May 2012
Nisimazine cannes shorts & camera d’or
Camera D’OR Pages 5-6 Pages 7-8
Beasts of the Southern Wild Interview Jury President Carlos Diegues
Critics’ Week Page 11-12 Page 13-14 Pages 15-16 Page 17 Page 18
Quinzaine
Pages 19-20 Pages 21-22 Page 23 Page 24
Aqui y Alla God’s Neighbours Augustine Hors les Murs Sofia’s Last Ambulance Los Salvajes Broken Peddlers Au Galop
A Respectable Family Rengaine Aliyah King of Pigs Room 237 La Sirga
Official Selection Page 25-26 Page 27 Page 28
Interview Adam Leon: Gimme the Loot La Playa DC The Sapphires Trashed Villegas
Festival Shorts Shorts Competition Page 33-34 Page 35-36 Page 37-38 Page 39-40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43-44 Page 45-46
Silent Chef de Meute Gasp Waiting for P.O.Box Mi Santa Mirada Ce Chemin Devant Moi The Chair Night Shift Yardbird Cockaigne Photo impression by Marek Maemets Focus on Cine-Boat
Cinéfondation Page 49-50 Page 51-52 Page 53-54 Page 55-56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61-62
Doroga Na Resen Interview Eduardo Williams: Pude ver un Puma Behind me Olive Trees Riyoushi Les Ravissement Abigail Tambylles Tabăra din răzoare Matteus Terra Los Anfitriones The Ballad of Finn and Yeti Focus on Animated Shorts Photo impression by Chloe Vollmer-Lo
Quinzaine shorts Page 65-66 Page 67-68 Page 69-70 Paes 71-72 Page 73 Page 74 Pages 75-76
The Curse Porcos Raviosos Avec Jeff, à Moto Two Reviews of Rodri Os Vivos Tambem Choram Portret z Pamicie Os Mortos-Vivos Tram Wrong Cops Konigsberg Photo impression by Cecile Janvier
Critics’ Week Shorts Pages 79-80 Pages 81-82 Pages 83-84 Page 85 Page 86 Pages 87-88
Circle Line Un Dimanche Matin It’s Not a Cowboy Movie La Bifle O Duplo Family Dinner Horizon Hazara Yuegas y Cottoras Credits
editorial
As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their cars, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit. – JG Ballard in Super Cannes Cannes is the ultimate cinematic event – a “monastic institution” in Bazin’s words – insofar as it effectively accommodates the eccentricities of art cinema and the universalism of profit in one cumbersome experience. Here, in one of stronghold of the xenophobic nationalist right, the clergy of world cinema gathers to deliberate on the poetic meaning and financial value of cinema. Cannes is to cinema as the Mecca is to Islam, Lourdes to Christianity; a sanctuary of illusions so convincing as to make the world go round. We at NISI MASA keep roaming the periphery of this mass-mediated circus to rescue the delicate cinematic gems big events often cast their shadow upon. Firmly committed to the discovery of new talents, Cannes suffers nonetheless from an acute form of ‘red carpet syndrome’, whereby the attention of a gossip-starved press is all focused on those few square meters of red-carpeted stairs, where men turns into stars and women into erotic capital. In the age of cultural retro-mania and perpetual celebration of past achievements, Nisimazine keeps looking at the present of cinema as its primary source of inspiration. There, where the photographers’ flashes don’t seem to reach, we, for the past seven years, have been discovering the most uncompromising voices of young cinema. For this year edition of our Cannes workshop we have experimented a new modality. In lieu of the daily Nisimazine, resisting the illegitimacy of austerity, we have created the e-book you are holding in your (virtual) hands, which covers all the films of the Camera D’Or and Short Film competitions. Two different groups comprising young journalists and photographers under 30, coming from Turkey, Estonia and, last but not least, France, covered the aforementioned sections voraciously. To a midnight in Paris we prefer a high noon of unexpected grace, we follow the trail of creativity for the one of gold leads to an Eldorado of spiritual misery. Even if uncertainty, inside and outside the cinema industry, seems to be the only certainty we are left with, we look at the films of today firmly convinced that the future remains unwritten. This year winner of the Camera D’Or competition, Beasts of the Southern Wild (camping on our front cover and pages 5-6), confirms our vision by opening a window on the intense humanity that no catastrophe can sweep away, marginal yet essential. When we look away from the red carpet is not out of envy, but is because we know that the lifeblood of cinema is elsewhere, in a rousing place where red stands for desire not fame.
Giovanni Vimercati, Head of Nisimazine
camer d’or
The Caméra d’Or ( Festival for the bes selections (Official Week). The prize, c Festival’s Closing C
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(“Golden Camera”) is an award of the Cannes Film st first feature film presented in one of the Cannes’ l Selection, Director’s Fortnight or International Critic’s created in 1978 by Gilles Jacob, is awarded during the Ceremony by an independent jury.
review
Beasts of The Southern Wild
The first feature by young American Benh Zeitlin is rightfully entitled, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Filmed in the bayous of southern Louisiana, this intense film does in fact showcase a lot of beasts of the wild, including loads of pigs, birds, insects and fishes. This post-Katrina apocalyptic story is a cinematic Noah’s arch taking on board a handful of incorruptible humans who are the inhabitants of a swampy zone called the Bathtub, which borders the delta of the Mississippi. Despite living in abject squalor with homes made of piecemeal nature, rust and mortar, the community is intent in fighting for their lives and the little bit of nothing they call home from an impending storm. Their rejection of the “civilized“ world is further emblazoned by their pride, as these men, women and children wouldn’t live elsewhere for anything. Opening up with an energetic joy and vibrating fanfare, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a voyage of initiation. Reminiscent of the Odyssey, it is both a magical and realistic fable of survival. The relationship between the father, Wink (Dwight Henry) and his six-year-old daughter Hushpuppy (the incredible and
by Benh Zeitlin // USA Winner Camera d’Or magnetic Quvenzhane Wallis) is about passing on how to survive. As narrator, the little girl adds magic to the film; incessantly trying to pierce the great mystery of the heart of the beings she crosses. The story of Beasts of the Southern Wild is also narrated by a greater, more ancient voice; the stuff of legends. Indeed, Benh Zeitlin weaves scenes of melting glaciers and extinct stampeding aurochs into his story, with the assistance of his special effects director Ray Tintori. These scenes, perhaps symbolic of that which looms over and menaces our planet, unfold in the story through what Hushpuppy believes is a chaos that she brought into the world when she struck the chest of her father as he lay dying. Through the acceptance of death and by releasing the maternal phantom inside her, Hushpuppy the child, at long last becomes a warrior. Ready to defend “her” ground alone and tread upon the land with euphoria. A blend of great joy, magic and bitterness, Beasts of the Southern Wild is an epic of hope and love shot out like fireworks lighting up the dark and hardened sky of the past and the future.
Beasts of the Southern Wild can already be named one of the big discoveries of 2012. After winning the Sundance Jury Prize, it was just awarded the Camera d’Or in Cannes, a to say the least remarkable achievement for a first feature. Director Benh Zeitlin spoke about the crews unorthodox approach and adventurous shoot in southern Louisiana, during a panel at the American Pavillion. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a kind of an amazing American story… Where did it start? Behn Zeitlin: Actually, the film creatively began with two movies in-progress at the same time… I had an idea, after my short film Glory at Sea, to make a film about holdouts, people living after the last town when you drive all the way to the Mexican gulf, to find out who was holding on at the very end of the precipice essentially. At the same time, we were working on turning Lucy [Alibar - co-writer]’s play, Juicy and Delicious, into a short film. These stories both dealt with people that were losing the things that made them. One was about a little child who is losing her parents and the other one, about a community losing its land. It seems casting was a very avant-garde process. Each time we found potential actors, we were listening to their personal story before giving them the script. Like this, they became collaborators, not only performers of the lines. We let the cast rewrite the lines with us and bring life to both their characters and the overall story. The best example is Mister Dwight Henry who plays Wink [Hushpuppy’s father]. He’s a local figure, running a bakery. We basically would spend every night with him at bak-
5 // nisimazine cannes 12 // review by emilie padellec // panel transcript by maartje alders // photo by chloe vollmer-lo
ing hours, and while making doughnuts me and him would be discussing his life. Since he had a girl around Hushpuppy’s age, he sort of taught me how to be a father, when your home is imperiled or in a crisis situation… Who helped you? Every person who wanted to help was included, people just kept coming and wanting to be part of it. Our crew treated it as a passion project and a big adventure. It was like one big family. its not like an adventure story shooting on a green screen in the studio. We were actually out there in the open on boats, in the water and in the elements. This is part of what made it exciting to get involved.
To what extend did you keep to your script during the shooting? The way our project was designed was sort of an explosion machine. In preproduction the script was very crafted, but the film is made on location with children and animals and water and a lot of people who don’t have experience, so it sort of throws the original design into a blender and let’s it fly all over the place. Every day things are coming apart; the current is going the wrong way or there are snakes where you intended to plant your tripod. For me, in terms of what you loose in precision, you are going to gain in having these rough edges that feel like they have a lot of blood and sweat and muscle in it. panel was lead by John Cooper director of Sundance Film Festival
interview
And then you finished the film: We finished the film 2 days before Sundance, I don’t really know what happened in between, someone put me on a plane and pushed me on stage. I don’t think any of us had time to think of how people would react to it. We edited the film for 2 years, and these 2 years sucked. When you screen a draft for a bunch of intelligent people and they get back to you saying, this is horrible, that sucks. It wasn’t until all the elements were done that it started to communicate. Sundance was the first time it was speaking to outsiders. And now bringing it overseas is a new thing.
interview interview
Carlos Diegues When Italy had its neo-realism and France, the Nouvelle vague, a new movement arose in Brazil as well: Cinema Novo, that had put the spotlight on a new generation of directors, aiming to put real issues on screen. One of the best known directors from this generation is Carlos Diegues, and now he presides the Caméra d’Or jury in Cannes, awarding the best first feature and taking a closer look at where young folks are driving cinema. You made your first feature in the ’60s, what do you think is different for directors starting out nowadays? Cinema became an art of the young people once again. One of the reasons I accepted to be in the jury is because I have the opportunity to discover the new tendencies all over the world: young filmmakers are the ones making them. When I made my first feature, only 5 or 6 films per year were made in Brazil – now they make around one hundred. I wouldn’t say it’s easier now from the industry point of view, but it’s easier regarding the technology. Everything is going to change in the next few years, and young people are the ones deciding where we are going. Can you tell me more about how the financing system in Brazil supports debut features? One law allows people to deduct film production costs from their taxes. There is also direct funding from the government for young filmmakers, who don’t have the same advantages as the established ones. But most films are produced from the tax shelter fund. One of your main beliefs is that a film has to fit the time it was made in; is that going to be one of the criteria for the Camera d’Or award? I have no nostalgia for the past, I want to make films of the present: I think that’s our duty as filmmakers, to make films about ourselves and our contemporaries, so that’s my main criteria. Even a historical film can speak about the present. What will be your other criteria? First of all, sincerity! It’s very difficult to lie in film because we can see it so easily. Do whatever your heart is telling you to do, but
Camera d’Or Jury President with sincerity. I also appreciate it when films try to surprise the audience, not following the line of whatever was made in the past. You can make comedies, tragedies or dramas, but sincerity and the concern for the present are what make them good. Being a director in a jury, do you think you have any advantages or difficulties? These are first films and I want to be supportive, so I’m very much afraid of doing injustice; when you choose a film you are putting aside all the others. You can say „these are the good ones, these are the bad ones”, but „this is the best” is very difficult. But my colleagues are very good, we discuss every film a lot and go very deeply, I’m very happy with the jury. So young people are the ones setting the new tendencies in cinema. What do you think these tendencies are right now? I’m dying to know! I really think we are at a turning point in cinema, the tendencies are very diverse. There are no genres anymore, every film is a genre in itself, so it’s a great moment to make original films and speak about ourselves. How do you feel about the digitalization of cinema? I can’t say if it’s good or bad, it’s a reality. I don’t miss the optical, you can make a good film in digital as well. I will start working on a new film by the end of the year and I am using digital. It’s easier and my subject can be adapted to that. What do you think about the film schools in Brazil? In my time there were no schools in Brazil, so we used to learn making films by making them. Now they go to school and learn everything, so they save a lot of time! There are many new schools all over the country, and many young filmmakers coming from these schools. There is a very good school in Sao Paolo, maybe the best in South America – USP. Apart from schools, there are many workshops and training programs all over the world nowadays, do you think they can be more useful than schools? I don’t believe there are any rules in learning to make films: of course, it’a technology, you can learn the technology but no one can teach you the talent.
text by andreea dobre // photo by marek mäemets // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 8
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review interview
Aquí y Allá
by Antonio Méndez Esparza Mexico, US, Spain // Critics’ Week // Grand Prix
In 2007, the Mexican population in the US reached 12 million. But between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million of them went back to Mexico, according to data from the two countries. These massive migrations and returns are a huge social phenomenon in Mexico and generate lot of tensions, countless individual tragedies that cannot be ignored. Aquí y Allá deals with this issue. Pedro Hernández Santos plays a character quite similar to himself, though it’s not necessary for the spectator to know what is real and what is fiction. Pedro is back home in Guerrero, after several years working in the United States. Very fond of music, he wishes to create a band and to find his role in his family again. Everything is to be rediscovered, and the many long static shots look like necessary statements. This way, Antonio Méndez Esparza gives time to the spectator – and to Pedro as well - to take his marks and to become familiar with his daily life in Guerrero. A life that is not romanticised in any way. Esparza doesn’t want his aesthetic to burden the story and he sticks to a very natural (though clean and mastered) rendering of light and sound. It doesn’t matter if sometimes the daughters burble a bit too much or if the kitchen’s light is not flattering: it simply feels truthful. The need to escape is always there, in every word, in every character, and it slowly contaminates the viewer’s mind
when things get a bit more tragic. Pedro’s newborn gets very sick, the medicine is awfully difficult to find... It’s hard not to make the comparison with the US where it would be a lot easier to save a child’s life. Antonio Méndez Esparza’s great achievement lies in never making this reasoning explicit. He doesn’t go for melodrama, he just tells the facts in a quasi-objective way and this is why the movie is so powerful and moving; nobody complains, nobody moans, nobody laments the gap with the States. Furthermore, there are no images of the US, we only hear about Pedro’s life there in his tales, or through other people’s expectations and ghosts. The United States may be the most important character of the movie, deeply stamped as a watermark. The ghost of a past life back there makes Pedro a strange character, eternally aside, as if he remained stuck in this non-place that is the border. Like his child that may pass away as soon as he is born, Pedro is struggling to finally belong somewhere. Antonio Méndez Esparza brings a voice to this common tragedy of Mexican workers in a very brilliant, sensitive and clever way that cannot leave you indifferent.
text by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 12
interview
God’s Neighbours (Les Voisins de Dieu)
by Meni Yaesh Israel, France // Critics’ Week Winner SACD Prize Your film deals with a topic that is still very new in Israeli cinema; the depiction of young Jewish extremists. How did you find your story and why did you choose it? I live in the city of Bat Yam where the story takes place, I grew up in this town and what you see on screen are events that happened in my neighborhood. I was there, it‘s a world I know it is not too far from reality. Although cinema turns it into something bigger, of course. Those things also happen in other places in Israel, like Beit Shemesh for instance. I also wanted to show other places than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, exploring new territories that a foreign audience would never know about. I hope that Israeli cinema will explore those new places in the future. Is it an autobiographical film then? In a way yes, the people in the film are people who were my friends, my relatives. When I was young I used to hang out with those kind of guys. Your film can also have a more universal reach, we think about other religious fanatics in other countries in the world… Of course, this work relates to all the religions through a film about my own people. It deals with the issue of fighting in the name of God, which is a wrong view of religion. However, the real focus of the film is faith and the journey that the hero takes to discover what is the real meaning of being a believer. The characters in your film are very ambiguous, they claim to be religious, but at the same time
they smoke weed, they are violent… What is your connection to religion? Do you have a religious background? I feel religious although I do not show it on the outside. I go to the synagogue on Fridays, I put on the phylacteries. Why did you choose to mix different film genre: vigilante films, film noir, comedy, and psychological drama? The film is indeed very radical because I’m skipping from genre to genre. I cannot stay in one place. But in the middle I am focusing on the journey of the hero. It is true that the first movies I saw were action films and I wanted to pay homage to those films.
This is a very low budget film how long did it take to shoot it? The film was shot in two weeks with a budget of around 700 000 euros. This emergency and pressure had it’s good aspects; it added intensity and energy to the film. It gave us power to work very hard and fight against time. And the script demanded it. So at the end of the day it turned out to be a good thing.
In his first feature film, God’s Neighbors, director Meni Yaesh offers an energetic and original take on the journey of a member of a Jewish extremist gang in the city of Bat Yam. The film has received the SACD award at the Cannes film festival, Critic’s week. The first scene of God’s Neighbors pays homage to American action films. In a style reminiscent of the early Quentin Tarantino’s and Guy Richie’s films, we see the main character Avi (Roy Assaf) doing his Shabbat prayer and reading the Thorah, while heavy electronic music is heard from the outside. Avi goes out of the building and asks the young Russian men to stop playing music but they refuse. Avi leaves and comes back with two of his religious buddies and beat the Russians up.
Avi and his two friends are self-proclaimed supervisors (the original title of the film in Hebrew “ Amashgihim”) patrolling their neighborhood with baseball bats punishing transgressions of religious laws. They also make sure that Arabs from the nearby town of Jaffa do not come close to their neighborhood.
review
How did you work with your actors? I have been working with Roy Assaf who plays the main character, Avi, since my early shorts at film school. In this film I mixed professional actors with amateurs. It mattered to me that the film would be the most realistic and authentic as possible. We made some rehearsals before the actual shoot so that they would be prepared to be in characters. I brought them to my neighborhood; let them study the kind of people I wanted them to play. They are themselves coming from similar cities so they already knew that world. Because the shoot was so short, they had to adapt themselves very quickly in every scene.
Avi’s belief is challenged when he meets and fall in love with Miri (Rotem Ziesman-Cohen), a new girl in town. When that happens the film takes a radical turn from the urban and vigilante tale to a more psychological tone, focusing on the main character’s spiritual turmoil, loosing thus its energy and originality. The director himself has confessed that he did not want to be bound by one genre. The mise en scène becomes less risky and more traditional. The ambiguous ending of the film even implies that although Avi has changed and has become more tolerant, Miri herself has become more religious.
text by aurite kouts // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 14
Augustine
by Alice Winocour France // Critics’ Week Special Screening
Your film Augustine focuses on the figure of Professor Charcot, at the time he became famous in the late 19th century for his studies on hysteria and his “Lectures”. What kind of research did you undertake on this historical subject? At the Salpêtrière Hospital, in the Women’s precinct, thousands of patients were submitted to the authority of few doctors. Nearly nude women, abandoned under the gaze of men in three-piece suits… I have read a lot about examinations these sick women received at the Salpêtrière. Au-
gustine, Charcot’s star patient, was the most studied until the day she ran away, disguised as a man. I started to question the hidden stories of this situation. Tell us more particularly about the work with the light, which is extremely outstanding… I worked with the Chief Operator Georges Lechaptois. I was looking for a poetic and wild atmosphere that could reflect the unconscious. Furthermore, our obsession was to avoid historical re-enactment, or an overly classical image.
with the monkey, the first moment for Charcot and Augustine on the borders of freeing their passion. It is a beautifully directed mise en scene where the smallest of details from light to facial expressions come together with the core sensibility and messages of the story. And such is the rest of the film: a delicate, powerful and graceful dance.
review
Augustine is a fantastic debut for French director Alice Winocour and there are many reasons for it. It is not easy to avoid clichés when making a period drama, especially for a female director. Casting a known and experienced actor, Vincent Lindon, alongside the french singer Soko, who although less experienced represents a fantastic choice for the role of hysteria-stricken Augustine, the couple creates a magical duo under Winocours’ direction. The noble and perverse Charcot and the beautiful but strong Augustine make for a story of suppressed sexual tension that grips the viewer from start to finish. The story of Augustine, the favourite patient of Charcot and his key to fame and glory in the medical society, is a story with many sides, there is the personal, the passionate and the social dimensions that come together in the relationship between the two. Using original means of storytelling, Winocour has added some documentary style interviews with Charcot’s patients into the story line. These interruptions are interesting breathers between the episodes of the film, but also serve as an overarching historical back-story to the phenomenon of hysteria and the practices of the historical Charcot. There is a scene in the film that is very powerful: it is the play
How did you work with Soko (Augustine) to depict hysteria? Hysteria is when the very body cries out when words cannot come out. Augustine seems possessed: she is a victim of her own and uncontrollable body. Therefore, instead of asking to Soko to mimic her seizures, we had to make her endure them. During the shooting, her limbs were pulled by ropes which twisted her body in all different directions. Her body became a monster that takes the upper hand.
interview
Vincent Lindon, who is exceptional, plays the role of JeanMartin Charcot. As a young director, how did you experience working with such a grand actor? When I discovered Vincent Lindon in Pater [ed.note: by Alain Cavalier], I was impressed by his authority, by his natural leadership. I knew that he would be credible as a man of power. Besides, he is a very physical actor, with a true inner violence. I did thwart his physical side by imprisoning him in the straitjacket of costumes… Being confronted with the violence of a repressed sexuality was a new experience for him.
review by greta varts // interview by emilie padellec // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 16
Hors les Murs
Sofia’s Last Ambulance
by David Lambert // Belgium, France, Canada by Ilian Metev // Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia
by Alejandro Fadel // Argentina // CW
After having watched debut feature Beyond the Walls (Hors les Murs) directed by Belgian filmmaker David Lambert, you can feel that he is undoubtedly a promising new entry coming from the “flat country”. However, the film deals with a theme we have very often seen on the big screen: love encounters. It is a love story between two men that is depicted as a stunning passion blossoming in Brussels between Ilir (a fantastic Guillaume Gouix), a handsome and self-confident bassist, and Paulo (Matila Malliarakis), a skinny piano player whose sexual orientation is uncertain. Ilir’s first instincts do not fail him: Paulo is an “inbetweener”. If many scenes are extremely funny (especially the one in which the two lovers are looking for a kiwi-flavoured lubricant!), other scenes, more intimate, are delighting thanks to their visual beauty and delicate mise-en-scène. This is the case of an inverted face-to-face (note, head to toe), shot from above. But, most love stories end in tears; Ilir and Paulo’s beautiful days quickly turn dark when Ilir “disappears” due to a stupid cannabis accident. Clearly divided in three parts, Beyond the Walls shifts towards drama as the film progresses. Experienced like a sudden death by Paulo, this forced separation leads Paulo to harden himself; first, through destructive urges, then through oblivion in the arms of another man. When Ilir eventually regains his freedom, the role reversal is striking; obviously still in love, here he is, dominated by Paulo, who has been gentrified and who is now, desire-less. All Ilir is left with is his newly found freedom. Despite a locked storyline and unequal performances, Beyond the Walls is a nice discovery. Better still: it touches your heart.
The amount of allegorical pregnancy Bulgarian director Ilian Metev manages to squeeze into the tight space of an ambulance is definitely worth of praise. Delivered from the stern homologation of soviet communism at the kind hands of democracy, Bulgaria is now facing a new, more liberal nightmare: the methodical destruction of public services. On board of this last ambulance – the ambulances serving the Bulgarian capital are actually 13 – we find a desperately hopeful crew of chain-smoking rescuers. Staring at them from a dashboard-mounted camera for 80 intense minutes, the audience makes the acquaintance of doctor Krassimir (‘Krassi’) Yordanov, pensive driver Plamen Slavkov and paramedic Mila Mikhailova. Despite never filming the face of a single patient, the film succeeds in penetrating the daily lives and struggles of this salvation guerrilla army, coping with the incurable with nothing but its disenchanted determination. While keeping his eyes firm on the inner dynamics of co-workers under the pressure of a collapsing system, the director evokes the outside world the lonely ambulance travels across without ever indulging in neither pedantic nor pitiful tones. Though overwhelmed by the absence of a sustainable infrastructure, Sofia’s Last Ambulance and its melancholic passengers stand out for their sardonic obstinacy, unwilling to give in even in front of the irreparable. As if fighting a lost battle that nonetheless is still worth fighting.
The first feature film by Argentinean director Alejandro Fadel is a film for his cast, as he explained himself in the introduction to his film at the opening screening at Cannes Critic`s Week. It is a story about teenage delinquents escaping from prison to the wilderness and promises to show the viewer the savagery of human hearts. It is a meek and poetic wilderness where “wild” is a symbol for some lost rituals of tribal culture, inaccessible to the viewer and the characters alike. The teenagers have names, but almost no characters or personalities, it is an anonymous crowd that in a way complements the message about a lost humanity, but also makes it very hard to give the viewers any possibilities for identification. The little thoughts they do express are naïve hopes for tomorrow and contemplations reduced to “yes” and “no” answers about whether to kill all humans on their way or not. Long takes of the poetic journey and the often emotionless faces of the teenagers are beautifully executed making this film strangely hypnotic, but not in a meaningful way. The film could be compared to the recent Hollywood blockbuster Hunger games (dir. Gary Ross 2012). The way the stories are told is of course radically different starting from the difference in production modes to the poetic approach. However, there might as well be a cult following of some sort to this meek wilderness of a film.
By Celluloid Liberation Front
by Greta Varts (Estonia)
by Emilie Padellec (France)
Los Salvajes
Broken
Peddlers
Au Galop
by Rufus Norris // UK // CW
by Vasan Bala // India // CW
by Louis-Do De Lencquesaing // France
Broken is the first feature length film by British director Rufus Norris, a former theatre director. Making a brave choice to yet again portray the social reality of the British Isles by gathering its stereotypes in a single neighborhood, Norris somehow succeeds in finding a new and special approach. Based on a novel by Daniel Clay, the story told is one of a lively girl called Skunk. In her early teens she discovers the complicated relationships of adults around her and tackles the new experiences coming her way with an emotional openness and curiosity unparalleled by any of the people around her. It is the story of innocence meeting a harsh reality and the way life throws curveballs from the get-go, making people behave in socially controversial ways, whatever their intentions might be. Shot in a realistic style and yet retaining the eclectic surrealism of one’s childhood memories, the often unbelievable and grotesque occurrences manage to come together into a warm and hopeful drama about the human condition. Bringing together old and new talents such as Tim Roth and Eloise Laurence, the superbly acted and stylishly executed film leaves you with a fresh sense of profound insights. In the words of the director himself: “compassion is not weak, it is what makes us human”.
This Indian first feature is presented as ‘another vision of Mumbai’, and surely besides the alleys, it has the middle class, it has the parties and the drugs, all underscored by a camerawork echoing an (American) indie visual style. The story is kind of patched together with the visuals following in its wake, forming a strange amalgam of intensely striking scenes with a lot of what-the-hell-is-going-ons.
Au Galop is the first feature film of Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, the name of the latter is however not unknown. Theatre director and prolific actor from 1990 till now, Louis-Do Lencquesaing particularly stood out in the beautiful film The Father of my children (2009) by Mia Hansen-Love; a film which offers a cinematic treatment of mourning of great beauty. Mourning is also the topic in Au Galop, an autobiographical fiction in which Louis-Do de Lencquesaing has cast his daughter Alice. Paul, the character played by the filmmaker himself, is a single dad, and charming novelist who finds himself confronted with the brutal death of his father. This is an existential blow: especially since Paul falls madly in love with Ada, an attractive illustrator, a mother herself but almost married. Besides the daughter and lover, another woman comes to spice up the life of this character-narrator: his mother, a haughty aristocrat of German origin and “very intrusive” ... From the outset, Au Galop resembles an emotional arena, at the center of which Louis-Do Lencquesaing revolves, surrounded by his women. Xavier Beauvois, his brother, completes this cast from which a great tender complicity and an invigorating naturalness emanate. More than the plot (touching but relatively conventional and very “French”), it is the staging and the acting that make Au Galop endearing. You laugh, shed a tear or two and can identify (everyone is in search of soulmate). Here and there, Au Galop touches on the irreducible parts of childhood. Finally, if the film flirts with no great interest with the Nouvelle Vague, it’s still nice to see Louis-Do entering through the window – like an Antoine Doinel resurrected for a few seconds ...
by Greta Varts (Estonia)
Ranjit is a hansom shy cop who takes a girl to his room after a party, empties a bottle of vodka down her throat and stages a non-existent sexual escapade before leaving her in the morning, dumbfounded. The source of his increasingly bad behaviour is, quite thinly, an erectile problem that makes it impossible for him to relate to women, especially his fiancée, without feeling wounded to the (masculine) core. Parallel there is the story of Bilkis, a young chemistry teacher with a terminal illness who takes up drug trafficking to provide for her small son, and Mac, a young and slightly lost fellow who develops a profound crush on Bilkis who he shares a room with. The two stories collide when Mac tries to rob a game hall and Ranjit is sent after him, initiating a cat and mouse hunt that will last until the end of the film, crisscrossing social strata and beautiful scenery. The acting is sound, but an underdeveloped script makes for too much helterskeltering for the story to really latch on. Mac’s lost youth character is the most believable in contrast to a ‘Breaking Bad Bilkis’ and a Ranjit whose problem is not convincing enough to motivate his extreme violence. Nonetheless, the strong scenes hit their target and when finding the right balance, Bala will give birth to a gem in the coming years.
by Emilie Padellec (France)
by Maartje Alders (Netherlands)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 18
Yek khanévadéh-e Mohtaram (A respectable family)
By Massoud Bakhshi Iran // Quinzaine
How did your film come about? I first had an abstract image in my mind of a woman in a bathroom crying. Apart from this image that has persistently haunted me, I was also highly influenced by my childhood memories of the war that Iraq, backed by the US, imposed on Iran. Then I got to know about the Torino Film Lab and was lucky enough to be selected and to develop the whole project through them, that’s how I met my French producer.
Did the fact of working with foreign producers and institutions influence the content of your film? No I don’t think so, on the contrary, to work with people with different background, coming from different countries helped me a lot when working on the script. To discuss my story, with its own cultural specificities, with different people was an enriching process insofar as multiple perspectives converged in the improvement of my work.
What divided this family is in fact the universal rule of money, whereby human relations are to be sacrificed on the altar of profit, which obviously does not exclusively apply to war-torn Iran too. Bakhshi’s film ends up mirroring the familial fracture it describes, on the one had an enticingly crafted story of secrets and betrayals, on the other, an historical drama aimlessly looking for contextual relevance.
How did the Iraq-Iran war change Iranian society? Every war has profound repercussions not only on the nation but also on the individuals. The IraqIran war came at a peculiar time, right after the revolution when the western world sided with Saddam Hussein; it was obviously related to oil. Iran and Iraq were in fact the major producers of oil at the time in the region. So to have that war in my film is also of use for European audiences that know very little about it, but I also think that Iranian people don’t talk enough about it either.
interview
Do you think there are preconceptions and prejudices towards Iranian cinema in the eyes of western audiences? Of course there are, and it’s really a pity. Our thoughts are manipulated daily by the media, it is really unfortunate because it prevents us from having an authentic picture of the country and its culture. I think it is only through the arts and culture that you can get to know other countries and different cultures. As a matter of fact cinema too, which after all is also a media, can feed prejudices and misconceptions.
The latter, generously supported by a democratic western world on Saddam Hussein’s side, never seems to find its rightful place in a film that clearly revolves around it. The familial story of greed and corruption (of men) clashing with the immaculate kindness (of women and the western-educated son) is convincingly told while struggling to meaningfully connect with its wider historical context.
review
There are enough elements in Massoud Bakhshi’s debut feature to satisfy fans of Iranian cinema eager to see their expectations confirmed on the big screen. A college professor returns to Iran after 22 years spent in Paris where aside the proverbial Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité he has also learnt how to dress like a western intellectual. A punchy opening sequence secures the spectators’ attention that for the first half of the movie tends to falter due to an initially enigmatic plot. Our man boards a taxi in Tehran only to be dragged out of it and be savagely beaten by what cunning European audiences knows are probably representatives of the Iranian authorities. We later discover that the exiled professor is having problems obtaining his passport back after having taught controversial history lessons in the city of Shiraz. It is a pity that the film itself does not deliver an equally challenging version of the facts that have shaped Iranian society after the 1979 revolution overthrew the medieval rule of the Shia and upset his criminal allies. Skilfully mixing social commentary with a thriller-like narrative, Bakhshi ambitiously, yet not always successfully, tells the story of a fractured family traversed by the tumultuous backdrop of the Iran-Iraq war.
text by giovanni vimercati // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 20
interview
review
Rengaine
(Hold Back)
By Rachid Djaïdani France // Quinzaine The first fictional feature film directed by Rachid Djaïdani, Hold Back, comes after several documentary films made by Djaïdani since 2006 . Previously, Rachid Djaïdani seems to have lived several lives, being amongst other things a novelist and a champion boxer… It is no coincidence therefore if Hold Back looks like a tense ring in whose strings a febrile camera keeps waving like a raging fist. Besides, one of the scenes takes us for real in the boxing ring, since one of Slimane’s brothers (the main character of the film) is a boxer. Keeping pace at all costs and listening to his own inner music: this is what this boxer needs to learn. That is also Rachid Djaïdani’s profession of faith. Accordingly, the whole film emerges driven by an urgency that echoes the fever contaminating the characters themselves... Upon hearing the rumour of the wedding of his only sister, Slimane, the older brother, sets out on a crusade against the unacceptable: how are his 39 brothers and himself going to accept the fact that Sabrina, Muslim and Maghrebin, wants to marry Dorcy, an aspiring actor, black and Christian? It’s unthinkable. Sabrina embodies in their eyes dis-
respect; she is “the laughingstock of the family”. On Dorcy’s side, the situation is not brighter; his sweet “mama” will only accept a black African daughter-inlaw, not a “white beur”. When it comes to themes such as diversity, fraternity, racism amongst urban communities and gender equality, Rachid Djaïdani does not beat around the bush. Multi-ethnic France (named in the 90s “Black Blanc Beur”) is nothing but an empty shell. If the charge laid by Hold Back goes in circles, the film seduces us when it tackles the taboo topic of the rejection of homosexuals in the Maghrebin communities of France. Despite its many flaws (an epileptic hand-held camera; a cruel lack of light; abusive extreme close-ups; its amateurish subplots), Hold Back definitely stands out, reminding us of the ensemble film Donoma (Cannes 2010). In turn, Rachid Djaïdani joins in the guerrilla.
text by emilie padellec // nisimazine cannes 2012// 22
Aliyah
The King of Pigs
by Elie Wajeman // France // Quinzaine
by Sang-ho Yeon // South-Korea // Quinzaine
At the centre of Aliyah we find Alex (Pio Marmai), a French Jewish Parisian who lives off drug dealing. He is estranged from his father and has a tensed relationship with his older brother Isaac played by French director, Cédric Kahn who harasses him, begging him to pay his debts and helping sorting out his sentimental problems.When his cousin announces he is going to open a restaurant in Tel Aviv, Alex thinks that he has finally found the opportunity to change his life and leave all his troubles behind.
This South Korean animated drama by Yeun Sang-ho is a very heavy-handed film and can be seen easily as emotional manipulation. It tells the dramatic story of three close friends and it’s told through flashbacks. Till the story reaches its huge emotional climax, it tries to deal with class difference in South Korean society. However, this kind of social conflict in the core of the narrative becomes just something unimportant when a very complex dramatic structure is created in the foreground. Three friends are coming from different social classes and backgrounds and all of them have common problems with their families, with school and schoolmates around them. We see lots of daddy issues, mommy issues with Freudian undertones. But the characters and sub-stories have really sharp edges and there are no grey areas in the story. Furthermore, because of these two-dimensional characters
Aliyah, the ascent in Hebrew, is the immigration of Jews to Israel. Paradoxically, Alex’s motivation to do his aliyah is not due to spiritual reasons but only because Alex wants to start all over again. This premise constitutes both a strength and a major weakness of the film. Indeed when the film starts, an obvious suspense draws out from the question, of whether Alex will manage to get to his final destination and some scenes show the humoristic aspects of
preparing one’s alyah; for instance Alex has to find a certificate that proves that he is Jewish. However, all those powerful ideas are quickly spoiled because of a very unclear and lazy screenplay, as if Wajeman like his hero, was getting lost in his way. First, Alex’s issues in Paris are not that tragic. His brother attitude towards him is never explained. When Alex meets a young woman, Jeanne, who falls in love with him, his motivation to leave for Israel becomes even more unclear specially when she confronts him at a restaurant confessing that she loves him because of his “existential problems». Alex’s quest like the film has no resolution. by Aurite Kouts (France)
and lack of character motivations the screenplay closely resembles an ordinary episode of a soap opera. Lots of crying, screaming and blood can’t make the audience really feel the pain and drama going on the screen. In contrast, it creates a huge distance between the viewer and the characters and the story loses its credibility. In the end it creates a film that tries to dictate its story by using over the top storytelling methods and that’s the most dangerous way of setting the tone in this kind of emotional extravagance with “social tendencies”. by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
Room 237
La Sirga
by Rodney Ascher // USA // Quinzaine
by William Vega // Colombia // Quinzaine
Part of the Quinzaine program and up for the Camera d’Or award, Rodney Ascher brings us a subjective documentary about the cult classic Shining by Stanley Kubrick. Exploring the role of the film from five different viewer perspectives, it both celebrates the film as a classic and mocks the phenomenon of cult following at the same time. Using mainly clips from the Shining and other Kubrick films, the style of the documentary is that of a collage, creating meaning from juxtaposing images to images and images to voice overs. The five people giving us their views on the film’s ‘true’ meaning and underlying messages delivered by Kubrick are wildly different from one another and border on insanity. A relatively simple horror film of demonic possession and murderous doubles, Shining is given a number of alternative explanations. One fan thinks it is a story about the native Americans, another that it is all about the holocaust and Nazi regime, yet another one that Kubrick is part of the American conspiracies and that the
La Sirga, first feature by William Vega, is a film that seems to come from the back of the beyond. As a matter of fact, the main character Alice, a young woman in her early twenties, crosses afoot majestic, desert and windy landscapes made of mist, hills and luxuriant vegetation during the elongated exposition scene, imposing a thumping, and in my opinion enthralling, rhythm to the audience. Only a stain of colour in the fog - as she wears a red jumper, Alice eventually arrives to a wooden house named La Sirga set on the shores of an immense lake. There, she is reluctantly welcomed by her uncle Oscar, who grumpily mutters that she can stay for a couple of days. With her very long black hair and American Indian features, Alice is a farther relative to the character of Fausta in Golden Bear winner La Teta Asustada. Both women - if one Peruvian and the other Columbian - flee from armed conflicts that rage in their countries and suffer in the aftermaths of war. The exact
Shining is his therapeutic way of telling that he was the one who staged the Apollo mission to the moon and so on. It is an interesting reminder of how far our fantasy can take us and how subjective viewers are when positing messages and missions on films and their directors. Poor Kubrick becomes like a devilish and god-like creator all in one person if we were to trust all of these views. It is interesting to see these opinions bordering on crazyness, but the film is far too long. The viewer pretty much gets the idea of the film in the first 20 minutes and not much changes in the next hour. Nevertheless, it is a good warning for the critics and viewers who are in danger of becoming obsessed over films. Next time you watch a film for the millionth time and notice a plastic bag in the corner and start thinking what cosmic meaning it might have had for the director, you might want to check with a psychiatrist first. by Greta Varts (Estonia)
nature of the violence will never be clearly explained in La Sirga; only we learn that “La Siberia” – Alice’s family house, or maybe village? – was burnt. Later on we will catch a brief glimpse of shotguns hidden in the bottom of a rowboat and Oscar’s son will complain at the vague desires of collectivization in the neighbourhood, but that will be it. The strength of Vega’s feature resides in its exploration of the characters’ intimacies, and its precise description of different processes of resilience. A little big film, La Sirga’s beauty lies in the exposition of small details, the very same ones from which Alice is capable to draw strength and hope in order to build a new life. by Matthieu Darras (France)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 24
interview
Gimme the Loot
by Adam Leon // USA // UCR
After the short Killer (2009), Adam Leon premiered his first feature Gimme the Loot in Un certain regard, where it got a very warm reception. The film tells the story of Malcom and Sophia, two young grafitti artist from Brooklyn, as they bomb their way through the city, raising money for their next hit. There is a sense of freshness throughout the film, together with the tension that comes so naturally from the boy and girl frienship, all in a story that stays off the beaten track and leaves you smiling.
interview
There is a feeling of nostalgia for teenage years in the film, but the story is very actual and universal; how did you work on that? Adam: I wanted it to be about this very specific place and time in New York, but also a little throwback to the ’80s and ’90s, which is when I grew up. We wanted to capture the now of the characters and reflect on what growing up in the city was like and that sort of energy. The dialogues are amazing, and they reminded me a bit of Richard Linklater. Was he one of the influences? Adam: I respect Linklater very much and yes, he is one of the people I look up to a lot. Woody Allen and Robert Altman as well. These three people have something in common: it’s ok for your characters to hang out and be natural, but with a sense that there is a story being told. Tyler: It felt very improvised but it wasn’t. By the time we got on set, we’ve already done the scenes hundreds of times. Tell me more on how you met and worked together... T: I met Adam 5 years ago and I was in his short Killer, his casting agent picked me up from the street. It fell from the sky and that was great. Adam believed in me and wanted to write a feature for me, so we were preparing for the past 2 years. He wanted me to feel comfortable so I had a large role in decision making. We auditioned about 500 girls for Sophia and at one point we thought we wouldn’t make the film at all because we didn’t have the girl, but it happened miraculously: Tashi Washington is an actress and
a singer from Universal. She will release a single very soon. A: I really love how film is a collaborative art. I create the characters in my head, then find someone to embody what I wrote but also bring so much more to it. We rehearsed a lot, because we knew that on set we have to be prepared for everything to go wrong. It was a low budget film, but I feel like this film should be made with this budget, it would be actually worse if we had 5 or 6 million dollars. Tyler, were you familiar with grafitti culture before the film, or did you prepare for it? T: I also draw, and when I worked on Killer I met a lot of grafitti artists, hung out and went bombin’ a little bit with them. Tashi didn’t have any experience at all, so she had a bigger challenge and pulled it off better than me. Adam, at one point I got the feeling that you were going to speak about racism and class differences, but you didn’t go that way. Did you think about these issues when developing the story? Of course, the main characters are African-American, and this is a major part of who they are, but this is is not a „black film”. We just wanted to stay true to who these characters are as people first, rather than as social ideas. How did you choose the music? A: People would expect hip hop, but most of the music is ’50s and ’60s gospel. I love that music and it tells the audience „it’s a story and an adventure, not some sort of fake documentary” and „this is gonna be fun”. We were trying to make a film that was sweet and cool and fun. Where does the title come from? A: „Gimme the loot” is a sort of a heist term from hip hop, and also the title of a song from Notorious B.I.G. I really like it, it’s active and it captures some of the spirit of the film. It’s not a traditional heist movie but we played with that a little bit. A very attractive girl once told me that both girls and guys like heist films, so I tried to embrace that idea a little bit, to get the dudes and the pretty chicks as well!
text by andreea dobre // photo by marek mäemets // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 26
La Playa DC
by Juan Andrés Arango // Colombia // UCR Colombian director Juan Andrés Arango’s first feature film turns its camera to the city of Bogota, which is in the process of changing its face due to the mass migration of Afro-Colombians from the Pacific coast. The story follows Tomás, a young Afro-Colombian who lives with his mother and brother. His mother pushes him to find a job and bring money home. In the meantime he has to deal with the problems of his drug addict younger brother. His rebellion towards life as a teenager leads him away from home and he starts to live on his own, working as an apprentice at a barbershop while trying to cope with life. But the problems in his family don’t leave him alone and all of these struggles make him act like an adult when he is still a teenager. The film may be seen as a coming of age story but it also reveals a window on a big city’s dark and unknown neighbourhoods. In this white-dominated city the invisible boundaries just imprison these Afro-Colombian people to their
district. The most important cultural code of Afro-Colombians in the film is the hairstyles of the young people. As Tomás starts to work at a barbershop, he realizes that the way the guys get their hair cut is just a way of expressing themselves. Tomás gets into designing different haircuts and for the director it becomes a useful tool to describe his characters visually. In the end, La Playa is an honest portrayal of an unknown part of a big city like Bogota but it lacks the cinematic power to grab the audience. That’s why it can be seen as an important effort in terms of subject matter but unfortunately it will not be a film to be remembered. by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
The Sapphires
by Wayne Blair // Australia // Out of Competition
Justly screened out of the competition, The Sapphires is not exactly the kind of film you’d expect in Cannes – more like on Hallmark channel: think Dreamgirls meets Good Morning, Vietnam! However, Waine Blair’s film is a touching dramedy that leaves you wrapped up in a warm sweet feeling, and probably one of the box office superstars of the near future. The Sapphires aims to touch racial tensions from 1960s Australia, and starts off by giving a few historical data about native Aboriginal children who are taken away from their families to be taught ”the white ways”. But forget about it – this film’s main mission is to offer extremely well made crowd-pleasing entertainment, as three young girls from a reservation and their estranged ”white” cousin sing their way to stardom, through racist tensions and nasty comments. Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy
and Shari Sebbens make up an excellent cast as the talented and emotion-loaded women, and their fiery performances are supported by a script that perfectly balances the drama and the humour. The Sapphires is a film that wears its heart on its sleeve – no heavy metaphors or food for thought, just a slice of what cinema once used to be: a show for the masses, with music, dance, fancy dresses and a happy ending. And judging from the prolongued standing ovation it got in the glitz and glam centre of cinematic intellectualism, my guess is that anybody needs a bit of that from time to time. By Andreea Dobre (Romania)
Trashed
by Candida Brady // US // Out of Competition
Trashed, the first film by Cidada Burray is a documentary about how we kill mother earth by producing unnatural toxic waste. In recent years at many festivals around the world, “green” documentaries are grabbing so much attention that it became a kind of new trend in documentary filmmaking. Especially after the commercial success of An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the subject matter became one of the most popular ones in documentary filmmaking. Trashed can be seen as a part of this series of environmentally friendly docs. The film starts in Lebanon at a huge waste disposal site and travels around the world to show us how these sites produce loads of toxic materials which are absorbed by the soil. As part of the food chain what we produce gets in our bodies and it causes mortal damages, including cancer. The film is basically an informative documentary narrated by Jeremy Irons. In some scenes, he gets in front of the camera and observes the damages caused
by waste disposal sites. But this kind of old school narration style hurts the film itself. Because it is obvious that Irons “really” acts in some scenes, he even cries a little bit in one. Also, the over the top Vangelis score is used to emphasize the importance of the subject matter, but it becomes something manipulative. In narrative terms, the film is stuck with repetition of the same scientific facts and can’t build up any anticipation as the story evolves. That’s why the film loses its sincerity trying to be this environmentally friendly important documentary not any better nor different from your average Discovery Channel TV programme. by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
Villegas
by Gonzalo Tobal // Argentina // Out of Competition
Villegas is the first film by the winner of the 2007 edition of the Cinefondation completion, Gonzalo Tobal. The film tells the three days journey of two cousins in their thirties from Buenos Aires back to their hometown, Villegas, for their grand-father’s funerals. In Villegas, Gonzalo Tobal offers his own interpretation of a classical film genre, the road movie, which was already at the centre of his last short, Ahora todos parecen contentos. Esteban and Pipa, once very close in their childhood, have followed different paths. The serious Esteban (Esteban Lamothe) has an office job and is about to get married whereas the laidback Pipa (Esteban Bigliardi) is a musician who has a complicated love life; their opposition drives some of the very few comical moments of the film. Esteban Bigliardi, has already played a similar character in Un mundo misterioso by Rodrigo Moreno. Indeed, both films deal with the same topic:
thirty-year-old Argentinean males trying to make sense of their life. Villegas offers a melancholic tale about two young men who have to deal with their lost childhood and the difficulty of growing up. Unfortunately despite very small incidents, not much happens during the road trip and the story line could have easily fit on a twenty minutes short. Nevertheless an important work has been made in terms of cinematography and music. The Argentinean countryside is filmed as to reflect the strangeness and sadness that both characters go through. The soundtrack by Argentinean rock singer Nacho Rodriguez Bagueira has an important role in the film and frames the connection between Esteban and Pipa whose only common point in life is the love of music. by Aurite Kouts (France)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 28
festival shorts photos by Chloe Vollmer-Lo (France)
shorts competition
interview
review
Sessiz-be deng (Silent)
by L.Rezan Yesilbas Turkey // Short Film Competition // Golden Palm
Silent by Rezan Yeşilbaş won the Golden Palm in the Short Film Competition. The film is set in 1984, which is the year Kurdish prisoners started to be released after their 4 year of imprisonment in Diyarbekir jail. Those are the years Kurdish people were not allowed to speak their own language as they were forced to learn Turkish, behave as Turkish. Silent tells a simple yet powerful story about Kurdish people who are excluded from Turkey and are convicted to live in their country without being able to speak their own language. In this silent era, film focuses on the silence of a Kurdish woman and the film describes one of her days. The narrative tries to be the voice of the voiceless and literalizes the metaphor by putting the silence of a woman at the core of its dramatic structure. This Kurdish woman lives with her two children and that day she goes to visit her husband who is imprisoned in
the infamous Diyarbekir penitentiary in south-eastern Turkey. Her aim is to give a new pair of shoes to her husband and this creates the main dramatic conflict in the story. Because she’s not allowed to bring anything inside the prison, she wears the shoes and secretly passes them on to her husband under the table. Even though the husband is physically in prison, as it is told in the film his conviction is no different than his family’s life outside. Because neither he nor his wife and children are allowed to speak in Kurdish language and that triggers the tragic silence.
text by ali deniz Şensöz // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 34
Chef De Meute
by Chloé Robichaud Canada // Short Film Competition
Herd Leader is a fiercely funny film, which however deals with serious topics like death, loneliness and self-accomplishment. How did the project start? To tell you the truth, the dog of the film, Jackie, is my dog! When he entered in my life, I had to follow the same process Clara follows. I had to learn how to dominate my dog, so that he would respect me. I said to myself that a fiction could really be made from that material. Besides, my intention was to mix drama and comedy. Mixing these two genres is never easy: you need to find the right dose. Looking at your filmography, I could notice that you seem already keen on your actresses (Ève Duranceau, Sophie Desmarais…) and you seem attracted by female topics. Is it conscious?
transcends an emotional connection and the relationship helps Clara to build her self esteem. The emotional relationship changes into a basic power relationship between them. The pet becomes subservient and Clara becomes the ruler.
review
Canadian entry of this year’s Official Short Film Competition Chef de Meute by Chloé Robichaud was one of the highlights in the selection. The film starts with a dialoguedriven scene where the main character Clara is having dinner with her family. She is seen as a tragically lonely girl in the eyes of her family and she tries to persuade them she’s happy with her life. While the discussion goes on about her, this ordinary family dinner ends with a tragic accident. Clara’s aunt chokes to death while eating. After the accident, Clara starts to take care of her aunt’s dog and this becomes the first step of a very unlikely relationship. The pet becomes the best pal of Clara but another tragic accident drives them apart.
In the end, Chef de Meute initially seems like a short film based on a gimmick, but with the method the director adopts this simple gimmick makes her film an expressionist depiction of a very basic human instinct.
I think that for a certain period of time, having female characters was not a conscious choice. Then, I realized that I wanted to pass on feminine voices. Right now in Quebec, male filmmakers are at the front of the stage and the few films made by women are a bit pessimistic. So I wanted to take the opposite approach! As far as my loyalty is concerned, over time, my actresses and I have forged strong links. More generally, that’s true that I’m young but I’m already used to work with the same crew. I feel like we can grow up and build something together.
You’ve been co-producing Herd Leader with La Boîte à Fanny via your own company: Les Films de la Meute. Is this a strategy to be freer? Yes, but not only. Of course, I wanted to be independent, but it was also a way to help other filmmakers. To tell you the truth, Herd Leader is a self-funded film because there are lots of young filmmakers who submit grant files for their short films and at the end, only 3/100 are supported! So, if you don’t want to wait 15 years, you need to take matters in your own hands!
interview
This absurd tale about a lonely girl puts forward the director’s theatrical vision in filmmaking. The way the scenes were shot from a direct angle and the use of cheesy lighting create a mise-en-scenes which looks like they were set on a theater stage. The iconography sets the tone of the film and this kind of easiness in the setting pushes the simple but strong subtext to the foreground. The relationship between Clara and her dog
review by ali deniz Şensöz // text by emilie padellec // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 36
Gasp
by Eicke Bettinga Germany // Short Film Competition
Is short film only a provisional period for you until you get to do your first feature film? No, not at all. I love short films. It is a great artistic feature with its own artistic needs and devices and incredibly challenging because of that. But it is true that the next step for me personally would be a longer film where I can go into details and develop the characters a little bit more. Then tell us about the main character inl. Do we have to know why the boy can’t feel? No, I didn’t want to do a stringent story whatsoever. And again, that’s the good thing about short films – I didn’t have to give a reason. I was able to play around with the main idea of not being able to feel and how I would like to make that visible to the spectator.
where we are going. There is a cut, practically a black gap dividing the film almost like a classical opera to keep us from solving the mystery when we were just about to.
review
A boy puts a red plastic bag on his head, makes a knot at the two ends of the handles around his neck. Then he waits; and breathes. He sucks in the air faster and faster, the layers of plastic make a sizzling noise before he goes down, down on to the ground of the white bathroom floor. This is the opening scene of Eicke Bettinga’s short film called Gasp. Gasp, like the English word for breathing, or trying to breathe. To suck something in, to give the outer world the power to affect you. That is exactly what the protagonist of the movie hopes to do. He just wants to feel something, anything. This attempt becomes already very clear in the first scene when he intentionally faints in his parents’ bathroom. But it becomes even more apparent in the following scene when his hands are sliding along the bark of a huge tree with classical, pure music underlining the minimalistic atmosphere. It also becomes evident to notice during the first encounter of the two boys in the middle of this forest. When they glance at each other, when they wander around, when one of them sacrifices himself for the other in the end.
And we begin to realize that those shouldn’t be the questions to ask when it comes to Bettinga’s movie. He prefers to play with symbols, leitmotivs, ideas, and symptoms. He touches on the big, abstract themes of solidarity, of human connection, of isolation, numbness and sacrifice. We are wandering through that mystic forest which looks like a sinister version of German Romanticism; we are longing for a feeling, for a kick, for relief. And Bettinga gives it to us, to the boy. His short film is not one which leaves the audience in the dark, wondering. He is not afraid of the resolution and the end of a movie. The story comes full circle; he leaves the stage with a loud bang,
Eicke Bettinga doesn’t give any explanation neither for the boy’s state of mind nor for his relation to the anonymous guy who just appears in the midst of the forest. He doesn’t give any clue about where we are, why we are there and
So what about the relation between the protagonist and the other boy he meets in the heart of the forest. What is that all about?
Well, again I didn’t want to make a clear statement really, there is room for interpretation. But the most important thing is that it gave a clear ending to the story. I didn’t want just to leave it hanging there but go the full circle. So it ends with destruction and relief at the same time.
interview
“Not being able to feel” – how did you come across that subject? It touches upon a strange trend among young people, called the “Fainting Game”. That’s where I at least got the inspiration for the first scene with the plastic bag. I consider that a very peculiar means to achieve strong feelings. However, the film is not supposed to be a social critique at all.
text by fraziska knupper // photo by cecile janvier // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 38
Falastein, Sandouk Al Intezar Lil Burtuqal (Waiting for P.O.Box)
by Bassam Chekhes Syria // Short Film Competition
Your film deals with the problems of filmmaking. Do you speak from your own experience? Yes, of course I do. I also had to face the exact problems the characters are dealing with in my movie. However, I think they are pretty universal issues affecting every filmmaker on the planet. Where did you shoot the movie? That was at a place at the border between Jordan and Palestine. I usually check out every location in advance, take pictures and then decide if it’s suitable for the film. And is the geographical setting important for the story? Did it have to be in the Arab world?
In the course of dream sequences Chekhes tells the story of the two artists trying to make their vision work. There are flutes and oranges, breathtaking sunrises, philosophical questions uttered without a response. The spectator wanders through their dreams, finds himself in strange places, confronted with surrealist images. Those images sometimes do not seem connected but remain single impressions the characters have while thinking about the film. At first, there seems to be no visible direction in which the film wants to move. But through recurrent images and leitmotivs the spectator is slowly led from one setting to the next and begins to accept the disorder of the characters’ dreams.
No, it wasn’t about anything in the Arab world. Most of the time I find it rather annoying being a filmmaker from an Arab country and shooting in Arab countries. People always expect you to cover certain subjects. It really was only the landscape that fascinated me there. So, is nature reflecting what is actually happening in the film? Well, in a way yes. There is definitely a deep relation and connection to nature. For example when one of the characters manages to finally get a hold of his mother to receive an answer to his question, the sky in the
review
Furthermore, the director’s love for nature and landscape becomes evident: high mountains and long-stretched valleys, overhanging orange trees and dusty trails along the crests. It becomes impossible not to be stunned in the face of that use of light, of vast sphere and composition. The different locations are connected by the characters that have the chance to visit them. They stand on a mountaintop playing the flute, they sit under a tree eating oranges, they wander on along a path talking about the meaning of why the hell they should actually make that movie. Those two characters are strolling on the border between being tragic, comic or ridiculous. One of them wears a sort of a uniform and a strange hat while the other one desperately tries to get hold of his mother to ask her about the meaning of life. He spends half the movie trying to get cellphone reception by wandering deeper and deeper into nature. Both of them do not seem to be on top of the game, they are overwhelmed by the vast possibilities of creating a film and the multiple risks of failing while doing it.
back opens up. A very convenient coincidence by the way, it is one of those perfect moments of the film.
interview
The two young filmmakers, Mustafa and Ayoub, have to face many of the problems every filmmaker has to go through during the career: low budget, diverging ideas, and insufficient funds. Director Bassam Chekhes wanted to depict them all. His characters have to survive all the nightmares of a filmmaker; they are uncertain, they are ambitious, they change their ideas and approaches every five minutes.
text by fraziska knupper // photo by cecile janvier // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 40
Mi Santa Mirada
Ce Chemin Devant Moi
The Chair
This short film by Alvaro Aponte-Centeno in the Shorts Competition tells a revenge story set in the backstreets of Puerto Rico. Samy is a drug dealer who tries to take care of his brother and his beloved horse. When he decides to betray his boss Papo, he finds himself in the middle of a revenge duel. This heavely stylized film tells a very familiar story for moviegoers; Latin American films which focuses on street violence and social issues have common points in their narratives: gangs, victims, drugs, guns, etc. Mi Santa Mirada gives the audience this familiar setting in the first scene but what the director tries to do here is to put the narrative in the background and focuses instead on the style that the story demands. Because this is a film that only speaks with its camera, colors and sound design. The film focuses more on how the story is told rather than on its narrative decoration, thus bringing on the forefront a new outlook on the subject matter, that of a sensual eye. The director uses tracking shots to create a dimensional sense of space of the Puerto Rican suburbs. The way he uses different rhytms in filmic narration and editing conjures up a fragmented narrative, that becomes something reflective of the mindset of his characters and their life in the suburbs. There is no law in this town and anything can happen to anyone, at anytime. This kind of ambiguity in regard to the characters’ fate doesn’t allow director to tell his story in a linear fashion but in a way that captures his characters’ dreams, anxiety and fear of death through the elements of film language
Two brothers, solidarity and struggle to survive. A dark night, a worried mother, burning cars. With only a few scenes director Hamé throws us into the jungle of the Parisian banlieues. Heavily armed cops are chasing gangs of young men in the streets; teenagers are questioned and arrested.
A narrator tells the story of a mysterious outbreak of a toxic mold in a small village in a dark, southern American accent. When forming the words, every syllable just seems to hang in there, wavering, and it only slowly fades away after every sentence. He seems to choose every expression very carefully as if he was reading a slightly gloomy bedtime story.
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
by Alvaro Aponte-Centeno // Puerto Rico
by Mohamed Bourokba // Algeria
It is the story of a family at the margins of France’s capital. With numerous close-ups and frequent soliloquies the director Mohamed Bourokba aka Hamé offers the audience a close and authentic impression of what living in those areas is like. He makes us jump in there, he makes us run, climb up the fire escape stairs; he makes us pant and hide. It is this proximity that makes the action believable. And the order of events, the change between speed and calamity creates suspension and tension. The spectator can’t wait to find out whether the two bothers will survive the night without getting caught, without getting beaten up, without losing each other. Hamé has always been concerned with the problems of the famous Parisian suburbs. His music, his films and his articles always depict and voice the problems of police corruption and violence as well as the youth revolting against the oppressing forces of the state. Once again, he focuses on those exact issues, on Paris’s ‘other side’; a rather depressing side and a side where struggle and pain seem inevitable and not even brotherly solidarity can prevent pain and suffering.
by Grainger David // US
Thus creating this calm and steady atmosphere, the voice leads the audience through the series of events. It belongs to a small boy who has to watch sudden destruction hitting his hometown and his own family. From his point of view we experience a strange and inexplicable world; a world consisting of warm colors, slow movements, numerous myths. It is the chair then which becomes the symbol for superstition and for fear; it is the origin of destruction as the boy’s mother died in it. Fear and mystery remained in the textile. Neither the town’s preachers nor scientists can solve its mortal mystery. There is only one solution: burning the chair, burning the disease’s root, burning the symbol of his mother’s death. The director David Granger introduces the audience to a secret, to a curse that seems to strangle and wipe out a whole community. His story resembles a folk tale, a legend passed on from generation to generation up to the small boy. Accompanied by piano tunes, recurring images, situations and frequent close-ups the spectator becomes an intimate witness of this inexplicable, apocalyptic series of events. by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
Night Shift
Yardbird
Cockaigne
Zia Mandviwall’s entry in the Short Film Competition this year tells an effective story about a woman who works as a staff member at an airport. The film follows its character every second of her working life and manages to create a great sense of mystery about her. Unanswered phone calls, little lies told to customers, stealing food leftovers from fast food corners in the airport give some clues about a huge conflict going on in her life but the director doesn’t want to tell the audience the reason behind these actions till the very end. Doing so the director keeps the attention of the viewer alive and an “unimportant” person’s life becomes the most important thing for everyone who’s watching the film. The film takes us in the locker rooms of staff members or in the boss’s room as we see how they have been treated behind closed doors. As it is understood at the end of the film it is a story of a lonely woman who tries to survive in a car with her two children. The dramatic climax of the film may seem a little bit lame and kind of a let down but when the great mystery just comes out, this very “ordinary” and simple ending strengthens the feeling that the director wants to give the audience about this woman’s life. Behind the great mystery we see something very simple and real. In the end, it reflects what we experience in our lives. What the film is talking about is just right there, in front of eyes but we always make it very complicated.
Michael Spiccia’s first short film Yardbird was competing for the Palme d’Or this year in the Short Films Competition. Yardbird is a genre film that tells the story of a young girl’s isolated life in a yard. There’s a reason behind this kind of living. Her father doesn’t allow her to leave the yard because she has some kind of a super power and she may inflict a great deal of pain to the people she doesn’t like. The narrative reminds of Carrie and Let the Right One In at times, because the girl can carry or reshape anything she wants with her telepathic powers like Carrie. In the meantime she is a little bit like Eli of Let the Right One In, a very kind-hearted human being who wants to take care of a vulnerable cat that was tortured by teenage boys. Fear, love and power converge in the character and the film sketches this complicated figure of the “other” in society. She lives far away from the city and although she wants to be part of society, she cannot be. Spiccia’s control over the screenplay and the actors creates a quality hybrid genre film contrasting the naturalist tradition of Australian mainstream cinema. It brings a little bit of mystery to the great desert of the new continent. However in the end, it is not better than a formulaic genre film with high technical qualities.
In Cockaigne Emilie Verhamme tells the story of Ukrainian workers who try to migrate to Belgium illegally. A father and his two sons manage to get into the country and start to work as repairmen but what they face in Brussels is a cruel and hypocrite world that will not allow them to survive for a long time. Verhamme’s way of using the camera gives a documentary feeling to the material she films. The camera always follows the characters and put them in the centre of the film. Especially the way director plays with the lenses’ focus disrupts the audience’s attention in a good way and let them to see whatever they want. It’s one of the rare films that is willing to narrate the biggest problem in Europe through the eyes of its subjects. However the screenplay’s dramatic structure is too heavy handed and complicated for a short film. The story is not based on a simple conflict but on a series of conflicts leading to one another. It is a very hard story to tell in a short period of time. Despite the good technical values and decent directorial effort it is not a film that satisfies the moviegoers. Because we have seen lots of stories like this on screen before and the film can’t manage to create a new discourse about this important subject matter.
by Zia Mandviwalla // New Zealand
by Michael Spiccia // Australia
by Emilie Verhamme // Belgium
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey) by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 42
photos by Marek Maemets (Estonia)
Cine-boat
by NISI MASA - Network of Young European Cinema // Critics’ Week
Us young people nowadays have more opportunities to travel than any other generation before us, and the colourful flavour of multiculturalism can so easily flow into our lives if we let it. It is in this context that NISI MASA launched the Cine-Boat documentary workshop, gathering 25 young filmmakers from all over Europe and taking them to the islands in the Archipelago Sea, all under the guidance of Slovak director Peter Kerekes. As Swedish and Finnish culture blend into the everyday life in South-West Finland, this was the perfect place to investigate multilingualism. The result is compiled in six short films: extremely different in style and story, they are either touching, funny or poetic, but remain connected through a mutual curiosity: who are the people? What are their stories and feelings? What is the difference between a ”Swedish Finn” and a ”Finnish Fin”? Is there any? The series premiered as a special event of Semaine de la Critique in Cannes this year, and more screenings are to come... The ferry is probably going to be one of the first things that pop in your head when you think about a community living on small islands, but it means so much more in Drifting Home. The doc co-directed by Nicolas Servide, Judit Kájel and Kirill
Naumko portrays several people who chose to live there but haven’t blended yet into a culture where ”the relative size of a person is bigger than on the continent”. Details, shadow patterns and landscapes emerge as these warm folks recount their past and present. Pikku-Kalle? by Alastair Cole, Daniel Szöllosi & Anna Dmitrieva is by far the funniest piece in the series: as the three filmmakers investigate local humour, they keep hearing about this character who seems to be the superstar of every joke. Who is Pikku-Kalle? Everybody has a different answer, but, as the old saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination: forget about him, what matters is the simple truths of life, nature, saunas, fish and growing up that the question digs out from the characters, all with a unique chance to watch a hilarious unplanned performance of an old Swede vs Finn joke. A bit more on the serious side of life, Velvollisuus/Duty plays with the fact that Finland is the most militarized country in Europe, despite its size. Severine Beaudot, Linda Dombrovszky and George Groshkov’s documentary shows us several men of different ages remembering the good ol’ army days, and what the mandatory military service has changed in them. Far from social or political commentary, the film is exactly what it is supposed to be given the subject: a small essay on the experience that unites these extremely different men.
Utöpia, on the other hand, focuses precisely on those differences, as two generations of women speak about happiness, love and dancing. This sweet film by Silvio Ivicic, Sam Batink and Laure Anna Franquès alternates a group of sunsoaked teenagers from a dance camp with a serene granny named Solveig, who is enjoying a peaceful retirement with her husband, and reflects on how little we actually need to be happy. Signed by Gautier Dulion, Albina Griniūtė and Melissa Suárez del Real, Destination North starts off as your typical television tourism ad, but has a lot more to offer. There are postcard-like landscapes, locals praising their lands and a narrator beckoning you to go book a ticket a.s.a.p., but this film is actually about mosquitos. Yes, mosquitos, the most common creatures from the area, whose history is at least as interesting as the one of humans. Kudos for the the misleading use of such a cheesy form, all for a truly well constructed surprise. Last but not least, Five Lives by Silence is a brilliant piece of visual and literal poetry, born from the shock of three people from noisy cities (Miki Ambrózy, Nick Shaw & Begüm Güleç) who find themselves in crushing quietness. Perfect visuals, a poem written specifically for the film, small everyday scenes shot from the distance, a drunken sailor staring straight into our souls: enough said!
text by andreea dobre // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 46
cinĂŠfondation
review
(Road to)
Doroga Na by Taisia Igumentseva Russia // Cinéfondation // Premier Prix
The short film Road to by Russian director Taisia Igumentseva takes a comic look onto the small world of the individual. The protagonist Serjoza is the ultimate loser, having a job at one of those stores that will sell you anything from eggshells to electronic-massage devices. Serjoza feels like many people: that he has to take a back row seat in life. Portraying the context of an anonymous Russian city littered with thousands of Sovietpanel houses, the director has also chosen to raise the pathetic stakes to the maximum. Renting a room from a lonely widower, Serjoza’s life is a grotesque series of failures. The only life advice comes from a guy who uses urine to cure physical traumas. There is one thing that Serjoza has in his life that gives him back some power. Coward as he is, he dresses up and goes to open courtyards at night to yell obscenities at the anonymous people living there. Even so, the swear words he chooses are not the strongest kind and to the crooks who regularly beat him up for shouting, the words ‘shit’ and ‘fag’ hardly make an impression. But then
there is Vera, a typical vain Russian girl full of ideals and hopes who works with Serjoza in the store and actually likes him. A series of slapstick situations follows and the two losers find each other in a happy ending. It is a mixture of attempts difficult to rate, as it has a student flavour to it from the execution (realistic documentary style + elements of grotesque) to the empty storyline and it is hard to comment on the social relevance of its critical message when it is this warm and (trying to be) funny in its approach. In that way it is a “road to” nowhere.
text by greta varts // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 50
(Dog Leash)
Resen
by Eti Tsicko Israel // CinĂŠfondation
How did you start working in cinema? What are your influences? I started to study theatre, and I became a theatre director and then I lived in England for some time. And because it was so cold there, I started to watch films and decided that I wanted to make some myself so I enrolled to Tel Aviv’s university’s film program. Antonioni, then Catherine Breillat and Bruno Dumont are the most influential ones; I tried to watch all their films before starting to make mine.
interview
How did you come up with the idea for your film? The short film is actually based on a former short I made in my first year of university which told the story of a woman who is unhappy with her marriage, she meets a young boy who is peeking into houses and she joins him to watch other people make love. I took the idea and developed it. At the centre of the film and its title we find the dog, what does it symbolize? The dog symbolizes many things. Most superficially it symbolizes men or revenge. But it also symbolizes the main character, Marina, and by killing him she commits a kind of suicide. In short the dog symbolizes all the things that she hates even in herself. The dog also symbolizes faithfulness, a certain relation of master and slave that she wants to escape from. Actors in your film had to play very tough parts and intense scenes, such as one long sex scene; how did you work and prepare them for the shoot? We had very hard and complex preparatory work with the main actress. Her character is very internal and it was very hard to put that out in the acting. It was very hard for her, but she did it beautifully I think. Basically, because she did not have any dialogs in the film, we
had to break the script and think about what she feels in each scene. What happened before, why is she feeling like this? We had a two months preparation work before the shoot, to talk about every part of the film and what she feels. She needed to act it up. We did not do any rehearsal. The only scene we rehearsed was the sex scene, but it was very technical with clothes and everything, just to explain when they would get up, move etc.The sex scene was done in four takes, I trusted the actors because we talked about what they feel during the scene a long time before the shoot. Both actors trusted each other and managed to feel comfortable. So it worked out good.
What do you hope to get in Cannes? What are your next projects? First of all it is a big honor just to be selected and be here. Being part of Cinefondation is like being part of a big family who supports you and wants to see what you will do next. I am now working on a feature film, which is a little bit based on Dog Leash. I applied for the Cinéfondation Residence with this project and hope it will get through.
In Dog Leash we follow Marina (Maya Gasner) a woman living a frozen life, unhappy and humiliated in her relationship with her husband. She witnesses several situations that break her dull life and push her to explore new and dangerous boundaries. Following Catherine Breillat’s footsteps, Eti Tsciko, a graduate of Tel Aviv University’s film program, offers a dark and disturbing short film about repressed desire, violence and sexuality. The mise en scène coldly isolates Marina from the other characters. She has indeed an estranged relationship with all the men in her life: her husband has apparently an extra marital affair and her father does not care about her either. The film shows a series of disturbing scenes witnessed or experienced by Marina that finally lead her to a sort of catharsis at the end of the film when she stabs her husband’s dog.
One can only admire the bravery of Eti Tsicko’s actors, especially Maya Gasner, who manages to give a subtle and solemn interpretation of Marina a woman who has locked down all her feelings and desires. However despite its risqué topic, the film makes the viewers walk away. Indeed, because of the scarce contextual information it is very hard to feel any empathy with Marina let alone with the other characters of the film. In addition, the accumulation of unjustified provocative scenes does not help us to understand the main character’s motivations. A very short and moving scene between Marina and her father gives us some clues about her past and the reasons of her behavior. Unfortunately, the short goes on following Marina’s disturbing journey, without any explanations.
review
Does your short film reflect a real situation existing in society? I don’t want to make a statement about the women’s status in Israeli society. My influences come from my family. My parents emigrated from Georgia and tried very hard to keep with the patriarchal rules where men give the orders and women have to be obedient. You can never free yourself from you roots in a way. The scene with the father, who is Georgian, really shows that. Even if she has a house , and everything is white and clean, she still cannot be detached from the roots.
Overall Dog Leash is a well-crafted film with solid acting but its content, which mostly relies on crude and violent scenes.
text by aurite kouts // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 52
interview
Pude ver un Puma
by Eduardo Williams Argentina // Cinéfondation
What was the creative process of the movie? What came first? It’s a mixture between things that I think and things that just happen to come in my mind. Some come from my normal life, like places or things I see or like. There are also some things I suddenly think about, strange images, or dreams I had. Afterwards I try to give a form to everything. I build a structure in a more conscious way when I know what I want to express. Sometimes in things I read, I like the structure or the relationship between two situations for example, and then I copy these links. But I’m not very good at looking for these sources of inspiration, I prefer bumping into them. I read or see anything my friends give me.
interview
Where was the movie shot? The film was entirely shot in the Buenos Aires Province. The first part is in the suburbs, in a neighbourhood where I went a lot. The central part is a destroyed place called Epecuen, 500km from the capital. I discovered it on youtube and I was very impressed. Then I knew I needed this place when I thought about the relation I wanted the characters to have with it, because the place itself is very impressive but I don’t want just to impress. Forty years ago, Epecuen had little lakes with thermal waters; people went there for vacations. Someone wanted to make with all the little lakes one big lake, and somehow it flooded the whole town. The last part is in the middle of those places, near these lakes. Your movie is very enigmatic; it doesn’t give any explanations. Do you feel like it’s necessary for you as a director, as a creator, to know what happens there? It’s not very important but of course there are some things that I don’t explain but I have an explanation for. I also find explanations once I’m done, months after I finished. For example the title comes from a book by Antonio Di Benedetto, an Argentinean writer. I had read it long time ago, I needed a title and I’m so bad with beautiful words I thought that book should have something like that. «Pude ver un puma» is the first part of a sentence. I was not sure and then I went to the jungle months later and I got this feeling of being near wild animals or thinking you’re going to see a wild animal; you feel a lot of fear but you want to see it at the same time… This feeling is beautiful; it’s my ideal thing about what I want the spectator to feel. It’s very complicated because
it’s very strong. There are also lot of things I have an explanation for but maybe they’re not understandable and I like that, people tell me they didn’t understand but they felt really attracted, they felt like they were there. Other people invent explanations of their own and that’s also ok. I like when simple things make something spécial, when I feel something I can’t explain really well. There’ve been many post-apocalyptic movies in the history of cinema. To you, how can this genre evolve and reinvent itself? I think this movie is more about the present than an imaginary post-apocalyptic future. It’s more a movie about today - or yesterday, maybe, more than the future. Some people see it and think it’s a kind of fantasy about the future. But I don’t identify with that. The images are more about thoughts and feelings. The town, for example: the place expresses the inner world of the characters. I liked it because of that: first you see that and think of a bomb explosion, and then these characters meet, and they just talk and walk… Their objective has nothing to do with that. There’s no tragedy in these characters, it would be too much if I had expressed the end of the world. But I still understand that it has something to do with that. What are your plans for the future? I’d like to think about how I can say what I want with a long feature because it is very different. I don’t have anything concrete at the moment. I’m also seeing if I can get some script residency so I can stop working. At the moment I work with a plastic artist to make a living.
text and photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 54
Derriere moi les oliviers
(Behind Me Olive Trees)
by Pascale Abou Jamra Lebanon // CinĂŠfondation
How and why did you write this story? I am myself from South Lebanon and I wanted to make a film about something real that comes from this region. I started to do some research and I found that the topic of families which have been linked to the Lahd army and lived in Israel was still a taboo subject in the region. Then I decided to write a script about it for my graduation film. In your film, the main character, Mariam tells her story in voice over and she does that in two languages: Arab and Hebrew. Why did you choose to tell her story in both languages and how did you manage to learn Hebrew? I wrote the Hebrew parts in Arabic
and then brought it to a translator who translated those parts in Hebrew and I read it with Arabic letters. I chose those two languages because the film tells about a split between two countries: the main character has lived for ten years in Israel before coming back to Lebanon. Hebrew has become a sort of native language for her; I wanted to reflect that by using both languages in the voice over. She also reveals the division between Israel and Lebanon, Mariam is someone who is looking for her own identity between both countries. Like Mariam, many of those Lebanese who came back to the country after many years, have trouble fitting in South Lebanon where they are not accepted anymore.
The short offers a beautiful and powerful cinematography of the Lebanese landscape and Pascale Abou Jamra has an intense on screen presence. The other main character of the film is Mariam’s little brother who in a long and poignant scene reveals to his sister that he has been bullied by his fellow students. The film focuses on the destiny of those children who long to fit in but feel disconnected from the rest of the society. The film ends with a tragic and almost fantastic tone where we
This year your short is competing with an Israeli film in the Cinefondation. Would you be interested in having your short film being screened in Israel? Yes of course, the film is also about Israel. So it would be interesting for me to have a feedback from an Israeli audience. The Middle East has been going through a political turmoil for many years, are you inspired by the current political situation of your country? The topic of my film is indeed political, but I am more interested in the social aspects, the life of
review
see the silhouettes of Mariam and her young brother walking in then night, probably looking for a new place where they will finally be accepted.
The film has been shot in Southern Lebanon, and everything reminds us of the particularity of the place: from the Israeli flag on the other side of the border to the picture of Hassan Nasrallah the chief of the Hezbollah on a building. Those images only add to the dramatic experiences shared by the characters. The choice to have the voice over in both Arabic and Hebrew reflects the main character’s complex double identity.
Despite the powerful topic, the film is rather contemplative and could be too abstract for people who do not know about the heavy political context behind it. Overall, the film is both a personal and symbolic depiction of what it feels to be uprooted from your own land and the painful experiences that come with it.
those children who cannot fit in this society and which nobody talks about.
interview
Apart from being the first short film from a Lebanese film student to be selected at the Cinefondation competition, Behind Me Olive Trees deals with a rather unknown side of Lebanon’s recent painful history: the cooperation of the so called “Lahd“ army with the Israel defense forces before Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000. Indeed, Mariam Mansour, the main character, played by Pascale Abou Jamra herself, is a twenty-year-old Lebanese girl who comes back with her family to Southern Lebanon after being forced to flee to Israel because her father was a military in the Lahd army. Those persons were considered as traitors by the Lebanese government. Over there, Miriam starts a new job as a hot dog vendor, but quickly her boss finds out her secret: her dad was collaborating with the Israeli army.
text by aurite kouts // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 56
Riyoushi
Les Ravissements
Abigail
Riyoushi takes place in the intimacy of a Japanese family of barbers. A wedding is coming, but Koichi, one of the barbers, may have cancer. All is kept secret though as not to invade the compulsory space of harmony built up for the loved-ones. Fear only stops when Koichi uses his razor as if he was gently dancing with his clients’ skin and everything else is suspended. One can feel that this is the only moment when everything seems to be in its right place, concentrating on the movement and on the will to do it well. The metaphor is obvious but efficient; it is known that hairs have a very specific place in Japanese culture, considered as the ultimate symbol of obscenity (even women get rid of them on the face, even if they’re not visible). By shaving his clients, Koichi can purify himself from bad feelings and silence is not a frustration anymore: it becomes a kind of shintô ritual to access serenity… Until work ends and he takes us back in the dining room, carrying his heavy secret, all energy focused on the will not to disrupt some socially approved balance. Thanks to the very subtle skills of the actors, one can feel them struggling against powerful feelings that shouldn’t be spelled out loud. In Riyoushi, the characters are running after the Untold – which is also what really matters – and after happiness as well. The wedding never materializes on screen, lingering out of frame like a ghost. Behind the Untold here is an incredible snapshot of Japanese culture and an accurate painting of tensions between individuals and the surrounding social pressure.
The house seems to be constantly suffused with light, almost light-flooded. It seems to come from every direction and every corner of the room; it blurs the lines on the faces, the bed sheets and the naked skin. It is either warm or cold, yet always soft and tender on the actors’ faces. It might be the balance to compensate the lack of sound in the movie. The young girl and the older man on the bed do not feel any need to fill the silence with talking but seem somehow connected through their bodies.
Director Arthur Kahn from La Fémis employs enough experimental means expected from a Cinéfondation movie: Frequently mute scenes and unconventional camera angles, flash-backs and flash-forwards, sparse dialogues and a lot of skin. He confronts us with a new means to overcome suffering and mourning. He thus constructs a complex relationship between two people who weren’t supposed to be together in the first place. Yet, they seem glued together by their similar situation and by this deserted house full of slight relicts and reminders. And again - a house full of silence that they only are able to fill with their mutual support, presence and touch.
A young woman in her early twenties is sitting inside a gas station, she goes out and starts smoking a cigarette, staring at the horizon. Those are the first images from Abigail, a short social drama set in an unknown American typical industrial city. The financial crisis seems to have inspired a new generation of American filmmakers willing to deal with the traditional archetype of the misfit of the American dream. Matthew James Reilly is one of them and chooses to focus on Abigail, a young gas station attendant who is longing to leave her job and the city she lives in for a better place. In a style reminding the Dardennes’s brothers although a bit more static and using very long shots, the director follows his heroine in her final day at work and unveils details of her personal life and the reasons why she wants to leave. Despite the confident cinematography and the gritty realism of the situation, the film fails in conveying constant interest into Abigail’s endeavors. The end is quickly predictable and Ashley Jane Peoples, although acting in a very natural manner seems to only shed one side of Abigail’s complex personality. However, Reilly manages to realistically illustrate the heavy and oppressing atmosphere of a city in which people have lost their jobs and their dreams. The urban landscape can be considered as a metaphor for Abigail’s complicated relationship with her mother. Unfortunately the exact nature of the tensions between Abigail and her mother (who remains invisible throughout film) is not shown or explained. At the end of the film, it seems that not much has happened and that Abigail has kept all of her mystery.
by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
by Aurite Kouts (France)
by Shoichi Akino // Japan
by Chloe Vollmer-Lo (France)
by Arthur Cahn // France
When teenage Etienne dies, he leaves behind his father and his young girlfriend in equal pain. He leaves behind silence, a room full of memories, yet more silence. Very soon father and girlfriend start a love affair, right from the beginning this seems inevitable and it only takes them one night on the same couch to jump into this ambiguous alliance.
by Matthew James Reilly // US // Deuxième Prix
Tambylles
Tabăra din răzoare
Matteus
by Michal Hoguenauer // Czech Repblic
by Cristi Iftime // Romania
by Leni Huyghe // Belgium // Cinéfondation
Hoguenauer’s ambitious and long short attempts to build tension by playing with two different narrative forms: documentary and fiction.
This 22 minutes long short film from Romania is a curious work that ends without an ending. A fact that could in fact constitute a huge problem had it made any difference. The viewer is invited to a camping site in the picturesque Romanian mountains at the end of the summer when happy campers are packing up to leave. A young man, Alex, has just been to see the local village doctor about pains in his stomach and testicles with no satisfying diagnosis to his problem. Returning from the doctor he is eager to start hiking and they start the journey back to civilization together with Vera, a girl sleeping in another tent. It is shot in the plainest documentary style with long takes adding to the immediacy and simple design of the film making it seem not designed at all (the color of checkered shirts and backpacks in the nature for example.) From small, seemingly meaningless conversations we learn that Vera has a boyfriend, that they are both starting a new chapter in life having graduated from university and that they are simple, hopeful, but already sucked dry of excess struggles, coming to terms with the life routine of 20-somethings. Nothing happens in this film. Where there should be a culmination of sort, there is none. Where there should be a surprise ending, there is no ending. But it somehow works. It is ok that nothing happens, as we leave them grappling with their new issues. One has potentially caught a sexually transmittable disease at the camp and the other gets severe green and red vision blurs from overusing the computer. Do we really need to know anything else?
Leni Huyghe’s short Matteus is the perfect film for those who drool at stunning cinematography: the story of a young boy who gets trapped in a sect is magically shot by David Williamson and Jakob Rosseel, gives us all a sense of strangeness and danger. Huyghe’s student film included in the Cinéfondation selection lacks many things, but atmosphere is definitely not one of them. In fact, it’s the only good thing about it.
The first 17 minutes of the short are in fact part of a fictional documentary shot within a film about the main character, an eighteen-yearsold delinquent recently released from a juvenile detention center, returning to his hometown. The filmmaker films the youngster at home with his parents and then interview people living in town, who have not forgotten what the boy has done. After the documentary has the delinquent confronting the mother of his victim, we move from the fictional filmmaker’s point of view, and the cinema verité style of editing, to a more traditional feature. We follow the unnamed youngster trying to start a new life, getting a new job and getting together with a new girl. The only question left being: has he really changed? The director Michal Hogenaer deals with similar themes to those featured in John Crowley’s drama Boy A about a former juvenile delinquent, starting over under a new identity: guilt, forgiveness, violence, revenge. However he chooses to treat them in a rather odd and clumsy way. This is due to the weak acting of his two main actors, Ivan Říha playing the young delinquent and Anna-Marie Maxera playing his potential love interest, both never seem to be into their characters. On the whole, Tambylles should have rather been a two hours feature rather than an hour short because of the level of complexity of the topics dealt with. by Aurite Kouts (France)
by Greta Varts (Estonia)
Nico and Alice move to the countryside and start working on the renovation of their idyllic new home. As they get busy caught up in the housework, their ten-year-old son Mateo becomes mesmerized by a fragment from the Bible, and things get out of control when he meets the family’s new neighbour and his gang of religious fanatics. The story is told with long static takes in eerie settings, awkward silences and carefully chosen colours, but something is missing. It is that special something that keeps you hooked and caring for the people you see on the screen. In this Belgian short, a subtle story that could have made an amazing slow-paced feature is squeezed into 18 minutes that never give us the time to get attached to the characters that are nothing but cold portraits in perfectly composed images. Despite its dry formalism, Matteus is a very promising piece of work – especially for a student film – that will leave you remembering Leni Huyghe for the future, wondering what sort of masterpiece will come from her when she finds a story she can put a heart into, not just brains and aestheticism. by Andreea Dobre (Romania)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 58
Terra
Los Anfitriones
The Ballad of Finn+Yeti
by Piero Messina // Italy
by Miguel Angel Moulet // Cuba // Troisième Prix
by Meryl O’Connor // US
The Italian short film by Piero Messina strikes the viewer with its strongly visual storytelling. The narrative centres around an old man (Giorgio Colangeli) boarding a night ferry for his final life journey, it is an emotionally touching, yet distantly intimate view at the inner thoughts of an old man.
La Havana. A man from behind, an old man. In front of him are scattered makeshift houses probably similar to the farm made of wood and rust where this man named Felix lives. Filmed from behind, the body of this man is trembling. Alzheimer? No; obviously, his arm is fussing around the crotch of his pants: Felix, 65, is masturbating. A groan of pleasure confirms us indeed that the Petit Mort has just fulfilled Felix… But few minutes later, Felix is on the verge of the Grim Reaper, when he badly hurts his hand while he’s climbing down a ladder to join his wife, Josephina. Through a letter we will learn that the latter has to leave alone for the hospital for medical tests that do not look promising, given her age. While Josephina is away and despite her wound, Felix try to carry on his daily occupation – from a visit to the local butchery to sell a pork (unfortunately, the wrong one, plus, alive…), to an evening spent drinking excessively as solace for his loneliness and a porcine sacrifice, that the Peruvian director Miguel Angel Moulet avoid showing. Only the piercing cries of this animal feeling an impending death is leave a bloodtaste in the mouth. And humans, can they feel death approaching? When Josephina comes back home to her husband, news is not very good. While a bright nonchalance rocked the majority of the film, Miguel Angel Moulet also heightens its dramatic intensity in a poignant face to face between Josephina and Felix. Grabbing in his hand his wife breast – a beautiful image of desperate desire – the old man reveals his deep sadness and fear of loss and mourning. This final embrace, depicted however with sobriety, is an incredibly intense filmic moment of grace. During the credits, an angel passes by…
The Ballad of Finn+Yeti is a 18-minutes long film directed by a young Californian film director, Meryl O’Connor. With a documentary-like tone and kind of Polaroid colors, the film opens with shots of a street ukulele player sitting on the floor and then strolling in the street. Intrigued by the treasures that might be hidden in a dumpster, the girl dives into it locking herself in this dark trap. Re-interpreting Alice in the Wonderlands’ fall, Meryl O’Connor transports her heroin (thanks to a shamanic twist) into a parallel universe made of recycled yet colorful trash. But this universe is not as enchanting as it seems. Finn in fact gets rapidly knocked out by a weird creature (Yeti is his name) – half animal, half man, whose language is limited to growls and primitive gestures. Progressively however, Finn and Yeti manage to tame each other, and ultimately, they even swap their roles. In the meantime, here is the initiatory program proposed by Yeti to Finn : learning how to feed herself, how to get dressed with hand-sewn ornaments made of feathers and rough threads, how to protect herself from the wolves, to become tougher in order to survive, and above all, to auscultate her inner wounds (symbolized here by rag bowels). In this new world of loneliness and rubbish, it’s time for her to know who she really is and what her values are. Once her solitary introspection is achieved, she will be able to come back to the “real” world, better equipped to confront it. Finally, if the imaginary universe of Meryl O’Connor is close to video art, her utopian tale (which is punctuated by alternative folk) is implicitly echoing the preoccupations of Occupy Wall Street protesters. After all, poetic creativity + activism are not incompatible…
by Emilie Padellec (France)
by Emilie Padellec (France)
Terra is a successful portrait of visions of wisdom, what old age looks like and feels to us - the still travelling youth. It is like witnessing a Sunday morning that most of us will end up sleeping through, this is the time and place where choices about life and death are made. The superb acting from Giorgio Colangeli incarnates the old man’s journey from resignation toward death to the hope of possibilities, from a bitter and pedantic old man to a wise traveller who bursts out in tears for having lost his sight for life. It sounds all a bit too epic to be true and having all of this in 24 minutes is a tough task. Perhaps this piece has deprived the reviewer of the accuracy of description with its emotional effect, but what remains as a fact, is that a short film this well made deserves some epic words. Hence, prepare to be moved. by Greta Varts (Estonia)
59 // nisimazine cannes 2012
The only animation in the Semaine de la Critique selection is Fleuve Rouge, Song Hong by French directors Stephanie Lansaque and Francois Leroy. The story takes place in Hanoi, Vietnam, the animation shows a single day through the eyes of three brothers who have arrived in the big city of Hanoi for the first time from the countryside. Using a mix of animation and real life imagery such as photos and film, the visual style becomes a dreamlike hypnotic experience. Using a very feature-film-like sound design, the world of this short is an intimate and beautiful experience, evoking feelings of getting somewhere new and exotic. The storyline is a slow paced experience, going by like time would in a fly-infested hot and crowded Hanoi, but it reaches a more political conclusion by finishing its seemingly stand-still activities with a war-time bomb going off at the hands of unknown people. The two other animations chosen for Cannes this year belong to the Cinefondation selection. Head over heels by British director Timothy Reckart is a story as charming as they come. Taking to the letter the long-term partners’ experience of living in different worlds under the same roof, the director has created a realistic household where the husband lives on the floor, but the wife inhabits the ceiling. Showing the viewer the parallel lives of this couple who only interact when they somehow get in each others way, this is a strong visual portrayal of
living side by side yet still isolated from one another. The house floats in space landing in a different planet where the floor replaces the ceiling and viceversa. It is a story about how this couple comes together again through difficulty that the director manages to narrate with no words whatsoever. The story works well as a reality translated into fantasy without ever sounding too far-fetched. The shortest animation with a comic finale and a colourful poetic style, is Slug invasion by Danish director Morten Helgeland. In a parody of Hollywood war films and cliches of military heroism, the viewer is taken to the level of garden slugs who are at war against the meticulously tidy old lady whose garden they inhabit. The slugs are given personal characterization and their hunger for victory and a beautiful flower make this war a very personal one. Juxtaposing two world sizes and showing them as parallel levels, Slug Invasion is a witty and clever fantasy animation that in its 6 minutes becomes more than a sketch. It is a smart and well executed animation story bringing together genre cliches and innovation. Furthermore, it gives the viewer laughs and provokes thoughts that go beyond the simple story it tells. In conclusion, the animations succeed in doing what most short films have major issues achieving, and that is clear and provocative story telling. Using original and innovative techniques (Fleuve rouge), beautiful colours and light (Head over heels), sharp and witty story lines (Slug invasion), the animations this year prove that when it comes to the human world, the borders of reality are ambiguous. The possibilities for illustrating our deepest thoughts and most intimate experiences often lie outside the domains of the real. Having these three animation shorts reach such quality, it is worth considering whether it would not be worth instead of the long selections of often average quality short films to open an entire selection for animation shorts as a separate program by Greta Varts (Estonia)
animated shorts
The three animations selected this year for the short film sections have one thing in common: colour, colour and a little bit more colour. This is not only a matter of visual range within the colour scheme, but it also relates to the warm and possibilityfilled stories chosen. What is often missing in short stories in general is instead featured in the animations of this year, the wholesomeness and strong storytelling is at the center of their success.
by Chloe Vollmer-Lo
Quinzaine shorts
The Curse
by Fyzal Boulifa UK, Morocco // Winner Best Short Quinzaine
Where does the action in this film take place? We shot the movie in a place outside Marrakesh. It is notoriously horrible. Every time I told people I want to make a film there everyone would just look at me like “Why? That place looks terrible.� But I liked that the earth was so red and the fact that there is nowhere to hide. It also reminded me a lot of the place where my family originally came from. I guess, I wanted to avoid this kind of exoticism or orientalism you have when watching films from Arab countries. You guys prefer to work with non-professional actors. Why? For me it is about the kind of essence of a person. And I want to see that on their faces. So, working with non-professionals allows me to see that much more than working with
Director Fyzal Boulifa paints the picture of an outsider. One who has been dismissed because she didn’t conform to the common rules of the group. It is not only an issue concerning Moroccan culture and strict values, but a universal issue. Boulifa likes to look at the margins of society, of humanity. The fact that the harassers of the movie are young children makes his vision even more threatening and oppressing. The situation takes your breath, it strangles you, makes you furious. They follow her slowly, they walk behind her, remain a permanent presence. The camera focuses on the girl’s face, her stubborn mouth, her unmoved expression that seems to be fixed on something in front of her. In comparison to Bouifa’s earlier movies this one contains fewer Dogma-like features. The images’ composition seems intentional, arranged, orchestrated. Nevertheless it continues to be minimalistic and
So please tell me about the subject of the movie. Well, I came across the idea by a personal anecdote that my mum told me. She grew up in Morocco in a bit of a shithole town. In my head and with the necessary distance I always imagined it as a kind of fairytale story and the teenagers just seemed to be such a nice metaphor for wider society. The actual aggressors in the movie reveal themselves
It is impressive how Boulifa succeeds to keep up suspension and tension throughout the whole story. He describes a fundamental struggle, a hunt with destructive consequences. In order to satisfy her blackmailers, the girl sells herself to receive money from a stranger. She gives in; she degrades herself for the sake of their demands. But even when she does so, Boulifa doesn’t offer us any relief. There is no place for someone who misbehaved and ignored the rules. We know that no matter what she does, she will always remain the inferior one on the margin. Small children will have power over her and force her to prostitute herself for a bag of candy; of Fanta, Twix and Mars.
sometimes to be very human, very child-like. They don’t know what they’ve done really. There is the real sadness in it.
interview
real actors that use more acting techniques. And for this movie in particular I didn’t want that as it is about an outsider and I really wanted that to be reflected by an authentic place and a real face.
rather realistic; one will not find bold surrealistic gestures. Colors are preferably muted; movements slow and always intended, the camera’s eye just a constant, cautious and low-key observer.
review
In the middle of a desert more and more children just appear out of nowhere, they just pop up into the vast space. They start to follow a girl as she walks along the dusty road. They harass her, call her names, they frighten her. She has been caught by one of the kids while having sex with her lover. Thus, she is now the victim of their blackmailing.
text franziska knupper // photo cecile janvier // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 66
Porcos Raviosos
by Leonardo Sette and Isabel Penoli Brazil // Quinzaine
How did you come across this subject? LS: The women in the movie are part of the Cuicuro tribe, in the heart of the Amazonas Jungle. Isabel and I both got in touch with them because of other projects. They preserve a lot of their traditions, their ceremonies and their language. Nevertheless they are really open to their surroundings. They manage to have a perfect mixture of both worlds and are very interested to use media productions. So they actually offered the project to us. But initially it was supposed to be a theater production? IP: Yes, first we wanted to turn the pigs’ tale into a theater piece and then just film actual performance. But both of us very soon started to realize that we should actually make a real film out of it, a different project. Still the movie keeps a lot of the original
This is only one of the many legends the Cuicuro are passing on orally from generation to generation. For the two directors Leonardo Sette and Isabel Penoli the women of one Cuicuro village performed this myth, they told their story, they sang, they danced. The film only takes place in a small tent of the village, the setting never changes. Here, the camera caught an intimate moment of the tribe, its performance culture, and its women’s fore. The Cuicuro society is still a rather patriarchal one and this legend is the women’s attempt to overpower their husbands who turned into savage animals. The two directors establish an image of excess and feminism, of deep-rooted traditions, of tribal customs. The camera catches every woman’s movement, their red eye make-up, the expression of their bodies, and the color of their naked skin. In the privacy of the tent they dare to let go, they dare revitalize their people’s identity.
soon developed into a film project. The Cuicuro are a people who do not make a strict separation between modern technology and ancient values. The vision of filming their dances seemed natural to them, and that is exactly what the result feels like. From time to time the spectator cannot even tell if what he sees has been rehearsed or is totally spontaneous. The movie’s authenticity allows to really witness this rare performance, to listen to this foreign chanting, to admire the women’s dark silk hair. It is a very respectful approach, almost cautious and tender. From the way the camera follows the women, the way it explores their movement and tiny details, it becomes clear that both of the directors honored and worshipped the Cuicuro women’s customs. It is them who are in charge - the camera is only their means to communicate their legend’s message. They control their bodies, they explore the room, and they have the power. Over the music, the myth and their men.
review
Once upon a time the men of the Cuicuro tribe didn’t return to their village after they went out to fish. Thus their women started to worry and sent one of the younger boys to go and look for them. When he came back he was shocked, all the men had turned into crazy pigs.
dramaturgical aspects. How about the costumes? Are those authentic? LS: Yes, those are their traditional clothes. Some of them wear them in daily life, some other are wearing ordinary dresses. As I said, things are very varied in this community. But in front of everybody on the stage they felt more uncomfortable to be completely naked. So for the film it was really good to have this covered, isolated area where they wouldn’t be bothered.
So were the women really acting or just showing you their traditional dance? LS: Oh they were acting, absolutely. We had many rehearsals. IP: Even though they would usually be considered nonprofessional actors they have a strong ceremony culture and thus are used to performances and dances. It was really fascinating to work with them, for both of us.
interview
Director Isabel Penoli started working on the project as a theater piece. However, the idea
text franziska knupper // photo cecile janvier // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 68
(With Jeff)
Avec Jeff, à moto by Marie-Eve Juste Canada // Quinzaine
review
Nydia’s movements are slow, careful. She always seems very conscious of herself and whatever she is doing. She seems tender, almost fragile. Thus she is a complete contrast to Jeff, to his intense glare and his motorbike’s speed. Everything about him is confident and direct; whenever he enters in the picture everything seems to start moving. Avec Jeff, à Moto is the story of two young people who meet each other and who couldn’t be more different. They meet in their French language class and only share some precious moments together, preferably on Jeff’s motorcycle. The film distinguishes between the two characters and their ambivalent worlds: when Nydia is presented the picture is blurry, the camera movements are slow. But when Jeff appears, we are on the road, on his motorbike and the buildings and cars just seem to rush by.
tions. Suddenly her duties in her mother’s hairdresser store or the babysitting at home seem not so completely consuming anymore. That is because Jeff is there and he is excitement, change and color. For him she starts to use make-up, for him she dresses up and steps out in the night. When he watches her with his intense glare she doesn’t mind the other people laughing. And even though Nydia is afraid of his presence and his force she finally decides to just throw herself in this new encounter and Jeff’s velocity and thrill.
For Nydia, Jeff becomes a means of escape; an escape from her routine, from her daily occupa-
text franziska knupper // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 70
review
Rodri by Franco Lolli Italy // Quinzaine
Rodrigo is a 47-year-old unemployed man who lives with his sister. He hasn’t been working for 8 years and his wife left him. His sister pushes him to find a job because he is perceived as a burden for the family. He’s a computer specialist that’s why he doesn’t like to work an irrelevant job. In the end, with his sister’s push he gets a job as a secretary but that makes him unhappier. Rodri by Franco Lolli focuses on a “loser’s life” and tries to explore how family may be a prison. The film can be seen as a manifesto for freedom of laziness since the director sides with his main character and tries to ask questions about the necessities of survival in modern life. It is a film driven by dialogues and it doesn’t have any cinematic ambitions in the first place. What the director wants to do is to focus on complicated relationships in the family by creating realistic settings. His camera observes the characters and he always puts physical distance between the camera and characters, except for Rodrigo. With this stylistic choice everyone around Rodri’s life is described as something surrounding him and that creates a circle of people, a circle that functions as a prison for Rodri. By telling Rodri’s story the director tries to give an impression about the effects of recession in modern society. An ordinary man like Rodri becomes someone that we can easily relate to, because he’s not so different than the people we see everyday on the streets. by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
(x2) Rodrigo has been unemployed for the last eight years and does not see any reason why he should change that. No job seems to suit him. And why would it? As he says it himself: he doesn’t look for an occupation but for happiness. That is what’s lacking in his life. Director Franco Lolli paints a picture of a man who cannot conform to society’s and his family’s expectation. He tries to capture Rodrigo’s complexity. He examines his body during the doctor’s visit, his faked smile at his first day of work, the tension in his jaw muscles during the family dinner. The camera work is traditional; Lolli doesn’t adopt any experimental device and keeps it simple. The camera just becomes a means to catch the different situations and the people involved. The camera frequently zooms in on Rodrigo so that there is nothing but his face on the screen: his face, his stubbornness and his desperation. We experience a man who is always on his toes and who feels like a fool whatever he does. He never feels at ease and his family is getting tired of it. Tired of talking, supporting, understanding. It is a situation to which the audience can easily relate; there is nothing fancy, absurd or inexplicable about it. It is about a man who fell and who can’t get up. It is about failing. It is about failing and the shame that comes with it; about the constant need to explain yourself, the feeling of being stuck in a desperate situation and the hesitation to pull yourself out of it. by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 72
Os vivos tambem choram
by Basil da Cunha // Switzerland, Portugal // Special Mention ”Safe trip captain!“, says Ze while shaking hands with a sailor. His face is unmoved, glued to the man’s uniform. To him, this is the symbol of freedom. Of escape. Of Sweden. This uniform could be the solution to all his problems. Ze is a dockworker in Lisbon watching the ships come into the harbor and leaving it again. Thus, he too is dreaming of hopping on one of them and leaving his life, his unhappy marriage and the slums of Lisbon behind. Unfortunately it turns out that his wife wasted his savings on a brandnew, pink washing machine. Director Basil da Cunha impressively catches the horror in Ze’s eyes when he realizes the fact that his wife took away his hope – just right before he hits her in the head with a frying pan. The camera remains relatively stable no matter what happens, the chronological storyline makes it easy for the spectator to follow the plot. With portugese guitar chords in the background and the warm colors of Lisbon’s evening sunlight, the spectator follows Ze through the streets, constantly looking for a possibility to get on one of the ships. The audience witnesses how a man can bring himself deeper and deeper into trouble just to make a dream come true. A dream that seems to legitimize all his crimes, and a dream that will only remain such. With Ze standing on a boat, waving, laughing, finally leaving everything behind. by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
Portret z pamicie
Os Mortos-vivos
by Marcin Bortkiewicz // Poland
by Anita Rocha da Silveira // Brazil
This little self-reflexive film tells the story of a young filmmaker who wants to shoot a film for his film school application and he asks his grandmother to act in the film. Because he knows that all she wanted in her life was to be a film actress, the grandson wants her dreams to come true. The film starts with three characters (mother, grandson and grandmother) looking at the camera, giving the feeling of watching a homemade amateur video.
Anita Rocha da Silveira’s The Living Dead is a pessimistic portrayal of Generation Y. In the sense of Gus Van Sant’s films, the director deals with inner conflicts of youth and tries to understand them by showing us how these young people survive in a wild and cruel society. We see the characters doing what their families are trying to prevent them from doing. Use of drug, alcohol consumption or one-night stands may be seen as signs of a wasted youth but here the story tries to explore the reasons behind them profoundly. For the youths, self-destruction seems the only way to express themselves in a cruel and materialistic society. The film handles the subject matter realistically even though it has some surreal moments and this surrealist approach even function better than realistic storytelling at times. It helps the director to visualize how the characters are surrounded by the traps of popular culture. Also, the film’s fragmented narrative and unexpected stylistic choices in filmic narration visually conveys many young people’s unrestrained way of life. Long takes, the use of music, surreal scenes mixing different styles reflects the complicated mindset of the youths which shifts from one point to another. Even though we see the dark side of these people, they have been described as fragile creatures who just try to survive in an a-politic world of their own. The film becomes an honest portrayal of young people of this modern age in a post-modern world.
As the story develops we learn more about the grandmother and how she didn’t get the chance to be an actress because of the war. Then, grandson and grandmother start to re-enact memorable scenes from classic films. The most famous scenes from films such as The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby and Psycho are recreated by recreating the same mise-en-scene and setting of the original ones. While these recreated scenes are juxtaposed together, the scenes that describe the relationship of grandmother, grandson and mother function as inserts in the narrative. So, the film starts to reflect what it is really about. These two different cinematic reality levels melt within each other and make the thin line between documentary and fiction blurrier. This blurriness also refers to the grandmother’s Alzheimer and through the end of the story it becomes clear that she even forgets his grandson’s name. The whole film becomes a love letter to the grandmother and also to cinema itself, signed by the filmmaker. by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
Tram
Wrong Cops
Königsberg
by Michaela Pavlátová // France, Czech Rep.
by Quentin Dupieux // France
by Philipp Mayrhofer // France
This 7 minutes animation from France is the only animated short in the Directors Fortnight selection. It tells the story of a very horny female tram driver’s day at work. Tram, roads, male passengers on tram, “stick” of tram’s panel board, vibrating driver chair become objects of sexual desire for the main character. Every small detail in the tram easily turns her on and in the end she can’t control herself and express her sexual desire unconsciously. The director manages to create a three dimensional character in 7 minutes even though she just uses a simple, two dimensional animation technique. Especially with the editing rhythm and score the character’s inner conflicts are reflected on screen in an expressionist manner. The tram becomes an organic extension of the character. Rising sexual tension in her body is described with the transformation of the “gadgets” into phallic objects. The tram is seen as a big penis in her eyes and this kind of visual metamorphosis in the film also reflects the character’s relationship with her job. Her sexual tension with the male figures on the tram (and also with the tram itself) describes a character whom is stuck with her job. The film becomes an absurd commentary about the sexual hunger of the working class, a hunger that defines persons as a human beings. When she finds a partner in the end, the story becomes something more than a female worker’s sexual dream, it becomes a film about loneliness in modern life.
Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong Cops, which was part of the short films selection of the Directors’ Fortnight, it is the first chapter of a 90 minutes film in progress. This politically incorrect piece of work tells the story of a cop who has no moral qualities and sells weed hiding it in dead rats. He is a totally impolite human being. One day he meets a young nerdy guy (played by Marilyn Manson) sitting under a tree listening to electronic music and the cop thinks he is a prostitute. They get into a discussion about “cool” music and when they disagree, the cop arrests him and starts to torture the guy with his bad taste in music at his house. The film is told with a self-consciously kitsch aesthetics reminiscent of the style of porn films at points. It may seem like a subversive approach to the symbol of absolute power in American society. However it is not a fresh idea and the director cannot add something new to the material. John Waters and Todd Solondz have already deconstructed American ideals in 80s and 90s, even if in some of their films these directors used the same kind of aesthetic approach. Apart from that, the absurdity in the film doesn’t work in a funny, but in a rude way. The secret of shooting a B-movie like this is to have over the top acting and dialogues, but the lack of enough “bad taste” in the film doesn’t let the story work as a trashy film. Consequently, Wrong Cops can’t even copy what its ancestors have done two decades ago and fails by not hitting the right notes in its own kitschy world.
Königsberg is well known as being the former name of the capital of East Prussia and the birthplace of German philosopher Immanuel Kant whose work „Critique of Practical Reason“ is often been regarded as one of the most important works in the history of philosophy. Furthermore, it also is the birthname of American screenwriter and director Woody Allen. Last but not least it´s the story of a successful, but rather lonesome man named Mr. Königsberg who is haunted by his reputation of being a terrible hunter with an introverted personality. One day while leaving for a weekly hunt he makes a decision to challange his destiny. That being said, the decision isn´t easy.
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
The character at the heart of Philipp Mayrhof´s Königsberg is a man who questions his faith in destiny and reason at the very core of his own existence. Philipp Mayrhofer who studied philosophy in Vienna and now continues his studies in Paris today is an author who doesn´t give solid answers to the questions his story and character poses. On the contrary Mayrhof leaves his protagonist quite often in silence, letting his eyes and movements carry the feelings and letting the viewer bring his own thoughts and reflections to the film. Yet the images Mayrhofer provides – wheter peering into actors faces or placing the protagonist by using wide-angles in the middle of the landscape – turn the story into mesmerizing and beautiful trip of almost mythic proportions. The brilliance of „Königsberg“ is all pervasive – a philosophical poem at its very finest. by Aurite Kouts (France)
by Ali Deniz Şensöz (Turkey)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 74
photos by Cecile Janvier
critics’ week shorts
Circle Line
by Shin Suwon South-Korea // Critics’ Week // Grand Prix
The title Circle Line already sounds like a paradox, a geometrical nonsense. Even if it actually refers to a metro that goes in a loop, the movie is all based on a play with geometrical shapes. The first circle with the belly of the main character’s wife, the face of a homeless baby and the never-ending itinerary of the metro; then the many rectangles drawn by strict city lines, sharp words and subway trains crossing each other. Shin Suwon sets her character (Sangwoo) in the middle of these shapes, and by visually isolating the man she creates the aesthetic sensation of being lost and unable to communicate with the surrounding world. It becomes clear he has been fired a few weeks before and is unable to accept it and cannot tell his family. He spends his days in his working suit, sitting in the circle line until it is time to go home. This event has taken him out of the system and he cannot enter it again, doomed to get lost between rigorous shapes that do not leave any space for alternatives. The brilliant composition of the shots provides strong feelings of Sangwoo’s inability to connect
with the social machine, which goes on functioning without him. As this gap increases, the border between reality and ghosts gets more ambiguous and brings him from awkward situations to hallucinations and uncanny dreams. The very soft image, well-mastered rhythm of the shots and clearly organized sound create a kind of bittersweet torpor where it becomes impossible to sort out what is real and what is not. It can be said for sure that Shin Suwon knows what she is doing and is able to control every aspect of her movie. The bad side of this firm grip is that the movie sometimes lacks some air: obvious metaphors are everywhere and it seems like there’s no place for the viewer’s interpretation or imagination. As if the director too had embarked on a circle line following a compulsory route.
text chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 80
Un Dimanche Matin
by Damien Manivel France // Critics’ Week // Prix Découverte
Simple stories are the hardest to tell and silent films with a simple story even harder. A middle aged, out of shape man gets up before dawn and takes his dog for a walk. They walk until the sun comes up; meet more people on the way as the town awakes almost as if searching for something they will never find. The man does not engage much with his surroundings nor does the dog. They walk along the streets, the dog goes for a quick swim and they both seem to take the position of observers. But is that not the position the viewer is supposed to take and where are we supposed to be then? In a way we are the silent members of the street, encountering a man with his dog. On the other hand, there is the moment when the dog moves towards the camera, almost as if making contact with the viewer; and so it might also be a little game that
this film plays with the viewer – now you see me, now you don’t. In praise of the director, using the actor’s body as the only tool to tell the story on a natural background, it must be said that the story is a subtle one. It seems to be about loneliness and friendship, a confusing condition pretty much describing the modern society where everyone is an isolated island, but desperately tries to find somewhere to belong. This man has his dog and the suburbs of Paris are their playground. We do not know answers to the question of how or why or what, but we see him as if we were also walking on the streets that Sunday morning.
text andreea dobre // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 82
It’s Not a Cowboy Movie by Benjamin Parent France // Critics’ Week
Four young actors are playing in your short. Two boys and two girls. Finnegan Oldfield has already been taking part to several short and feature films, what about the others? Each actor has a different profile. For example, the character played by Leila (Choukri) was completely different in the script. We were looking for a tall and elongated black girl but couldn’t find her. One day, Emma, one of my Casting Directors, spotted Leila in the streets. She was a complete amateur but she obviously had “that thing”. For Malivaï (Yakou), who plays Moussa, it was his very first film. Garence Marillier (Nadia) already acted in a short film selected
in Cannes in 2011 (ed. note: Junior by Julia Ducournau). As for Finnegan, he’s the last actor I saw after 5 months of fruitless searches. Concerning the screenplay, what was the starting-point? Actually, the project was born 5 or 6 years ago. With my co-scriptwriter, we were developing a pilot project made of very short episodes entitled The Girls’ Corner. It was based on girls chit-chatting in the toilets of a secondary school. The project was extended to the boys. For each episode, the same theme should unite them, namely: homosexuality.
Which kind of personal elements did you add? In fact, my own father is gay but I learnt it only four years ago (ed. note: Benjamin Parent was born in 1975). When I started to write the pilot project, I didn’t know that. In recent years many French films have been dealing with school through realism, like in Laurent Cantet’s film Entre Les Murs or in a more goofy style, The Class by Riad Sattouf. What is your own approach? To me, Riad Sattouf’s vision is a little bit too cruel. For him, teenage years are horrible. I feel like he has little faith in humanity…
review
To get into more detai, It’s Not a Cowboy Movie is an insolent film chronicling, in the span of a school break, the life of Vincent, Moussa, Nadia and Jessica, four prudish preadolescents whose vocabulary does not shy away from swearwords. If proof is needed, in this 12-minutes long film, you will hear lots of charming and chastened words such as “faggots” or “motherfuckers” and you will also learn that, for these teenagers, some gay men can be described as “more visited than Le Louvre”… Far from being outrageous, the dialogues of this jubilatory French short film are simply hilarious! But let’s get back to the cowboys… When Vincent appears on screen, he is actually talking to Moussa of a wicked movie he saw the evening before on TV: the famous “western de pédé” Brokeback Mountain. Obviously overwhelmed by the film, Vincent is yet reluctant to show his feelings, his tears, fearing not to appear ‘normal’… To
spice things up, the director Benjamin Parent films his young actors in the toilets of their school. With its swinging doors and intruders stepping inside, this set has a unique cowboy spirit! In the girls’ bathroom, Nadia and Jessica are also talking about Brokeback Mountain, in a tone halfway between intimacy and crudity. We learn that the father of Nadia, the frail blondinette, has made a belated outing. He inspires the girls’ wild laughter but also an awkward misunderstanding (could Nadia be an “accident”?).
The genius of Benjamin Parent is to have given to these kids a great freedom, even letting them mimicking a very special fist-fuck. Unforgettable! But if the teenagers of today seem to lack of depth when it comes to sexuality and its verbalization, they still (hopefully) embody a deep-skin sensibility and a moving innocence. Finally, It’s Not a Cowboy Movie is a film with guts and a huge amount of tenderness.
On the contrary, I feel close from more realistic visions, like Laurent Cantet’s one. In my short film, I wanted a fair balance between laughter and sadness. Anyway, I learnt that your own style chooses you, not the other way around. I would say today that my style is bittersweet.
interview
One thing is for sure; It’s Not a Cowboy Movie is not a cowboy movie. This is a film about a movie cowboy. But not only…
text by emilie padellec // photo by chloe vollmer-lo // nisimazine cannes 2012 // 84
La Bifle
O Duplo
by Juliana Rojas // Brazil // Special Mention
by Stefan Constantinescu // Sweden
In the opening credits the definition of the term Dickslap : “the act of slapping with one’s penis” sets the tone for the rest of the film which is a mostly amusing and unpretentious tale about a young man’s fight to get back his girl and manhood.
A Brazilian director with a fair amount of experience in short film making has yet again come up with an allegorical story on the human condition. Employing the concept of Doppelgänger, a myth and story so popular in western philosophy and folkloric traditions, Rojas attempts to translate the often-untraceable development of our personalities into a 24 minutes story. We meet Silvia, an elementary school teacher and single young woman whose life starts to take a fatally eerie turn once she and others start to see her doppelganger in the school. Actions that never would have been part of her normal behavior now become natural instincts and this doppelganger starts to stand so close to the real Silvia it becomes hard to tell them apart. An allegorical journey of the divided soul, the premise of split personality, the repressed and the subconscious, psychoanalytical concepts representing possible departing points to dissect the story of O Duplo. Told in a visually supportive style of the thriller genre, this makes for a haunting and uncomfortable viewing, an accomplished and professional story that evokes… What exactly? And that is exactly it: it is not important what it evokes, but how.
Everything about this family is neat: the clean kitchen, the bathroom light and the healthy dinner. The director Stefan Constantinescu makes the spectator enter this world of Scandinavian perfection where the rooms are tidy, the decoration minimal and people beautiful. Where everything is in order and civilized.
by Jean-Baptiste Saurel // France
La Bifle is heavily influenced by recent American independent comedies, (Judd Apatow, Kevin Smith, the Farelly brothers and Mike Myers’s Austin Powers to quote but a few) and for its second and best part by far by Quentin Tarantino ‘s Kill Bill. The short film follows Francis, a geeky and introverted young man working in a video store specialized in Asian porn. Francis is secretly attracted to his colleague, Sonia, whose dream is to participate as an actress in a film starring the rather well-hung kung fu master Ti Kong. When the director offers Sonia a unique opportunity to act in a new Ti Kong’s dickslap production, Francis has no other solution than to fight Ti Kong in order to save the girl of his dreams. The film has a very simplistic storyline, dialogues and characters are somehow very superficial and not always that funny. How can we relate to Francis’s attraction to Sonia, when her only motivation throughout the film is to being slapped by Ti Kong’s giant penis? That said, La Bifle offers a very innovative, funny and impressive visual universe as well as a solid mise en scène. The set design is very well crafted, from the amazing T Kong’s film posters to the giant fake plastic penis. Finally the film introduces one of the most original and funniest fight scenes in Cannes this year. The final discklap fight between Francis and Ti Kongs is memorable. by Aurite Kouts (France)
by Greta Varts (Estonia)
Family Dinner
Well, everything except those kinky text messages the wife is sending to an anonymous lover while having a bath. The husband and the daughter are preparing the dinner next door while she and her secret boyfriend fantasize about having sex on the office table. She transforms into another person, a person who can’t stop herself from imagining sexual adventures with her lover, a person so completely different from the strict mother at the dinner table. The camera work as well remains minimalistic and calm, just like the setting and the décor. Sometimes it does not move at all and remains stable throughout the relatively long scenes. Style and colors reflect this antiseptic mood, this atmosphere of neatness where no one ever loses appropriate manners and suitable behavior. There is this huge gap between the shining, light and almost sterile setting and the thoughts the woman utters in her messages. The cellphone is like a small element of dirt in this spotless world, in this perfect little family. It is the hole being cut into that thin layer of civilization and perfection. by Franziska Knupper (Germany)
Horizon
Hazara
Yuegas y cottoras
by Shay Levy // Israel
by Natalia Garagiola // Argentina
A tree is facing us, incredibly tall. As if it was rooted in our retina, this tree is standing up in an extreme low-angle shot. An uncanny feeling comes out from this preliminary scene, similar maybe to what you might feel during the Hitchcockian sequence of the sequoia forest in Vertigo… This is, without a doubt, a shot filmed with a wild verticality. This Romanian short film from Paul Negoescu is entitled Horizon. Yet, the director brings us back rapidly to the promised horizontality; after few minutes indeed, this towering tree does collapse in a slow fall, idly… Suddenly, the set changes: the horizon is given back to us, one licked by a shimmering sea under the sun of an ending day. Here the story is tinted with a documentary tone letting us discover a man with a craggy face and a grayish ponytail. Obviously, this is a master mariner bustling around his nets with gestures he knows by heart. As if we were literally inside his makeshift boat, we witness the fisherman hauling in his nets from the sea, shaken by strong waves. Then, the frame broadens and the camera gets higher to embrace the immensity of a commercial seaport; the kind of soulless setting where men have no place. Back on the sea, the contrast of the small pale blue boat sailing along the black and red flank of a gigantic cargo ship illustrates clearly how threatened this man is in our industrialized world. Is this denunciation stereotyped? Not if we notice that Paul Negoescu inserts slight and yet oppressive strokes of supernatural.These waves that bang together on the skiff of the fisherman’s boat, aren’t they accompanied by strange knocks? Aren’t these knocks following the fisherman when he tries to anchor a little bit farther? Yes, a predator is tracking down this man and his fall in the waves seems unavoidable. At dusk, an aquatic creature emerges from the sea. How disappointing: the secret should have been kept…
Hazara offers a sensitive journey into the mind of Shay, a young Israeli suffering from depression. The topic is autobiographical, not only does the main character shares the same name as the director of the short but Shay Levy has himself recovered from a similar state as well.
Argentinian director Natalia Garagiola`s second short film looks into the world of Argentinian aristocracy and the hidden cracks behind the marble façade. Three friends, Delfina, Sofi and Jose get together the night before Delfina`s wedding to reminisce about old times and prepare for the event. The way these young women are introduced is an excellent example of a good short film opening: visually compelling, the characters are opened up in a sequence of shots in an introductory yet narrativedriven way. We see Delfina hunting parrots. We see Sofi looking at her mirror image in guilt, reluctant to exit the car and not answering the never-ending phone calls. Finally we see Jose, the pregnant woman sunbathing on the stairs of the villa waiting for her friends and her soon due baby.
by Emilie Padellec (France)
by Aurite Kouts (France)
by Paul Negoescu // Romania
From the beginning of the short we understand that something is wrong with Shay, he seems restless, we gradually learn that he has recently returned from a long trip to India, a popular destination for many young Israeli backpackers. His family tries its best to deal with and comfort Shay, but by doing so they paradoxically feed his alienation. The short, at times successfully but mostly unsuccessfully, tries to convey the effects of depression in a cinematic way. One of the major drawbacks to the understanding of the film is the lack of context: we do not know what happened to Shay in India, and the reason that triggered his depression. The only thing we are left with is the raw psychotic moments that Shay experiences and which are somehow exaggerated. Thus, in one scene, Shay is sitting for dinner, refuses to eat, the shot changes when we can see Shay focusing on an ant that is walking on the table, all the surroundings conversations are blurred. The mise en scène visually separates Shay from the rest of his family and acquaintances and emphasizes his loneliness. Despite all, the film through several ellipses, shows how Shay manages to get over his depression, for instance he finds a job as a cook. The film ends with Shay holding his sister’s baby outside his house; finally it seems in peace, announcing “We need to return now». However, the last shot on the actor Tom Hagi’s nervous face reveals that the crack is still there.
The director has a clearly feminine approach to both the visual and the dramatic direction. There are no shots in the film that lack a balanced encapsulation of light, composition and emotional storyline. Also worthy of praise is thus the cinematographer Fernando Lockett. Yes, it can all be dangerously close to soap opera in its plot premise where almost everyone except the bride has recently slept with his husband-to-be Alvaro, but there is something in this perfection of visual imagery and seemingly perfect, but rotten inside people that is enjoyable to see. The film does not leave us with anything special about the story, but a haunting image of women as beautiful as they come, all doomed to be parrots in their tangled lives and mares to their passions. by Greta Varts (Estonia)
nisimazine cannes 2012 // 86
Director of Publication: Matthieu Darras Editor in Chief / Design / Layout : Maartje Alders Project Manager / Editor: Giovanni Vimercati
Credits
In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgement of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense.
Contributors: Maartje Alders, Celluloid Liberation Front, Matthieu Darras, Ali Deniz Şensöz, Andreea Dobre, Cecile Grâce Janvier, Franziska Knupper, Aurite Kouts, Marek Maëmets, Emilie Padellec, Greta Varts, Chloe Vollmer-Lo Special thanks to: Christine Aimé, Critics’ Week team, Jean-Charles Canu, Catherine Giraud, Dana Linssen, Jay Weissberg, Boyd van Hoeij, Pamela Biénzobas, Viviana Carlet.
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Cover photo: Beasts of the Southern Wild Back cover photo: by Chloe Vollmer-Lo
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