A Film a Week - The Crystal Planet / Kristalni planet

 previously published on Cineuropa

After the death of the only Yugoslav Oscar winner, Dušan Vukotić (1927-1998), who won his statuette for the animated short The Substitute (1961), it took Croatian filmmaker Arsen Anton Ostojić a decade to ask for and acquire the rights to film Vukotić’s unfinished feature-length animated project The Crystal Planet, for which the latter also wrote the story. It was a further decade or so before Ostojić actually started making the project come to life. The modern animated feature is now completed and ready to be presented to a worldwide audience. After its world premiere at the Zlín Film Festival, it was presented to the Croatian public at the Pula Film Festival, where it won the Special Golden Arena for its contribution to Croatian animation.

After her mother’s death in an accident, 11-year-old girl Rea reluctantly moves with her engineer father, Val, to the titular crystal planet in order to start a new life. The father is about to begin a new job as the right-hand man to the robot-factory owner and ruler of the planet, Governor Mordokan. The entrepreneur’s newest inventions are (still glitchy) robotic pets, as animals are forbidden on the planet. Elections are just around the corner, and Val’s efforts are needed to secure the governor’s victory against rival candidate Sandra, who campaigns on environmental issues.

All Rea wants is to go back to Earth, which she still calls home. But things begin to change when she meets and befriends her next-door neighbour, Sandra’s son Andy. On one of their first adventures, they encounter and save the cub of a local animal species and realise that the planet has its own ecosystem that is being endangered by the pollution created by Mordokan’s factory. They try to keep their find a secret, but the revelation threatens to rewrite all of the rules on the planet. Two single-parent families, with the help of the intelligent and empathetic species, must therefore fight the establishment.

The Crystal Planet is clearly aimed at younger audiences, so one shouldn’t expect any kind of nuance in delivering its environmentally conscious message. The heroes and villains simply wear their allegiances, and often their thoughts and inner turmoil, on their sleeves. The storytelling also suffers from some deus ex machina plot devices and twists, while mimicking the US style of children’s animation and even introducing a couple of songs as transitions between the acts. However, the script written by Ostojić, Aleksandar Žiljak and Brett Shumway redeems itself with some warm-hearted humour and a good helping of sincerity.

On the technical side, the combination of model-based animation and CGI serves its purpose perfectly well, as it is blended together smoothly, so the work of the team of animators should be commended. The same goes for Tomáš Sysel’s cinematography, which creates the sense of a well-rounded world while capturing the heroes in action and the rich background textures at the same time. Arsen Anton Ostojić’s sure-handed directing might come as a surprise for an animation first-timer (although he did co-produce one such title, The Oddsockeaters, back in 2016), and the editing by Lucie Haladová helps everything flow smoothly while keeping the running time around the 90-minute mark.

The Crystal Planet is a very ambitious film. The existence of dubbed versions in several languages, including the worldwide one in English (voiced by, among others, Jeremy Irons, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York), could help the movie cross several borders. In the context of Croatian cinema, it is a valuable addition to the recently revived tradition of feature-length animation for younger audiences.

A Film a Week - Extraordinary / Glavonja

 previously published on Cineuropa

As a global society, we are becoming increasingly aware that we are not all the same, so a “one size fits all” approach cannot be applied to everyone. The differences between specific needs and reactions can and should be noted from an early age, so that we can create a flexible world based on acceptance, which can serve as a decent home for everyone. In the cinematic world, this is being reflected in the ongoing trend towards movies for younger audiences featuring characters that are on the autism spectrum and sending the message that they should be accepted as they are.

The newest addition to this canon comes in the form of Extraordinary by Marina Andree Škop and Vanda Raymanová. It has already enjoyed a gala premiere and a wide theatrical release in Croatia. However, at BUFF Malmö, the film festival for children’s and youth audiences, it is celebrating its first international screening.

Alisa (newcomer Marta Mihanović) lives in the shadow of her brother Milan (Maks Kleončić), who is a bit out of the ordinary and whose needs mean he gets all of the attention from their parents (Ajda Smrekar and Matej Puc). Milan always wears a leather helmet on his head, since it helps him block out the loud sounds from the outside world. He is also able to walk along straight, clearly marked lines, and his preferred ritual is drawing straight lines on perfectly white sheets of paper with his pen. As Alisa likes to say, he lives in his own world.

The social services, represented by two agents (Judita Franković Brdar and Borko Perić), are always on the parents’ case, trying to take Milan to a medical facility, so the family moves from the city to the nearby countryside. After an accident befalls each of the over-stressed parents, they both end up in the local hospital, where the doctor (Csongor Kassai) and the stern head nurse (Gabriela Dzuríková) have sinister plans for them. So, the siblings, with the help of a trio of local kids playing detectives (Andrija Lamot, Mark Spiridonović and Martin Pišlar), set off on an adventure to find them, revealing a heist plot in the process. For the first time, the “extraordinary” Milan has to face the ordinary world…

The duo of directors works in perfect synergy here. Marina Andree Škop has made a name for herself with children’s films (for instance, the 2019 title My Grandpa Is an Alien) and knows how to gently steer her young actors in the desired direction. This is especially the case for the two leads, as Marta Mihanović showcases both her character’s inner strength and vulnerability at the same time, which is quite a task even for experienced thesps, while Maks Kleončić possesses the necessary mix of calmness and expressiveness that is needed for the character of Milan, who does not speak. On the other hand, Vanda Raymanová comes from the realm of animation, which is crucial for a heavily stylised film such as this one, where the characters exist against backgrounds consisting of photographic imagery refined with hand-drawn details, and where the travelling sequences are made in a cute form of 2D animation.

Extraordinary might be a tad over the top with its striking design cues and the almost cartoonish concepts of the adult characters. Also, the detective plot is possibly too far removed from the initial topic, so it might resonate better with parents than with children. But the simple, positive message of friendship and acceptance it conveys, as well as its unapologetic playfulness, makes it a praiseworthy effort.

A Film a Week - Pelikan Blue / Kék Pelikan

 previously published on Cineuropa

“The smell of freedom in the air...” In an Eastern European context, that phrase clearly conjures up the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the boxed-in communist states began to open up to the West’s capitalist goods and its way of life, which also brought freedom to travel, regarded as an essential element to enable young people to get acquainted with the big, wide world beyond the borders of their state. But what can a young person dying to live life to the fullest do if financial resources are scarce?

Working from an idea by Son of Saul producer Gábor Sipos and Gábor Szentpáli, and using audio interviews from the 2010s as his basis, filmmaker and animator László Csaki has composed a unique animated documentary that could serve as one of the answers to the above question. Pelikan Blue opened the Critics’ Picks Competition at the Black Nights Film Festival and feels ready to take the film-festival world by storm.

In some fast-paced narration that we hear over the imagery, deriving from different approaches to animation and even comprising some short bursts of filmed archival material, the narrator gives us a brief background story before introducing us to the three leading characters, young men named Ákos, Petya and Laci. They wanted to travel to the West but had no money, so they had to hustle a bit. An opportunity presented itself in the guise of the lo-tech way in which Hungarian Railways dealt with their international tickets: they were all hand-written on paper, with the titular carbon paper used to make copies, and were protected only by stamps. Led by Akos’s analytical, scientific mind, the guys came up with a scheme involving imported bleach, indigo paper and copied stamps to forge the international railway tickets.

Their first trip to Scandinavia went without a hitch, so they kept on indulging in trips all over Western Europe in the early 1990s. But word of their adventures got out and, pressured by their friend Rozi, who had his own list of clients, and spurred on by Petya’s urge to help a girl he liked, their operation first became a clandestine “service” for friends, and then a large-scale and somewhat lucrative scheme that attracted the attention of both the ticket inspectors and the police.

Combining a documentary foundation, an animated approach and a certain reliance on the tenets of a fiction film, Csaki takes the best of all three worlds and combines them with ease in order to tell a magnificent, nostalgic and heart-warming story, while jumping between the two timelines – one from the 1980s and 1990s, and another from the 2010s – leaves enough space for thought and reflection. Since the fast-paced narration serves as the primary means for plot delivery, animation was pretty much the only way to go. Blending the simple 2D foundation with some figurine animation and even filmed archival material suits the purpose very well, while the animation team’s attention to period details, such as the changes in fashion and scenery in the transitional times, is simply stellar. The passing of time is further commented on through the soundtrack, which emphasises it by using different genres of popular music that emerged over the 1990s.

Stitched together masterfully by Daniel Szabó and compressed to a pleasant running time of under 80 minutes, Pelikan Blue is the type of film that leaves a permanent smile on the viewer’s face. It has the power to make us believe that, not that long ago, the world was a far better place.

A Film a Week - Samouni Road

Disclaimer: The text was written during the workshop organized by Go Critic and Restart held in Zagreb on 13th and 14th of December under the mentorship of Jay Weissberg

Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road is a demanding watch since it portrays the aftermath of the events of 2008/09 Gaza War, especially the Zeitoun massacre in which 29 family members of the titular clan were killed by IDF infantry and air force. However, it is also interesting because of its focus on a particular group of people and a particular farmland area and Savona’s ability to find a new, fresh angle, as well as the deliberate choice of technique, combining the documentary footage, animation and drone shots recreation.

Our guide to the post-war reality of Zeitoun is Amal, a young girl who survived the massacre but has to deal with the trauma, both physical and psychological, since she has lost her father and younger brother and still has pieces of shrapnel in her brain while living in extreme poverty with her mother, surviving siblings and extended family members. The orchards and olive gardens that have been destroyed in the war should be rebuilt and the first cheerful event, a wedding, is about to happen in the community since it has been converted into the pile of rubble.

Early on Amal tells that she is not a good story-teller, which cannot be further from the truth: her memories of her father and the pre-war life are both fond and vivid, here done in the form of short animation sequences in the linocut fashion by Stefano Massi. The initial dream-like reality of the animation turns gradually darker, culminating with her dream of a story from Koran about the elephant-mounted army being defeated by the birds throwing stones and the re-enactment of the attacks by Israeli soldiers intercut with the drone sequences in the emotional centrepiece of the film which is also the most problematic.

There is an obvious reason for going for animation and drone graphics since the pre-war and wartime material was unavailable, but the question rising from that particular sequence is whose story is that after all – hers, the community’s or the director’s. What is the whole film about then? The girl? The family? The post-war life reality of once prosperous, peaceful community whose male members were somehow integrated in Israeli society and not very political per se? About the particular aspect of the Gaza conflict? The correct answer would be: “all of the above”, and that will prove to be the film’s greatest flaw.

Savona’s approach of combining bits and pieces from the past and the present from the close, yet noticeable distance serves the purpose well enough for the first third of the film where the filmmaker demonstrates that he is a talented observer and selector, but shifting focuses becomes a bit painful in the anticlimactic final act where he finally introduces the politics, but too little and too late. Having in mind that Samouni Road is a sort of sequel to his previous Gaza-themed documentary Cast Lead (2009) filmed on the spot during the war helps to understand some of Savona’s choices and the film profits from the, technically speaking, precise Luc Forveille’s editing in the sense of glueing frame to frame and scene to scene, which eases enduring the 130 minutes runtime, but the feeling is that the film is, while occasionally impressive, a bit all over the place due to the lack of sense of direction in the terms of the story.

A Film a Week - April and the Extraordinary World / Avril et le monde truqué

A Film a Week is a weekly column on this blog, run on Sunday for our English-language readers and friends, presenting usually local or European festival films to a wider audience. Every review is directly written and not translated.

April and the Extraordinary World is really something, well, extraordinary. It is an animated feature, a delightful and wild adventure in a crazy, steam punk-themed world based on Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel, directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci and beautifully voiced by pleiad of French actors, including Marion Cotillard, Marc-Andre Grondin and Jean Rochefort. It is unmistakable Tardi’s work, but other influences can also be found, like Tintin, Miyazaki’s work and even live-action science fiction classics like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Let’s start with the world. Imagine that Franco-Prussian war never occurred because Emperor Napoleon III got killed in a scientific experiment, and his son Napoleon IV signed the peace treaty that kept the French Empire and consolidated its place at the center of Europe. That would mean that the 2^nd Industrial Revolution that brought us combustion engine and electricity would be postponed and the world would be stuck with steam engines only. But over the span of several decades, the resources like coal and wood became scarce, which led to the energy wars with the League of America for the Canadian forest, poverty and a gray and dusty world. It seams that the only good thing is that there are two Eiffel Towers.

The year is 1931, and the government is hunting the scientists to help with the research. That is, the ones who are not disappearing on their own since the accident. Since the greatest minds are nowhere to be found, the government is left with the mediocre ones. Inspector Pizoni wants to change it by capturing Prosper, nicknamed Pops, his son Paul and daughter-in-law Annette who have been working in secret on the potion of immortality. When Paul and Annette get killed in the chase, their daughter April is left alone in the world, aside the talking cat Darwin, a clear side-effect of the immortality experiments.

Ten years later, April is living in hiding and working on the potion trying to save Darwin’s life. She is still the target of Pizoni who wants to get Pops through her. But the accidental meeting with a thief-turned-police informant Julius sets the new adventure in motion that will the characters and the viewers beyond their wildest dreams. Think of the invention of electricity, robot-rats, steam punk planes, moving houses, intelligent mutated lizards and whatnot.

Every scene has at least one brilliant punchline, a witty comedic turn or a piece of imaginative steam punk technology. Even though the structure is somewhat off, with the introduction being a bit too long and the ending that feels rushed, and the plot doesn’t make too much sense (no more or less than a standard issue animated adventure), but those small gems like bicycle-powered zeppelins, long distance cable cars, the head of the Emperor’s statue converted into living quarters, switches hidden in globe model, re-imagination of steam-powered cars, radio and television are enough to make April and the Extraordinary World a great experience. It’s larger than life story about sustainability, hopes for a better future, beautifully voiced and elegantly hand-drawn with simple lines, it feels so retro and so new at the same time.