Karlovy Vary 2016: Central and East European Cinema in the Spotlight

Death by Death (dir. by Xavier Seron)

The directing feature debut Death by Death by Belgian filmmaker Xavier Seron falls into the niche of small oddball films. The monochrome photography and idiosyncratic style choices remind of Estonian filmmaker Veiko Ounpuu´s brilliant film The Temptation of St.Tony. However, where Ounpuu employs twisted and Kafkaesque poetics, Seron tinkers with neurotic comedy and hyperbole, although curiously enough both reached for religious, more precisely Christian, iconography to subvert. Xavier Seron´s protagonist Michel is almost 40-year-old stuck at dead end job at an appliance store and taking care of his terminally ill mother. The lengths he is willing to go in providing the best care demonstrates riotous deadpan opening scene where he tries out coffins as a piece of clothing to best suit his mother´s measures. The play with eccentricities transferred onto the structure, a narrative arc catering the leitmotif of mortality is chopped up into a sequence of vignettes, a diverse variation on the absurd icing each one of them.

The Fits (dir. by Anna Rose Holmer)

Last year was a ripe season for powerful and intriguing debuts giving way to newcomers. This wave washed ashore American indie filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer at Lido whose first feature-length outing The Fits also co-produced La Biennale di Venezia. The Fits is a small film with a big heart proving there is still enough space for artistic experimentation in genres. A traditional coming-of-age tale of eleven-years-old Toni who spends too much time with brother turns into a mysterious parable on assimilation. Toni decides to switch boxing training for a spot on local dance troupe and the ambition prompts up a process of an attempt to become part of another subculture. The austere conditions enabled Holmer to craft ominous atmosphere of unexplainable phenomena of a series of epileptic fits starts plaguing young girls around the protagonist. The mood reminds of Charles Burns magnificent graphic novel Black Hole albeit playing less on a sinister and creepy note.

Aloys (dir. by Tobias Nolle)

Another exercise in minimalistic filmmaking. Swiss director Tobias Nolle does not need much ammunition to turn his solo feature debut into immersive psychological drama Aloys. Aloys Adorn runs one-man investigative agency taking up all the tasks by himself including creeping around bushes and recording other people´s private business. A loner and recluse, Aloys perfectly matches the job description he inherited from his father, deceased yet he still refers to his tasks in plural as if the father was still by his side. Nolle combines character study and romance into slightly surreal packaging through voluntarily isolated protagonist finding a way back to reconnection with casual social interaction and human touch via imagination, an unlikely door back to the real world.

Motherland (dir. by Senem Tuzen)

Among the recent Turkish cinema, a poverty porn seems to be the hot topic although some filmmakers decided to immerse into more psychological and social themed ventures displaying the generational schism of traditional society growing into a secular future. The up-and-coming filmmaker Senem Tuzen is one of them. Nesrin, the protagonist of Motherland, represents the modern Turkish life, a recent divorcee who quit her daily job in order to finish a novel and become a writer she desires to be. To get her artistic juices flowing, she resorts to a village house of her deceased grandmother. To her chagrin, her mother who can find a little to no understanding in daughter´s behavior visits and her presence derails Nesrin´s writing aspirations. As the traditional meets the modern, the both women, the overprotective mother and urbanite daughter, confront inside a love-hate relationship. The clash of the two worldviews brings to the fore deeply rooted and outmoded social stereotypes in Turkish society among which belongs a collective and public shaming of a person with different opinions.

Island City (dir. by Ruchika Oberoi)

Indian filmmaker Ruchika Oberoi´s feature debut Island City is a portmanteau offering comprising of three stories from contemporary Mumbai. The director predominantly mines out the potential of Indian cosmopolitan lifestyle and an existential situation in light satire despite nourishing the leitmotif of despair to the fullest. The three stories lie on a trajectory absurd-comic-tragic though the tonal trinity mixes to bigger or smaller extent in each story. “Fun Committee” opens Island City, a curiously satisfying take off from the sterile milieu of corporate office and corporate shenanigans such as boosting individual morale of the staff. Each time a randomly chosen employee is granted a day off to indulge into supposedly endorphin-driven although rigourosly standardized activities by the corporation. The whole escapade is witnessed through a perspective of a reluctant drone who would prefer to spend the day by mindless grind in his cubicle. Not only for comic and absurd effect did Oberoi stylistically fleshed out the “fun day” programme utilizing paranoid thriller conventions. The management has control over employees even during their day off commanding them how to enjoy themselves. The simple idea and linear development including violent finale work well in terms of hyperbolizing the dark side of corporate work engulfing one´s life and Oberoi´s light, jolly style eases the reception. The middle story looks like something Neil Gaiman might have written. An extremely patriarchally dominated family becomes addicted to a soap opera featuring a prototype of perfect man while the head of the family lies in a coma. The filmmaker employs a witty concept of paraleling television storylines with the actual life of family yet building a twisted counterpoint to the real life happenings. The set-up works extremely well exposing the comic with the tragic suspended however shadowily omnipresent. Island City caps off an anti-romance carrying the strongest punchline of the three stories. It´s actually the punchline that turns the seemingly regular romance of the type of white knight coming to save the princess upside down in laught-out albeit caustic moment. Aarti life is a giant rut that robbed her of her individuality and the approaching marriage to a man she finds repulsive will only add insult to injury. However, a love letter from secret admirer awakens Aarti from the existential limbo and she starts again living her life until the admirer reveals himself in a hilarious, surprising and cringe-worthy twist.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (dir. by Juho Kuosmanen)

The Finnish newcomer Juho Kuosmanen certainly pulled a Wellesian stunt. He delivered a strong, matured and extraordinary first feature, a period biopic The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, where a debut just identifies a chronology in Kuosmanen´s filmography rather than an offering suffering from rookie mistakes and raising the bar of expectation for himself insanely high. The director concentrates on days leading to 1962 world featherweight title match which according to some had a national hero in the making. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki is more intimate and sensitive biopic than a raging sports drama. Recently, Slovakian drama Koza expanded the limits of boxing genre in formalistically daring docudrama. Kuosmanen makes his protagonist Olli Mäki, perfectly portrayed by Jarkko Lahti as down to earth and timid ascending athlete, the front and center giving Lahti a heavy burden he graciously bears until the end, mostly depicting the opposite of opportunistic macho man. Black and white crisp photography by Janni-Petteri Passi and mesmerizing art production by Kari Kankaanpäa along Kuosmanen´s directing bring to life an unsentimental story about dignity and values.

Dark Beast (dir. by Felipe Guerrero)

The ambient sound and absence of dialogue play a crucial role in Felipe Guerrero triptych Dark Beast (Oscuro animal) about three women freeing themselves out of (male) oppression and violence. Voicelessness serves as the metaphor of women´s lesser status in a patriarchal society caught in unstable environment however Guerrero empowers them following their process of emancipation. Clearly and strongly politically wedged, Guerrero´s feature debut feels like a follow-up to the film of his Colombian colleague José Luis Rugeles, Alias Maria. Both films define a war conflict devouring innocent bystanders while assimilating them into the machinery from which they are trying to free themselves.

Wolf and Sheep (dir. by Shahrbanoo Sadat)

The emerging writer-director Shahrbanoo Sadat debuts with Wolf and Sheep, a delicate more docu than fiction probe into the daily life in Afghan rural village. Sadat adapts ethnographic lens spotlighting simple unindustrialized living in her charming poetically realistic oeuvre. A group of ragtag children serves as a guide in initiation into local customs and rituals along folklore and hierarchy driven by gender, fertility and ownership of sheep. Lacking a conventional narrative arc, the series of minutiaies and incidents represent a piece in Sadat´s puzzle recreating the (polygamic) social order in a nomadic aggregation of several families. Naturalism goes hand in hand with lyricism as the community lives in close relation to nature and tradition of the geosocial specificities including religion. An enriching debut by young talent.

Original Bliss (dir. by Sven Taddicken)

Sven Taddicken´s Original Bliss, an adaptation of Scottish author A.L. Kennedy´s novel, won two non-statutory awards at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, FIPRESCI award and Europa Cinemas Label award. Similarly to Karl Markovics´ sophomore feature Superworld, Taddicken follows a mid-aged dispirited housewife Helene on her journey back to the faith. Contrary to Markovics, Taddicken´s self-discovery quest is considerable more masochistic and deals with male violence represented by her abusing and atheistic husband who ridicules his wife instead of trying to understand her. Ulrich Seidl explored the bond between faith and masochism in the second part of his Paradise trilogy although it was a self-inflicted physical masochism, whereas in Original Bliss, Helene becomes psychical and physical martyr of her husband and own resignation. She finds a temporary asylum in conversations with psychologist Gluck specialized on “new cybernetics” who, oddly enough, is being enslaved by another kind of pathology. The two damaged souls try to find redemption from precarious states and prejudices. Even though the director works with romance template, he soon turns Original Bliss into complicated psychological character study unspooling in rather chamber configuration.

On the Other Side (dir. by Zrinko Ogresta)

The husband and wife relationship is the focus in Croatian psychological drama On the Other Side by Zrinko Ogresta. Vesna, a middle-aged nurse, had done everything in her powers to start a new life for her and her children twenty years ago and to erase any bond to her husband, a war criminal. However, the stigma cannot be so easily washed out even after two decades as Vesna´s daughter finds out. Struggling with the past in their present lives, Vesna receives a call from her husband out of nowhere revealing his human face in the light of possibly war crimes for which he was tried yet not sentenced. Ogresta asks a big and complicated question about forgiveness as Vesna contemplates meeting her husband when children disapproved of the act. On the Other Side is subtly gripping drama opening the wounds of a political situation of former Yugoslavia and testifying how the past is carried into the present. Ogresta also follows also another motif, purely intimate one revolving around loneliness and isolation.