A man with a beard as long as his gaze and a smile that’s always open, Gadappa is not just the nicest character in Thithi (an Indian film in the Concorso Cineasti del presente competition) but also someone who teaches us how to interpret the present. Impervious to the frenzy typical of the rest of his family members, Gadappa has the pace of someone who has understood how to “surf” the waves of life.
Alex van Warmerdam’s film has no waves, but a swamp whose calm waters end up gradually swallowing the various characters in his entertaining and surreal spy story. Waves do break violently against the shoreline in Zulawski’s film, which endeavours to tackle Gombrowicz’s masterpiece. Cosmos is a film world in which the task of giving meaning to a chaotic reality collides with the mission’s incongruity.