A Film a Week - Myth & Pieces / Kalponik

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

We tend to see India as a single country, no matter how complicated. But even geographically, it is a sub-continent, while the diversity of its social landscape reminds us that it should be seen as a complete civilization. And, where is the whole civilization, there is a plenty of the axis of division: linguistic, religious, ethnic, class and caste. Sometimes it is quite a hard task to govern such a country and achieve some kind of balance in it.

The diversity also applies to the national cinema with different “schools” of it in various states. Coming from Kolkata, one might assume that “Myth & Pieces” (“Kalponik” in original), written and directed by Arka Mukhopadhyay, could be something along the lines of art house cinema. However, it is a mix of fairly conventional sub-genres of thriller, with an investigative, political and even symbolic mystery angles, which in theory sounds fine and dandy, especially when packed in a compact 90-something minutes format. In theory…

Mukhopadhyay takes some sweet time for exposition, introduction of characters and situation, with a hint of plotting the matter. Maithili (Satakshi Nandy) was once a promising journalist, but facing the sensationalism in her house, she decides to change her employer. She starts working for the paper supporting a seemingly progressive rising star of a politician Adhiraj Mitra (Sahidur Rahaman) who tries to improve his chances on making a splash in the upcoming elections. One of the first stories she stumbles upon is the one of a legendary lost temple served to her by the professor Shom (Janardan Ghosh) which turns to be a great hit.

However, when an old Hindu statue is found underneath the Muslim temple, the tension rises in a seemingly peaceful West Bengal town, culminating with a murder of the professor Rakshit (Rajatabha Dutta) who previously contacted Maithili in attempt to debunk Shom’s theory. Aided only by the filmmaking student Meghnad (Sudip Mukherjee) who was the last to interview Rakshit, she starts her own investigation. Also, in a different plotline, we get to follow a man named Dilip (Sayan Ghosh) who struggles to get the money needed to buy an apartment in a new building…

The thing is, the exposition part takes something like two thirds of the film before the plot even starts to take a shape, juggling with characters to develop and topics to explore. The thing is, none of the two is done in a satisfying manner, since the characters remain as given at the beginning, without much change due to their findings as the plot thickens, while the topics of the divisions and tensions within the society in India are explored only superficially. The mystery to bind the whole thing together is not strong enough to succeed doing so, effectively ending on the level of which character plays which part in the mosaic.

Production values are solid throughout, and so is the acting, but none of it raises above the level of passable. The impression is further reinforced by Mukhopadhyay’s directing that is pretty functional, “invisible” and devoid of anything resembling style. The thing is, the complicated story with such a number of characters, events and discoveries does not fit the compact format, especially in such moderate pace and without proper dynamic accents, which might be the fault of the editor Amitava Dasgupta. In the end, it seems that the final version was extracted from a much longer one and that some continuity fell a victim of that. With such plain directing, “Myth & Pieces” seems more like a two-episode pilot for a season of a TV show which would let the characters and the plot breathe and develop properly.

A Film a Week - It All Ends Here / Svemu dođe kraj

 previously published on Cineuropa

Everything has to end at some point, and legendary Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlić supposedly decided to wrap up his career with a genre piece along the lines of a crime and political thriller, film noir, romance and satire all in one, which was also intended to rail against the corruption and the abuse of power deeply rooted in Croatian society. It All Ends Here premiered at 71st Pula Film Festival, the same place where Grlić showcased his feature debut, Whichever Way the Ball Bounces (1974), for the first time 50 years ago.

Written by Grlić and novelist Ante Tomić as their fourth collaboration, It All Ends Here is actually an adaptation of Miroslav Krleža’s 1938 novel On the Edge of Reason. The novel itself is tough to adapt owing to its structure of concentric circles, but the duo did a fine job of streamlining it and converting it to an eventful, linear plot that’s easy to follow and suits the genre cinematic approach. Their decision to move the plot from the first half of the previous century to a contemporary setting also proved to be a good way for them to make their point.

At the centre of the story we have lawyer Maks Pinter (Živko Anočić, seen in last year’s Pula entry Escort), who becomes fed up with serving his client, tycoon Dinko Horvat (played by Serbian actor Boris Isaković, best known for the role of Ratko Mladić in Quo Vadis, Aida?), after getting him off the hook for the murder of two trespassers, both former workers of a meat-packing facility that Horvat ran into the ground. Maks is willing to sacrifice his social status and even his cosy family life, so he turns to his former lover Nina (Jelena Đokić, glimpsed recently in 78 Days), who also has her own motives to try to hurt Horvat. Maks actually has a video that he can use to blackmail Horvat, but can the duo endure the pressure exerted by the powerful, psychopathic magnate, who also has strong political ties?

The main problem with the film lies in its dialogues, which sometimes sound as if they have been lifted directly from a work of literature and at times are overly theatrical. This is compounded by Grlić’s and Tomić’s tendency to speak through the characters in order to make a point, which is something that does not sit well with genre filmmaking that “likes” certain rules, but which cannot abide unsubtle didacticism. Also, this type of dialogue puts pressure on the actors to deliver the lines, which all of the leading trio do fairly well. Živko Anočić is a standout here, since those ambivalent types of characters suit him, while Boris Isaković does enough recycling of his preferred type of menacing characters to make Horvat compellingly scary, and Jelena Đoković adds a bit of craziness and vulnerability to the seductiveness of a noir femme-fatale type.

The technical aspects are also well done. Branko Linta’s camerawork uses a lot of bluish tones that suit the genre, while Tomislav Pavlic’s precise editing keeps the viewer engaged during the merciful running time of 89 minutes. Grlić’s directing is generally unobtrusive and invisible, so it lacks a bit of the flavour and flare much needed for a genre piece, but it does not overly hamper the film, which uses spoken threats as its primary fuel. With this “message over both style and substance” approach, It All Ends Here lands in the territory of a decent film that also serves up a strong statement.

A Film a Week - Power / Moc

 previously published on Cineuropa

Someone wise once said that politics is the art of the possible. In order to achieve some common goal often described as the greater good, the interested parties have to make deals and compromises using money, power, influence and services as currency in deal-making. The trouble is that there is no strict definition of the greater good and no manual on how to define it. A seemingly ordinary but actually very complex situation illustrating this conundrum stands in the centre of Mátyás Prikler’s sophomore feature Power, which premiered earlier this year at IFFR and was just shown in the Network of the Festivals in the Adriatic Region programme of the Zagreb Film Festival.

It all starts with a hunting accident in which a young local man named Adam gets killed. Since the local police and the forensics cannot trace the bullet to any of the local hunters’ rifles and the hunting party included some high-ranking politicians, it becomes a sensitive question. Steiner (Szabolcs Hajdu), a former lawyer now employed in security services, is tasked with conducting the investigation with utmost discretion. The ailing man, who only has a few months left to live, reluctantly accepts the offer from his chief (Roman Polák) in order to provide some extra resources for his family.

The investigation gets him into the orbit of several players in the ethnically mixed part of the country. There is the family of the young victim, who want justice to be served. There is the suspected shooter, minister Berger (Jan Kačer), who is the official candidate for the role of EU strategic water commissioner and whose opponent runs on the platform that would allow the privatization of the water resources — neither he nor the government can allow for such a scandal to be made public. There is also a journalist (Lucia Kašová) in search of a big break, and a high-profile political scandal might serve her cause perfectly. Finally, there is a disgraced former cop named Ondris (Mihály Kormos) who might serve as an ideal fall guy and might want to make such a deal. Each of the characters mentioned, Steiner included, has some sort of a moral compass, which makes the ideal scenario less possible.

If judged simply for its merits as a political thriller, Power is bound to fail since there is almost no mystery about the event, the actions or the motivations of the characters involved, making the ending too logical and too neat. However, the film functions way better as a drama about ethics powered by moral dilemmas and as an examination of deal- and compromise-making. 

The script, co-written by the filmmaker himself together with Marek Leščák, is ornamented by realistic details of life in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual provincial environment and largely populated by firmly drawn characters that nevertheless leave actors plenty of room for interpretation. Actor and filmmaker Szabolcs Hajdu seizes the opportunity to play Steiner in a restrained manner with a lot of integrity, while Jan Kačer as Berger does something similar but in a slightly higher emotional register.

In terms of direction, the frequent use of one-take scenes, framed with a sense of symmetry and filmed from fixed positions and from various distances, serves the film well. The execution on the part of the cinematographer Gergely Pálos, who shoots them in wintery tones that add to the cold atmosphere, is also astute, while the piano and strings score by Zsófia Tallér highlights the seriousness of the topic and Matej Beneš’ editing keeps the structure clear and the format efficiently compact. Power might not be the most philosophical or deepest study of the titular term crucial to politics high and low, but it works well in its simplicity and clarity.

A Film a Week - Libertate

 previously published on Cineuropa

Of the images from the Romanian Revolution that occurred in the last few days of 1989, we certainly remember the photo of the dictator being shot by the army. We may also recall the simplified stories about how it all started in Timişoara, what happened in Bucharest and how the military sided with the people, against the police and the much-feared secret service, the Securitate, which remained faithful to the dictator until later on. However, we do not necessarily know about the events in, for instance, the Transylvanian town of Sibiu. Those happenings are the topic of Tudor Giurgiu’s newest film, Libertate, which, after its world premiere at the Transilvania International Film Festival, has enjoyed its international one in competition at Sarajevo.

The opening info-card informs us that the regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu relied on pitting different groups, such as the army, police, secret service and civilians, against one another so that it could have firmer control over each of them. But once the protests began, things escalated quickly, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. In Sibiu, the army interned policemen, suspected Securitate operatives and their contacts, as well as a number of civilians (some of them by mistake) in an empty swimming pool, where it kept them under guard until the captives were questioned, sentenced or released.

We observe the chaotic, civil war-like events from several perspectives of the people involved in different sides of the conflict. The (sort of) protagonist is police officer Viorel Stanese (Alex Calangiu in his first main big-screen role), who decides to go to work on the fateful day when his police station is attacked by the angry mob, which soon enough get hold of weapons from the armoury. Viorel and his colleagues then try to escape, but they are swiftly detained by the army and sent to the pool. Notable among the other points of view are those of opportunistic cab driver Leahu (Catalin Herlo), who may or may not be a secret-service informer, and Lieutenant Colonel Dragoman (Iulian Postelnicu), who, although initially on the right side of history, gets intoxicated by his newly acquired power over the life and death of people. Some other, shorter episodes include other individuals, some of them civilians who got arrested simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, while far-fetched theories about the terrorists poisoning water, digging tunnels and preparing counter-revolutionary attacks on the army and the people do the rounds.

The approach that Giurgiu adopts is not dissimilar to the one he employed in his previous, fact-heavy political drama-thriller Why Me?(2015), also based on true events, since the source materials of both films were obtained through extensive research into the two occurrences. However, things are less linear in Libertate, and Giurgiu and his co-screenwriter Cecilia Stefanescu focus on more than one individual and their stories. The style is also similar in terms of the frequent use of long, single-take sequences with a hand-held camera, but here the camerawork tends to be shakier and more chaotic, which actually fits the material perfectly, especially in the action-packed first half, while both the camerawork by Alexandru Sterian and the editing by Réka Lemhényi get steadier and more predictable once the whole internment situation seems “normalised”, both for the jailers and the captives.

Tudor Giurgiu paints a realistic picture of the revolutionary chaos and turmoil, questions the established narratives and, most importantly, makes a thrilling film that grabs viewers’ attention, elicits an emotional response and leaves a lasting impression.

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.

A Film a Week - Unsilenced

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Falun Gong is a new religion movement that originated in the early 90s China during the boom of “qigong” spiritual practices. It declares itself as a non-violent movement with an emphasis on compassion. Its practice consists of meditative exercise sessions and it combines the teachings from Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism with some minor influences of Christianity and Islam. Not all the messages the movement transmits are beyond any doubt (its disapproval of homosexuality and racial or ethnic mixing are especially questionable), and it recently allied itself with various far right organizations and media outlets in the US, which does not shed a nice light on it. Nevertheless, the movement is the best known as a victim of the violent crackdown conducted by the Chinese communist government in 1999 (for being too massive for Party to handle it, therefore threatening the state-imposed Marxist ideology) in which those who practiced Falun Gong were imprisoned, tortured and even executed.

The second feature film of the Chinese-American filmmaker Leon Lee (otherwise more active in the realm of documentaries) called “Unsilenced” is a political thriller based on true events that tries to chronicle the crackdown and the suffering of Falun Gong devotees. It was shown on some minor festivals in the US last year, while this year it saw some limited distribution. 

As film opens at Tsinghua University in Beijing (albeit the movie was mostly filmed in Taiwan), we meet the quartet of university friends who get involved with Falun Gong and get in the trouble when they try to complain against it being outlawed, risking their career prospects and chances for social advancement in process. They are arranged in two couples, with Wang (Wu Ting) and Li (Tao He) taking the role of the main one, while Jin (Shi Chenghao) and Xia (Chen Yingyu) serve as the supporting one. All of them (well, almost) would get in trouble with the law by the end of the film and they collectively serve as one of the three points of view for the audience.

The second point of view belongs to the journalist from Chicago and the veteran of Tienanmen coverage Daniel Davis (Sam Trammell of “True Blood” fame) who stumbles upon the story of the crackdown and tries to push it to his outlet back home, while his bosses are more interested in the efforts made by the official China to enter the World Trade Organization. There is also a hint of romantic relationship going on between him and his assistant / protege Min (Chinese-Canadian actress and activist Anastasia Lin with whom Lee collaborated on his previous illegal organ trade-themed feature “The Bleeding Edge” from 2016), who might be the government’s infiltrated agent. Finally, the third perspective is given to the government represented by the ruthless secretary Yang (Taiwanese actor Wang Tzuchien) who is tasked with the whole crackdown operation.

There is no shortage of the films that problematize the attacks on the human rights performed by the Chinese government and communist party, both in documentary and fiction forms. “Unsilenced” starts as a decently told story that is not that known to the world-wide audience, and it is admirable that it is not completely Western-centric, although it features the well-known cliché of the noble American journalist willing to expose the violation of human rights in an authoritarian country. For a good part of it, it is a highly functional and clearly structured political thriller, highlighted with solid production values, decent cinematography and competently “invisible” directing which, along with the choice to hint at brutality rather than showing it, makes it almost an ideal buy for the TV networks.

The cracks start to show around the half-point and it originate from the screenplay written by Lee, Ty Chan and Jocelyn Tennant. It looks like the trio has run out of the ideas how to picture the crackdown and the struggle by the quartet on one side and Daniel on the other without repetitions, so they decided to raise the stakes. One particular sequence, in which Lee’s water breaks while she tries to escape from the police as she was denounced by the shop owner, seems like an overkill, while all the dramaturgical solutions towards the end are forced. Problems with the dialogue that goes more and more to direction of characters shouting political slogans put the cast under considerable pressure and even some sloppiness regarding the props (cell phones and cars tend not to look like they came from 1999) becomes apparent.

In the end, it is clear that the mission of “Unsilenced” was more political than artistic, with the focus on communicating the message and condemning the authoritarian Chinese government and communist party, which is more than legitimate. But paired with the modest scriptwriting and filmmaking skills of the film’s creative team, it pretty much backfires, seeming transparently fake even when it is not.

A Film a Week - There Is No Evil / Shaytan vojud nadarad

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Out of the total number of death penalties conducted globally in the year 2017, over half were done in Iran. The percentage has been dropping since, but Iran is still in the lead in that regard. Another thing, as we learn from Mohammad Rasoulof's newest film that just premiered at the official competition of Berlinale and is one of the favourites for prizes, is that death penalty is rarely being executed by the professional staff, but in most cases the military conscripts (as military service is compulsory for all the country's men, without having it completed they are unable to be employed or to have a passport), which means that the regular citizens are being made accomplices in the country's crimes against humanity.

Rasoulof's film There Is No Evil deals with the issue of the death penalty and the ethics behind it in a series of short, loosely connected stories. The first one follows a seemingly ordinary man Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) out and about doing his daily routine: coming back from work, spending time with his family, taking care of an elderly family member, bickering with his wife, shopping in supermarket. The nature of his job that we learn at the very end of the segment is a shocker that will set the theme for the rest of the film. The second story follows Pouya (Kaveh Ahangar), a young soldier tasked for the first time to carry a death penalty by kicking chair under the convict's legs. He is opposing murder on ethical grounds, figuring out how to get transferred, but is surrounded by his mates whose reasoning is that resistance is futile and as unethical as the murder, since someone has to carry it on anyway. The only option is a bold, but desperate attempt of escape to a new life with his girlfriend with the Italian resistance song O, Bella Ciao as a leitmotiv.

The third story starts also with a man who is also seemingly on the run, but Javad (Mohammad Valizadegan) says that he is on his regular weekend leave from the army, going to his girlfriend Nana's (Mathab Servati) birthday in order to propose to her. However, the village is mourning the death of a beloved teacher who was also an activist that was executed for his political views, and Javad has to face the consequences of his actions and moral choices. The fourth story, revolving around a couple of former intellectuals and possibly resistance figures and their niece Darya (Baran Rasoulof, the director's daughter) who visits the country of her origins for the first time (or after a long time). The death penalty dilemma here is extended on other living being rather than human, but is over-shadowed with a not-so-secret-secret within a family that opens some new philosophical questions about giving and taking life and/or identity.

Rasoulof's storytelling is intriguing enough to make There Is No Evil more than a mere collection of thematically connected shorts, which is obvious from the way one segment moves to another and the suggestions of interlinks that might connect the dots between the different segments in a more significant fashion. That might not be the case, there is a clear sense of ambiguity around it, but it makes the film as thought-provoking as it gets, and not only concerning its primary topic and the ethics and the politics behind it.

When it comes to directing, it is clear that, unlike his colleague Jafar Panahi, who turned to more of a low-fi approach due to the government ban, Rasoulof is determined to remain faithful to his standards of filmmaking, despite the same type of ban imposed on him. The style remains pretty much the same, it is a proper art house film, professionally shot and edited, with a lot of thought put to it, with a clear sense of purpose in every one of the stories. However, the question arises how much control can he keep, being forced to film in secrecy or to delegate some of his work to his assistants, and it sometimes shows.

The acting is usually spot-on, but there are some missed cues that might be attributed to the director's absence from shooting, and the unevenness of the segments and the parts of the segments could also be dictated by that fact rather than story itself or the ability of the editor, or even by the fact that There Is No Evil is an omnibus film by nature. There are also some slight pacing issues, since 150 minutes of runtime sometimes seem a bit excessive, especially with the last story succeeding and failing to make a point or reach catharsis at the same time.

Nevertheless, disregarding all the alibis, There Is No Evil is a very good film that makes up for the slight missteps with its cleverness, integrity and soulfulness. Rasoulof is here to stay at the film festival circuit, no matter the ban. Good news!

A Film a Week - Extracurricular / Dopunska nastava

previously published on Cineuropa.org

The films of Ivan-Goran Vitez are always thought-provoking and laced with irony as well as sharp social commentary, from his student films and shorts to his work on TV series and on his features. After his intriguing mix of woods slasher, politically incorrect comedy and social drama in Forest Creatures (2010) and the World War II-themed satire Shooting Stars (2015), Vitez has written and directed his third feature, Extracurricular. A socially charged genre piece set around a hostage crisis in a school, the film also opens an array of social issues relevant to contemporary Croatia. It premiered in the national competition of the Pula Film Festival and, as a competently executed genre piece, should see a regular theatrical distribution in the near future.

Vitez dedicated just the right amount of time to exposition before events are set in motion. He opens the film with a parallel montage of a man wrapping up a gift and a woman dropping of her daughter at school on a very special day, set against the tension-building soundtrack written by Jelenko Hodak. The young girl, named Ana (first-timer Frida Jakšić), is celebrating her ninth birthday, and the school just got a brand-new gym thanks to the project of the town's corrupt mayor (veteran stage and TV actor Željko Königsknecht) and the "fortunate" timing of elections just around the corner.

Vlado Mladinić (Milivoj Beader), the man we saw wrapping the gift, is planning to spend the day with Ana, who is his daughter. After his first attempt at taking her out of class fails due to the intervention of the school staff, he comes back with plan B: a hunting rifle in one hand and a cake in the other. A divorced, desperate man left behind by society, Vlado does a desperate thing: he takes Ana's class hostage. As the situation develops, a number of interested parties join in, so to speak. Besides the kids' parents and the police, there is also the mayor, who seeks a political angle, and the fame-hungry journalist from the local online newspaper, who tries to control a situation that repeatedly gets out of control.

Vitez, by contrast, manages to maintain perfect control over the material for most of the film’s duration — not an easy task, since his ambitious script juggles a lot of characters, each with their own well-established points of view and agendas. Thanks to the director’s precise direction and good sense of timing, his characters are rather evenly developed and do not overstay their welcome on the screen. The casting choices are also interesting and seem deliberate, as most of the actors in both the main and the supporting cast play against their usual type. Cinematographer Lutvo Mekić does a very good job and the editing by Ivana Rogić is faultless.

Slight problems occur in the film’s conclusion. The ending itself could be a little tighter and better motivated, with some of the plot threads simply getting lost on the way. It feels as though the writer-director has simply tried to touch on too many social issues — such as education, the judicial and political system in Croatia, its endemic corruption, the country’s history of war, diverging parenting methods, the rise of right-wing rhetoric in public discourse, and so on. This was more of an issue in Vitez's previous films, however; here, this profusion of topics does not take as much of a toll on the film, since Extracurricular remains a good, well-paced and precisely executed genre piece.

A Film a Week - The Last Serb in Croatia / Posljednji Srbin u Hrvatskoj

previously published on Cineuropa

The year has started promisingly for audience-friendly Croatian cinema. After a decent theatrical run for Vinko Brešan's satirical political drama What a Country!, the next in line is a zombie comedy penned and helmed by first-timer Predrag Ličina, entitled The Last Serb in Croatia. The film opened nationally in Croatia on 28 February, one day ahead of its festival premiere in Serbia, at the Belgrade International Film Festival FEST. Chances are it will be at least a minor hit in both countries, as well as in the wider region of the former Yugoslavia.

It is the near future, seven years after the total bankruptcy of Croatia. The population has fallen to 2.5 million, while class differences have become more pronounced. A minority of well-to-do citizens can enjoy the perks of the high life, while the majority of the people have to rummage around in the garbage and beg on the streets just to survive. Nevertheless, they all get to "enjoy" a series of domestic blockbuster superhero films entitled Task: Impossible, revolving around the adventures of national(istic) heroine Hrvojka Horvat (Serbian actress Hristina Popović) and her superior, called The Leader, as well as live radio reports by DJ Carrot (the voice of Rene Bitorajac).

When we meet our unlikely hero, Mićo (Krešimir Mikić), it seems he is on top of this dog-eat-dog world, as he’s filthy-rich and suitably cocky. Soon enough, after the outbreak of an epidemic, he is bitten by his zombified date, so he ends up in a hospital where he meets his idol, Hrvojka – or actually, jaded actress Franka Anić, who plays the role of Hrvojka – a neo-Nazi skinhead thug called Maks (Dado Ćosić) and a mysterious businesswoman called Vesna (rising star Tihana Lazović). They all decide to go to the countryside near the Bosnian border, where they believe they have a better chance of survival. 

However, strangely, Mićo has not started turning yet, even though he was bitten hours ago. The answer to the mystery will come to light soon enough, when the gang reaches a village inhabited by a Serbian-minority family. It turns out that Serbs, Mićo included, are somehow immune to the virus. Our heroes still cannot get out of the country, which is surrounded by a wire fence, but they manage to reach a refugee camp operated by a Slovenian doctor called Jana (Judita Franković). In the meantime, an intervention team located in Sweden, consisting of a trigger-happy American general (a cameo by Sergej Trifunović), an anti-globalist activist (Croatian pop star Severina) and a scientist, is tasked with finding a cure...

Aside from the part about looking for a solution and the popular anti-globalist "water is the greatest treasure of all" discourse, the plot is fairly standard for movies of this ilk and is not Ličina's primary focus. It is merely a framework for a series of clever and provocative observations on national stereotypes and the nationalistic sentiments of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Ličina tries to achieve this with rapid-fire verbal and visual jokes that do not always hit the mark, even among a well-informed audience, because they sometimes demand some specific knowledge of a certain sub-culture, which is to be expected from a director with a background in music videos. The film starts promisingly, but the pace drops towards the end, though not dramatically. The star-studded cast helps a lot, as do the simple make-up and the visual effects by Miroslav Lakobrija, but the visual identity of the film is caught between its virtually no-budget means and its ambitious goals, as it clearly aspires to be more like contemporary genre cinema from Western Europe and the USA.

A Film a Week - Idol / Woo sang

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

One thing is certain: Lee Su-jin's second feature "Idol" ("Woo sang" in the original language) is a head-spinning thrill ride of a movie which, in the end, can become exhausting. Having in mind Lee's previous feature, a minor sensation on both the genre and the regular film festival circle titled "Han Gong-ju", Idol's inclusion in the Panorama selection of this year's Berlinale is completely justified, even though the film certainly has narrow limits regarding the exposure outside of its native South Korea and hard core genre circles.

Basically, it is a story about two fathers connecting by a hit-and-run accident involving their sons. The title character of sorts Koo Myung-hui (Han Seok-kyu of "Shiri" and "The Berlin File" fame) is a politician on the move whose career prospects seem promising due to his respectable, honest and trustworthy public image. His son Johan is the supposed perpetrator, but Koo stays firm in the decision to let his son try his luck with the legal system rather than to make an attempt at cover-up. On the other side of the spectre is a simple-minded van driver Jong-sik (Sul Kyung-gu) whose mentally handicapped son was the victim. He is full of rage and is not going to be satisfied with a proverbial slap on the wrist of a sentence for the politician's son, so he hires a private detective to conduct his own investigation.

As it plays out, there were witnesses to the accident, and they saw a young woman leaving the scene. It turns to be Jong-sik's daughter in law, Ryeon-hwa (Chun Woo-hee, the lead actress of "Han Gong-ju", also seen in Na Hong-jin's "The Wailing"), and she might not be that innocent. She is an illegal immigrant from China with "colourful" past, a tortured soul prone to torture and violent behaviour herself. And so begins the battle of the wits full of twists and turns where no one is actually innocent set against the rainy nights of Seoul for the exceptionally noir-ish feeling.

Noir as a genre has archetypical characters in its foundations and that is the path that Lee Su-jin takes straight from the start. The trouble is, however, that even the main trio (a seemingly benevolent, but corrupt politician, a vengeful proletarian father and a woman who serves as a damsel in distress, a femme fatale and a downright psycho) is never elevated to anything more than a cliché. The Korean star actors do what they can, Chun Woo-hee is especially memorable, and their interaction is both juicy and compelling. The supporting characters fared even worse: they are lost in numbers and relegated, at best, to plot devices.

It is evident that Lee, who also penned the script, has her mind somewhere else: on the plot that is complicated enough so it keeps the viewer intrigued for the whole duration of the film. However, the last drop of its logic gets lost in the inflation of twists and turns, so even the most attentive of the viewers to make any sense out of it.

Combined with fast pace, rapid editing and the runtime of 140 minutes, "Idol" definitely outstays its welcome a bit due to its intensity. But it is technically masterful and stylistically polished enough to be fun for most of the time, especially for a certain type of genre audience, which makes it more than a decent efort.

A Film a Week - When the War Comes / Az pride válka

Documentaries on the topic of the rise of populism have been hugely popular in the recent years and the trend will continue in the years to come, as it is the case with the refugee crisis / migration-themed films. It is not strange by any means: documentaries are mirroring reality (comes with the territory) and in some cases offer the key to understand the social phenomena going on. And populism is not just a Central European post-communist thing anymore, hence the new Austrian government, Brexit n the UK and the rise of Donald Trump in the USA.

Jan Gebert’s sophomore documentary feature When the War Comes works best as a case study of the rise of a future star of populism through the ranks of local militia Slovak Recruits. Their self-proclaimed leader Peter is young, charming, eloquent and a natural-born leader. He lives a normal life with his parents and his girlfriend and the only thing strange with him is his “hobby”. Every weekend he goes to the woods in rural Slovakia with his friends and serves as an instructor at a military-style training camp, complete with automatic weapons, national flags and uniforms.

His first encounter with the police highlights his character: he is being reprimanded for the using of national insignia (which is illegal for the organizations without the official government sanction), but that is it, the policemen even shake his hand. Later on, the usage of symbols and rhetorics from the Nazi-backed Slovak puppet state from the WW2 times does not get noticed: Peter and his comrades are being welcomed to schools, TV debates and even appear on the celebrations where the prime minister Robert Fico is present. Recruiting the new Recruits from the ranks of high school youngsters was never a problem for them. Seems like Peter’s rise to stardom in the arena of national politics is just a matter of time…

Film-wise and otherwise, When the War Comes does not bring anything that new on the table, but it does not have to. It is an honest examination from close by, without any kind of Gebert’s comment, but also without hiding or masking a thing. We see all the ideological nonsense and the white noise of half-truths and miss-information. Anti-Islam, anti-globalism, anti-communism, traditionalism, nationalism, Christianity and pan-Slavism are all mixed up here in a toxic and heavily flammable mix. So, the infamous bikers Night Wolves fit perfectly once when they show up in the film.

Having all that in mind, did When the War Comes deserve the world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama Dokumente Section? Well, yes and no: it is not that new and attractive in the terms of topic and style, but it is on the same page with the current political moment.

A Film a Week - The Other Side of Everything / Druga strana svega

Resistance to the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević in 90’s Serbia was stronger, at least in numbers, and more eventful than it seems from the information provided by the media, Serbian and international. Still, it was not powerful enough to prevent a madman from doing the damage to the neighbouring countries, national economy and his own people. People who took part in it, my elementary / high school self included, tend to romanticize their futile fight for freedom. It took ten years of fighting to kick him out, ten years marked with the collapse of the former country, bloody wars, destruction of cities like Sarajevo, Vukovar and Dubrovnik, economy experiments, collapses and theft through multi-level banking schemes and finally the change was pretty cosmetic – “The Butcher of Balkans” went to The Hague to stand trial for his war crimes, but the system and the “deep state” remained intact.

From that time on, the name Srbijanka Turajlić has been very well known in Belgrade and in Serbia. Even though rarely (if ever) politically active as a member of a certain party, she was a political figure coming from the university circles, organizing the protests and attending them side by side with her students. And that qualifies her as a good subject for a documentary about those uncertain times.

However, HBO-produced The Other Side of Everything, the film which premiered in Toronto and won big at IDFA, was made by the subject’s own daughter Mila Turajlić, known for her previous effort Cinema Komunisto. And here we are on a slippery ground from an ethical point of view. Will a mother be completely sincere with her own child? Could a daughter treat her mother with the same distant objectivity / objective distance as it would be the case with some other subject? What about the memories that are not that stable and can be easily manipulated to fit the existing narrative? And finally, what about the theme or themes, would a filmmaker closely related to her subject be able to filter all the important moments from the unimportant ones?

But the film starts quite simply, with a text card explaining the always locked door in the living-room of the Turajlić family apartment. Two doors in the same room have been locked from the time of nationalization in 1947 when the luxurious apartment belonging to Srbijanka’s grandmother (a widow of a former government minister) was divided in smaller units to accommodate some of Belgrade proletariat. Seems a bit odd to start a documentary about a distinctive political figure with such petty and petit-bourgeois problem like nationalized apartment, but it is an efficient way to point out that the Turajlić family was often on the wrong side of historical tendencies thanks to their own personal ethics. Srbijanka’s parents were social democrats and they were opposing the communist regime, which was enough to mark them bourgeois and label them as class enemies. Srbijanka and her husband were pacifists in the war time and convinced democrats under the dictatorship. Mila might find herself in a similar situation in near future.

Mila Turajlić succeeds in intertwining the intimate, family history with a national one, but the topics she juggles with are numerous which makes film uneven. The topic anticipated as central, Srbijanka’s account of the events of the 90’s and post-Milošević times, does not bring anything new and unknown to the table for someone who witnessed the same events, but might shed some new light for someone less informed. The ending, with the very same door from the beginning being finally open, seems a bit neat, and it closes the proverbial circle, which seems to be its only purpose. With more than a decent look, top-notch editing and evocative moments like contrast between the turmoil on the streets of Belgrade city centre and the calm of organized chaos of Turajlić home, The Other Side of Everything is not an essential viewing, but it is not a waste of time either.

A Film a Week - Liberation Day

Unlikely as it might seem, Laibach and North Korea are match made in heaven. Slovenian band was the first musical act from the West to perform in Pyongyang, mildly (or not so mildly) shocking both Western and Korean audiences on national holiday, the titular Liberation Day. The “pitch” to the Koreans was the idea that their country is being misunderstood (with the label of heavily militarized communist despotism) just like Laibach, a conceptual act which toying with different iconographies of dictatorship while having to deal with label “fascist”.

The man who made this strange cultural exchange happen was Morten Traavik, the Norwegian theatre director and provocateur who had previously dealt with both Laibach (he did a music video for them) and the North Koreans (he organized a tour for their national military choir in Norway, which was considered scandalous even in that open-minded Scandinavian country). He directed the show for which the audience reacted with genuine confusion and, with the help of the editor Ugis Olte, the documentary about the whole ordeal.

Just imagine the level of mistrust and miscommunication between the two worlds, one of them being extremely paranoid with all the “aparatchiks”, spies, secretaries, committee members and whatnot hanging around the band during the show preparations, trying to censor the whole thing (and usually succeeding). Laibach members, technicians and the whole entourage around them are not helping either: the frontman Milan Fras keeps wearing his “Nazi” hat even during the official photo-shooting, and the main ideologist Ivan “Jani” Novak almost caused the catastrophic incident by simply going for a walk, against the advise.

Naturally, the concert was also a strange compromise. First of all, the equipment in the hall is from the middle of last century. Also the music and the concept of Laibach is strange and even disturbing in the context of humourless North Korean society, so lots of last minute changes were being made, usually the things like projected videos and similar stuff. Maybe the craziest of all fuck-ups was the issue of the dialect: for one song, the band has translated some verses from German to Korean, but their pronunciation sounded suspiciously “southern”.

But the concert actually happened, and everybody involved was, well... satisfied. So, how about the audiences? In Slovenia at least, where the whole tour was covered in daily papers, an issue popped up just after the premiere: according to some critics, the film is neither about Laibach nor North Korea, but about Traavik himself, making it a publicity stunt. They have actually missed the point by a mile. It might not be about Laibach and Traavik might have made himself more important, but it definitely is about the parallel universe of North Korea. And in that universe every team has its leader, the one who is responsible. In the case of this particular show, that person was Traavik and it just shows how well he got the point about the North Korean culture. If it is not a shiny example of cultural exchange, I really do not know what would it be...

A Film a Week - Knives Out

Previously published on Cineuropa

Knives Out is as independent as Polish cinema gets. It was financed privately, filmed on a single set of locations (a house with a yard and a nearby forest) over several days on a shoestring budget, and with a cast consisting of seven acting students. The film was ignored by the state funds and is even being distributed independently in its own country. The screenings are usually followed by an emotional debate with experienced director Przemyslaw Wojcieszek (known for films such as How to Disappear Completely, Secret and Made in Poland. After its international premiere at the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz, some festival exposure could be expected, but the chances of regular international distribution are slim.

The film’s strongest point is also its main problem: the political aspect. Wojcieszek’s standpoint is that the parliamentary and presidential elections held in 2015, and won by a large margin by the populist right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), were a shock of epic proportions that would not only transform Poland as we know it, but would also have repercussions on the state of things across the entire EU. Wojcieszek claims – and the statistics support him – that in the elections, the votes of the younger demographic groups, both urban and rural, were critical, and they either went right or abstained. The context is too delicate for the current Polish government, sensitive to all forms of criticism, but too local for the wider, European picture, too.

Knives Out is an honest effort to face the new reality and examine the state of Polish society, especially its younger generations, and try to figure out what went wrong. The characters are twenty-somethings from an unnamed town who have not seen one another since high-school graduation but who meet up at a party. There are three couples, two heterosexual (one of which is conservative and lives in relative poverty; the other one is hosting the party, and is liberal and well-off) and a lesbian, leftist one, consisting of a young, sought-after app developer and her partner, an activist. The mere presence of the host’s Ukrainian co-worker, Solomiya, is a catalyst for unpleasant events. As the amount of wine and vodka drunk by the people around the table steadily rises, the boasting about the best generation switches to statements about love, then to the best country and nation in the world, and finally rude jokes turn into ethnic slurs. Solomiya could not be more in danger even if she had a target drawn on her back.

The film is structured like a play in two acts, which is to be expected coming from a writer-director with considerable theatre experience. The atmosphere is marked with a somewhat rough style similar to American indie cinema of the 1990s, with black-and-white photography in the 4:3 ratio, filmed with a hand-held camera and featuring abrupt cuts in editing. Therefore, there is no stale sense of filmed theatre, and the proceedings are kept kinetic and lively. However, bearing in mind the economy of the script, Wojcieszek sometimes goes too far in skipping the steps that outline the shifting of the characters’ motivations, which makes some turns of events fairly unlikely. But overall, as a film, as well as a sociological and political exposé, Knives Out stands very solidly.