Belgian film Close directed by Lucas Don. Author: taken from internet
When the triumphant echoes of a couple of European films (Swedish triangle of sadness and German No news at the front), it is announced that the film program for April is being offered in Halls 23 and 12 by Charles Chaplin and La Rampa, the sixth European Film Festival, from the 12th to the 23rd of this fourth month of the year. And since sensation and exclusivity should be the main principles of such events, below I recommend only the latest films from a selection and thus deliberately exclude two of the most unusual names of this festival: Polish Corpus Christi (2019) and Bosnian-Austrian-Romanian co-production Kuo Vadis, Aida (2020), both previously exhibited and by various media.
Those who have seen the above two films know why I rate them as colossal, and those who have not seen, thanks to this festival, can now feel the value of both proposals, complex, dark and heartbreaking films, such that it confirms the reasons why the cinema was called the seventh art, a denomination that was born in Europe around 1911 thanks to the intellectual developments of an Italian living in France who responded to the name Riccioto Canudo. The rest is history, and no matter how many millions of viewers in the world can hardly mention the name of a non-American film, from Europe we got French surrealism, German expressionism, Soviet montage cinema, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, auteur cinema from the 1960s to the 1980s… and every year, or almost every year, a handful of important films.
So, let’s start the list of recommendations with France, one of the largest European cinematographies, if we take into account the number and quality of films released each year. A long, very long list of French productions that attempted to understand and naturalize sexual experiences of a diverse nature. One of the latest attempts in this direction is Delicatethe protagonist of which is Johnny, a ten-year-old boy who is faced with the problems typical of those who approach homosexuality out of fear of the unknown, in a poor, macho environment, and thus, in one argument, the intentions of a social drama and an intimate film are connected about a “soft”, “gentle” character, or at least unable to accept the hardness and insensitivity that his environment seems to require.
To a certain extent, the plot and the protagonist of the German one are similar to the French film. system switch, written and directed by newcomer Nora Fingscheidt, winner of the Silver Bear in Berlin and awards for the best national film in 2022. In all synopses, a nine-year-old girl, abandoned by her mother, is described as aggressive and rebellious, capable of driving everyone around her to despair. The film will gradually reveal, without didactics and melodrama, that layer of helplessness, vulnerability and lack of attachment, which almost always determines the cruel and short-tempered relationship of this girl, a memorable character, with a character that is in the antipodes of the protagonist. Delicateor maybe not so much, because perhaps the two beings are much more alike at heart than deceptive appearances would suggest.
The third most recent film among those selected for the European festival and dedicated to very young heroes is the Belgian Close (Closed), directed by Lucas Dont, who in principle approaches the beautiful friendship of two teenagers, Leo and Remy, 13 years old, but the closeness is understood by their classmates as a love relationship, and Leo decides to completely ruin the friendship and violently distances himself from Remy to avoid gossip and discriminatory etiquette. The highly commendable direction of the actors (especially for achieving the grandiose results of two teenagers), as it happens in Delicate And system switchis consistent with the character design, which suggests that the protagonists are symbols of not only love, orphanhood, fear, and naivety, but also violence and cruelty, while the visual design of the three stories is applied to subtle allusions to all these spiritual states. , using light, color and camera movements.
The name chosen for the opening of the Festival, due to its many merits, is a joint Swedish-Norwegian-Danish production. Run (Escape), awarded worldwide in two generally mutually exclusive categories: Animation and Documentary. And the thing is, it’s a relatively new audiovisual modality where it’s approached from some animation technique, a story, and some real character that can’t be filmed “in person”. So it was with the two most famous predecessors: Persepolisa parody biography of Iranian director Marjan Satrapi, and Waltz with Bashir, which recounts an Israeli soldier’s experience in the Lebanon War. Both films have passed several times through the television space that X-farwhose systematic search for the best and latest rarely finds recognition in our media with the enthusiasm it deserves.
IN run away some of the past and present experiences of an Afghan refugee in Denmark are recounted, and real footage from the archives is added to this animation set, which reinforces the documentary legitimacy of the work, about what happened in Afghanistan before and after the flight. In this way, the film is about the dramatic discovery of a character, a man who must deal with a conflict that represents not only his homosexuality, but the rejection of everything he knows and loves, while spanning several decades of history, recently from Afghanistan. On the other hand, the fields of activity and the power of both documentary and animated films are expanding significantly.
In the European cinematic panorama, the Italian contribution is represented through ant lord, directed by Gianni Amelio, one of the most experienced and recognized directors presented in this selection. Faithful to his own filmography, which insists on the realism and denunciations inherent in social drama (child thief, lamerica) Amelio refers to the events that took place in the late 1960s, when the homosexual playwright and poet Aldo Braibanti was tried in Rome and sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of brainwashing him or similar nonsense. his young, but already adult students. Amelio wanted to reveal this tragic case of homophobic repression and provided the film with flexible and meaningful dialogue, not at all literary, as the profession of the protagonist frightens, and it is these dialogues, coupled with the productions, that manage to bring the greatest emotional intensity. this good film. an example of modern political cinema.
A portrait of institutionalized corruption, also associated with machismo and homophobia, contains a Turkish film Burning days, Emin Alper, also a veteran whose previous films and this one we are about to see now can convince the most reluctant viewers of the authenticity of Turkish audiovisual productions, beyond the flurry of soap operas we see in every possible way. with format thriller, the victimized hero, is a young prosecutor assigned to a remote rural town, where he encounters local aristocrats and landowners determined to defend their privileges and their conservatism and use any arguments against the alien vigilante that could undermine their prestige. or their desire to develop. The arid landscape, shown in beautiful shots, contrasts with moving images, as if reinforcing the differences in a country marked by atavisms and modernity.
European cinema, from France to Turkey, from Denmark to Italy, continues to bet on the naturalization of aesthetic, generic, sexual, and even social and political differences. Always new, always provocative, it will run for two weeks in April in the main cinemas of Havana.
The festival will open with a joint Swedish-Norwegian-Danish work Flee (La huida).
Source: Juventud Rebelde