much higher in the latter.

In the film The Dirties (by debuting director Matt Johnson), where a bullied young adult and his friend start a video project to express their feelings towards assailants, it becomes clear that facing reality as if it were play is far easier than coping with the reality by showing real emotional investment. Furthermore, playing a game is dangerous and you have to be careful about not losing your grip on reality. Acting your way through life is failing to live it, but it’s very difficult to be that brave.

That is why films can sometimes help by making the first step to address the problem, as Raag discovered when he released The Class: “For many people the film was too dark and pessimistic. However, I was surprised to get really many messages and e-mails from young viewers. It means that this film effectively touched the real problem. I chose this topic because I had also witnessed bullying, but I didn’t do anything. Somehow, however, those moments have stayed with me and I regret my passiveness. I would like to be a braver person. I also chose to make the film, because I saw that in the society those problems are often treated superficially. Like the background of school shooters. These are most often described as simple psychopaths while in real life there are often aspects in their life that are leading to the disasters.”

All the films shown about the terrors of school addressing that personal communication, and therefore also personal investment in the problems of the young adults, could help to tackle the issue. Nevertheless, a balanced portrayal of this theme is no easy task. Students who try to express their feelings can do so in an enormous variety of ways. It is up to the community to make them feel empowered and taken seriously, because attachment does not come easily. Like Raag says: “It is important to watch the film, but it is even more important to discuss it genuinely with friends afterwards.” text by Matthias Van Hijfte // NisimazineTallinn // 27

3 Many Weddings

by Javier Ruíz Caldera (Spain) Vitamin Boost

Tickets for 3 Many Weddings sold out quicker than for the new film of the Coen brothers screened here in Tallinn. Javier Ruiz Caldera tells us about the connection between comic books and films and being faithful to the genre of comedy.

ly, I feel very comfortable in this genre. My previous movies were comedies as well – Spanish Movie was a spoof on several box office hits in my country and Ghost Graduation is a comedy mixed with horror. I move inside the genre, but try to make something different in each film.

Why did you start making movies?

It was because of Alan Moore and Frank Miller – my favourite comic books authors.

But not only. I used to read everything, European authors as well, and somehow comic books led me to film. Actually my next project is going to be an adaptation of a graphic novel very popular in Spain: Anacleto, agente secreto (Anacleto, the Secret Agent). The main character reminds me of James Bond, only with really bad luck.

What was it in the case of 3 Many Weddings?

The construction of the main character is pretty unusual for a romantic comedy setting. I didn’t see such characters in the Spanish cinema and thought that I have to do a film with a character like that. Usually, girls in romantic comedies are not much more then beautiful and nice. Ruth is much closer to real life – beautiful, but also funny, crazy, smart and absolutely disastrous when it comes to boyfriends… I know a lot of girls like that. In fact, I used to fall in love with them.

So comedy again?

I want to make a serious film, but they keep sending me comedies (laughs)! But serious-

When a female lobster loses her shell it is immediately devoured by the male. Working as a scientist with a shellfish specialization, Ruth has appropriated some aspects of the lives of her “wards.” There aren’t many men in her life (at least, not before three drinks). And when there are, they accuse her of agreeing with them too often.

There is a grain of truth in it – assertiveness is not Ruth’s strongest trait. That is why she doesn’t decline any of the three wedding invitations from her ex-boyfriends, who are quite an impressive collection – a hyper-active surfer, a transsexual and an un-engagable one. With such a story one could make either a tragedy or a comedy, said the director after the screening. Fortunately, the filmmakers decided for comedy, which worked pretty well.

Lobster scientists?

I am not even sure if such a profession exists!

We’ve made it up to show the unrealistic setting of a romantic comedy. And if they do exist, they certainly don’t work in labs as we have shown in the film. We’ve been to a place like that and they’re usually dark and simply ugly. So we’ve decided to polish the place, make it lighter and more aesthetic than in real life – just as romantic comedy is.

Coming back to reality – how do you see your future as a filmmaker in Spain?

The situation is difficult nowadays, we receive very little help from the government because of the protests the filmmakers organised against the war in Iraq. It will probably change in a few years, I’m still young and I hope I have a future career as a director ahead of me. In the meantime, I try to do my best making comedies and having fun.

Declaring himself as a romantic comedy lover, Javier Ruiz Caldera not only doesn’t try to escape the traps of the genre, but willingly jumps into them. You can bet your life savings on which character is going to be “bad” on the sole basis of their appearance. It will not be much of a bigger risk to guess when the reunion moment is going to happen (based on the level of glamour of the female character). With one eye closed to that I can’t help noticing that the pouted lips of the actress as well as her cocker-spaniel eyes put a hint of parody in the character.

Laughter makes the inevitable cheesy moments smoother. I can’t help noticing that the corners of my lips are moving upwards, despite the fact that the plot is as predictable as the life of a lobster.

There are movies which change your life, others that make you revise your worldview, and those responsible for sleepless nights. 3 Many Weddings is neither- you might even forget it the next day after watching. It has a different quality though – this Spanish Bridget Jones and her futile efforts not to embarrass herself will certainly make you smile.

interview

review

It is as evident as the lack of sun in Tallinn that cinema is mostly about re-telling the same stories. The main point is to do it skilfully so the viewer can pretend not to notice the repetitiveness and fully indulge in fairy-tale motifs flowing from the screen (again). Yes, this is going to be a review of a romantic comedy – get ready for a prescription of a solid vitamin dose that will help you survive the next chilly days.

review & interview by Ewa Wildner // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 31

Sanctuary

by Fredrik Edfeldt (Sweden, Finland) // Tridens Competition

Daddy’s girls are the lucky ones, at least that is how the saying goes in my country. The leading actress Clara Christiansson, only 11 years old at the time of the shooting, makes her Papa (Jakob Cedergren) proud as a strong little girl. A conflict is born when her father may or may not have killed a man. Papa does not look like the murderer-type, but does such a thing really exist?

The texture of the film reel, details from this dismantled home and the actors’ clothing remind of the 80s, like so many other set designs of Scandinavian films screened this year at BNFF. Fredrik Edfeldt’s second film, nominated for the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film, depicts the fugitives filling up the gas tank of a rusty Ford and driving as fast as the car goes. They flee to live in the wilderness, to spend one last summer together before they will be separated.

Police are coming and social services are ready to take over.

The typical chase that follows will not be the last cliché in the adventure drama. It is a scene that characterises the storytelling as a whole. Gorgeously natural reactions of the characters

Nisimazine Tallinn // 32 // review by Emilie Toomela

speak of the skilful supervising by the director, and dialogues that might have been utterly banal come across as fresh instead. The mother is not in the picture and discarding the few unimaginative tangents in the plot (a crazy hippy lady also living alone in the forest), the reach of the frosty camera (it is Scandinavian summer after all) stays with the father and daughter as the only presensences amidst breathtakingly beautiful nature shots. Even a full-grown elk is caught straight on camera.

Scenes of endlessly tall trees, beautiful lakes, sky as the ceiling, and wild animals as scary new friends give the feeling of being there yourself.

Melancholy and mystery in the eerie woodlands create a dark green springboard for the characters to jump off to wondrous heights that apparently lead to nowhere. The plot is thin, it seems to be compiled for a much shorter film, but stunning cinematography and impressively resourceful acting make it an evocative exploration of paternal love worth watching.

My Dog Killer Brutal social realism is one of the most prominent styles of European low-key, festival-oriented cinema. Quite a few films on topical contemporary world issues appear every year, and My Dog Killer, by Mira Fornay one of the winners at this year´s Rotterdam Film Festival, typifies the genre.

The protagonist is a young Nazi skinhead Marek, a white supremacist who hates Roma and Jews. But it’s not only him who appreciates the xenophobic attitude to all alien people: migrant workers, as we learn, routinely get lower salaries than locals, and one sequence set in a café with a sign on the entrance that publicly announces: “Gypsies are not admitted”. What Fornay tries to bring into this topic is that fear of the other stems from fear of the hidden part of one’s own identity – of the other in oneself. Marek learns that he has a half-brother – his own flesh and blood – who is a Roma. Now the tables turned, and he himself becomes a target for xenophobia of his neo-Nazi friends.

The idea, however, is nothing new; to put it frankly, a Nazi character who is related to someone of the group he hates (or even is a part of it, like in Henry Bean’s Believer) is a massive cliché. And it’s only one of the many commonplaces employed

by Mira Fornay (Czech Republic, Slovakia) // Panorama

by Fornay: The Dog Killer is constructed entirely of them, and for this reason it’s perfectly predictable from the start to the bitter end. The first moment when the titular dog named Killer appears on screen, we know exactly that it’s going to play its role in the plot. Same with humans whose actions can be foreseen a step before they take place.

Fornay is a skilful director: the rhythm is well calculated, acting is solid, and sequence shots aptly build the oh-so-real feel of the film. But, however well-executed the film is, we’ve already seen many like it. The mobile handheld camera, deliberately unkempt composition and editing, bleak colours (it’s always late autumn in such movies, no exceptions), and graphic violence: all those features are used in almost any social realist film, and My Dog Killer hardly brings anything new or noteworthy to this category of cinema. Fornay is driven by a noble cause and raises important issues, but the film lacks some aesthetical quality that would make it outstanding.

review by Andrei Kartashov // Nisimazine Tallinn // 33

Luc Déry With titles such as Incendies, Monsieur Lazhar, Inch’Allah and Whitewash under his belt, he has a front row seat to the current Canadian film revolution. We caught up with him to learn what is happening now in Canada and how come so many young filmmakers there seem to have it easier to breakthrough in the international scene.

There are some interesting young Canadian directors attracting attention in the festival circuit, how do you think it happened and what impact does it have in the local scene?

It’s a great time for Canadian cinema; it’s a great time for cinema in Quebec in particular. Canadian cinema, through David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, has traveled all over the world for a long time. Yet it comes and goes in different waves, in the 1980’s the films of Denys Arcand were in major festivals and competitions and then for a while it wasn’t happening very much.

Right now there are ten directors I could name that have some type of following around the world, that have a chance of getting into Cannes or Berlin, or Venice, or Sundance, in major festivals. Why? I think that if I would have to name one thing it would be that 20 years ago we went back to making short films and a lot of things were organized for short films to get some type of distribution and for people to see them. A couple of short film festivals became very popular at that moment. A thing called the Kino Movement started with a lot of young filmmakers deciding to do short film with no financial means, they kind of provoked themselves in making a film a month and showing it in these gatherings. And then the more official industry decided to follow and to put

more money in short films.

A lot of people we see nowadays making feature films, Denis Villeneuve or Denis Côté, come from that world completely, started by doing short films. Xavier Dolan not so much because he did his first feature when he was like 20 years old or something, he’s a bit of a whizz kid.

It’s a group of talented film directors and right now we have a chance of being taken more seriously on the international front and people are waiting for our films, which get sold and get distributed around the world.

There’s a sort of domino effect, people want to see our films, so we have slightly better means to do it.

Do you think there is a connection between these directors? Could they maybe even form a new movement?

I think it’s too soon to say, I mean one interesting thing is that right now there are 4-5 Quebec filmmakers that made films in Hollywood, within either the independent or studio system and these are like major films.

Prisoners by Villeneuve is getting serious Oscar talks for Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman; Dallas Buyers Club is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, with Matthew McConaughey; Philippe Falardeau with whom we did Monsieur Lazhar, just finished doing a film in the US, a very political story, about young African kids immigrating to the

US, which is not out yet. There’s a very commercial film coming out these days called Delivery Man which is a remake of a Quebec film called Starbuck, which was a big success at home but a big success in Europe and the US as well.

So what’s really interesting is that not all the filmmakers we’re talking about can keep doing films in the US, but one interesting challenge is to see if these filmmakers are coming back to making Canadian films in the future.

How did your work as a producer change in this context?

We sometimes try to co-produce films with Europe or with foreign countries and we’re always looking for our films to sell internationally, we have our films travel before they are released in Canada, to give them a profile before they’re released at home and the big difference is that when we talk about our projects and when we talk about our upcoming films, people know the filmmakers we’re talking about and people know when we say we produced Incendies and Monsieur Lazhar. People not only have heard about the films, but most likely have seen them and liked them and more often than not, these films have been released in their countries. Of course they can’t be released everywhere in the world and they can’t do well everywhere, so that’s the big difference with a young filmmaker; since we produced Incendies and Monsieur Lazhar, people will think maybe this is the new Denis Villeneuve, or this is the new Philippe Falardeau, or the next Xavier Dolan, so the expectations are there and people are excited to see our new films. I’m talking for me as a producer, but I think it’s the same for almost all of Quebec’s producers and directors now. Denis Côté is a good example and the younger directors, Maxime Giroux, Stéphane Lafleur-he’s a director we worked with, his first film was in Venice, his second film was in Berlinthese are more difficult films, these are not films that get theatrical releases, these are films that get good festival exposure.

reacts more closely to a typical American audience than American audiences. I don’t know why, if a film works in Toronto, there’s a good chance it will work in the US. What part did Hollywood play in this growth of Canadian cinema? Did it help it or suppress it?

What it does is that it makes it possible for some countries to fabricate films for Canadian crews to work on, that come and do post-production in Canada. A lot of big studio films come and shoot in Canada. It makes our technicians even better because they work a lot, it makes them more expensive because they make a lot of money on these films. So that’s a bit detrimental to our industry.

I think our special effects have become incredibly good.

It’s very interesting for us as potential co-producers on European films or even as partners on American films, because we can do special effects and post-production and we have good sound facilities as well. I think we don’t often have money to do special effects on films, but we do it more and more.

Enemy, the film we did, we co-produced this Denis Villeaneuve film with a Toronto based company, the special effects in that film are phenomenal.

What part did the explosion of the Toronto Film Festival played in this change?

The great thing about Toronto is that it has 250 new features, almost all premieres. Cannes is like 80-90 every year, Venice about the same. In Cannes you have the market which is another group of feature films that you can see as a distributor. European producers and sales agents prefer to come to Toronto than Venice. I think the audience there is very cinephile, very generous and it reacts like an American audience. There’s one thing, I read somewhere, the Americans like their films to premiere in Toronto because Toronto, even though it’s in Canada, interview by Andra Gheorghiu // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 35

I’m the same I’m an Other

by Caroline Strubbe (Belgium) Official Competition Eurasia

Caroline Strubbe is not only one of Belgium´s new stars in the scene but also one of the most daring and the first act of her trilogy could not be a better proof of that. We met her to fully understand the complexity of her work.

It’s not very common for beginners to start with a trilogy, but you did it anyway. Why? It was meant to be one movie, though a very long one. I started working on this story in 2005 and just couldn´t stop. I ended up with a script of 350 pages, which meant 5-6 hours running time. It had three parts, like Jane Campion’s Angel at My Table. I proposed it to the [state funding] commission. They proposed to re-write, cut and add some flashbacks to explain the story in shorter time. It would be a different kind of movie, and I decided to pursue the initial plan with the story told chronologically, but

make three films instead of one.

Abandoning flashbacks can impair the continuity and comprehensibility of the plot. Did you do it on purpose?

After the first film I had to rewrite the script of the second one, because things had changed in the process of editing and filming. And I decided to make a kind of experiment, a little bit like the Kuleshov effect, but in a big way. The perception of the characters is completely different for the viewers who have seen the first movie and those who haven’t.

In both films you work with the same actors, and they are non-professionals.

Why did you decide to do that?

When I was preparing Lost Persons Area, I first chose two famous Belgian dancers for the roles of the parents. Then I saw Zoltán Miklós Hajdu in a Hungarian movie and presumed he was an actor. But when I

review

Through a vast, lifeless landscape moves a car. An inscrutable Eastern European man drives, an adolescent girl sleeps in the trunk. This is the premise of I’m the Same I’m An Other – the sophomore effort of the Belgian director Caroline Strubbe, a film that starts in a most intriguing way, implying some sort of in media res narrative device. However, this promise is false: there will be no flashbacks, and the director will take her time to spill any light on what’s going on altogether. Not until the second half hour the viewers will be able to penetrate the mystery behind the story: on a ship that’s bringing the two to England the girl (her name is Tess) stumbles upon a newspaper from which we learn that she disappeared from home after her parents had committed double suicide. Szabolcszt (the man) has, apparently, kidnapped the girl, but during the course of the movie’s two hours she grows more and more consentient to the situation, the two of them forming a quasi-father-and-daughter relationship.

called him, he turned out to be an acrobat with Cirque de Soleil, living in Las Vegas. He accepted the part, so I had three body people, two dancers and an acrobat. And it made sense, because the films are about time, space, body, and movements.

Are you going to proceed with the third part of the trilogy? If yes, when?

I am. The story is very personal, and I need to get it finished to get rid of my demons, my past, my memories. I’ll have to wait several more years so that the girl grows up. She’s eighteen in the third part of the story, and she’s going to look for the man, the kidnapper, after several years in a foster home. And she tries to deal with this father-lover situation, because for her the man replaces a lover, and her dead parents.

Very rarely do the two speak– they literally don’t have a common language. The body language comes to the fore – to get the point we have to look narrowly at the smallest gestures and movements of the actors.You need to be attentive to watch this subtle film, but if you are, you may get engaged with the sad atmosphere of solitude.

For those who are patient I’m The Same I’m An Other will offer a beautiful story of a very unlikely relationship.

interview

In fact, the I’m The Same… is the second part of what is to be a trilogy with a continuous narrative, so the backstory is known to those who watched the first part, Lost Persons Area. But anyway, it’s not the plot that is in the focus here. David Williamson’s camera obsessively ex-

amines little details in closeups – the girl’s fingernails, grease stains on a cloth, dirty spots on the walls of a rundown villa where the two stay. These insignificant minutiae form the sense of solitude that the man and the girl experience together; further emphasis on this feeling is provided by the very opposite of closeups, i.e. the static wide shots of desolate landscapes in which Szabolcszt is often the only human being. Tess, in turn, is locked in the house, she’s only able to watch people walking around from inside.

review & interview by Andrei Kartashov // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 37

Whitewash

by Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais (Canada) // North American Films Branches of the trees are heavily loaded with snow. Lights in the windows of suburban houses give the surrounding an atmosphere of pre-Christmas cosiness. The only sound coming to our ears is the gentle purring of the bulldozer which pushes a corpse away from the street to cover it with snow.

As a popular saying goes, a movie should start with an earthquake and build to a climax. The first scenes set the climate for the whole movie which, at first glance, could be considered as an ordinary tale of a fugitive, if it wasn’t for the form of presenting it.

Adjusting to the slowish weather conditions on the set, the filmmakers didn’t hurry with telling the story, making it all the more tasteful. Everything is vague, yet sufficient, here – the only sign of the supposed crime is the trail of the plow’s tires, the only information we get about the incident comes from the abrupt narration of the character, as well as the retrospectives projected on us through his chaotic mind. Thanks to that we get a gripping picture that holds viewers by the throat to the very end, to leave them disturbed as well as disturbingly amused.

kills time practicing the conversations he is expecting to have with the police (peak of Thomas Haden Church’s performance) and bringing porcelain dolls to the place. When the small fire set to warm him up starts to bring to mind an unusual family fire, we are starting to doubt our perception – is he really stuck here or does he simply want to be? Who was the mysterious man covered now with snow to him? What is the border between a crime and an accident?

During the screening of Whitewash these questions gave me a nagging feeling that the director is toying with me. Being a skillful storyteller, Hoss-Desmarais knows what to uncover to make the audience want more without losing their attention. The film exceeds the genre of the crime story, stepping gently onto philosophical ground, when we realize that the border between choice and a chance is thinner than ice on a frozen Canadian lake. It is even less definite when it comes to guilt – unexpected glances of the main character towards the audience which made me feel responsible for the fictional turn of events are the best proof of that.

Surprisingly, the story of a fugitive soon turns into a handbook of survival, when the circumstances force the main character to live in a forest in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter. Hiding from view in an out-of-gas and snow-filled bulldozer, Bruce

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary // 7

review by Ewa Wildner // Nisimazine Tallinn // 39

All Musicians are Bastards

by Heleri Saarik (Estonia) // Heave(i)n Estonian Film Award

Considering how non-existent the film industry in Estonia is, 2013 has provided a remarkable pool of well received films: Ilmar Raag’s rural drama Kertu, Hardi Volmer’s The Artistreminiscent Living Pictures and the Estonian-Georgian coproduction Tangerines Heleri Saarik’s debut, All Musicians are Bastards is probably more experimental than all the aforementioned combined. It comes as no surprise then that when it was released at the end of last year already, it didn’t pack cinemas - quite the opposite, actually - and received only a handful of screenings.

It doesn’t take much time to see why, due to the lack of continuity in the storytelling. The main character is Leila, played fiercely by Riina Maidre, who finds her company in a bunch of (wannabe?) bohemians and young vagabonds connected by a surreal strip club/music bar. While the general theme can be grasped - the film portrays young people trying to find meaning to their lives, mostly through drugs, alcohol, sex and music there is no story as such. It’s all very abstract, non-linear and artistic.

Nisimazine Tallinn // 40 // review by Andrei Liimets

The hazy and dreamy feeling is stressed by the impressionistic, sometimes decadent visuals. Some of the set pieces are stunning but much like the situations depicted, they rarely link to each other. In other words, the film never manages to feel holistic. Furthermore, it blurs lines between reality and fantasy, art and kitsch, music and noise. Music, by the way, is treated as an organic component of the film, at least complementing the audiovisual aspect very well.

All Musicians are Bastards is definitely for those more inclined towards poetic visuals than those preferring a more conventional narrative. Needless to say, this strongly polarizes audiences as it has already done in Estonia. It fails to establish much rhythm or momentum since the offbeat experimentations make it difficult to connect with. The few spectators who manage, will probably adore it. Others will mostly feel indifferent, if not thoroughly disappointed. Saarik seems to be in firm control of her vision - passing it on to the audience is another question.

As things stand, the lavish visuals deserve a more engaging storyline. Any storyline, really.

Two Mothers Did you know that legally sperm is considered medication in Germany? Therefore it can be ‘’prescribed’’ only in certain conditions… and social circumstances. I had no clue, just as a lesbian couple in their late thirties having to find out all the ridiculous intricacies of bureaucracy while trying to have a baby.

‘’I’d like a donor, but not a father. Something just between us’’ this is the major topic of the film – how to get pregnant without a man. The caregiver seems to be desperate to become a mother, while her breadwinner partner is afraid to be left out.

The legal ways are the most difficult, paralegal options are very expensive and there are other ways also…but are they ready to go all that way?

The great intention of the film makers, probably, was realism in all its glory, or life just the way it is. Sadly the result leaves us with the two seemingly tired and vitamin deprived smoking actresses knocking on the doors of various doctors and arguing in the kitchen on their free time. Oh, there are also some uncomfortable love scenes, giving the impression even the characters feel vague and not really enjoying it. The story is truly intimate, but the gloomy surroundings and dim lights which supposedly were considered as tools for creating the particular mood, make the whole film seem rather bleak.

by Anne Zohra Berrached (Germany) // Tridens Competition The complete lack of aesthetical pleasure is balanced out with some curious cases, regarding insemination syringes (you can’t buy it in the pharmacy, but you can try a vet shop), the place of woman in the society (by the stove as, according to donor clinics and in vitro lawyers, females are not considered equal to male in terms of income). More than homosexual issues, the story is concerned about some sensitive socio-philosophical issues - kitchen dramas after all are the dull façade of a self duplicating concerned society, some calling it motherhood, and some just ruthlessly spreading the seeds of their ego (as the sperm donor, having 20 kids in three years).

The film could work as an eye opener, not promoting any ideas, but revealing injustices of the laws, raising bio-ethical questions and making one feel a little bit sorry for the protagonists. Just a little, as the overbuilt wall of pessimism doesn’t let you close enough to love them. Ideally the content could overweight the form, however the aftertaste is of pervading twilight, even in the midst of the bright day.

review by Vaiva Rykstaite // Nisimazine Tallinn // 41

Home

by Maximilian Hult (Sweden) Tridens competition

After winning an audience award at the Busan Film Festival, Maximilian Hult was in Tallinn to present his nice little gem that definitely will charm people from all over the world. In the interview of the debuting director we tried to break into his directorial comfort zone.

As a director and screenwiter you are even more closely involved with your main characters. Was the film therefore also colored with autobiographical memories?

There are definitely pieces of myself in all four main characters, which also have characteristics of people I know. The main plot structure is fictional but the surrounding scenes are basically built on events that happened in my own life or I extracted out of real life conversations.

Shooting these first scenes is quite exciting. Looking at the dailies, you feel like it

might work. But when you start the editing process and the editor has synced up all the footage, it is an awful experience. It is only when you start filing down your rough whole; you finally get to a stage where the film feels good The main location in the film is Frida’s house, where Lou finally opens up to other people, encouraged by her grandmother. Was it difficult to find this essential location and did it immediately feel like home?

It was challenging because we needed a house that not only could breathe the right atmosphere and looked good, but it also had to be big enough to fit in a film crew.

Moreover, the house was in Iceland - we did the filming there because the Tax Shelter saved us a lot of money - and the houses there are really small, especially outside Reykjavik and we needed a location in a small village. When we finally found the

review

Once upon a time, in a cosy village somewhere in Sweden there was an ordinary funeral where four extraordinary characters met. A young woman went to see her grandmother who for the past 20 years she thought to be dead. The small family reunion leads to other awkward relationships, eventually forcing the girl to re-evaluate her city life. The protagonist, Lou, a young exaggeratedly introverted woman, seems as if she just wandered in from the ‘’Invention of lying’’ – she is the definition of ‘’straight forward’’, thus struggling to be accepted by people. Nope, she hasn’t mixed movies, though here English sarcasm is replaced with the Scandinavian sentimentalities.

perfect abandoned house, we still had to move all sorts of furniture from Sweden. In the end it was all worth it and I was very happy and proud of the result.

How has been the festival circuit experience?

Before I went to the South-Korean film festival of Busan I had never seen the film with an audience. I was very pleased the people enjoyed it.

Both the festivals it was showed in, it won an award, but I am still a little bit scared how people in Sweden will react because different cultures perceive a film in distinct ways. There was one scene at the end that I really found funny; in Germany the theater remained quiet but in Busan the whole crowd laughed, so the film connects with people in different ways.

The spontaneous trip to the grandfather’s funeral unfolds as some of the cycle of love stories are forced to end while others bloom in the shy beginnings. The parallels of young and old, falling in love and dying gently prompts one to ponder on everlasting values – The meaning of companionship and sense of belonging.

This is not the sort of film to be challenged or shaken by, on the contrary – soothing, comedy like drama, where even death is handled with the lightness of parody, has the potential to substitute the actual visit to one’s grandmother. You know what she is going to say next, yet here is the whole point, as being offered coffee every five minutes and surrounded by old photographs creates a feeling of a safe sweet home.

interview

So we have a playful granny, a chubby school boy, a somewhat autistic young woman, and a handsome man, all hanging around in the house of the quirky grandmother. Their odd dialogues and actions create a feeling of a sweet absurd. Neither the clothing nor the environment gives us any clue of when the action takes place, leaving a blurry impression it could have happened any time during the last three decades. The surroundings are atmospheric, especially the scruffy house which seems to play an important role, hence metaphorically competing with each other: the old, the chubby, the handsome, and the weird one. The psychological portraits are so obvious it leaves very little space, if at all, for layers of

personalities and interpretations. But it is the plot and not the characters that might make one annoyed with the lack of pepper. The film is as sweet as it can be and the plot is predictable. Although the sweetness is comforting and makes one hope for an happy ending, the fairy tale like story is balancing on a fine line bordering the banal.

review by Vaiva Rykštaitė // interview by Matthias Van Hijfte // photo by Laura Urbonavičiūtė // Nisimazine Tallinn // 43

Mother, I Love You Childhood is difficult and grown-ups often forget that. They forget how serious their troubles seemed, and actually were at that time. They forget what it means to be scared; what it means to be prepared to do whatever it takes to just delay taking the responsibility for your actions- even if it means telling a lie and then having to cover it up with an even bigger one, until things end up spiralling out of control.

That is exactly what happens in Mother, I Love You – a Latvian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film and the second film of Janis Nord. It tells a story of an adolescent, Raymond (Kristofers Konovalovs), living with his single mother who is constantly busy working at a clinic, trying to make ends meet. While she does love her son, spending quality time together becomes a sort of reward for good behaviour at school. Such conditions lead Raymond to tell the first lie that sets in motion the wheels of drama.

The narrative, told entirely from the boy’s perspective, makes a good use of MacGuffin – a plot technique of attaching a huge importance to an object that serves no real function- making the protagonist pursue it at all costs. This and the avalanche of dramatic situations that supersede one another create an intrigue

Nisimazine Tallinn // 44 // review by Saulius Kovalskas

by Janis Nords (Latvia) // Tridens Competition

and makes viewers interested in the boy’s choices. However, the script has plenty of structural holes. There are quite a few side lines of the plot (sexuality, the mother’s personal life) that, while hinted at, are neither explored to their full potential, nor do they contribute to the main story strongly enough to justify their use.

In addition to the troubles in the script, the film also suffers in terms of execution. While acting is believable and the boy performs well, the actors just don’t achieve the level of depth suitable for the theme. Sometimes it feels like the director took an easy way out, and, instead of pushing acting and cinematography to their limits, decided to use soundtrack as the main tool for creating tension and portraying inner world changes of the characters.

Based on the premise and theme, Mother, I Love You could have been a major film about childhood. Unfortunately, due to unwillingness or inability (which seems to be the likely case, considering the budget of 200 000 dollars and the situation of the film industry in Latvia) to go deeper, it ended up being just another film delivering the story in an unremarkable way.

The Double

by Richard Ayoade (England) // EurAsia Competition

Richard Ayoade showed a lot of promise as well as eclectic inspirations and ambitions with his directorial debut Submarine, a bittersweet tale about an outsider growing up in England. Now Ayoade, best known for his irresistibly weird character Moss in the TV-series IT Crowd, returns to deliver on that promise. The Double, based on the great Fjodor Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same name, recreates its events in a dystopian England as Ayoade effortlessly blends genres, from sci-fi to dark comedy.

focating surroundings Orwellian, some sets remind Blade Runner, the dry humour Roy Andersson, or the criminally under-seen The Bothersome Man and I could swear there’s even a hint of Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre. Despite all of the aforementioned the most precise comparison seems to be Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville. Both depict a similar cold technocratic society and a protagonist (although they couldn’t be more different) trying to get past the system in the name of love.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon, a man who constantly underachieves. He’s not able to get a promotion, or the attention of his love interest. One day his identical double James appears. He has everything Simon doesn’t - he is great with people, attracts women and just strolls through life. Slowly the double starts taking over Simon’s life, ruining his already deteriorated chances to achieve anything. Eisenberg is always fun to watch but he has so often chosen films below his talents. Here he again tackles a role that shows his tremendous range.

Part existentialist dystopia about dehumanization, part social commentary about a lonely person’s psyche, part dark comedy about passiveness, the film both fascinates and frustrates. The first because of the perfectly bleak atmosphere and the constantly clever visuals. The latter because the film seems desperate to mean more than it actually does. Much like Submarine it’s brilliant in bits but leaves you wanting a bit more as a whole. Minor criticisms aside, Ayoade again proves himself one of the most literate and promising young British directors and it will be very interesting to see which genre(s) he takes his talents to next.

The bureaucratic world is devoid of emotions, much like Terry Gilliam’s famous Brazil. The reference points don’t stop there.

The fatalistic feel of the proceedings is very Kafkaesque, the suf-

review by Andrei Liimets // Nisimazine Tallinn // 45

Of horses and men

by Benedikt Erlingsson (Iceland) Tridens Competition

Best Tridens Award FIPRESCI AWARD

The great winner of this year´s edition of the New Directors section of the San Sebastian Film Festival was a groundbreaking film from Iceland.

Benedikt Erlingsson, the Nordic a tor turned filmmaker, was the name on everyone´s lips. The film made it´s way to Tallinn, making it imperative to look back at the chat we had with the director and his main star, Charlotte Bøving, who happens to be his wife.

When did you start working on this script?

BE: It’s been a long process. The ideas have been a long time with me, they come from my background, living with horses and people, and working in the countryside.

Are you from a rural background?

BE: No, I’m from Reykyavík, but there’s this tradition in Iceland that when you’re a teenager you go and work with the farmers for three months. And it was a shock. And maybe in this film I’m trying to heal myself after that shock.

There are some brutal scenes, did you make them up or are they a part of Iceland’s imaginary? Like when the wire blinds this man…

BE: Yes, this can happen. Everything can happen. If the wire breaks, because of the tension, it can really hurt someone. We have these national roads and it’s in our constitution that you cannot block these paths, but some farmers do and then a conflict starts.

I was also curious about what the Latin boy does with the horse…

BE: Well, don’t they do it all the time in Latin America? (laughs) No, this is an old trick that you use in Iceland when you’re caught in bad weather, it has been done since ancient times and the grandfather of a friend saved his life like this. And it’s important that it was a Latin character because he knows how to kill a cow, or a horse, because he knows about bullfighting.

How important is humour in this story?

BE: For me it’s very important. When you tell a good story humour is always there. Even if you tell something very sad about your life or

review

Writing about an artwork without straight recognizable references or familiar patterns is delicious and challenging just as it is somewhat frightening. Benedikt Erlingsson signs this odd jewel as his first feature, although he’s no firsttimer in terms of storytelling. Widely awarded for his theatre plays, he’s regarded to be one of Iceland’s most talented directors.

randomly meet fellow residents when sharing a similarly isolated piece of land. Yet acting per se does not seem to be present; it just flows, leaving the audience in the privileged position of a nearby witness. This may very well be a consequence of the fact that the actors are actual friends of Erlingsson (or even his wife) and do have horses in their real lives.

Of Horses and Men is a captivating film wrapped up with the harshly beautiful Icelandic landscape. It focuses in a small community of people living in the countryside who attempt to peacefully merge their demanding and helpless desires with a simple and traditional life alongside the wild horses’ herds. However, truth be told, at least regarding the peace factor, they are not very lucky.

Throughout the story’s unravelling more than one, even more than two, very severe events occur – each of them so visually haunting they get stuck in the retina’s memory and may very likely lead to discussions on limits, rivalry, endurance or honour.

The Icelandic horse is said to be specially robust and tough as opposite to more slender races. This is wisely used by the camera as it is placed low, always framing ample portions of ground and thus showing how gracefully the hoofs caress the earth during the ridings, or how hard people grip their desires and fight in their quests. Tagged as a tragicomedy, personal dramas are intertwined with subtle humour, exquisitely rooted in the narrative’s repetitiveness or the characters’ primitive behaviours. The original score is worth being mentioned too, for it precisely emphasizes the story’s rhythm and the subtext’s tone all the way through. A new voice is coming from the North and, hopefully, we’ll be hearing it sometime soon.

about a very tragic film, you should try to see the humorous side of it, in order to make literature out of your life.

What is the film actually about?

BE: It’s been said that it’s about the horse in men and the men in horse. Maybe this is banal, but it’s important to accept that humanity is also very animalistic. People are brutal like animals, we say, but people are also lovable like animals. In Icelandic language you can say “he’s a horse”, it’s a common nickname.

Is it negative?

CB: I can tell you why is not that negative. Because it’s a very tough country to live in, you don’t have this weather or a ground that it’s just giving, life is tough in there. Today we can heat our houses but your mother, for example…

BE: My mother was born in a house made of stone and mud, so only very recently we’re coming out of the mud. We’ve been living very close to the animals to keep us warm. Maybe we have some kind of connections that in Spain you have not. Where you shocked about the film?

interview

A notably varied line-up of characters configures a wellbalanced sieve where everyone has about the same prominence as the others and delivers his/her particular dramatic peak in its due course – all rushes avoided.

Actors seem to naturally come and go, just as one would

review & interview by Júlia de Balle // photo by Eftihia Stefanidi // Nisimazine Tallinn // 49

Blue Ruin

by Jeremy Saulnier (USA) // North American Films How would you start your revenge quest?

A smartass would say: by starting. A wise man would quietly think that revenge is not the smartest way to cope with death.

A clever man would step by step execute a long before prepared plan.

In Blue Ruin the audience gets none of the recycled American types but the social inadequate, tacky man. After the socially maladaptive Dwight is given the news of the release of his future target, he even has to fill air into the tires of his blue Pontiac sedan to get further in his personal vendetta. In the first fifteen minutes or so there are also a lot of mysteries surrounding his motives which give a strange tension to the film.

Surprisingly, the fumbling Dwight rapidly reaches his aim after murdering the released prisoner even if the assassination looked like if he never even filleted a fish.

But things are never that easy, and having relatives you care about makes you vulnerable. Instead of things falling into place, they actually start to gradually fall out of place. Revenge is like a tornado drawing in more and more material on its path, until the storm quietly rushes out of

power, only to come back unexpectedly after a certain amount of time. Dwight puts his sister’s life at stake and has to involve an old friend in his mess. On top of that America is the land of guns, making the trajectory of destruction much easier to bleed heavily.

Even if the use of the color blue in the film sort of comes from a forced nowhere, the debuting director Jeremy Saulnier - who won a FIPRESCI award in Cannes for Blue Ruin - is effectively getting somewhere in a gritty, stripped down, and somehow comic way. Yet, compared to No Country for Old Men, Blue Ruin never hits the same whimsical heights. He should have scraped of a little more blue from the rough film; that way he would have shown the audience a kind of ruin that could completely stand on its own.

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary // 7

review by Matthias Van Hijfte // Nisimazine Tallinn // 51

Hide your smiling faces

by Daniel Patrick Carbone (USA) // North American Films

What is the sound of a dead bird? The sound of a snake slowly chewing already dead fish? Do the sounds and acts of nature still have a meaning in human life? Is it possible to return the importance of the connection with nature in today’s world?

In his début full-length feature film Hide your smiling faces American director Daniel Patrick Carbone paints the picturesque landscape of two brother’s efforts to survive their adolescence.

14 years old Eric and his brother, 9 years old Tommy, begin to realise their current state in the circle of life through facing the mystery of death. In the opening scene, filmed from behind the characters, the boys tentatively explore the wilderness, the essence of their nature, and their safe sanctuary in the forest. As if born in shadow or in deep ground they open themselves to the world and prepare for the flood of truthfulness, though closing the door for each other.

- Have you ever thought of dying? Someone killing you or you killing yourself? I have. Although the brother’s discussions are full of seriousness, they don’t reach each others heart. The words are stuck somewhere in the air and the audience gets only its

Nisimazine Tallinn // 52 // review by Ugnė Česnavičiūtė

reverberation, only a pitiful look, an uncomfortable smiling face.

And that honest smile is told to be hidden, cause it is not suitable to laugh from death. In the almost soundless film, the children’s world is so full of chaos and misunderstanding that it is obvious why nature is the best refuge.

The pristine forest, corpses of dead animals interact with the social environment and help the boys in their exploration path. The main phases of growing are represented by very dense and bright colouring. From the first scene, a type of framed view makes the film look like a digital art exhibition. The story is accompanied by a strong, bright, greenish hue, creating a calm and safe atmosphere. And as the brothers’ world view begins to change, so does the colouring of the film. Coming to the climax, red colours begin to appear, expressing its strong and energetic nature. The contrast tries to prove the idea that changes of your personality will be reflected in the environment you are living in. The visual storytelling of the film makes the strongest impact to the viewer.

It helps to better understand characters, though it saves neither the dead bird, nor the fish.

Hotel

by Lisa Langseth (Sweden) // Nordic Lights

I read about a woman who could choose her feelings in different situations. She described her inner self as a hotel. Those are the first words Erika blurts out during a therapy she is assigned to after she refuses to acknowledge her newly born brain-damaged baby. As she is a woman of action, she takes matters in her own hands and starts checking in different hotels so as to be somebody else for a while.

She doesn’t do it alone, however. Erika finds companions who are eager to join her in these room/ personality switches – a quirky lot from a therapy group. It would seem that she doesn’t have much in common with the girl scared of crowds, a Swede who secretly longs to be Mayan, and a lady in her sixties who dreams about having sex with a stranger. All of them speak the same language however – longing for acceptance without being judged. Together they indulge in each other’s petty pleasures of transforming into a different person. Whether what they do can be considered as cowardly escapism or a brave endeavor to create their own reality is left for the audience to decide – the director Lisa Langseth is far from presenting a black and white picture.

At least for most of the film. The protagonists are shown as people troubled with constant struggles – as for Erika it is a struggle to defend herself from being forced: to give birth, to go to therapy, last but not least, to accept the baby towards which she does not feel any bond. This major clash with social pressure to be a “good” mother makes her close to other protagonists, and raises the most important matter of the movie – what is considered normal and who is to put a clear-cut definition of it? The thesis significantly loses its strength, however, when the group is confronted with the… “normal” part of society. Their motivations, supported in the course of narration, are suddenly exposed to ridiculousness when put in front of the background of reality.

Despite the fact that at some point 360-degree, no-soundtrack shots exposing loneliness of the protagonists are replaced with loud close-ups and situations treating them less seriously, the movie sustains its unconventional character. It could have been much more, however, if the inconsequent turn of events didn’t overshadow an original approach to the topic with a somewhat obvious conclusion that reality will eventually come pounding at everybody’s door.

review by Ewa Wildner // Nisimazine Tallinn // 53

Cheap Thrills

by E.L. Katz (USA) // North American Films An eviction letter hangs on your door. Your employer just made your job disappear into thin air. There’s only one place left to go: a bar.

Curiously, when he finds himself in this situation, Craig does not return home with a hole in his pocket and smelling like alcohol. Instead of this, while at the bar, a rich man and his trashy ‘pin-up’ girlfriend begin flashing around with fifty dollar bills, planning to have a big party with Craig and his friend, Vine, who he has not seen in years. We dive into a hefty parody of the outwashes in America’s show culture. As the story storms forward with big laughs, the two friends enter a luxurious house where the games of their rich companion start to get awfully derogatory, daring both men into deviant behavior for the pleasure of the twisted couple’s minds. Meanwhile, the audience, who is almost forced into the testosterone filled voyeurism, becomes equally exploitative towards the characters.

put on the exploitation of the emotions in popular ‘grab-cash-for-doing-stupid-stuffso-we-can-make-fun-of-you shows’, accomplishing to transport the festival audience into the events happening on screen.

How far would you go when you were totally broke and someone throws you offers you would otherwise refuse?

Katz constructs the film with a confident cheapness vibe and almost gives the perfect dose of energy for the ultimate adrenaline kick. Subsequently, he also excellently dives in the social problems underlying game shows and bravely drops the term ‘deserve’ into the message. Everyone thinks they deserve to have some fortune, but do we really? Because nobody necessarily deserves money in the game; it is just a matter of you willing to play the game, at all costs.

Director E.L. Katz builds the film with an extreme amount of close-ups and often plays with the attentively constructed shallow focus shots. Hereby, emphasis is

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary // 7

review by Matthias Van Hijfte // Nisimazine Tallinn // 55

Body Talk in Cinema There is an alternative healing method, amongst hundreds of other new age tales: rumour has it some people can talk to our bodies. I met one myself, a middle aged sweaty lady (it was summer in Asia). Looking nothing like a witch, she asked me to lay down in a gloomy beach shack.

- Is my body actually talking to you? – I asked not holding up my sarcasm.

- It does. – She said, and, well, I suppose it kept talking in the language I didn’t know. It is called Body Talk.

Crossed legs is a sign of closing up (doesn’t matter consciously or subconsciously) - an act of the body reflecting one’s psychological state. But there are physical states somewhat out of our control, more of biological or sometimes even genetic nature. The body language is what we do with the body, the body talk is what the body does to us, or sometimes – just the way it is. The philosophical question here is how much of it can be granted as a merit of good acting?

In Focus

Someone eating raw lemon on screen (or possibly you reading this) makes the saliva taste sour-ish. To put it short – I know how it feels because I probably felt it myself once. Watching a man shivering in the rain (Stray Dogs by Ming-liang

Tsai) gave me goose-bumps. Watching him for longer - I put my coat back on. But he stood still.

Then there was a telescopic close-up, I could even inspect his clogged pores. But my gaze focused on his watery eyes engraved with red blood vessels, then on his nose which kept on running - the man was still cold. And I sniffed. It works, I’m more than convinced - the film stunningly transmits the depths of human dignity magically transcending the scantiness of bodily fluids, and the reflections of my empathy reached organic heights. And yet, what puzzled me is: was the nose running or did the actor make it run? (Although in this case I have no doubts of the great Kang-sheng Lee‘s talent) Is it a merit of performance if the actor is actually kept in the cold until he starts shivering?

The body is the most powerful medium giving us an immediate point of view. And actually the only medium– as there is no other way to see the world, except from the perspective of an embodied consciousness. Sometimes even the whole body is not necessary – screening just parts of it, especially if separated and preferably bloody gives us serious thrills, in this way just proving we are here to feel for others. The choices are few: vulgar (gladly not my job to explore the genre), or brutal (like in Heli,

by A. Escalante). But the biggest challenge is to make art out of it (very experimental but visually glorious attempts in The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears by H. Cattet and B. Forzani, in obsessive close-ups showing the parallel of human skin and crisp leather).

Sometimes having the right body puts actors in an awkward position. Like in Home by M. Hult, some characters are so well defined by their natural appearances it seems there is not much left to fake.

The ginger haired chubby school buy, the old granny, the young beauty - got the picture? This is no fault of the performer, but of the viewer - how much of it (the certain body type, the look) is needed to convince? Our faith in reality is defined by the objectiveness of the camera which, as André Bazin once put it, is ‘’capable of telling no lie’’. Thus cinema is a sort of reality in a very ambiguous way – on the screen and behind it. In other words, if you act

a fat lady – be fat for real, please. The spectator wants to see the actual body – the way it is supposed to be.

Thus usually it is not enough of a good actor imitating the body language typical for the (ugly/skinny/ fat) protagonist, there are cases it can be played around. Sometimes it works (as in Finsterworld, by F. Finsterwalder, the elderly nursing home resident lost in the lust unusual to the age of her body looks a bit disturbing but convincing) and sometimes it doesn’t (as in Pluto by S. Shin, kids acting as adults perpetually create the impression of mocking adults).

There have been many times in film history that directors have tried to challenge actors, their bodies and body language – we have seen it several famous examples- Boys don’t Cry, Monster, Transamerica, and many more. For those who say: “yeah, just get an ugly woman; why you need to turn a Barbie-like girl in to a monster?” Because a) this is an art, and a real challenge of acting, where she proves she can embody someone very different b) the viewer (some may add ‘sadly’) still needs to be convinced a bit more, meaning the actor often has to walk an extra mile. I have only one question now: what a terrible diet or torture camp Matthew McConaughey had to go through? In Dallas Buyers Club (by J.Vallée) acting a heterosexual pioneer of HIV he looks scarily anorexic. He looks if he were ill. Possibly even dying. I really felt for him, even thought: wow, he is so damn good in this film!

But was he? Or is it just that he had lost weight?

Or – even if he was the greatest actor on earth, would I be convinced by his performance if he was in good physical shape instead?

The conclusion of cinema is an eternal illusion, no matter what was happening behind the scenes (for real). The truth is we love being fooled. The question I’m still pondering on is – well, you should see my body talk to decide yourselves, am I pretending or a born philosopher – what makes a good act?

text by Vaiva Rykstaite // Nisimazine Tallinn // 57

nisimazine rotterdam shorts // 15

Tiina Lokk PÖFF Festival Director

The Black Nights Film Festival director, Tiina Lokk, is one of Estonia´s most recognizable face in the local culture sector. For over decades she has been playing a pivotal role in the region. Our whole team had the opportunity to sit down with her for a chat to find out the real story behind these Black Nights.

We heard a lot of talk about the Estonian cultural sector these days. And your name was often mentioned.

I just got a phone call to ask me for a statement on the possibility of becoming the new ministry of culture. I am making PÖFF, it’s my main interest right now. There have been speculations, but I was shocked to be called for an interview. It made me think if I want to take this position. It recalled my experience during the past 17 years organizing PÖFF. I knocked on the doors of all the Ministers of Culture, and I remembered all my suffering behind those doors, and in front of the table.. And suddenly you get the proposal to have a seat on the other side of that table. It’s shocking. I don’t even know how to react.

It’s certainly a long way since the starting point...

We started this festival in the middle of the 90’s. It was a period when it was quite a hopeless situation for cinema as a whole. During the soviet time we got the money to manage the cinemas from the USSR, and when we became independent there were no funds in the national budget allocated for this. We went to sleep under one power, in certain conditions, and we woke up in an entirely different situation. Nobody really knew where to pick things up.

Did you start the festival to protest against this status quo?

We didn’t necessarily start it to protest, but to bring

attention to the situation. Up until 3 years ago we had to build temporary cinemas to run the festival. We wanted the audience to raise questions about why the almost 15 cinemas in Tallinn had been closed, leaving us with just 2. The situation was similar in terms of the repertoire.

There used to be only a few films available to the larger public, mainly those produced in the Soviet Union. In the 90s, when everything opened up, we could finally see all the big American movies. We forgot that other countries were also making movies. We wanted to show that the film world was much larger.

As you know, the main conditions to have a successful festival are the audience and the market. We hardly had any of both, or an actual film industry. I remember during the first years I was calling distributors, and after explaining what and where Estonia was, they would usually say “Ah! You’re making film also?!”.

Why did you choose this particular time of the year for the event?

When we had a look at the festival map, it was even more obvious that it was going to be hard to get this running. With a festival somewhere almost every week, it’s hard to start something in.. nowhere. At least this part of the year there was not much happening. There was no money for marketing, so we had to connect the event to something already known. So we decided to do it in November and we started to promote the worse things in Estonia: bad weather, black nights... Since November is the month of the souls, we created this poetic concept that these films are souls walking around, looking for their spectators.

How has your role within the festival changed over the years?

One side was to build up the festival, the event itself, and on the other side was to build up the organization.

The first side was easy for me. I knew very clearly what I am going to do. It was just a question of when I was going to realize my dream. But to build up the organization it was absolutely another case.

The festival has grown quickly, which also created a big responsibility towards the audience, which has also grown incredibly fast. We haven’t been ready for this.

Because there are two things that were never popular in Estonia- and those are cinema and circus.

How did you, then, trigger their need for the film festival?

The honest answer is that I don’t know. A lot was built on intuition. You just have to be in contact with the audi-

ence. For me it was a question of how to keep the balance. In this respect we are at the positive crossroads between art and commercial. We are making a quality event, which has also become a mass event. Estonians are a very cultural nation, but they really didn’t like cinema before. Maybe it is just that we started this at the right time.

Have you also seen numbers raising for cinema tickets in general throughout the year, outside of the festival?

First of all, the number of cinemas themselves have increased. Smaller cities wanting to host screenings of the PÖFF films started fighting for the renovation of their cinemas. But we are still in the beginning- because only in Tallinn, Tartu and Narva there are cinemas equipped for digital projection. So yes, I would say PÖFF has a huge influence on raising cinema ticket sales, but also on developing cinema. Local professionals have the possibility to make a lot of contacts, especially since we increasingly developed our industry event.

How is the festival doing at the moment, especially with the price of the ticket increasing this year?

The ticket price is not so high by comparison with other cultural events and the regular price in cinemas. That being said, the situation is quite difficult because we are still paying our debts caused by the economic crisis.

When the crisis came we were afraid that we will lose our sponsors. That didn’t happen but instead we lost a part of the government support. So now we are putting a lot of effort into preserving our sponsors. But the world is changing and that also has an influence. For example, one of our biggest sponsors used to be Nokia. And where is Nokia right now?

The programme this year is especially strong. But there are some films which many expected to see, but are not here.

Usually we are losing movies when they are in the selling process. Let’s put it like this: if you are renting out an apartment with a person living in it, you are going to get less money. On one hand it is a question of trust in the relationship with the distributors. And then there is the issue of who owns the regional rights. Now it’s funny that producers start fighting, and they go and confront their distributors, because they want to be part of the festival.

interview by Nisimazine Tallinn 2013 team // transcription by Mirona Nicola // photo by Agnieszka Pokrywka // Nisimazine Tallinn // 63

editor: Fernando Vasquez (Portugual), Mirona Nicola (Romania) location director: Merli Antsmaa (Estonia)

location manager: Emilie Toomela (Estonia)

photography editor & tutor: Liis Mehine (Estonia)

writers: Andra Gheorghiu (Romania), Andrei Kartashov (Russia), Andrei Liimets (Estonia), Ewa Wildner (Poland), Matthias Van Hijfte (Belgium), Saulius Kovalskas (Lithuania), Ugne Česnavičiūtė (Lithuania), Vaiva Rykštaitė (Lithuania) photographers: Agnieszka Pokrywka (Poland), Laura Urbonavičiūtė (Lithuania) video: Anastasia Kovalchuk (Ukraine) additional content: Julia de Balle (Spain) and Eftihia Stefanidi (Greece) design and layout: Lucía Ros Serra (Spain)

original layout: Maartje Adlers (The Netherlands)

very special thanks to Tiina Lokk, Javier Puerto, Maris Hellrand, Helmut Jänes, Heidi Koppel and Kuninga Apartments.

Nisimazine Tallinn is the result of a collaboration between NISI MASA and NISI MASA Estonia with the support of EESTI KULTUURKAPITAL, PÖFF and KUNINGA Apartments.

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editor-in-chief: Fernando Vasquez (Portugal)