The capital of Lithuania will soon open its gates to cineastes, with the Vilnius Film Festival "Kino Parsavaris", the largest cinematic event in Lithuania. Roaming the streets of the second biggest city of the Baltic states. The fest runs from March 19 until April 2.
The twenty year anniversary of Vilnius will be celebrated with a full retrospective of French enfant terrible, Leos Carax . After 18 years Carax comes back to Vilnius with the Alex trilogy (Boy Meets Girl - 1984, The Night is Young- 1986, The Lovers on the Bridge- 1991) to the enigmatic Holy Motors. The retrospective also includes Tessa Louise-Salomé's documentary on the man, Mr. X.
Among the selections are Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, Chaitanya Tamhane's directorial debut Court, the Turkish coming of age drama Sivas,, the Vietnamese banned The Inseminator, Greek´s queer dramedy Xenia, and Peter Strickland's beguiling and erotic The Duke of Burgundy.
Baltic Gaze is the competition section from the region mixing a variety of different themes and formats such as a Signe Baumane´s autobiographical animated feature debut Rocks in My Pockets, a Silver Bear winner from Poland- Body, and from Russian filmmaking maverick Alexey Fedorchenko's Angels of Revolution.
The Masters section speaks for itself, with Academy Award winner Birdman, Peter Greenaway's Berlinale bowing Eisenstein in Guanajuato, Abel Ferrar's Pasolini, Kim Ki-duk's most recent outing, One on One, Silver Bear Grand Jury winner The Club by Chilean director Pablo Larrain and Golden Bear endowed dissident guerrilla docu-fiction from Tehran, Jafar Panahi´s Taxi.
Below you'll find a gallery with capsule reviews of some of the festival's offerings -- enjoy!
IN THE CROSSWIND dir Martti Helde (Section New Europe – New Names)
This impressive debut by 27-year old Estonian filmmaker Martti Helde depicts a dark chapter in Estonian history: a Soviet holocaust. In the Crosswind plunks us down in 1941 when people from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were deported to Siberia under the pretense of being “anti-Soviet elements.” The dire straits of imprisonment in a labour camp are recounted through the personal story of young philosophy student Erna whose family got tore away by the false allegations and inhuman treatment.
Helde´s screenplay is inspired by letters from such imprisonment of the real life Erna. the epistolary form of Erna´s monologues and existential musings while enduring the suffering and oppression yet preserving the tiniest spark of hope in the darkest period of her life. The melancholic tone of the correspondence is being overwhelmed by impeccable composition of thirteen tableaux vivants. Helde retorts to rigorous mise-en-scene of living sculptures in black-and-white dioramas. The precise and virtuoso glacial-paced camera snakes through the frozen time to convey a powerful and personal account of the deepest yearning for survival and dignity. It took Helde 4 years to finish the film with every single detail showing and 700 extras. An amazing piece of work.
MODRIS dir.Juris Kursietis (Section New Europe – New Names)
If there is a stereotype for Eastern European social drama (close to Romanian New Wave), Modris would formally fit the pattern. The eponymous protagonist is our titular Latvian seventeen year old (authentic newcomer Kristers Pikša), living a teenager´s life. However, two things differ Modris from his peers: his father whom he never met and his insatiable desire to feed a slot machine in the local pub.
Juris Kursietis makes a coming-of-age tale that tackles the social issues in Latvia. The storyline grinds two rails, the one where our protagonist´s mother forecasts that he will end up behind bars as his father did, with the second one where Modris tries to find out who his father really is.
Kursietis maps the fallout of the divided and dysfunctional family and the syndrome of the absent father figure. The director ceaselessly tracks the subject in the style of the Dardenne brothers, with his grey-tinted palette of industrial town under siege by the Baltic winter.
Despite a docu-fiction heavily inspire by a real life case, Kursietis employs functional figures playing the role of anticipation such as “the last supper” of Modris and his girlfriend, a scene the director uses to stress also class difference.
NO ONE´S CHILD dir. Vuk Ršumović (Section New Europe – New Names)
Serbian director Vuk Ršumović's debut is similar to Modris, in that it addresses the theme of a dysfunctional family and the social implication of left behind kids in a Serbian orphanage.
Ršumović uses an actual account about a feral child found in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the launchpad for de-romanticized the Tarzan story. Mapping the transition from animality to civilisation by taming the urges and leading the abandoned wild child into the realm of language, Ršumović echoes the need for social structure. The sidestory of the wild child´s friend, rebelling kid Zika neglected by his father, emphasizes the need. The director also tackles the universal theme of one´s identity and personality.
THE TRIBE dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy (Section New Europe – New Names)
“I am always joking with journalists that I was shooting a western,” confesses the Ukrainian Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy of his festival hit The Tribe. “Because it completely looks like a western, a foreigner comes a to small town, there is a wild bunch, lovely girl...” His boarding-school “western” performed completely in sign-language with no subtitles challenges viewers to decrypt the story based on powerful visuals done in complex long shots.
Citing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days as one of his favourite films, Slaboshpytskiy left a memorable back-alley abortion scene in The Tribe as well as peppering a bleak teenage love story with Eros and Thanatos allusions. This is raw and radical stuff.
Read the full review here.
KOZA dir. Ivan Ostrochovský (Section New Europe – New Names)
Ivan Ostrochovský is the Slovak documentarian standing behind the award-winning Velvet Terrorists. Here he ventures into feature narrative territory with a minimalistic docu-drama on a god-forsaken boxer struggling to make ends meet. It is inspired by the real life Slovak-Roma featherweight boxer Peter Baláž, who appears as a fictional version of himself in the film.
Peter collects metal scraps for a few euros and relives the star moment of his career from the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta via a worn out VHS tape. Peter lives with his partner Miša in a derelict housing estate on the outskirts of society. Miša soon finds out she is pregnant and urges Peter to find some money for an abortion. Peter goes to do what he knows best.
Ostrochovský uses a fixed camera and long takes in the utmost form of observational realism to capture Peter´s downward spiral of reentering the ring while trying to raise money to be able to raise a kid of his own. Unlike a more traditional sports drama, the director focuses on the protagonist pre- and post-match situations, sketching a bleak psychological portrait.
THE LESSON dir. Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov (Section New Europe – New Names)
This supposed poverty thriller Bulgarian directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, cultivates comedic glimpses, which helps put a spin on the sometimes stereotyped perception of Eastern European film. A teacher tries to teach her pupils a lesson on not stealing a peer´s pocket money while falling in the downward spiral and trying to patch the swelling holes in her family budget. The Lesson largely keeps a straight face of a serious social drama, however the filmmakers at some point blurred the line between drama and comedy through vaudevillian situations such as when the teacher in order to save her family and house needs to decide whether she will humiliate herself by performing a vulgar sex act with a sleazy moneylender or rob a bank instead.
Read the interview with the director here.
ANGELS OF REVOLUTION dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko (Section Baltic Gaze)
One of the most interesting films of 2012 was the Ethno-omnibus The Celestial Wives of Meadow Mari by Russian filmmaker Aleksei Fedorchenko, a witty and original wanderlust through the folklore peculiarities of the Meadow Mari people, a group considered to be the last pagans in Europe.
The film was full of odd customs, a weird ghost appearance (probably the most memorable and oddest of them all), rituals, superstitions and celebrations of the corporeality of womanhood in the eastern Volga region epitomized a motley collection of cultural fragments that is available from a rare and tiny population, not to mention Fedorchenko´s own visions and ambitions. The filmmaker´s fascination with ethnic minorities and obscure customs also fuels his latest outing, Angels of Revolutions.
The title bears an expectation of politics, which is a good hunch. Fedorchenko retells a dark chapter in Russian history about the forced collectivization in the 1930s among indigenous Soviet tribes on the banks of the river Ob. The government summons an ace agent, the sexy, green-eyed Polina "The Revolutionary" Schneider (Daria Yekamasova, who also appeared in The Celestial Wives of Meadow Mari), to do her job as smoothly as possible. Having the privilege to put together a dream team, Polina starts to assemble the brightest Soviet avant-garde minds.
Though recent Russian films are often politically charged and bear the indelible stigma of the times, as in, for example, Academy Award contender Leviathan, Angels of Revolution is much more colourful fare compared to Andrey Zvyagintsev´s take on the Biblical book of Job. Fedorchenko once again sticks to the mercurial nature of the narrative form, nourishing a variety of digressions and anecdotal curlicues running halfway through the film.
Read the full review here.
ROCKS IN MY POCKETS dir.Signe Baumane (Section Baltic Gaze)
Latvian animator Signe Baumane, author of the funny and poignant animated sex(y) shorts Teat Beat of Sex, performs a unique striptease on family history and daily living with tje foul beast of depression. Baumane´s uncovers mystery plaguing her family with disarming honesty yet the film doesn´t lack comedy, which are mostly seen through the director´s playful visual puns and gags. Bright, fun and educational.
Read the full review here.
PASOLINI dir. Abel Ferrara (Section Masters)
Willem Dafoe stars as controversial Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini under Abel Ferrara´s direction in the re-enactment of the final 24 hours of the director´s life.
Read the full review here.
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS dir.Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi (Section Viasat Comedies)
The recent shortage of quality comedies prompt zealous anticipation of a saviour or two. The latest endeavour from Jemaine Clement (of The Flight of the Conchords fame) and Taika Waititi (offbeat romcom Eagle vs Shark), became an instant festival hit and the undisputed comedy champion of 2014.
This hilarious mockumentary investigates the secret life and current flat-sharing situation of four Wellington-based vampires. Clement and Waititi juggle and shift vampire stereotypes and tropes in a situational comedy environment with marvellous grace, maintaining fresh pace at delivering full-blood gags (pun intended).
Read the full review here.
MAGICAL GIRL dir. Carlos Vermut (Section Festival´s Favourites)
Carlos Vermut´s sophomore feature is an odd tragicomic triptych. World, Devil and Flesh are the tittles of episodes dissolved one into another and the source of unhappiness of the three protagonists.
Vermut uses elliptical narration hiding some motives to render situations more weird or funny as in the case of the first third where Luis enables his twelve year old daughter to smoke and drink, only to succumb to her further whimsical demands. Luis goes on to sell a part of his extensive library just to buy his daughter a ridiculously expensive costume from a Japanese anime. Then he has two problems, total shortage of money and a daughter dying of leukemia.
In an unexpected, though a bit forced twist of fate he ends up in the bed of Barbara. Barbara doesn´t lack money and Luis doesn´t hesitate to blackmail her. Barbara has two problems, she just cheated on her caring husband and she is mentally disturbed.
The third character is an ex-con and retired teacher Damián who tries to help Barbara but has own dark history. The three of them get caught up in a vicious circle of deception. Magical Girl treads the usual ground of a social critique where everybody has a dark side and gets himself draw into bizarre turmoil.
VIKTORIA dir.Maya Vitkova (Section Festival´s Favourites)
Maya Vitkova, executive producer of Eastern Plays and director of several shorts, could not hope for a more striking debut. She rams the door and takes viewers by frontal attack with the 155 minute long chronicle of a dysfunctional family.
Mesmerizing art direction brings to life three decades of life under the rule of communism rushing towards an abrupt end. Vitkova proves to be a mature filmmaker defined by a singular screenplay which is shaped by thought-provoking details and motifs.
The director chooses the point of view of the avowedly damaged wife, Boryana, who wishes to prevent pregnancy by any means necessary, several of them violent in the masochistic form. Her zealous struggle to annihilate any possibility of new life in her womb reaches shocking heights. If Vitkova aimed to subvert the archetype of mother, she has succeeded on many levels. The screenplay deserves further applause for handling such various and diverse motifs and allusions while tying them gracefully into a functional multilayered story. The antithesis of motherhood draws parallels to the Communist regime well. The director even uses archive footage to make the experience more vivid.
And then, against Boryana´s will, she becomes a mother, giving birth to a child without an umbilical cord, an accurate metaphor for the above. Nevertheless, the eponymous protagonist (another savvy word-play, the name clearly derived from Victor) is immediately glamorized by the Communist party as the child of the decade.
The tapestry of destinies criss-crossing yet not being lost in the process and being crafted into a coherent story is a testimony to Vitkova´s amazing capacities and keen eye for story. Surely, she will become a major figure in the new Bulgarian cinema.
LUCIFER dir.Gust van den Berghe (Section Critic´s Choice)
Belgian director Gust Van den Berghe concludes his triptych on the emergence of human consciousness that began with Little Baby Jesus of Flandr and continued with Blue Bird.
Speaking of consciousness, a better-suited mythological figure in the Western canon would be hard to find than Lucifer. The script is adapted from a 1645 play of the same name written by Joost van den Vondel, from which, supposedly, John Milton drew inspiration for his Paradise Lost. Van den Berghe's previous indigo-tinged film was also an adaptation of 1908's symbolist play by Belgian literature Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Maeterlinck.
The director keeps the classic three-act structure, introducing each act with a particular title, "Paradise", "Sin" and "Miracle", that bears more figurative than literal meaning.
A ladder hangs from the sky. On his way downtown, so to speak, Lucifer (Gabino Rodríguez) stops in an earthly paradise of an inconspicuous rural Mexican village, where Lupita (María Acosta) and her granddaughter Maria (Norma Pablo) live their modest lives. They tend to sheep in their day-by-day routine while Lupita´s brother Emanuel (Jeronimo Soto Bravo) pretends to be a cripple so he can avoid any work whatsoever, and gamble and drink all day long. Lucifer smells a chance in this household and puts on a Samaritan-healer mask to conjure a miracle of his own, fraud to fraud.
Van den Berghe subverts a notorious tableaux from Christian iconography, bypassing pitfalls of flat blasphemy or sacrilege. A scene where Lucifer literally saves a sheep or washes "a sinner's" feet do not occur under religious pathos, although it's hard to ignore the ironic bent. Lucifer's docile intervention depicts the character as an intelligent and well-advised entity, as opposed to the popular image of a sadistic devil. His acts unfold according to the Light Bearer moniker as he repeats the stunt from the Garden of Eden, sans slimy guise.
Read the full review here.
GOODNIGHT MOMMY dir.Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala (Section Discoveries)
Ulrich Seidl produces this auteur horror co-directed by his long-time writer partner Veronika Franz. Twin brothers enjoy fun in a modern and recluse luxurious mansion by the forest. There days are numbered when their grotesquely bandaged mother crashes the party and demands utter calmness after her cosmetic surgery. She soon starts mistreating the boys and they grow more suspicious about somebody else being hidden under wraps. The usual parent-children tug-of-war shifts into more sinister turmoil of distrust and paranoia. Austrian horror accompanies exceptional cinematography by Martin Gschlacht.
Read the full review here.
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