#stp2016

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Petra Meterc - Cheating games

When last month Melania Trump delivered a speech plagiarized from Michelle Obama, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago Monika Nalepa wrote a blog for the Washington Post, where she claims the cheating to be endemic of Eastern European culture. While the article is quite generalizing and presumptuous, Mungiu's film GRADUATION / BACALAUREAT (2016), a narrative on cheating seen from a Romanian and therefore Eastern European perspective, could partially comply with Ms. Nalepa’s claims.

Cristian Mungiu, one of the Romanian New Wave frontrunners, is telling us a story of a father (Adrian Titieni) who would do anything for the success of his daughter (Maria-Victoria Dragus). The father figures his daughter would not be able to pass her high-school finals as successfully as planned due to the assault she felt victim to the previous day, so he decides to take things into his own hands. He uses his social network for the favor he needs, and Mungiu's Romania seems the right country to do so. Even though the central character appears to be caught in a chain-reaction of moral decision-making to which there seems to be no ending, it is the highly corruptive and rigid bureaucratic system that Mungiu dissects, not the character. This system functions as a clientelistic jungle; the culture of favors works on all levels, be it law, the healthcare, or the educational system, filling the gaps caused by the state's shortcomings. “Don't tell me you live off your pay check,” the father is told at some point, yet funnily so, he is renowned as one of the doctors who actually do not accept bribery.

Yet it seems this does not help him much in life. The film jumps from the public to the private sphere, and both are presented as similarly dysfunctional. Disillusioned by the post-Soviet transitional society, the protagonist gives the impression to be entrapped in constant failure. The mysterious stone-throwing, that he perceives as some kind of bad omen, only intensifies this mood. He fails most in his relationships. Not only is his wife (Lia Bugnar) depressed, his lover (Malina Manovici) is disappointed by him (when she is introduced, we also find out that he is ironically named Romeo), and his daughter is annoyed by her father's personal frustration transforming her into his child-project. He is completely detached from all of these women and yet still only obsesses about whether or not his daughter is going to a prestigious British university, thus succeeding in his glorified concept of the West. The lesson comes in a non-climatic way at the end and actually has more to do with the generational differences than with corruption, which is great food for thought.

Yet for someone familiar with Mungiu's cinematic language, as well as with other films tackling the topic of corruption in Romania, such as Corneliu Porumboiu's POLICE, ADJECTIVE / POLIȚIST, ADJECTIV (2009), GRADUATION does not live up to expectations. It seems as though Mungiu made a step aside from the typical, almost dogmatic aesthetics, and the rough realism is toned down. The film presents the viewer with an overwhelming abundance of action and issues addressed, so the focus of the main storyline sometimes gets lost. The pace of the film is often sped-up due to several plot lines, of which some feel redundant, such as the story of the lover's son and the scenes with the daughter's boyfriend. Also, the omnipresent corruption being demonstrated by such an amount of examples can work against the film's realism. Topic-wise, a parallel could be drawn with the Bulgarian THE LESSON / UROK (2014) by Grozeva and Valchanov, in which the Dardennian thriller-like critique of the dysfunctional society is built around the metaphor of a school theft. GRADUATION, maybe not surprisingly co-produced by the Dardenne brothers, lacks at least a tiny step out of the plot's comfort-zone.

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Petra Meterc - Before the storm

FOX / ALEPOU (2016) may be a short film when it comes to its length, but as far as the plot is concerned, the skilful structure of the narrative line, and the manipulating of time, it feels as if we are watching a feature. It is a coming-of-age film, in which the growing up part comes in a flash. The film kicks off with the oldest son of the family (Nikos Zegkinoglou) getting into a fight with his single mother (Nota Tserniafski), who, crushed by the argument, then drives off in tears. The scene that switches from her crying while searching for a cigarette to the aerial view of the twisting road, perfectly contrasted by David Bowie's happy-go-lucky soundtrack material Modern Love playing in the background, ends in a moment of inattentiveness. This sudden cut represents the end of the oldest son’s youth as well.

However, it is the viewer who possesses the sole knowledge of that. The film jumps back to the house, where all of the three children, the oldest adolescent son together with his child brother (Lyssandros Kouroubalis) and sister (Mihaela Holeza), spend what turns out to be their last carefree summer day. The hand-held camera follows them in dancing around the house and sprinkling with water in the sun, with the interplay of sunbeams and water drops, as well as a mixture of laughter and background chirrup adding to the ecstatic playfulness. The children are joined by the oldest son's girlfriend (Katerina Zisoudi), adding to the “teenage film” feel of an easy-going vibe including adolescent sexuality, meaningfully taking place in the mother's bed.

This mood is juxtaposed by a certain sense of unease that keeps looming in the background, and the viewer is anticipating the rough end. We can see that in the oldest son’s face, he is obviously tense due to the early argument, which is emphasized with close-ups of his face. These show his suppressed frustration of not wanting to be appointed the role of the second adult in the family. There are clues for the viewers that work as strong reminders that the lives of all of them will be changed soon. While the scenes of dancing and playing around in the garden seem timeless, suspense is built by interruptions of the phone ringing and it being ignored. It is clear that the calls are coming from the mother’s phone, and since the viewers only have partial knowledge of what happened, this heightens the suspense of wanting to know what the phone call is about. Yet the motif of death appearing twice suggests the worst scenario.

The young Greek director Jacqueline Lentzou, also a participant of the Berlinale Talents Short Film Station 2015 with FOX, wrote on the film's official website that she decided to make the film after she experienced death for the time, wished to convey the feeling of sensing that something tragic is on its way, and she succeeds in doing that. While many movies deal with grief, the last moments before knowing that someone close to you is gone are not something often explored in such a well-structured manner. The family will change soon, and a few carefully framed bird's perspective views of the children doing usual family things seem to imply that someone may already be observing them from an unearthly place, while they spend the day alone, as they will in the near future.

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Katerina Lambrinova - Toni Erdmann, an antidepressant

An eccentric father is lightening up his serious businesswoman daughter in the quite enjoyable and insightful German feature TONI ERDMANN.

It is Maren Ade’s third feature film and the second to attract such attention by both the critics and the audience after the success of EVERYONE ELSE / ALLE ANDEREN (2009) at Berlinale. During the Cannes Film Festival this year, TONI ERDMANN was a sensation and went home with the FIPRESCI Award.

There is a specific magic in the movie. Certainly, the extravagant script about a daughter-father relationship is the backbone. The film treats the occurring sense of melancholy in contemporary society, where there is no time and space for real feelings or for questioning one’s values, and where all human connections are deformed or even broken, in a very soft and humane way.

In its thematic focus and general bitter-sweet atmosphere, TONI ERDMANN reminds me of another female director’s movie – LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003). They both switch effortlessly between laugh-out-loud comedy and existential drama. They both are interested in the father-daughter relationship (of course, Sofia Coppola would delve deeper into that subject in her 2010 movie SOMEWHERE dedicated to her father). They are both bitter-sweet and battle the existential sadness and boredom with wittiness and humor. And sure, they both include quite interesting main characters.

At the beginning of the film, we meet the retired piano teacher Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), who lives alone with his old dog. He is abandoned by his last student, his dog dies, and he decides to pay a surprise visit to his always-busy daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), a corporate professional who is trying to negotiate a contract with a Romanian oil company in Bucharest.

Winfried, who wears freaky artificial teeth on his sad face and, tired from life’s boredom, makes weird jokes, precisely of these characteristics reminds us of the famous protagonist of Heinrich Böll’s novel The Clown / Ansichten eines Clowns (1963). Surprised by his unexpected arrival, Ines takes her father to a series of important meetings that become quite confusing and disturbing for everyone. Observing her robotic behaviour, her father asks her: “Are you a human?”

Although Ines is totally absorbed by her work in the corporative world, she is way more complex as a character. She is smart and sardonic, and Winfried suspects she is unhappy and feels unfulfilled. All she needs is to be shaken off, and that is exactly what her father intends to do, when he appears once again (after he had previously officially left the town) as the fictional freaky character Toni Erdmann – a prominent businessman or an ambassador, depending on the case. Maren Ade creates a series of farcical situations, but one of the most memorable scenes in the film is Ines’s party, where she welcomes her guests at the door absolutely naked. Her father comes to the party, disguised in a traditional Bulgarian kuker costume. The huge and fluffy figure embraces Ines tenderly in a funny reference to the famous Godzilla scene. Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller show a large range on the borderline between farcical and serious.

Along with Sofia Coppola’s movies and Alexander Payne’s NEBRASKA (2013), TONI ERDMANN turns out to be one of the most intelligent comedies in the last few years to deal with family reconnection. They all show that life, with all of its boredom and repetition, could be sometimes quite enjoyable. With its extraordinary story, light atmosphere, witty dialogue, and incredibly amusing moments, TONI ERDMANN works as an antidepressant, bringing humor and some healthy doses of madness into our routine life.

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Janka Pozsonyi - Playing through the trauma

Dealing with personal and socio-political traumas is at the core of the films of the young Hungarian film director and screenwriter Petra Szőcs (born 1981). Her previous short THE EXECUTION / A KIVÉGZÉS (2014) and the latest LIMP LIKE THAT / CSOSZOGJ ÚGY (2016) both react playfully to different kind of traumatic experiences – once through the eyes of little children, and then by following a family in grief.

Selected for the Short Film Competition of the 67th Cannes Film Festival, THE EXECUTION focuses on two young children – a brother and a sister – who are living in late-communist Romania with their family. Their favourite game is playing out the execution of the former dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, which became one of the most important broadcasted events of European history. Just as in LIMP LIKE THAT, this re-enactment or imitation works as a form of psychotherapy, with the purpose that reliving something will help in letting it go. We have seen forms of re-enactment as an aesthetic strategy in many recent documentaries, most notably those of Joshua Oppenheimer and Rithy Panh. The children are processing the misery of their parents, and the historic event through this game, that gives an interesting perspective on the society living through these defying moments. It is shocking to see how normal these horrible events seem to them.

Born and raised in the same city of Cluj and in the same era, Petra Szőcs pictured her own experiences and memories, just like she did in her latest short film LIMP LIKE THAT, which she shot in her childhood home. Devastated by the death of her husband, a woman in grief hires a young actor to play the role of the deceased around the family home. The man goes through the casting process – the most important feature is to cough and to limp like the old man did – before he settles down in his new role, and slowly starts merging into his character. Despite the fact that the setting is clearly that of the nineties in Romania, the fusion of the deceased husband and father and the young actor has a magic realist vibe.

Slowly coming to terms with the fact that “Daddikins” has left and returned to their house, the mother and daughter are creating a whole new meaning for the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are pictured through this absurd element of the father being resurrected by the young actor. Out of the shock and denial, the mother hires him for the part, and managing the casting with a bit of anger (because he is not coughing the right way). The depressed daughter does not feel the need for this man to be around, wearing her father’s clothes and smelling like him, but thanks to the mother’s wise, persuasive words “everything is happening in the brain,” the daughter finally accepts his death, by just simply looking at him differently.

Both shorts use acting, gesticulation, and recreation as a therapeutic method to deal with the shock and the trauma of historic events and family drama, to accept what is happening.

[festivalists]

STP 2016 / Emre Çağlayan - Mother and son

What is at stake in certain films is less a comprehensible story involving a motivated character, an event, or an obstacle. These films can best be described as creating an imaginary and unique world, and, immersing oneself in it, makes the prospects of contemplating and reflecting upon the most pressing concerns of the human experience possible. Lucile Hadžihalilović's EVOLUTION / ÉVOLUTION (2015) is an example to this esoteric strand of filmmaking – uncompromising in its vision, it is a challenging journey based on the director's memories of childhood and confronting a multitude of negative emotions: anxiety of growing up, fear of pregnancy, and trepidation of death.

The film takes place on a remote volcanic island, where Nicolas is coming of age and is teased by other boys in an otherwise uninhabited village, with the exception of his and the other boys’ mother(s), who seem to be primarily interested in curing their children from an inexplicable disease at a run-down hospital. The barren landscape, however, speaks more than these disturbingly laconic characters, as the film frequently portrays waves crashing on beaches composed of black volcanic pebbles, with an even more extensive portrayal of underwater sea creatures. Most significant and vivid of all is a red starfish, in itself a potent evocation of the mystery that surrounds the cycle of life – birth, death, and all in between.

Indeed, the film’s iconography is as ambiguous as its conception of time and space, where the advancement of medical technology contradicts the primitive and elusive rituals enacted by the nurses. Another mesmerizing scene depicts a flowing mass of green algae with minutes on end – an extended moment that renders the impression of living inside an aquarium through the movement of water dust in harmony to eerie drone music. Although the filmmaker and the cinematographer wanted to achieve a grainy image, shooting in celluloid was not feasible, so they reconstructed film grain in digital post-production – an aesthetic practice that appears as a bemusing parallel to Instagram filters mimicking 8mm color palettes.

If Hadžihalilović's equally cryptic feature-length debut INNOCENCE (2004) was a parable on the ways in which young girls are conditioned by society through education and discipline, then EVOLUTION might be seen as an unsettling tale about a boy's rite of passage, a realization of one’s own aging body and the angst of puberty. But on a metaphorical dimension, EVOLUTION seems less interested in the politics of gender and questions instead the cosmic, existential, or even ecological state of affairs. It explores what we are as humans, where we come from, and where we are headed, and especially how this trajectory relates to this small blue planet. In this world, a seashell can be a gift, a piece of memorabilia for the children, yet another symbol of the enigmatic transition they are about to experience. This, and the film’s unwavering investment in nature, seems to suggest a paradox of evolution – the possibility of a future devolution to our origins, to a more primordial form of existence, with, or without, the burden of consciousness.

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Andreea Pătru - The weight of the world

Kirsten Johnson’s CAMERAPERSON (2016) offers an intimate insight on contemporary issues from around the world by putting together the scenes that marked the author through her wide cinematography career shooting mostly documentaries. Although the film lacks a narrative vertebrae, and the scenes seem random and not as necessarily shocking as one might expect, it is the personal approach and the invisible narrative threads that link those images in a deeply intimate statement of the role of the behind-the-lenses person.

CAMERAPERSON cleverly combines visuals that had a different purpose, such as scenes that were destined for the documentaries Kirsten Johnson worked for, or even left-out ones with some original footage and some personal images that she shot for herself. The scenes are identified by simple location names and a few details of the violent events that took place, only to add context and legitimacy to the images. Regarding content, CAMERAPERSON is a curated combination of all hot-spot, war-related zones, with scenes from Liberia, Uganda, Yemen, Rwanda, Tahrir Square, or Darfur, although harsh imagery is elegantly avoided. Even so, the testimonies of women going through rape, children witnessing the death and torture of their beloved ones, people losing their homes, are more than one can bear and this post-traumatic stress is at the core of the unseen job of the cinematographer.

At one point, the crew of a film Kirsten Johnson worked on share that they have nightmares only by hearing about the atrocities they are documenting, while the real victims confess with some detachment. In this respect, she shows real emotion when interviewing a boy from Afghanistan who lost one of his eyes, and asks him to answer her questions in his own language although he does understand English. Even so, she cannot help herself being moved to tears by his testimony. She asks him to cover and uncover his eyes one by one in this little game of the seen and unseen, which is the heart of the matter in this documentary. The job of shooting individuals in their most vulnerable state is a delicate one, and the power of images is brought into question by the statement that “hearing about it and looking at it is different,” as it is stated in one of the scenes.

The ethical questions that CAMERAPERSON raise regarding the active / passive role of the documentarist are similar to the debate that Kevin Carter’s notorious picture of the Sudanese little girl and the vulture opened about consequences and morality in photojournalism in 1990s. Kirsten Johnson approaches the responsibility of documenting with an emotional investment that maybe some of the projects she worked for as a cinematographer did not explore as much. She avoids the death voyeurism of the deceased Syrian child on the beach and brings a welcomed human dignity and sensitivity to light. The moving scenes with her mother having to deal with Alzheimer’s and the loss of one’s personality enhance even more the involved nature of the filmmaker's job, an attribute that is as hidden as it can be in a conventional documentary. By exposing herself, without actually making an appearance for more than a few seconds, Kirsten Johnson obtains an honest confession of the nature of filming and being filmed. Through the level of commitment that she shows, the cameraperson is someone who sees everything though his/her personal filter, a perspective that the distant observer tends to block. “She sees everything,” as philosopher Jacques Derrida states in one of the scenes that she shot; “we are blind.”

Following the legacy of Chris Marker’s filmmaking and committing to film essay aesthetics, the film includes remarkably well shot scenes, such as a continuous unedited breathtaking shot of a midwife who struggles to save a newborn’s life with minimal resources. A risky programming choice, the scenes that included stories about the atrocities committed during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia received an increased interest from the Sarajevo Film Festival audience, a young bunch that is still attached to the subject through close family bonds and even personal experience.

With a respectful attitude towards the critical moments that are witnessed or vividly recalled, Kirsten Johnson manages to balance the images from countries that are in desperate situations with particular issues from Western countries in a clever gaze upon universal problems. In the overexposed passive image culture that we live in, topics like cruelty, discrimination, immigration problems, terrorism, or institutional abuse, do not submit to geopolitics. Affected by the stories she had to witness, but also in an attempt to let go, the cinematographer-director shows tremendous awareness of the burden of her work. Fundamentally, CAMERAPERSON is the sensitive gaze lacking ideology of a cinematographer who chose humanity above everything.

[festivalists]

STP2016 / Andreea Pătru - Walking the line

Milica Tomović's TRANSITION / TRANZICIJA (2016) is about the changes and vulnerability of a woman who cannot identify with her assigned gender. The Serbian director focuses on her character’s remarkably played inner struggle, leaving behind the judgement calls of such a controversial topic. While other gender-challenging films focus on the scandalous aspect and on suppressing one's masculine or feminine features, TRANSITION is rather about the journey and the courage of becoming your true self.

The film sets the tone with a defining scene of the boyish Jana who does a little bit of role-playing in the mirror, while combing her hair and admiring her imagined self. She proudly flexes her muscles, and we can see a hint of her full-grown armpit hair. As the story unfolds, we learn that these are the last two days with her beloved ones before leaving to secretly make a crucial adjustment in her life. Even if she is not completely honest with the entire bunch, telling them that she is leaving to pursue her studies in Michigan, some of her friends are already aware of her actual intentions.

The contrast between her bold decision and the way she is perceived is a nice addition to the plot and makes it even more surprising. She is repeatedly called good-looking or beautiful, even though she does not have a feminine attitude or posture. While she splendidly enacts the burden of her life-changing decision, there is no background information about her past or reasoning. It is not obvious if Jana came up with her choice as a part of a coming-of-age story, like in Céline Sciamma’s TOMBOY (2011). It does not look like a phase – although young and rebellious, playing in a rock band, Jana is a fully-grown woman who does not seem gender-confused. The director brings a fresh look on gender reassignment without the typical moralist discourse and prefers to focus on Jana’s difficult decision. The slow pace of the editing builds up the tension she must be going through, but also gives a sort of fluidity that comes from the feeling of Jana being conciliated with her decision.

Moreover, the battle between social expectations and Jana’s internal feelings of being uncomfortable with herself is cleverly expressed through a scene between her ex-lover confronting her departure. The use of over-the-shoulder shots functions perfectly to articulate Jana’s reluctance to deal with the deadweight of her decision and hints at the difficulty of voicing out loud her desire to change. With very few frontal shots showing Jana’s contentment with her option, the character realizes that this gain of confidence will cost her the loss of her beloved ones.

And while one might feel the need for more detailed premises for this transition, its mysterious path is the one that makes it original. In the end, it is Milica Tomović’s merit to create a piece that has more to do with mood rather than with details out of the flexibility of sex and gender in a simple natural way.