“The figure of the shaman arose in primitive societies to solve basic problems for the survival of societies. He tends to assume the behavior of an ecstatic character, acting as a bridge between spiritual and earthly energies, a channel for the divine will and for the forces of nature that he makes available to humanity through love and understanding”. This is an academic description of the shaman, the leading figure in City of Wind (2023), the feature debut by Mongolian director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, which was presented in the Horizons section of the 80th Venice Film Festival.
“La figura dello sciamano nasce nelle società primitive per risolvere problematiche di base per la sopravvivenza delle società. Egli tende ad assumere un comportamento di carattere estatico, ponte fra le energie spirituali e quelle terrene, canale della volontà divina e delle forze della natura che mette a disposizione dell’umanità attraverso l’amore e la comprensione”. Questa una descrizione accademica dello sciamano, figura protagonista di City of Wind (2023), opera prima della regista mongola Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, presentato nella Sezione Orizzonti dell’80a Mostra del Cinema di Venezia.
“What happens to a country when an entire page of its history is erased?” This is the starting point of Felipe Gálvez’s debut feature film Los colonos (“The settlers”). A raw and refined film that, through the journey of three men charged by landowner Jose Menéndez to find a “safe” – meaning “cleansed” of Indians – route to the shores of the Atlantic, brings attention to the genocide of the indigenous Selk’nam people perpetrated at the beginning of the 20th century for long obscured by Chile’s official history.
«Che cosa accade a un Paese quando un’intera pagina della sua storia viene cancellata?». Da qui parte l’esordio nel lungometraggio di Felipe Gálvez Los colonos, crudo e raffinato film che attraverso il viaggio di tre uomini incaricati dal latifondista Jose Menéndez di trovare un percorso “sicuro” – cioè “ripulito” dagli indios – fino alle coste dell’Atlantico, porta l’attenzione sul genocidio degli indigeni Selk’nam perpetrato alle soglie del XX secolo e per lungo tempo oscurato dalla storia ufficiale del Cile.
Carlos riattacca il telefono e si appoggia al muro. Ha gli occhi lucidi e vorrebbe sfogarsi ma non lo fa perché, come dice lui, “gli uomini non piangono”. Questo è il conflitto che Un varón, il nuovo film di Fabian Hernández, si propone di indagare: quello di un ragazzo che tenta di conformarsi all’ideale di mascolinità che vige nelle strade di Bogotá mentre nel privato vorrebbe solo essere se stesso. Il Natale si avvicina e il suo unico desiderio è quello di passarlo con la sorella, sempre più sfuggente, e con la madre che è in carcere. Uscito dal centro giovanile che l’ha accolto, si ritrova a fare i conti con la vita di strada e la legge del maschio alpha.
Presentato in anteprima nella sezione Encounters dell’ultima Berlinale, dove ha vinto il Premio Speciale della Giuria, Taste, primo lungometraggio del regista vietnamita Lê Bao, approda al TFF39 nella sezione Fuori concorso/TFLAB.
Rudro (Titas Zia), a young artist in search of inspiration, decides to leave the chaotic life of Dhaka and embark on a journey to a remote mangrove island in the Bangal Delta. At first, he is welcomed by the local community, a small group of families who make their living fishing, but Rudro soon finds himself misunderstood and then ostracized by the villagers. Led by the Chairman (Fazlur Rahman Babu), imam and local leader, they first stare suspiciously and then with open disapproval at his installations and habits.
Rudro (Titas Zia), giovane artista in cerca di ispirazione, decide di lasciare la caotica vita della capitale Dhaka e intraprendere un viaggio in una remota isola di mangrovie sul delta del Bangladesh. Inizialmente accolto dalla piccola comunità locale, un ristretto gruppo di famiglie che si sostenta grazie alla pesca, Rudro si ritrova ben presto frainteso e poi ostracizzato dagli abitanti del villaggio. Questi, guidati dal Messere (Fazlur Rahman Babu), imam e capo locale, guardano prima con sospetto e in seguito con aperta disapprovazione le sue istallazioni così come le sue abitudini.
«Da a qualche tempo vivo in Repubblica Ceca e poco per volta ho scoperto la sua cultura e, soprattutto, la sua grande storia cinematografica; per questo ho voluto fare un film che fosse un omaggio al cinema ceco degli anni Sessanta»: il regista cileno introduce così la prima proiezione del suo Hra al Torino Film Festival.
«I have been living in Czech Republic for some time. I have been discovering its culture little by little and, above all, its great cinematographic history. For this reason, I decided to make a movie which was a tribute to the sixties Czech cinema.» that is how the Chilean director introduced the first screening of his film at Torino Film Festival.
Messi and Maud wasn’t the first title of this film. When it has been presented at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), its title was La Holandesa. Subsequently, the agent decided to change it for the international distribution. For the director Marleen Jonkman, her movie will always be La Holandesa. Indeed, the plot revolves around a Dutch woman. Continua la lettura di “MESSI AND MAUD” by MARLEEN JONKMAN→
Messi and Maud non si è sempre chiamato così. Quando è stato presentato al Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), si intitolava La Holandesa. Solo in seguito l’agente ha deciso di cambiare il titolo per il mercato internazionale. Ma per la regista Marleen Jonkman la sua opera resterà sempre La Holandesa. Ed è proprio intorno a una donna olandese che ruotano le vicende di questa pellicola. Continua la lettura di “MESSI AND MAUD” di MARLEEN JONKMAN→
Il film di Jihane Chouaib, presentato nella sezione del TorinoFilmLab, si apre con l’arrivo in Libano di Nada che trascina affannosamente una valigia. La sequenza conduce immediatamente lo spettatore in quella che sarà la location protagonista del film, ovvero la casa dei nonni. La dimora è stata saccheggiata dei beni ma non del proprio passato, e grazie a Nada torna a risuonare di ricordi. La casa è la trasposizione della protagonista, o meglio della sua mente: gli affreschi sono rovinati, ma in alcuni punti sul muro Nada riesce a ritrovare un disegno che la ritrae insieme al fratello. Continua la lettura di “Go Home” di Jihane Chouaib→
According to biblical tradition, The Mount of Olives represents the place where God will bring the dead back to life on Judgment Day. Cliffs and rocks outline a landscape full of paths both winding and labyrinthine, each of them studded with an unknown number of tombstones. A house built into a rock wall separates the world of the dead from the living. Tzvia (played by Shani Klein) lives in this spiritual and transcendental place. She is the protagonist of Mountain, the new film by Yaelle Kayam, which was presented for the first time this year in the “Orizzonti” section of the 72nd annual Venice International Film Festival. This feature film tells the story of a Jewish woman waiting for any signs of love coming from her husband. The routine of Tzvia is always the same: she does housekeeping and walks in poetic landscapes among millions of burial recesses. While Tzvia waits for the love and attention of Reuven, her husband, she begins to wander in the area around her house at night. Thus, she discovers that some erotomaniacs meet to consummate decadent copulations with each other, when the sun goes down. At the beginning, she hides herself among the tombstones and watches, with a voyeuristic attitude, the merging of the bodies during sexual intercourse. The Jewish woman discovers the meaning of sexual liberty and makes a comparison between that attitude and her unsatisfying life with her husband. Tzvia is still hidden and she does not know how to escape the situation. When the erotomaniacs become aware of the presence of the woman, Tzivia reduces herself to a servile condition. She feels a sense of guilt, so she decides to offer a meal to the group of exibitionists every night from now on. The film exudes the philosophy of Bataille and sacredness becomes seminal. Mountain presents images full of symbolism. For example, the scene in which Tzvia touches a used condom clearly indicates that she is a sexually repressed woman, while the image of the dead mouse lying on the floor reveals in advance the tragic ending of the film. To summarize, this work by Kayam is nebulous and fails to emerge. Still, there are some interesting – but half-developed – ideas. They float in the air just like Tzvia’s sexual desires do. Who knows if love will crush sense of duty once again.
Il Monte degli Ulivi, per tradizione biblica, è il luogo in cui Dio farà rinascere i morti quando sarà giunta la fine dei secoli. Dirupi e rocce delineano un paesaggio composto da tortuosi e labirintici sentieri costellati da un numero imprecisato di lapidi. Una casa scavata nella roccia separa il mondo dei morti da quello dei vivi. In questo luogo trascendentale e spirituale vive Tzvia (interpretata da Shani Klein), la protagonista del nuovo lavoro di Yaelle Kayam: Mountain.
Oggi la Grecia è un paese socialmente e culturalmente in crisi, eppure il cinema nazionale è sempre molto attento nel monitorare questa crisi e nel coglierne ogni minimo segnale di movimento. Non esiste una vera e propria Scuola che riunisca la nuova generazione di cineasti greci, ma ciò non significa che non siano presenti caratteri comuni alle diverse poetiche.
In aesthetic terms “Catharsis” means purifying the human passions that are understood and overcome with art. However, this word comes from Ancient Classic Greece and is connected with a sort of religious ritual that requires to purify both body and soul. Nowadays Greece is facing a cultural and social crisis: in few words it is an adrift country. Despite this, Greek cinema is constantly focusing on this national crisis and ready to supervise its flow. There is no real school of contemporary Greek cinema but there are several common artistic trends in these Greek movie makers.
Interruption is the first feature film by Yorgos Zois and without doubt follows this trend. This film starts with some out of focus lights blurring in a dark space. These lights stand for something not clear but alive that is going to bump soon into an unexpected future. This obscure element is actually an ancient man who’s completely naked. There’s a young blond and short haired woman with him. Those lights we have noticed at the very beginning of the film are actually Clitennestra and her lover Aegystus. Nonetheless the old man and the girl are Agamemnon and Cassandra. The starting events of The Oresteia are well known: the queen and her lover will kill the king who has come back to Troy after many years with another woman. The clash between Cassandra and the new masters of the palace occurs in a glass cube in the middle of the stage. According to mythology there should be then Orestes coming back from his exile and his vengeance versus his mother. Anyway the performance is suddenly stopped by a group of young people running through the stage and telling us they are the Chorus. Their leader is a black haired guy with an amused smile who takes some people from the audience as volunteers. They will introduce themselves and take active part in the show.
“What’s happening here is fiction or reality?” this is the question made by to a member of the Chorus to a girl.
“It’s the reality” replies the girl but she doesn’t look very convinced. The wonderful event this movie is trying to show is the theme of being guilty putting it aside for a while and playing it without misleading it. Now it’s high time to recollect Pirandello.
This movie is about a nowadays issue. At the end the young man kills himself while the theatre audience stands up thinking the tragedy came to its end. He’s another victim of nowadays spread indifference. It’s time that the actors and people taking part in the tragedy take off their clothes as a metaphor of their shame. But if they purified themselves and cleansed their guilty souls what about us and our Catharsis?
Mr. Kaplan is the second film by Alvaro Brechner, a director who had a great personal success in 2009 with Mal día para pescar. He gets back to film direction thanks to the Torino Film Lab, too.
Jacob Kaplan lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. He lived the atrocities of the Nazi persecutions in Europe and did not forget his Jewish origins. When he hears that a German man lives and works near him, all the terrible feelings related to the period of the Second World War resurface. He knows about what Simon Wiesenthal did in 1960: he worked for the seizure of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. In the same way, with the help of a family friend, a former police officer, Jacob tries to carry out investigations in order to arrest his enemy and move him to Israel for the trial.
This event will push the protagonist beyond his physical limits trying to pursue his ideals and maintaining his dignity. He’s trying to get his revenge, which is within his reach.
In this film both comedy and detective story features are perfectly mixed together. There are comical situations, based on the personalities of the two main characters. One is determined to reach his goal, while the other one wants to find a way to regain his family’s respect.
This film is the boast of the Torino Film Lab. It has been chosen for the 2015 Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. It is a funny but undoubtedly composed film, which encourages defending your ideals as well as pursuing justice and truth, even many years later.
Mr. Kaplan è il secondo film di Alvaro Brechner, che dopo il successo personale di Mal día para pescar del 2009 ritorna dietro la macchina da presa grazie anche al Torino Film Lab.
Jacob Kaplan vive la sua vita a Montevideo, in Uruguay. Ha vissuto gli orrori della persecuzione nazista in Europa e non ha dimenticato le sue radici ebraiche.
