Screen Jerusalem Film Festival 2016 Day 3

IS SU E

3

SUNDAY, JULY 10 2016

AT JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com

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Rozenkier, Tobal clinch top Sam Spiegel prizes Yehonatan Indursky

Beta Cinema boards Before Memory

BY TOM GRATER

German sales agent Beta Cinema has boarded worldwide sales on Before Memory, the debut feature from Jerusalem-born director Yehonatan Indursky. The IsraelFrance co-production recently wrapped a 23-day shoot in Tel Aviv and the nearby city of Bnei Brak.

Indursky won the best director prize in last year’s Jerusalem Film Festival short film competition for The Cantor And The Sea. He is also the co-creater of award-winning TV show Shtisel. Producers on his debut feature are Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman-Keren for Pie Films and Moshe Edery and Leon Edery of United King. French outfit Haut et Court co-produce.

The film is the story of a chancer living on the fringes of an ultraorthodox community who must raise his nine-year-old daughter when his wife leaves. The project was developed in the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab and supported by Rabinovich Film Fund, Gesher Multicultural Film Fund and Avi Chai Foundation.

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Israeli director Yona Rozenkier and producer Kobi Mizrahi have clinched the $50,000 top prize at the final pitching event of the fifth Sam Spiegel International Film Lab for their road-trip tale of an elderly father and son, Decompression.

Described as “a sad, late coming-of-age comedy”, it revolves around a journey from the north to the south of Israel on a tractor by 35-year-old Ben and his truculent, larger-than-life father.

“The jury was impressed by the

A special mention went to Margarita Linton-Balaklav’s deeply personal Life Is Anywhere Else, based on her upbringing on a settlement in the heart of the Palestinian territories.

A total of 11 projects were presented at the pitching event running July 8-9 on the fringes of Jerusalem Film Festival. The annual event marks the final stage of the prestigious seven-month programme aimed at developing first and second features. The prizes were sponsored by the philanthropic Beracha Foundation.

Tarantino at JFF, page 3

NEWS Tarantino thrills The film-maker wowed fest crowd with tales from his lauded career » Page 3

SPOTLIGHT Time to shine Israeli film-makers line up for today’s Pitch Point session » Page 4

REVIEW The Neon Demon Nicolas Winding Refn’s fashion industry satire goes to extremes » Page 12

Evgeny Ruman

Ruman finds his Voices

Yam Vignola

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Actresses Nuria Dina Lozinsky and Yuval Vin, writer-director Nir Bergman and co-writer and original author Eran Bar-Gil arrive for the Jerusalem Film Festival screening of Bergman’s latest feature, Saving Neta.

Fig Tree takes root in Ethiopia Alamork Marsha is heading to Ethiopia next month to commence pre-production on her debut feature Fig Tree, winner of the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab pitching event in 2014. The film is based on the Israeli-Ethiopian film-maker’s own experiences growing up in wartorn Addis Ababa and being airlifted to Israel in 1991 as part of the country’s Operation Solomon.

Producers Saar Yogev and Naomi

genuine and emotional father-andson story from north of Israel to south,” said jury president Slawomir Idzak. “The mix between drama and humour is very well balanced. The very visual metaphoric ending is so powerful, you will not forget it.”

Argentinian film-maker Gonzalo Tobal took the second prize of $20,000 for Dolores, a psychological drama about a young woman from a comfortable background awaiting trial on charges of killing her best friend. Benjamin Domenech of Rei Cine is producing.

TODAY

Levari at Tel Aviv-based Black Sheep Film Productions are still closing finance but Marsha is pushing ahead with the shoot while awaiting responses from film funds at home and in Europe. “I want to shoot the film in November, which is the best season in Ethiopia in terms of the climate and light,” says Marsh, who will fly to Addis Ababa in August and cast the film with non-professionals.

Melanie Goodfellow

Paolo Sorrentino’s Young Pope bows at Venice Film Festival

BY TOM GRATER

The first two episodes of HBO, Sky and Canal Plus television series The Young Pope — starring Jude Law as the fictional Pope Pius XIII — will have its world premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival (August 31-September 10).

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), the eight-episode series was produced by Italian outfit Wildside and executive

produced by Carole Scotta and Caroline Benjo of Haut et Court, who are both delegates at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival. “[Sorrentino] is a film-maker who dares to take risks, who fearlessly and with his customary creative and innovative spirit tackles the language of television series,” said Venice festival director Alberto Barbera. The Young Pope will air across Europe from October.

Vladimir Friedman and Maria Belkin have signed to co-star in Evgeny Ruman’s upcoming feature Golden Voices, as a pair of veteran dubbing artists from the Soviet Union struggling to make a new life in Israel. Ruman will unveil the project alongside producer Eitan Evan of Tel Aviv-based Evanstone Films at the Jerusalem Pitch Point industry event today.

The director, who moved to Israel from Belarus in the 1990s, says the feature is inspired by his own experiences as well as those of his parents. “The core story is very emotional,” he says. “It’s essentially about people starting over again and learning to accept one another in a new environment after so many years together.”

Budgeted at $1.3m (¤1.2m), Golden Voices promises to be a more ambitious production than Ruman’s previous project, The Man In The Wall, which was made for less than $100,000. Ruman hopes to complete financing by the end of 2016 and shoot in spring 2017.

Evan is producing Golden Voices alongside Israeli production powerhouse UCM with Germany’s Black Forest Films on board as a co-producer.

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NEWS

Tarantino unchained thrills JFF crowd

By Tom Grater

Hollywood icon Quentin Tarantino regaled a sold-out crowd at Jerusalem Cinematheque on Friday with tales from his directing career and his enduring love for cinema.

The famously loquacious filmmaker spoke with enthusiasm and energy about his craft, comparing his method to that of a 13-year-old child imagining writing an episode of his favourite TV series. “If you’re a kid, you don’t know any of the rules and regulations, you just want to make the greatest Star Trek episode ever, a wild, crazy version of it — that actually sounds fucking exciting,” said the director, whose nine features include debut Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. “My take on genre is not dissimilar; I want to deliver the pleasures that are there but I want to do it my way.”

Tarantino was speaking before a screening of his second feature, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, which was shown on a 35mm print flown in from the director’s personal archive. He is attending the festival this year as a guest of honour.

Yam Vignola

Quentin Tarantino at Jerusalem Cinematheque

At Thursday’s opening ceremony, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award by festival director Noa Regev and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat.

On working with frequently starry ensemble casts, Tarantino described the respectful relationship he has with his actors.

“When I have direction, I walk over to them and talk about it, it’s very intimate,” he noted. “I don’t

scream at them across the set.”

However, he does have one golden rule: learn your lines. “You have to know my dialogue backwards and forwards,” he said.

“Anything else and I could fire you and start again because you’re just disrespecting me. I am paying them to say my dialogue. That is their job. I like my actors, but I love my characters.”

He described moments when

Classic Avanti has new lease of life

By Tom Grater

Following last year’s festival screening of Uri Zohar’s restored Three Days And A Child, Jerusalem Cinematheque and Tel Aviv-based technical facility Realworks Studios have collaborated on Israeli war classic Avanti Popolo (1986), from late director Rafi Bukai.

Marking 30 years since the film’s original release, the digital restoration will be screened for the first time here at the festival on July 12, with cast and crew in attendance including the film’s lead actor Salim Dau and Bukai’s widow Mayan.

The dark comedy follows two Egyptian soldiers stranded in the Sinai desert after the Six-Day War — now caught inside the new borders of Israel — who are desperate to return home.

Originally Bukai’s graduate film from Tel Aviv University, the feature version went on to be

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Avanti Popolo

widely acclaimed, and is still studied in the country’s film schools.

“It is a very politically engaged, left-wing film,” says Realworks’ Vanessa Lapa. “It’s probably the first Israeli film to show the world through the eyes of the other side,” adds festival director Noa Regev.

The restoration was initially discussed at last year’s festival, with the actual process beginning in March this year. The Cinematheque had tracked down a 16mm

negative print in London five years ago, but its poor condition led to a lengthy and arduous restoration process. The initial scan was done at Cinelab in Romania — because of quality and affordability — and Realworks also used image-processing software from UK outfit The Pixel Farm.

The company’s next project is Philippe Mora’s documentary Swastika, which provoked controversy at Cannes in 1973.

his cast almost transform into his characters: “I’m looking for that take where an actor just kicks into something — actors describe it as flying, they’re not them anymore, it’s the reason they become actors.” Christoph Waltz’s performance as sinister colonel Hans Landa in Second World War action thriller Inglourious Basterds achieved that level of lucidity, Tarantino believes.

“Landa is the best character I’ve ever written and maybe the best I ever will write,” he said. “I didn’t realise [when I was first writing him] that he was a linguistic genius. He’s probably one of the only Nazis in history who could speak perfect Yiddish.”

Tarantino revealed that after an unfruitful auditioning process for the role, he almost shelved the entire film: “I was getting worried. Unless I found the perfect Landa, I was going to pull the movie. I gave myself one more week and then I was going to pull the plug. Then Christoph Waltz came in and it was obvious that he was the guy; he could do everything. He was amazing, he gave us our movie back.”

The director also reconfirmed prior proclamations that he will retire from film-making after his tenth feature, meaning he has two more to go following The Hateful Eight (Tarantino counts Kill Bill: Vol 1 and 2 as a single film). But nor does he rule out returning to the medium later in life: “I am planning to stop at 10 [films], but at 75 I might decide I have another story to do.”

Industry heavyweights ponder VoD, future of cinema Dylan Leiner, EVP acquisitions and production at Sony Pictures Classics (SPC), and Alison Thompson, head of sales company Cornerstone Films, shared their industry experience here on Friday.

The panel was titled ‘Commercial Distribution of Documentary Cinema’ but Leiner and Thompson addressed wider challenges in the industry, including the changes wrought by VoD and the future of cinema culture and curation.

Thompson agreed her industry was in the midst of painful reconfiguration, but also expressed confidence that “the nadir” had been reached and felt optimistic about the future. “It reminds me now of when I started out in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” she said. “We’re going back to basics. It’s becoming about the quality of films again.”

Despite the disruption to the theatrical release market by the

rise of streaming giants such as Netflix, Leiner pointed out SPC has no plans to enter the day-anddate market with its releases, preferring to continue banking the rewards of a traditional windowing model. “It’s not to say that we wouldn’t consider something in the future, but at the moment we have a business model that is working for our films,” he said.

“And the films we pursue are really theatrically driven films.”

Leiner said that how to build film-maker careers and a future cinematic culture are the “big paranoias right now for the industry”.

“The onus has to be on the community to help educate filmmakers so they can make educated decisions about what they want for their film when it’s going out into the world,” he said.

Matt Mueller

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 3

SPOTLIGHT PITCH POINT

The Jerusalem connection Israeli directors and producers seek to meet all-important international partners at the festival’s annual Pitch Point event. Melanie Goodfellow reports

K

eren Yedaya, Evgeny Ruman, Mushon Salmona and Bazi Gete are among the Israeli directors presenting projects at the 11th edition of Pitch Point (July 10-11), at Jerusalem Film Festival.

The annual event aimed at connecting local film-makers with international partners is a key date on the Israeli film industry calendar. Past participants have included Rama Burshtein’s Fill The Void, Nadav Lapid’s Policeman, Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation and Nir Bergman’s Saving Neta, which premieres at JFF this year.

“This year we have a nice mix of veteran film-makers and fresh faces,” says co-ordinator Elad Goldman.

Yedaya’s new project Red Fields follows the father-daughter drama That Lovely Girl, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2014, and debut picture Or (My Treasure), which won the Camera d’Or in 2004. An adaptation of cult Israeli anti-war rock opera Mami, it portrays a woman from an impoverished southern Israeli town who rises to power in Tel Aviv and then launches a final war to end wars. Israeli singer Neta Elkayam — known for fusing the traditional music of her Moroccan Jewish ancestors with a modern vibe — has signed to play the lead character Mami.

“It has a strong female protagonist and explores some of the themes of her previous works,” says Goldman.

Gete, who won the best first or second film prize at JFF for Red Leaves in 2014, is presenting Night Voodoo, about a lost Ethiopian woman who sets off on a journey across Israel with a truck driver.

Salmona, whose works include Vasermil and Invisibles, will pitch Prisoners, about a recently released convicted killer.

Ruman is participating with his third film Golden Voices, following the critically acclaimed Man In The Wall. It is described as a tragicomedy about a renowned voice-dubbing couple who try to transfer their skills into other lines of work when they emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Producer Chilik Michaeli of Tel Aviv-based United Channels Movies (UCM), which is

4 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

Montana

The Cakemaker

Being Solomon

producing Golden Voices, says co-productions are essential for the Israeli film industry.

“Even though our [average] budgets are not high by European or US standards — falling around the $1m-$1.5m mark — we don’t have enough funds in the local market to raise the money at home,” explains Michaeli.

“We work a lot with Europe, particularly with Germany and France, although we’ve also done co-productions with Poland and Canada and from time to time with Italy and Spain,” he adds.

The company, which counts Saving Neta, Atomic Falafel and Dancing Arabs (aka A Borrowed Identity) among its recent credits — will present a further two projects and a work in progress. These are Roni Ninio’s Mamaliga, about the emotional connection between a young woman and a male k i d n e y d o n o r, Michael Rozanov’s supernatural thriller Neon Sky, and Limor Shmila’s first-time feature Montana, about a woman forced to confront a childhood tragedy.

“Mamaliga will be shot

‘This year we have a nice mix of veteran filmmakers and fresh faces’ Elad Goldman, Pitch Point

(Left) Ram Nehari’s romantic comedy Nils

in Europe so we need one or two partners and are hoping to tap into Eurimages too,” says Michaeli.

“For Montana, which we financed ourselves with private equity money, we’re looking for sales companies and some finance to help complete it.”

Further first-time works in the line-up this year include Oren Adaf ’s project Darwin, about a National Geographic photographer estranged from his Orthodox Jewish family, and a work-in-progress project called Nils, an eccentric romantic comedy directed by leading TV director Ram Nehari. It won the top prize at Pitch Point in 2014 when it was presented at the project stage.

Also being showcased at Pitch Point is Ofir Raul Grazier’s drama The Cakemaker, about a German man who becomes romantically involved with his late Israeli lover’s wife.

For the first time, the event will also feature an Israeli feature-length animation, Albert Hanan Kaminski’s Being Solomon, a family film revolving around the biblical King Solomon.

As in previous years, there will be a number of prizes including the $5,300 (ILS20,000) Van Leer Group Foundation award, and the $1,000 Wouter Barendrecht and Lia van Leer Jerusalem Pitch Point award.

This year’s jury includes Sony Pictures Classics EVP Dylan Leiner, Ewa Puszczynska of Poland’s Extreme Emotions and Opus Film, and Protagonist Pictures’ Vanessa Saal. Also in town are Croatian producer Cédomir Kolar of Paris-based A.S.A.P. Films, sales supremo Hengameh Panahi of Celluloid Dreams, who handled Golden Lion winner Lebanon, and US agent and producer David Lonner of the Los Angeles-based s Oasis Media Group. ■

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INTERVIEW ORI SIVAN

Harmonia

Birth of a nation Renowned TV writer-director Ori Sivan explains to Wendy Mitchell why his latest project Harmonia could only be made as a film

I

t takes a certain confidence to update the Bible. Ori Sivan, well-known as the cocreator of hit Israeli TV series In Treatment, is a writer/director who was inspired by the tale in Genesis of Abraham and his two wives, and wanted to show how this story can resonate today. The result is Harmonia, which has its world premiere here in Jerusalem in the Israeli Feature Competition section.

“I stay close to the Biblical story,” says Sivan of his film. “I even tried to write it in the way the Bible tells stories. The style is pure and short and without subtext; it’s straightforward and simple, but the story is dramatic, there is conflict.”

The action is transplanted to contemporary Israel and follows a childless couple, Abraham and Sarah. He is the charismatic conductor of Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and she is a morose harpist who develops a special friendship with a young horn player, Hagar. Hagar offers to bear a child for Sarah and Abraham, and gives birth to Ismail, who grows up to be a gifted pianist but does not know the story of his birth.

“One woman can offer her help or her abilities to a woman that cannot give birth, it was there in the Bible and it’s also true now.

It’s a story that can hold now,” says Sivan.

The director loved exploring the world of classical music (his grandmother was in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). “I found it the perfect way of people connecting to each

6 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

other,” he explains. “There are 100 people doing something together that has no meaning when they are alone, and that has no meaning without the conductor.”

Sivan built a good deal of emotion into the story of the two women. “It could have been a dominating relationship, and the Bible tells the story that way. But my interpretation is different and I thought it would be a very deep friendship and connection between them.”

He sees ties to themes from his previous works, such as his miniseries Barefoot, about three generations of a family on a kibbutz.

“That was my TV miniseries dealing with people wanting to be part of a bigger body and co-operating. People don’t live their lives alone, they live in co-operation with other people — that’s also the essence of classical music, giving life to a symphony.”

He continues: “My interest is in the way people relate to each other; the Israeli reality and Israeli cinema is loaded with aggression and violence and it’s hard for me. I try to avoid that subject, which is surrounding our lives here. I tried to tell a story that is connected to the way people relate to each other as human beings.”

He says television projects are easier to produce in Israel. In Treatment — which inspired HBO’s US remake — ran for an impressive 80 episodes in Israel.

“I really like photography and looking at interesting framing and telling a story visually,

and In Treatment was totally words and acting but nothing to do with cinema,” says Sivan.

“Harmonia is a kind of a reaction. [I wanted] to make a film and express myself in that way cinema can provide and television cannot.”

‘I tried to tell a story that is connected to the way people relate to each other as human beings’ Ori Sivan, director

A joyful shoot Sivan speaks with joy about the experience of making the film, particularly working with the music and the actors, led by Alon Abutbul and Tali Sharon. “I had so much fun listening to classical music, choosing the pieces and working with the orchestra, and working with the actors.” Sharon learned to play the harp for the role in just a few months. “She knew the hand movements and the right strings, she was doing a perfect job playing the harp — the orchestra members could not believe she was doing the concerto.”

The film is Sivan’s second fictional theatrical feature (he co-directed Saint Clara with Ari Folman in 1996). He has caught the film bug again, and has another idea he would like to shoot in the next two years.

While Harmonia is not overtly political, Sivan hopes it will cause the audience to think. “The story is in a way about the ArabIsraeli conflict; Ismail used to be metaphorically the father of the Arab Muslims, and Isaac — the other son of Abraham — is kind of the father of the Jews, in a metaphorical way. I tried to give it a very, very slight touch. s I tried to say, in a way, we’re all brothers.” ■

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‫יוסף שילוח‬

YO S E F S H I LOA H TRIBUTE

A TRUMPET IN THE WADI

‫ערב הוקרה‬

DESPERADO SQUARE

WEDDING DOLL

On the occasion of his receipt of the Jerusalem Film Festival’s Life Achievement Award, The Jerusalem Film Festival, the Israel Film Fund and the Israeli Cinema Testimonial Database present an evening in tribute to Yosef Shiloah, with the participation of some of the people who have accompanied him throughout nearly half a century of acting for stage and screen. The participants will sketch the life and personality of one of the most outstanding and popular actors in the history of the Israeli cinema.

TURN LEFT AT THE END OF THE WORLD

NOODLE Opening remarks:

JELLYFISH

Participants: actor Zeev Revah, director Shemi Zarhin, director Benny Torati, film critic Meir Schnitzer, film critic Shmulik Duvdeveni, and others.

Moderators: Marat Parkhomovsky and Avital Bekerman, Testimonial Database Coordinator: Tzila Levy

BROKEN WINGS

ZERO MOTIVATION

GETT

:‫בהשתתפות אישים שליוו ומלווים אותו בדרכו המקצועית‬ ‫ באמצעותם נשרטט קווים‬.‫ במאים ומבקרי קולנוע‬,‫שחקנים‬ ‫ אחד משחקני הקולנוע והתיאטרון‬,‫לדמותו של יוסף שילוח‬ .‫הבולטים והפופולאריים בתולדות הקולנוע הישראלי‬

OUT IN THE DARK

,‫ מאיר שניצר‬,‫ בני תורתי‬,‫ שמי זרחין‬,‫ זאב רווח‬:‫משתתפים‬ .‫שמוליק דובדבני ואחרים‬

THE ISRAEL FILM FUND CONGRATULATES THE 33RD JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL

During the evening, excerpts will be screened from an interview with Yosef Shiloah conducted as part of the Israeli Cinema Testimonial Database documentation project. The project is conducted with the support of the Israel Film Fund, the Israel Lottery Council for Culture and Art, the Jerusalem Cinematheque-Israel Film Archive and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.

Length of program: approximately 60 minutes

WALTZ WITH BASHIR

‫"מאגר‬-‫ קרן הקולנוע הישראלי ו‬,‫פסטיבל הקולנוע ירושלים‬ ‫העדויות של הקולנוע הישראלי" בתכנית לרגל הענקת‬ ‫פרס מפעל חיים לשחקן יוסף שילוח בפסטיבל הקולנוע‬ .‫ירושלים‬

:‫דברי ברכה‬ ‫ מנכ"ל הסינמטק‬,‫אילן דה פריס‬ ‫ מנכ"ל קרן הקולנוע הישראלי‬,‫כתריאל שחורי‬

Ilan de Vries, General Director, Jerusalem Cinematheque Katriel Schori, CEO the Israel Film Fund

THE FAREWELL PARTY

EYES WIDE OPEN

‫במסגרת הערב יוקרנו גם קטעים נבחרים מראיון שנערך עם‬ ‫יוסף שילוח במסגרת פרויקט התיעוד "מאגר העדויות של‬ ‫ מועצת‬,‫ בתמיכת קרן הקולנוע הישראלי‬."‫הקולנוע הישראלי‬ ‫ ארכיון ישראלי‬- ‫ סינמטק ירושלים‬,‫הפיס לתרבות ולאמנות‬ .‫לסרטים וסינמטק תל אביב‬ ‫ דקות‬60-‫ כ‬:‫משך התכנית‬

FILL THE VOID

‫ מרט פרחומובסקי ואביטל‬- "‫ "מאגר העדויות‬:‫עורכי הערב‬ ‫בקרמן‬

‫ צילה לוי‬:‫הפקה בפועל‬

!‫ הסרט "כיכר החלומות" בעיצוב סטודיו יש‬:‫כרזה‬

Poster: from the film Desperado Square, designed by Studio Yesh!

IGOR AND THE CRANES' JOURNEY

LATE MARRIAGE

14.7

??

2NIGHT

• 18:00 • Cinematheque 3

Code for Ordering Tickets:

SIX ACTS

‫קוד‬

3 ‫ • סינמטק‬18:00 • 14.7 :‫קוד להזמנת כרטיסים‬

MOUNTAIN

DANCING ARABS

BETHLEHEM

ROOM 514

WALK ON WATER

THINGS BEHIND THE SUN

WE HAD A FOREST

THE BAND'S VISIT

filmfund.org.il ORANGE PEOPLE

LOST ISLANDS

USHPIZIN

OUR FATHER

FOOTNOTE

LEMON TREE

THE BUBBLE

LEBANON

TOTAL LOVE

RESTORATION

FIVE HOURS FROM PARIS

AJAMI

THE SYRIAN BRIDE

CLOSE TO HOME

SAVING NETA

ELI & BEN

A MATTER OF SIZE

SWEET MUD

THREE MOTHERS

JAMES' JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

FROZEN DAYS

THE WANDERER

TIME OF FAVOR

VASERMIL

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Kleber Mendonca Filho Interview

The price of progress The Brazilian director of Aquarius talks to Elaine Guerini about working with his childhood icon, and what compelled him to make a film about the changing urban landscape

T

he demolition of a residential building dating from the 1940s in the north-eastern Brazilian beach city of Recife was doubly painful for local film-maker Kleber Mendonca Filho. “My city lost one of the remaining architectural jewels and I lost the ideal location for my film,” says the director, referring to his second feature, Aquarius, which has sold to more than 30 countries since its world premiere in Cannes, and gone on to win the Sydney Film Prize at Sydney Film Festival in Australia. It is screening here in Jerusalem in the Spirit of Freedom strand.

Aquarius is the story of a retired journalist, played by veteran actress Sonia Braga, who leads a quiet life surrounded by books, records and memories in her apartment facing the sea. Her peace is destroyed when the company that has bought all the neighbouring apartments, insists on acquiring hers.

The destruction of Mendonca Filho’s preferred location confirmed he was on the right track with the story he wanted to tell, which is one that reveals the manoeuvres of Brazil’s rapacious real-estate market. The actual location where he ended up shooting the film was built in the 1950s, and is the only two-storey building still standing in the face of urban renewal on Recife’s beachfront Avenida Boa Viagem. Taller and more modern buildings now dominate the landscape.

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“The market is deciding without considering the memory or heritage of the cities,” says the director, who has emerged in recent years to become one of Brazil’s most outspoken film-makers.

In addition to securing theatrical deals around the world, Netflix has bought the VoD rights in approximately 30 further countries. The deal includes North America, Latin America (except Brazil), Australia and New Zealand, the UK and Asia (except China). In each territory, the film will be available three months after its release in theatres.

Produced by CinemaScopio, with France’s SBS, Videofilmes and Globo Filmes, Aquarius has been selected for at least 25 more festivals. After Jerusalem, it is going on to screen in Nantes, Melbourne, New Zealand and Sarajevo, among others.

On the fast track Aquarius is Mendonca Filho’s second feature following 2012’s Neighboring Sounds, which was a portrait of Recife in the post-economic boom. It won the Grand Prix at CPH PIX in Copenhagen and the Fipresci prizes in Rotterdam and Wroclaw.

“In comparison to Neighboring Sounds, which gained visibility slowly after Rotterdam, we were fast-tracked into major exposure with Aquarius in Cannes,” the director explains. “It feels that everything

of the cities’

‘The market is deciding without considering the memory or heritage

Kleber Mendonca Filho

that happened in a period of over a year with Neighboring Sounds happened in just two weeks with Aquarius.”

The film enabled Mendonca Filho to work with Braga, long an icon to him.

His first memory of the actress goes back to 1978, when she was a wellknown sex symbol in Brazil and played a heroine in local soap opera Dancin’ Days. Best known internationally for Hector Babenco’s Kiss Of The Spider Woman and Bruno Barreto’s Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands, Braga subsequently moved to New York and dedicated herself to an international career.

Aquarius is one of her rare forays back to Brazilian cinema.

“Sonia understood Aquarius’s character deeply from the moment she read the script, as if she’d been waiting for something like this for quite some time,” the director says. “When she got back to me, she said she needed to do the film — something that doesn’t happen every day.”

Building on the heat from Aquarius, Mendonca Filho is now concentrating on writing the script for a film called Bacarau, a slang term for the last bus of the night. He plans to shoot at the beginning of next year and for the first time is working with a co-director, Juliano Dornelles, the production designer of Aquarius.

“It is a movie about history — the history of violence, guns and knives,’’ Mens donca Filho explains. n

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 9

Feature The Neon Demon

Elle Fanning as Jesse in The Neon Demon

‘The way that I approached casting, there were going to be two options – either it was going to be an unknown or it was going to be Elle Fanning’ Nicolas Winding Refn

Dressed

to kill A tale of beauty obsession and obsessive beauties in the ruthless world of Los Angeles fashion, The Neon Demon is Nicolas Winding Refn’s first venture into horror. The Danish film-maker and his producing partner Lene Borglum tell Wendy Mitchell about their Midnight title

Gunther Campine

N

icolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon marks two firsts for the Danish filmmaker: his first horror film and his first film led by female characters. “I think there is a 16-year-old girl hidden in every man and I felt that it was time I made a movie about the 16-year-old girl inside of me,” the director says, speaking to Screen in Copenhagen in April. He also suggests his past films are not nearly as manly as people think: “I always thought the other films were very feminine.”

The Neon Demon’s female focus is combined with other darker aspirations Winding Refn has had for decades. “For years, I’ve been wanting to make a horror film; I had done various ideas and versions, but then I got this idea,” he says. The

10 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

idea was to explore ruthless, beauty-obsessed women in the Los Angeles fashion world.

Elle Fanning stars as Jesse, an aspiring teenage model who moves from the American Midwest to Los Angeles, where she meets a make-up artist/ mortician (Jena Malone) and other models (Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee) who are more dangerous than they first appear. Suffice to say, California mountain lions are not the most bloodthirsty creatures Jesse encounters.

“I was interested in doing a horror film without horror — but not 100% without horror,” the writer-director adds cryptically.

Lene Borglum, who is Winding Refn’s producer and partner in Danish production company Space Rocket Nation, says: “It’s interesting

that Nicolas wants to portray a woman, and this game between women. I have never seen another man direct a film about women who really got this thing between women.” As one of the film’s pitiless protagonists says, when any new girl walks into a room, she wants to know, “Who is she fucking, how high can she climb and is it higher than me?”

The men of The Neon Demon are marginal figures. “All the male characters are the ‘girlfriends’ of other films,” Winding Refn says proudly.

Among them are Alessandro Nivola, who plays a creepy fashion designer, and Keanu Reeves as the sinister manager of a seedy motel.

Even though he still lives there, Winding Refn has made all his films outside his native Denmark

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since the Pusher trilogy concluded in 2005.

It was his wife Liv Corfixen, a fellow filmmaker, who suggested they return to Los Angeles for his next film, after they had lived in Bangkok for the making of Only God Forgives. “We truly love it in LA,” Winding Refn says of the city where he shot 2011’s Drive as well as several commercials.

The challenge became to figure out what Los Angeles story he wanted to tell. “I thought it would be interesting to film that ‘girl comes to the city’, A Star Is Born-subgenre,” he says. “In a strange way, it’s like a fairytale. It goes back to ancient storytelling, about innocence coming to the unknown. It’s always a female perspective.

It’s about innocence, sexuality, virginity.”

Winding Refn also wanted to explore the modern mania with beauty. “The obsession people have with beauty is quite enormous,” he says. “It has been like that since the beginning of time. In a way, it’s the most profitable stock ever to invest in.”

There are scenes in The Neon Demon — particularly one involving a cadaver — that push boundaries of taste, but Winding Refn does not try to second-guess how critics and audiences are going to react. “I don’t think about that,” he declares. “I had no clue how aggressively people would react to Only God Forgives. I had no idea how Drive would be accepted. I don’t think about it.”

Cinephiles will have a field day dissecting his new film’s multiple influences and references, which include everything from Under The Skin and 1982 cult classic Liquid Sky to works by John Waters, David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Winding Refn prefers the audience to discover them. “References are more fun for other people to see,” he says.

The right collaborators The director recruited some female perspectives for the script: UK playwright Polly Stenham and US writer Mary Laws.

After devising the story, he collaborated with Stenham before moving on to work with Laws, asking each to focus in particular on character and dialogue. He enjoyed the energy that was injected into the script with each collaborator.

“It’s a bit like working with a performer,” he says. “You collaborate with them in a way that’s very egotistical, you consume what you like and then you move on.”

He also acknowledges he is not a director who religiously follows a script once production starts. “Because I shoot in chronological order, I’ve probably never done a movie that hasn’t mutated 50% in that shooting process,” he says.

Casting his leading lady was crucial — and Fanning shows a new maturity and calculated coolness as Jesse. “The way I approached casting that role, there were going to be two options — either it was

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Nicolas Winding Refn and Elle Fanning on set

‘I’ve probably never done a movie that hasn’t mutated 50% in that shooting process’ Nicolas Winding Refn

FILMOGRAPHY 1996 Pusher 1999 Bleeder 2003 Fear X 2004 With Blood On My Hands: Pusher II

going to be an unknown or it was going to be Elle Fanning,” he says, explaining that his wife had been impressed after seeing the actress in Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa.

“Elle was born with it; she just has it, visually,” he says. “Also, in terms of a performer, she is just unique. I’ve never met somebody like her. The character was written as a 16-year-old girl, and Elle was 16 when I cast her. You try to find somebody that could be a great version of what you want to do.”

The Neon Demon continues Winding Refn’s collaboration with Cliff Martinez for the composer’s most evocative score yet — some of the music is dark electronica, some has a twinkling quality that alludes to the otherworldly fairytale feel. “Cliff Martinez was really important,” the director says. “At some moments in the script, I would just write, ‘This is where Cliff comes in.’”

2005 I’m The Angel Of Death: Pusher III 2008 Bronson 2009 Valhalla Rising 2011 Drive (best director: Cannes) 2013 Only God Forgives 2016 The Neon Demon

Drive

Creative smarts Producer Borglum, who started collaborating with Winding Refn in 2008 on Valhalla Rising knew about the direcRising, tor’s love of horror from when they first met in Copenhagen 25 years ago.

“We had a group of friends who would sit and watch horror films, all kinds of genre films,” she

says. “There’s something about taste and what we consider interesting that Nicolas and I have never disagreed about.”

The Neon Demon was the first film Borglum has produced in the US. “It was a challenge on this budget [an estimated $6m], because everything is a lot more expensive and complicated,” she says. “The first thing people said was, ‘You can never get more than five weeks in Los Angeles,’ and we got almost eight weeks. We were minding the rules but really trying to squeeze out everything that can be squeezed in order to focus on the creative side.”

Costs were kept down through smart logistical planning, such as not changing locations during a single shooting day (the film was shot almost entirely on location).

“We try to use things that are in the place where we shoot,” says Borglum. “We brought over very few Europeans for the shoot, only very core members of his fixed team — basically Nicolas, myself, the line producer [Carsten Sparwath] and the editor [Matthew Newman]. Everybody else was local.”

Danish crews tend to be smaller than US crews, and the Space Rocket way of working is typically to have a lean team that plans carefully, to keep costs down. “It was quite refreshing to say, ‘That’s not how we do it, we do it like this,’ and then find a common way,” says the producer. “The American crews are very good, very experienced; they really know what they’re doing.”

At Space Rocket Nation, the boutique Copenhagen-based production company owned by the pair, the rule is that Winding Refn has total creative freedom. “My job is to give him the framework,” Borglum says.

“He says, ‘I want to do this next, how can we do it?’ And then we find solutions for the financing.”

The solutions for The Neon Demon include financing from French sales companies Wild Bunch and Gaumont, the Danish Film Institute, Bold Films and Vendian Entertainment. Wild Bunch and Gaumont are typically competitors but joined forces to work on both Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon.

“It’s two very strong sales companies and they have very different profiles, very different approaches to things, but together they can do the whole package,” Borglum says.

Amazon Studios has the North American rights to The Neon Demon and Scanbox released the film in Denmark in June.

Borglum and Winding Refn are next producing a remake of Maniac Cop, which will shoot later this year in Los Angeles with John Hyams directing. Winding Refn has not decided on his next directorial effort yet, but has both feature films and TV projects in development. Whatever is next, it is sure to push boundaries. “It would be boring to repeat yourself,” he s says. “It’s too easy.” ■

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 11

Reviews Reviews edited by Fionnuala Halligan finn.halligan@screendaily.com

Sieranevada Reviewed by Dan Fainaru

The Neon Demon Reviewed by Wendy Ide The fashion industry is an easy subject for satire. Even so, Nicolas Winding Refn’s lurid evisceration of the Los Angeles modelling community misses its target more often than it hits. The film follows wholesome, corn-fed 16-year-old orphan Jesse (Elle Fanning), an aspiring model with flaxen locks and the kind of wide-eyed innocence that makes her both vulnerable and powerful.

Newly arrived in Los Angeles, she is fresh meat — and that term is used advisedly — to feed the voracious machine of magazine advertorials, catwalk shows and slightly dubious fetish shoots.

Refn’s gifts as a visual stylist are employed to arresting effect, and there is a luxuriant use of colour that evokes the work of photographer Guy Bourdin. But peel back the glossy surface and there is not a lot of substance.

Jesse arrives in the big city with a wardrobe of shapeless frocks. However, she has something special — a quality that makes fashion designers including Alessandro Nivola, hamming shamelessly, experience moments of blissful transport, and fellow models glare at her hungrily. She is befriended by make-up artist Ruby (Jena Malone, with a smile that shows a few too many teeth), who takes her to parties with S&M shows and ominous techno music. There she meets veteran models Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), who eye her with undisguised loathing. “I hear your parents are dead,” says Gigi, sweetly, when Jesse fails to be sufficiently impressed by Gigi’s surgical enhancements.

Touching on similar territory to Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, the film skewers society’s obsession with youth and beauty, and its pursuit at all costs. But Refn employs some rather obvious imagery. The film is full of mirrors — entire conversations play out through reflections — just in case we had forgotten the fashion industry is superficial and obsessed with appearances.

Other scenes seem to have been added for shock value alone. Malone’s character moonlights as a mortuary make-up artist, a character detail that is included purely to facilitate a particularly ill-judged sexual encounter with the corpse of an attractive woman. The extreme tone of the ending — part fairytale, part bloodbath — is likely to alienate as many viewers as it amuses.

12 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

Into the Night US-Fr-Den. 2016. 117mins Director Nicolas Winding Refn Production companies Space Rocket Nation, Gaumont, Wild Bunch International sales Wild Bunch, sales@wildbunch. eu; Gaumont, mpereira@ gaumont.fr Producers Lene Borglum, Sidonie Dumas, Vincent Maraval, Nicolas Winding Refn Screenplay Mary Laws, Polly Stenham, Nicolas Winding Refn Cinematography Natasha Braier Editor Matthew Newman Production design Elliott Hostetter Music Cliff Martinez Main cast Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Bella Heathcote, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Alessandro Nivola

Cristi Puiu’s third story from the Bucharest outskirts (following The Death Of Mr Lazarescu and Aurora) should have been another tough nut to crack: three hours long, and shot almost entirely in one cluttered, old-fashioned apartment, family and friends celebrating the memorial of the recently departed pater familias — everything that should scare an average audience away.

No wonder so many partners had to join forces before the film could reach the screen.

Granted, this is not multiplex fare. But those who are not put off by extensive subtitling will find themselves swept away by this family reunion that offers a masterful portrait of the contemporary Romanian middle class, and a whole set of perceptive reflections on the relativity of truth, the failings of memory, the interpretation of history, the significance of religion and much more.

Triggered by the memory of his father’s memorial and his own attempts to reconstruct what went on, Puiu turns this family encounter into an ironic but compassionate clash of characters and opinions. All are locked in the confined space of a flat, with its doors closing not only on rooms but on issues as well, the camera following the skirmishes, misunderstandings and arguments that keep this family apart and united at the same time.

Shown mostly through the eyes of Lary (Mimi Branescu), the older son of the deceased, the gathering moves from one crisis to another, brought about by the temper of Lary’s wife Laura (Catalina Moga), the barely hidden frustrations of his sister Sandra (Judith State), the anguish of his brother Relu (Bogdan Dumitrache), the wailings of his aunt Ofelia (Ana Ciontea), and so on.

Puiu alternates between tempos, effortlessly going up and down on the decibel scale, often placing Barbu Balasoiu’s camera at eye level in the apartment’s entrance hall to move from there to one or another room. He never cuts a shot as long as it can be sustained continuously, and uses the flat’s many doors not only to close down one space and move to another, but also to shift between issues.

The cast is admirable throughout. The coherent precision of their performances is bound to draw in an audience, forgetting they are watching strangers on the screen and suspecting they are at their own family get-together.

International Competition Rom-Fr-Bos-Herz-MacCro. 2016. 173mins Director-screenplay Cristi Puiu Production companies Mandragora Film, Produkcija 2006 Sarajevo, Studioul de Creatie Cinematografica, Sisters and Brothers Mitevski, Spiritus Movens, Alcatraz Films, Iadasarecasa, Arte France Cinema International sales Elle Driver, sales@elledriver.eu Producers Anca Puiu, Mirsad Purivatra, Sabina Brankovic, Lucian Pintilie, Labina Mitevska, Zdenka Gold, Laurence Clerc, Olivier Théry-Lapiney Cinematography Barbu Balasoiu Main cast Mimi Branescu, Dana Dogaru, Judith State, Bogdan Dumitrache, Catalina Moga, Ana Ciontea

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Screenings, page 14

Zero Days Reviewed by Jonathan Romney

Staying Vertical Reviewed by Allan Hunter Unless you are Federico Fellini, weaving a film around the creative paralysis of a film-maker rarely seems a wise move. Alain Guiraudie puts his idiosyncratic stamp on the premise in Staying Vertical (Rester Vertical) as he follows a film-maker sidetracked by troubles while seeking the inspiration for a screenplay.

Sex and death have been the recurring themes of Guiraudie’s work and are present here in abundance, along with the notion of the promise to be found in a new life. Exploring a bewildering range of issues from ideas of masculinity to assisted suicide and the fraying of societal ties, Staying Vertical is wildly eccentric, darkly comic and filled with you-don’t-see-that-often moments that are liable to render it an acquired taste. The film’s unpredictability and fondness for the fluid sexuality of its characters will seem odd to some, endearing to others, making commercial prospects likely to match earlier Guiraudie features such as King Of Escape (2009) rather than his breakthrough Stranger By The Lake (2013).

There is a fairytale quality here, with film-maker Leo (Damien Bonnard) like a lost knight riding into the unknown. On a journey through the south of France, Leo is drawn to shepherdess Marie (India Hair), but when their liaison results in a son, she is coldly indifferent and he is left to take responsibility for the boy.

Fatherhood is both the making of him and the thing that spins him even further from the axis of his life.

The combination of harsh rural plains, hard lives and bitter truths suggests a modern twist on the novels of Thomas Hardy or Marcel Pagnol. The tale of a film-maker brought low by encounters with the real world even suggests a link of sorts to Sullivan’s Travels, especially as Leo grows destitute and struggles to stand tall, or stay vertical, in a world that is conspiring to beat him down.

Bonnard’s lugubrious, lumbering Leo becomes an appealing figure as he sustains his curiosity about other people, grows protective towards his son and shows a generosity towards the desires of others.

Even as Staying Vertical strays into darker territory, Guiraudie retains a comic touch and is unafraid to tackle big themes in a film that is tinged with a nostalgia for an earlier age and way of life that is disappearing.

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Panorama

Fr. 2016. 100mins Director-screenplay Alain Guiraudie Production company Les Films Du Worso International sales Wild Bunch, ndevide@wildbunch.eu Producers Sylvie Pialat, Benoit Quainon Cinematography Claire Mathon Editor Jean-Christophe Hym Production design Toma Baqueni Main cast Damien Bonnard, India Hair, Raphael Thiery, Christian Bouillette

Gala

In the new world of cyber warfare, it is understandable that things should be unimaginably complex, and one of the key metaphors in Zero Days — although it is as much scientific fact as metaphor — is that certain kinds of complexity expand rapidly beyond easy analysis. That is partly what makes the latest documentary by the indefatigable Alex Gibney exciting and troubling, but it is also why Zero Days often feels like a breathless rush of data that only truly coheres at certain points — notably at the end, when the point is made that the Pandora’s box of cyberwar has been opened and the world needs to find ways of dealing with it.

The importance of the theme and the established appeal of what is by now well established as the Gibney ‘brand’ — this film explores an area close to Gibney’s 2013 WikiLeaks doc We Steal Secrets — will make this a must-see for anyone interested in how cybertech is changing politics, even if a more cool-headed analysis would be welcome in this informationally cluttered film.

Zero Days begins by looking into the discovery by IT experts in 2010 of the so-called Stuxnet virus, which defeated all attempts to identify its source. Interviews with journalists, techies, security specialists and other pundits eventually get to the core: Stuxnet was designed to incapacitate the nuclear facility in Natans, Iran and, eventually, the hard information about Stuxnet is delivered by an anonymous insider figure.

Stuxnet was created and launched by the CIA, NSA, the US military, the UK’s GCHQ and Israel, its function to cause physical damage through undetectable means.

It is alleged, however, that Israel unilaterally changed the coding of Stuxnet, causing it to proliferate uncontrollably — also leading, paradoxically, to an eventual expansion of Iran’s nuclear capacities.

While the urgency of the message emerges powerfully, the details are often difficult to absorb as Gibney skips from political information to technical specs. Talking heads zip by in quick succession and, by the end, just as the film calls for moderation and caution in pursuing computer warfare, you end up feeling that lucidity could similarly be useful for documentarists dealing with such byzantine cyber-complexities.

2016. US. 116mins Director Alex Gibney Production companies Global Produce, Jigsaw, Participant Media International sales FilmNation Entertainment, nyoffice@filmnation.com Producers Marc Shmuger, Alex Gibney Executive producers Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Sarah Dowland Cinematography Antonio Rossi, Brett Wiley Editor Andy Grieve Music Will Bates

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 13

Screenings Edited by Paul Lindsell

» Screening times and venues are correct at the time of going to press but subject to alteration.

paullindsell@gmail.com

Sunday July 10 09:15 The Boy and the Beast See box, right

10:00 No Home Movie

(Belgium, France) Doc&Film. 115mins.

Dir: Chantal Akerman.

The last film by the great Chantal Akerman, who passed away last October, is a demanding and touching documentary that follows the final months of her mother’s life, revealing the deep and complex relationship between a mother and daughter.

Masters Cinematheque 2

11:00 Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World

(US) Magnolia. 98mins.

Dir: Werner Herzog.

In his new film, screened at Sundance, documentary giant Werner Herzog explores the connected world and its effect on our minds and lives.

Herzog’s characteristic style and scepticism offer an amusing and insightful viewing experience.

Sunday July 10 09:15 The Boy and the Beast

(Japan) Gaumont.

119mins. Dir: Mamoru Hosoda. Key cast: Koji Yakusho, Aoi Miyazaki, Shota Sometani, Suzu Hirose.

A breathtaking animated fantasy about

a nine-year-old boy who stumbles into a parallel universe inhabited by talking animals. There, he is taken under the wing of a famous, bearlike warrior and becomes a master of martial arts.

Panorama Cinematheque 1

Masters Smadar

11:30 Evolution

(France, Belgium, Spain) Wild Bunch. 81mins.

Dir: Lucile Hadihalilovic.

Key cast: Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, JulieMarie Parmentier.

Nicolas and his mother live in a village inhabited only by women and their young sons, who undergo strange medical procedures. Nicolas is determined to find out what is going on.

Panorama Cinematheque 1

12:15 Kindergarten

(Israel) Doc Films.

75mins. Dir: Era Lapid, Haim Lapid.

About the ease with which people can ruin the lives of a kindergarten teacher and her family with one hasty accusation of child

abuse. It is also about how people’s greatness or baseness is revealed in times of trouble.

Israeli Cinematheque 2

13:00 Ma

(US) Stray Dogs. 80mins.

Dir: Celia Rowlson-Hall.

Key cast: Celia RowlsonHall, Andrew Pastides, Amy Seimetz, Matt Lauria, Peter Vack.

American choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall presents her directorial debut: a modern-day interpretation of the story of Mother Mary that raises theological and genderrelated questions. The director forgoes dialogue to highlight the impressive cinematography, art design, sound and, of course, choreography.

Panorama Smadar

14 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

13:15 The Childhood of a Leader

(UK, Hungary, France) Protagonist Pictures.

115mins. Dir: Brady Corbet. Key cast: Berenice Bejo, Robert Pattinson, Stacy Martin, Liam Cunningham, Yolande Moreau.

Drama about an American family in post-First World War France who have to cope with their young son’s tantrums.

Debuts Cinematheque 1

13:30 The Chosen Ones

(Mexico, France) Mundial. 105mins. Dir: David Pablos. Key cast: Nancy Talamantes, Oscar Torres, Leidi Gutierrez.

Fourteen-year-old Sofia falls in love with Ulises, not knowing he was sent to

seduce and abduct her to his family’s brothel. When Ulises decides to free Sofia, he has to find another girl to take her place.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 3

14:00 Our Father

(Israel) Transfax. 105mins.

Dir: Meni Yaesh. Key cast: Moris Cohen, Rotem Zisman-Cohen, Haim Znati, Alon Dahan.

Ovadya Rachamim is a club bouncer. His biggest dream is to become a father, and he is ready to “kill” for it.

Israeli Cinematheque 2

14:45 Uncle Howard

(US) Upside Distribution.

96mins. Dir: Aaron Brookner.

A stirring documentary portrait of Howard Brookner, a promising film-maker who died of Aids at the age of 35. Brookner’s nephew meets his uncle’s friends (including Jim Jarmusch and Robert Wilson) and unearths his legacy, using footage that was buried for 23 years in William Burroughs’ ‘bunker’.

Cinemania Smadar

15:30 Je Suis Charlie

(France) Pyramide.

90mins. Dir: Daniel Leconte, Emmanuel Leconte.

This documentary follows the January 2015 Paris terror attacks, starting with the Charlie Hebdo attack where 12 people lost their lives and continuing with the attack on a kosher supermarket.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 1

15:45 The Death of Louis XIV

(France) Capricci.

115mins. Dir: Albert Serra. Key cast: JeanPierre Leaud, Patrick d’Assumcao, Marc Susini, Irene Silvagni.

The last days in the life of King Louis XIV receive a mesmerising cinematic treatment by Catalan director Albert Serra.

Intl Comp Cinematheque 3

16:15 Photo Faraj

(Israel) Inosan Productions. 77mins.

Dir: Kobi Faraj.

Recounts the emotional tale of a big family from Iraq who emigrated to

Israel and revolutionised photography, from their rise to their downfall.

Israeli Cinematheque 2

16:45 French Blood

(France) Indie Sales.

98mins. Dir: Diasteme.

Key cast: Alban Lenoir, Paul Hamy, Samuel Jouy, Patrick Pineau.

Marco is a skinhead who hates Arabs, Jews, blacks and gays. It will take him 30 years to rid himself of his anger and become a changed man.

A critical look at some troubling aspects of French society.

Panorama Smadar

17:45 Certain Women

(US) Sony Pictures Classics. 107mins.

Dir: Kelly Reichardt.

Key cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros.

A cinematic triptych depicting several women in Montana, continues Kelly Reichardt’s sharp-eyed and sensitive study of the people on the margins of American society.

Intl Comp Cinematheque 1

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Further JFF coverage, see screendaily.com

18:00 David Greenberg — Shorts

(Israel) 90mins. Dir: David Greenberg.

David Greenberg was a director, film critic and teacher but above all he was a man of cinema, a true cinephile and one of the founders of film culture in Israel, both in terms of the film industry and in terms of exposing local audiences to seminal works of modernist European art cinema.

Israeli Cinematheque 2

Dimona Twist

(Israel) Lama Films.

70mins. Dir: Michal Aviad.

How would a girl, coming from a large city, feel as she gets off a truck in the dark night with her family, to discover she has moved to the middle of a desert?

Israeli Cinematheque 3

19:00 The Last Laugh

(US) Amy Hobby.

90mins. Dir: Ferne Pearlstein. Key cast: Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Sarah Silverman, Gilbert Gottfried, Rob Reiner.

Is the Holocaust an appropriate topic for comedy? That question is at the heart of this doc, which tells the story of a survivor alongside interviews with influential comedians and thinkers.

Panorama Smadar

19:45 A German Life

(Austria) Cinephil.

107mins. Dir: Christian Krones, Florian Weigensamer, Roland Schrotthofer, Olaf S Muller.

One hundred and fouryear-old Brunhilde Pomsel, the stenographer of Nazi minister for propaganda Joseph Goebbels from 1942 to the end of the war, relates her life story. Her experiences raise the troubling and timeless question: how www.screendaily.com

Sunday July 10 20:00 One Week and a Day

(Israel) New Europe Film Sales. 98mins.

Dir: Asaph Polonsky.

Key cast: Shai Avivi, Evgenia Dodina, Tomer Kapon, Alona Shauloff.

When the Jewish week of

reliable is our moral compass?

Panorama Cinematheque 3

20:00 Hooligan Sparrow

(China, US) Ro*co Films.

84mins. Dir: Nanfu Wang.

The disturbing reality of modern-day China is exposed in this doc following Hooligan Sparrow — an activist who fights against the sexual abuse of women.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 2

One Week and a Day See box, above

20:30 The Meddler

(US) Sony Pictures Classics. 100mins. Dir: Lorene Scafaria. Key cast: Susan Sarandon, JK Simmons, Rose Byrne.

A new widow throws

22:15

mourning ends and his wife tries to return to her routine, a grieving father sets out on a journey with his son’s medicinal weed and childhood friend.

Israeli Cinematheque 1

Aquarius

(Brazil) SBS International.

142mins. Dir: Kleber Mendonca Filho. Key cast: Sonia Braga, Julia Bernat, Humberto Carrao.

Clara, the last resident of a seafront condo in Recife, Brazil, finds herself

in a nerve-wracking confrontation with a realestate company.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 3

23:00 The Ardennes

(Belgium) Pascale Ramonda. 93mins. Dir: Robin Pront. Key cast:

Kevin Janssens, Jeroen Perceval, Veerle Baetens.

This film noir begins with two brothers and a robbery gone wrong when one flees and the other serves a four-year sentence.

On release, he discovers a lot has changed.

Into the Night Smadar

herself into the life of her single daughter, causing a meddlesome mess.

Gala Wilf

21:00 Ville-Marie

(Canada) Films Boutique.

101mins. Dir: Guy Edoin.

Key cast: Monica Bellucci, Pascale Bussieres, Aliocha Schneider, Patrick Hivon.

A contemporary melodrama about four individuals grappling with their emotional baggage, whose lives intertwine during the course of one night. Explores human complexity with great sensitivity while engaging with the melodrama tradition of Douglas Sirk, Fassbinder and Almodovar.

Gala Smadar

22:00 I Promise You Anarchy

Sunday July 10 22:00 I Promise You Anarchy

(Mexico, Germany) Latido. 88mins. Dir: Julio Hernandez Cordon. Key cast: Diego Calva Hernandez,

Eduardo Martinez Pena, Sarah Minter, Martha Claudia Moreno.

Miguel and Johnny are skaters, best friends and occasional lovers trying to make money in the

illicit blood trade. Julio Hernandez Cordon’s film tells an unusual love story set against the gritty backdrop of Mexico City.

Panorama Cinematheque 2

»

See box, right

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 15

Screenings

life and work of Frank Zappa, a musical genius and strong critic of American society, mixes different archival materials as we delve into Zappa’s musical world.

Panorama Cinematheque 3

Tower

(US) Cinetic Media.

96mins. Dir: Keith Maitland.

In August 1966, a sniper climbed to the top of a tower at the University of Texas at Austin and committed a horrifying massacre. Keith Maitland combines archival footage with rotoscope animation to revive a grim day in US history.

Spirit of Freedom Smadar

Monday July 11 11:45 Agnus Dei

(France, Poland) Films Distribution. 115mins.

Dir: Anne Fontaine.

Key cast: Lou de Laage, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne.

Poland, 1945. A French Red Cross doctor on a

Monday July 11 09:30 Weiner

(US) Dogwoof. 96mins.

Dir: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg.

An intelligent and amusing portrait of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, as he runs for mayor of New York, exposing politics in the age of digital media.

Intl Comp Cinematheque 1

09:45 Oscuro Animal

(Colombia, Argentina, Greece) Pascale Ramonda. 107mins.

Dir: Felipe Guerrero.

Key cast: Marleyda Soto, Jocelyn Meneses, Luisa Vides, Veronica Carvajal.

Three women are forced out of their homes in a war-torn region of Colombia. Each of their respective journeys leads them from the jungle into the safer suburbs

Wrong Elements

humanitarian mission discovers a number of pregnant nuns in need of medical care. This drama deals with the crisis of faith that arises when the house of God is desecrated by war.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 1

This documentary portrait of Robert Frank, who achieved fame with his 1958 photography book ‘The Americans’ and went on to become one of the most influential figures in contemporary photography, was directed

by Laura Israel, Frank’s film editor since the 1990s.

Panorama Smadar

11:45

of Colombia where they must somehow gather the strength to start anew.

See box, above

Debuts Cinematheque 2

JFF Series — Program 1

10:00 The Event

(Netherlands, Belgium) Atoms & Void. 74mins.

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa.

Weaving amateur footage and archival materials, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa returns to the August Putsch, the failed coup d’etat staged by communist reactionaries in Moscow in 1991 that led to the collapse of the Soviet regime.

Masters Cinematheque 3

10:45 Don’t Blink — Robert Frank

(Canada, US) Laura Israel. 80mins. Dir: Laura Israel. Key cast: Robert Frank, June Leaf, Tom Jarmusch, Ed Lachman.

16 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

Agnus Dei

12:30 Evolution

(France, Belgium, Spain) Wild Bunch. 81mins. Dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic.

Key cast: Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, JulieMarie Parmentier.

Nicolas and his mother live in a village inhabited only by women and their young sons, who undergo strange medical procedures. Nicolas is the only boy determined to find out what is going

on. This imaginative film won two awards at San Sebastian.

Panorama Smadar

14:15 A War See box, below

Eat That Question — Frank Zappa in His Own Words

(France, Germany) Sony Pictures Classics. 90mins.

Dir: Thorsten Schutte.

This in-depth look at the

(France, Belgium, Germany) Le Pacte.

132mins. Dir: Jonathan Littell.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is a violent guerilla movement, established in Uganda in the late 1980s, which kidnapped and forcibly conscripted more than 60,000 teenagers. In an effort to rebuild their lives, four people revisit the places that had stripped them of their childhood.

Spirit of Freedom Cinematheque 2

131mins.

A festival screening of first episodes from upcoming TV series: HBO’s ‘The Night Of ’ and Baltasar Kormakur’s ‘Trapped’.

Series Cinematheque 3

12:00 One Week and a Day

(Israel) New Europe Film Sales. 98mins.

Dir: Asaph Polonsky.

Key cast: Shai Avivi, Evgenia Dodina, Tomer Kapon, Alona Shauloff.

When the Jewish week of mourning ends and his wife tries to return to her routine, a grieving father sets out on a journey he can’t take with his son, but can with his son’s medicinal weed and his childhood friend.

Israeli Cinematheque 2

Monday July 11 14:15 A War

(Denmark) Studiocanal.

115mins. Dir: Tobias Lindholm. Key cast: Pilou Asbaek, Tuva

Novotny, Soren Malling, Charlotte Munck, Dar Salim.

A Danish company commander, caught in a crossfire with his men

in Afghanistan, makes a fatal decision that will affect both him and his family back home.

Intl Comp Cinematheque 1

www.screendaily.com

A biblical adaptation of the story of Sarah, Hagar, Abraham, Yitzhak and Ismail, from the book of Genesis.

The melodramatic plot is set in the world of a philharmonic orchestra in present-day Jerusalem.

Israeli Cinematheque 1

Heart of a Dog

Monday July 11 16:30 A Monster with a Thousand Heads

(Mexico) Memento Films. 74mins. Dir: Rodrigo Pla. Key cast: Jana Raluy, Sebastian Aguirre Boeda, Hugo Albores.

14:30 The 1000 Eyes of Dr Maddin

(France, US) Taskovski Films. 65mins. Dir: Yves Montmayeur. Key cast: Guy Maddin, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Kenneth Anger, John Waters.

Follows the making of Guy Maddin’s ‘The Forbidden Room’, depicting a oneof-a-kind director whose hypnotic films show a range of influences, from German expressionism and classic melodramas to David Lynch.

Cinemania Cinematheque 4

16:00 Women Who Run Hollywood

(US) Poorhouse International. 52mins.

Dir: Clara Kuperberg, Julia Kuperberg. Key cast: Paula Wagner, Sherry Lansing, Lynda Obst, Cari Beauchamp.

Did you know that the first talkie and the first www.screendaily.com

When her insurance company refuses to sign off on her husband’s life-saving treatment, Sonia declares an all-out war against the system.

Spirit of Freedom Smadar

colour film were both directed by women?

Through rare archival materials and interviews, this documentary seeks to restore the women who ran Hollywood to their rightful place in the pantheon of cinema.

Cinemania Cinematheque 4

16:15 JFF Series — Program 2

101mins.

A festival screening of the first episodes from two upcoming TV series: Robert and Michelle King’s ‘BrainDead’ and Robert Kirkman’s ‘Outcast’.

Series Cinematheque 3

16:30 A Monster with a Thousand Heads See box, above

16:45 Hitchcock/Truffaut

(France, US) Cohen Media Group. 79mins.

Dir: Kent Jones. Key cast: Alfred Hitchcock,

Francois Truffaut, Wes Anderson, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, David Fincher.

Kent Jones’ documentary, based on Truffaut’s 1962 week-long interview with Alfred Hitchcock, plunges us into the world of the great British auteur. The film combines archival material and interviews with Martin Scorsese, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater and other leading film-makers.

Cinemania Cinematheque 1

and complex relationship between a mother and daughter.

Masters Cinematheque 4

18:15 Boris without Beatrice

(Canada) Films Boutique.

93mins. Dir: Denis Cote. Key cast: James Hyndman, Simone EliseGerard, Denis Lavant, Isolda Dychauk.

The life of wealthy businessman Boris takes an unxpected turn when

his wife falls into a deep depression. A stranger blames Boris for her condition, driving him to re-evaluate his life choices and try to become a better partner, parent and son.

Panorama Smadar

18:30

(France, US) Celluloid Dreams. 75mins.

Dir: Laurie Anderson.

Pioneering musician Laurie Anderson is back to film-making after a long hiatus with this personal essay combining her own narration with original violin compositions, hand-drawn animation, 8mm home movies and artwork, creating a compelling and touching cinematic collage.

Panorama Cinematheque 3

18:45 Bernadette Lafont, and God Created the Free Woman See box, below

Harmonia

(Israel) Inosan Productions. 98mins.

Dir: Ori Sivan. Key cast: Tali Sharon, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Yana Yossef.

20:00 Harold and Lilian: A Hollywood Love Story

(US) Wide House.

17:00 Dimona Twist

(Israel) Lama Films.

70mins. Dir: Michal Aviad.

How would a girl, coming from a large city, feel as she gets off a truck in the dark night with her family, to discover she has moved to the middle of the desert with only sand surrounding her?

Israeli Cinematheque 2

17:30 No Home Movie

(Belgium, France) Doc&Film. 115mins.

Dir: Chantal Akerman.

The last film by the great Chantal Akerman, who passed away in October, is a demanding and touching documentary that follows the last months of her mother’s life, revealing the deep

Monday July 11 18:45 Bernadette Lafont, and God Created the Free Woman

(France) Doc&Film International. 65mins.

Dir: Esther Hoffenberg.

This inspiring doc about Bernadette Lafont traces the French star’s life, from her work as a pin-up girl, through her status

as the sensual movie star of the New Wave, to her unforgettable role in ‘Paulette’.

Cinemania Cinematheque 2

»

July 10, 2016 Screen International at Jerusalem 17

Screenings

in this documentary that follows the production of the Met’s 2015 fashion exhibit and the preparations for ‘Vogue’ editor-in-chief Anna Wintour’s gala.

Jerusalem Cinematheque, 11 Hebron Rd, Jerusalem, 91083

Gala Cinematheque 3

Editorial

News from Planet Mars See box, below

22:30 Slack Bay

(Germany, France) Memento Films. 122mins.

Dir: Bruno Dumont. Key cast: Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.

A sardonic tale with outlandish characters.

Masters Cinematheque 2

22:45

Monday July 11 20:30 Lolo

(France) Wild Bunch.

99mins. Dir: Julie Delpy. Key cast: Julie Delpy, Dany Boon, Vincent Lacoste, Karin Viard.

96mins. Dir: Daniel Raim. Key cast: Harold Michelson, Lillian Michelson, Francis Ford Coppola, Mel Brooks.

A fascinating documentary portrait of storyboard artist Harold Michelson and cinema researcher Lillian Michelson — an extraordinary couple who worked with some of the most important directors in film history and are often referred to as Hollywood’s secret weapon.

Cinemania Cinematheque 4

20:15

The Neon Demon

Violette, a chic Parisian, falls for Jean-Rene, an IT geek. Cultural differences and Violette’s son Lolo are not making things easy for the love birds.

Gala Wilf

20:30 Family Film

(Czech, France, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia) Cercamon. 95mins. Dir: Olmo Omerzu. Key cast: Karel Roden, Vanda Hybnerova, Daniel Kadlec, Jenovefa Bokova.

A married couple embark on a sailing holiday, leaving behind their son and daughter. The yacht capsizes, the family dog disappears and the family faces a crisis.

Israeli Cinematheque 3

20:45 Love & Friendship

(Ireland, Netherlands, France, US) Protagonist Pictures. 92mins. Dir: Whit Stillman. Key cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Emma Greenwell.

A comic adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel about a beautiful widow

searching for a match for her daughter, and perhaps one for herself.

Gala Cinematheque 1

22:15 The First Monday in May

(US) Elle Driver. 90mins.

Dir: Andrew Rossi. Key cast: Andrew Bolton, Wong Kar Wai, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano.

The tension between art and commerce in the fashion world is exposed

(France, US, Denmark) Wild Bunch. 110mins.

Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn. Key cast: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote.

Jessie arrives in Los Angeles and rises to stardom in the modelling industry.

However, her beauty becomes the source of jealousy for those around her, who will stop at nothing to steal it away.

Into the Night Cinematheque 1

Schneider vs. Bax

Lolo See box, above

18 Screen International at Jerusalem July 10, 2016

Tom Grater, tom.grater@ screendaily.com, +44 7436 096 420 Reviews editor and chief film critic Fionnuala Halligan, finn. halligan@screendaily.com Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray, mark. mowbray@screendaily. com, +44 7710 124 065 Sub editors Paul Lindsell, Richard Young Advertising International sales consultant Gunter Zerbich, gunter. zerbich@screendaily.com, +44 7540 100 254 Publishing director Nadia Romdhani, nadia.romdhani@ screendaily.com

Production manager Jonathon Cooke, jonathon.cooke@ mb-insight.com, +44 7584 333 148 Managing director, publishing and events Alison Pitchford Chief executive, MBI Conor Dignam Published by Media Business Insight Ltd (MBI) Zetland House, 5-25 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4HJ United Kingdom

My Hero Brother

(Israel) Yonatan Nir Films. 77mins.

Dir: Yonatan Nir. The film documents young people with Down syndrome and their siblings on a trek in India.

It is a moving record of the complex relationships between the siblings, and the magical moments that a relative with Down

Reporters Melanie Goodfellow, melanie.goodfellow@ btinternet.com, +44 7460 470 434

Senior sales manager Scott Benfold, scott. benfold@screendaily.com

Debuts Cinematheque 2

(Netherlands, Belgium) Fortissimo Films.

96mins. Dir: Alex van Warmerdam. Key cast: Tom Dewispelaere, Alex van Warmerdam, Maria Kraakman, Annet Malherbe.

A dark comedy crime film about two assassins who have each been given a job by the same client to take the other one out.

Panorama Smadar

syndrome brings to a family.

Editor Matt Mueller, matt. mueller@screendaily. com, +44 7880 526 547

Monday July 11 22:15 News from Planet Mars

(France, Belgium) Memento Films.

101mins. Dir: Dominik Moll. Key cast: Francois

Damiens, Vincent Macaigne, Veerle Baetens, Jeanne Guittet.

Philip, a divorced father of two, tries his best to maintain a healthy and stable lifestyle, but

it seems as though his eccentric family and unhinged surroundings are determined to drive his life out of control.

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Gala Smadar

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