A Film a Week - The Stories

 previously published on Cineuropa

When we get to see some of “big history”, such as wars, political assassinations and military coups, unfolding virtually right before our eyes, it is safe to assume that, if we come out the other side unscathed, we will have many stories to recount about said events. This is the premise of Abu Bakr Shawky’s (Yomeddine) newest feature, The Stories, which has premiered in the official competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The place is Egypt, the time between 1967 and 1984. The film is structured into five chapters, each following our hero Ahmed (Amir El-Masri) and his colourful extended family during an episode set against a historical event, such as two wars against Israel in 1967 and 1973, the street riots against the pro-market reforms in 1977, and the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981. When we first meet him, Ahmed is a gifted pianist living in a cramped house with his homemaker mother Fairouz, civil-servant father Ragheb and two brothers: his twin, Russian language and Soviet politics enthusiast Hassan, and Sharaf, who is into football, particularly the unlucky Zamalek club.

Their home is often visited by uncles and neighbours, his father might have got into trouble for uttering the word “corruption” on live television, the whole family is waging a “noise war” against the neighbour upstairs, and the brothers are targeted by bullies who support another club. Hassan has been drafted into the army just in time to participate in the Six-Day War, and Ahmed has started a pen-friendship with an Austrian girl called Elizabeth.

Six years later, Ahmed is in Vienna on a scholarship, courting Elizabeth (Valerie Pachner, from A Hidden Life), trying to dodge the proverbial bullets from her family, which is as chaotic as his own, and navigating his academic life under the wing of a casually racist bohemian professor and in the shadow of his more industrious rival Shams. When he hears the news about his brother getting killed in the Yom Kippur War, he has no choice but to return home. Four years later, Elizabeth comes to join him and his family, to fall into their chaotic dynamic, to witness the turmoil, to listen to their stories and start writing her own…

The Stories is a rare animal on the festival circuit, as it is an audience-friendly form of organised chaos that operates in a heightened emotional register and speaks about troubled life experiences in a fairly light-hearted way. In order to do so, Shawky relies heavily on a number of clichés, tropes and commonplaces, such as the actors’ rapid-fire dialogue, some hectic pans in Wolfgang Thaler’s cinematography and rapid cuts in Roland Stöttinger’s editing, as well as the loud sound design and even louder music, usually consisting of nationalist anthems and marches from the TV, contrasted with the modern, virtuoso pieces that Ahmed plays.

The thing is that these broad strokes usually work perfectly well, although more demanding viewers may pan the film on the grounds of exoticism exemplified by the slightly kitschy production design, the wild acting and the over-the-top sentimentality. But those things are here for a reason: they work in movies. And The Stories is just that, a fun movie that would fare better in theatres than on a festival circuit dominated by gloomy arthouse pieces. In a milieu like this, it constitutes a refreshing change.

A Film a Week - Ida Who Sang So Badly Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song / Ida, ki je pela tako grdo, da so še mrtvi vstali od mrtvih in zapeli z njo

 previously published on Cineuropa

Ester Ivakič’s debut feature, Ida Who Sang So Badly Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song, might have a ten-year-old protagonist and coming of age as its primary topic, but its vibe is way darker than one would expect from a children’s film, which is a genre that has become very popular in Slovenian cinema after the success of Slobodan Maksimović’s Beanie and Klemen Dvornik’s Block 5. Its premiere in the main competition of FilmFestival Cottbus, rather than in the children’s and youth sidebar of another festival, confirms this notion.

When we meet Ida (played by newcomer Lana Marić), it might seem as though she lives an idyllic life. She is growing up in the countryside, has both of her parents, Ivana and Stanko (played by Judita Franković Brdar and Matej Puc), by her side, and has a strong connection with her grandmother (non-professional actress Milena Stropnik). They all seem well off, and they are about to build a new, bigger house.

But soon enough, the cracks start showing. Grandma is old and ailing; the parents both have their quirks and differences in character, so they are seldom on the same page; Ida is something of an outcast in her class, ruled by a sadistic teacher (Lara Maria Vouk); and her only friend and fellow outcast, Terezka (fellow newcomer Liza Muršič), is turning into a religious fanatic. Ida’s inner fantasy world can only protect her from this harsh environment (and after all, it is socialist Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, in the 1970s) for a little while, and even in that inner world, she has a mission to accomplish: believing that her angelic singing can save her beloved grandmother from death, she decides to join the school choir. The trouble is that Ida is tone-deaf…

The plot is meandering and slow-moving, while some of the subplots seem simply tacked on to the main story, which can get a bit frustrating over the running time of close to 110 minutes. This is to be expected from a film that is an adaptation of several short stories from Suzana Tratnik’s collection Neither Voice, and Ivakič and her co-writer Nika Jurman at least try to intertwine them into a single narrative.

However, Ida Who Sang So Badly… is clearly less about the plot than it is about the atmosphere. This is discernible from the polished cinematography abounding in dreamy landscapes by Rok Kajzer Nagode and the soft editing with regular cross-fades by Andrej Nagode. The score by Alenja Pivko Kneževič and Simon Penšek, and the suggestive sound design by Samo Jurca serve the same purpose. The same can also be said of Lana Marić’s performance, as the child actress nails the metaphorical absence of her character, while the supporting performances by Judita Franković Brdar, Matej Puc and Petja Labović serve as a reliable anchor for the lead actress and for the movie itself.

It seems that Ester Ivakič wanted to create a mood piece with her debut, something that would show off her considerable talent, and she has succeeded in her ambitions up to a point, as Ida Who Sang So Badly… is a moody, gloomy coming-of-age movie that displays a great deal of skill. It might open with “Once upon a time,” but it would be naive of us to expect it to end with “And they lived happily ever after,” since there is nothing that can prepare us for impending loss and nothing that can prevent it.

A Film a Week - Nova '78

 previously published on Cineuropa

The Nova Convention was a three-day event that took place from 30 November-2 December 1978 in New York. It was produced by writer and book editor James Grauerholz, poet and performer John Giorno, and literary critic and cultural theorist Sylvère Lotringer in order to celebrate writer William S Burroughs, and his ideas, influence and legacy. Late filmmaker Howard Brookner (1954-1989) and his core crew documented the whole event, but the material was considered lost until it was unearthed in 2012. The largely previously unseen material was progressively restored up until 2024, and Howard’s nephew Aaron Brookner and his Portuguese colleague Rodrigo Areias composed a documentary called Nova ’78 out of it, which has now premiered at the 2025 edition of Locarno, out of competition.

While most of the previous paragraph could be read in the opening title cards of Nova ’78, there is more of a backstory here that did not end up in Brookner and Areias’ documentary. Maybe the reason for this is the fact that some of the material was also used for the 2014 updated version of Howard Brookner’s Borroughs (1983), and that Aaron Brookner explained the life and the work of his uncle, and his ties to him, in his 2016 documentary Uncle Howard. For those acquainted with those two docs, it should not come as a surprise that Tom DiCillo and Jim Jarmusch were signed up as the cinematographer and the sound recordist, respectively, on Nova ’78, as they were part of the original Burroughs crew.

Nova ‘78 is pretty much focused on the very event, from the last backstage arrangements the day before the convention to numerous panel discussions, dance, theatrical and musical performances, readings, and expressions of gratitude for the inspiration that Burroughs provided to all of them. Regarding the speakers and performers, the list is long and varied: Philip Glass, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin and many more. Some of the initially announced guests did not appear, like Susan Sontag and Keith Richards, but those who did surprised many with their openhearted confessions. For instance, Frank Zappa, who was never much of a reader, deeply admired Burroughs for writing and publishing Naked Lunch. The rest of the conversations revolved around the future and the fear of it for reasons that still stand today, like wars, the environment and the persecution of minorities, while one conversation between Burroughs and Ginsberg on the topic of the turmoil in Iran just before the revolution sounds prophetic from such a distance.

Howard Brookner set the style somewhere between a fly-on-the-wall kind of observation and a reportage that aims to be as factual as possible, and Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias maintain it for the better part of the film, as they stay at the convention and in its immediate surroundings. However, they both know that they have to relax the atmosphere a little and also show the hero of the story, Burroughs, in some other settings, so they take us away from the convention and into his world of long walks and road trips where every source of inspiration can be turned into a work of art through a process of mental training. The almost abstract imagery is accompanied perfectly by a psychedelic guitar- and synth-heavy soundtrack by Paulo Furtado (aka The Legendary Tigerman), while the precise editing by Aaron Bruckner and Tomás Baltazar keeps the running time of this dense documentary at a pleasant 80 minutes.

The convention it portrays proved to be a uniquely influential event. As a documentary, Nova ‘78 deserves the same outcome.

A Film a Week - The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo / Shkelqimi dhe renia e shokut Zylo

 previously published on Cineuropa

The satirical novel The Rise & Fall of Comrade Zylo by Dritëro Agolli was very popular among readers right from its first publication as a series of columns in a satirical newspaper in 1972, and then as a book in 1973, as it mocked the incompetent officials in a communist dictatorship, while not questioning the system itself. Now, it is considered a seminal piece of 20th-century Albanian literature, but so far, it has not been adapted for the screen. This has now been put right by one of the most well-established Albanian helmers, Fatmir Koçi, who has been on the scene since the 1980s.

The Rise & Fall of Comrade Zylo world-premiered in the newly established Critics’ Picks competition programme of Tallinn Black Nights. Its topic and tone should go down well with audiences who have some historical knowledge about life under the communist dictatorship, while its purely filmic references to noir and the Nouvelle Vague work equally well in all contexts.

As in the source material, our point of view is established by the narrator and protagonist, Demka (Donald Shehu), a man who gave up on his dream of becoming a writer in favour of making a living by writing reports and speeches for high-ranking party officials. He is therefore bitter and constantly on call, and his wife Zenepja (Xhoana Karaj) therefore advises him to take on less work. However, he does not know how to break the cycle of being overworked and exploited.

His newest boss is our title character, Zylo (Alex Seitaj), a man with grandiose ambitions but limited capabilities. His ideas are neither original nor applicable to reality; they are just platitudes taken from the communist propaganda textbooks, so it comes as no surprise that they all end in failure. In his madness, Zylo is supported by his wife, Adila (Enisa Hysa), and his neighbour, influential journalist Cleopatra (Jorida Meta), while some other comrades in the committee cannot wait to see his downfall. It seems that Demka has no choice but to follow him wherever he goes, whether it’s to a remote village where he “preaches” the need to consume culture to the over-worked and extremely poor farmers, or to a country in Africa with which Zylo wants to establish some kind of cultural exchange. But then the plot starts to thicken on both the work and domestic fronts.

Agolli’s novel has been adapted into a script quite faithfully by the filmmaker himself in collaboration with Mike Downey and Jonathan Preece, who was the writer for his more international works, such as Amsterdam Express and Elvis Walks Home. The trouble with such faithfulness in an adaptation is that some things do not transfer well between the different media. For his part, Koçi tries to break the rigidity of the chapter-like structure with long, dialogue-driven scenes, by visualising the narrator’s thoughts and musings in black and white, and by using the styles of different historical genres, but nevertheless, this kind of structure would be better suited to theatre. Some other debatable choices would be the almost constant use of Karl Heortweard’s score in different musical keys and genres, and the broad acting by all of the cast members, although the latter actually suits the satirical genre of the movie. Meanwhile, the technical work that has gone into the production design and costume design faithfully re-creates the atmosphere and the feeling of the early 1970s.