New Cinema in a Very Old Town
New Cinema in a Very Old Town
Films from the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival // Film Festival Favourites Super-List
Karlsbad. Carlsbad. Karlovy Vary. However you decide to name the delightful Czech city in deepest Bohemia — home of Becherovka and multiple filming locations for Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006) as well as the life-affirming, Queen Latifah-starring romantic comedy Last Holiday (Wayne Wang, also 2006!), including, most notably, the beautiful Grandhotel Pupp, which also lays host to screenings of its own — the UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Great Spa Towns of Europe is undeniably a beautiful, relaxing, wonderful place to watch films.
My sole venture there, back in 2018, writing for Much Ado About Cinema (rest in peace), was interrupted by cheap food (full meals for less than six euros), cheaper beer (two euros) and the Euros beamed in every festival tent. And I may not be there in person this year, but I feel Karlovy Vary-ian in my spirit, having watched four films, varying in quality, that I will share with you today. Read on, with a Pilsner in hand, and, like me, just pretend you’re there.
Filmmaking is Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
Making any feature film on an indie budget is a minor miracle. Favours must be pulled, late nights are a given and disasters have to be averted on an almost constant basis. Everything you lack in pure hard cash has to be made up for in graft, dedication and quick thinking.
Some behind-the-scenes documentaries, such as Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola, 1991) and Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982) are almost as compelling as Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) and Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982) respectively — pulling back the curtain on the chaos while also showing the price of realising egotistical, out-of-the-box, unethical, problematic visions.
Joining this genre with a smaller, yet perhaps more poetic and intimate entry is Crystal Globe competition entry Dancing on The Edge of a Volcano (Cyril Aris, 2023), capturing the behind-the-scenes struggle to get Costa Brava, Lebanon (Mounia Akl, 2021) made.
The script is written. Development is finished. The players have been cast. The crew has been hired. But about a month out from pre-production, on August 4th, 2020, the unthinkable happens. In images seen across the world, the port city of Beirut is rocked by the explosion of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate — causing 218 deaths and 7,000 injuries while leaving 300,000 people homeless. Meanwhile, it’s the height of COVID-19, causing further complications for an already stretched crew.
Full review over at Journey Into Cinema.
Keeping Mum. Keeping Schtum.
With Proxima Competition entry Keeping Mum (2023), French filmmaker Emilie Brisavoine confronts childhood trauma head-on, attempting to the cycle with unusual honesty and a willingness to embrace the cringe. Unafraid to shy away from “uncool” filmmaking techniques, her raw, open approach yields effective, affecting results.
The documentarian follows up her investigation of her half-sister in Oh La La Pauline! (2015) by turning her focus toward her absent mother. Brisavoine has just had a baby herself and is concerned, to quote Larkin, that “they fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do.” Emilie both loves her mother and resents her, especially as she was absent for most of her youth; when she was there, she mostly remembers endless shouting while raising the other kids by herself. To try and break the circle, she investigates her own mother’s difficult past in an attempt to make sure that her child isn’t fucked up too.
Breaking the circle is the eternal conversation. Even well-adjusted people usually blame their parents for something, believing that they will be even better parents in the future. Yet with every iteration, perhaps something can improve.
The problem Emilie finds early on is her mother’s unwillingness to look inwards, to see her own faults as anything other than a result of her own upbringing, including an abusive husband, a mother who wished she wasn’t born and a string of lecherous co-workers. The name of the film explains itself.
Full review over at Journey Into Cinema.
Empty Nets. Empty Catch.
A sign of a highly patriarchal society is the persistence of a dowry, literally putting the price on love. Perhaps intended for good reasons — after all, the woman may not work and need some financial assurance — it reduces their hand in marriage to a question of economics.
For the young Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) in Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe contender Empty Nets (Behrooz Karamizade, 2023), in love with the beautiful Narges (Sad Asgari), his poor financial standing pushes him further and further into the murky underworld of the Iranian fishing industry. It’s dutifully portrayed by first-time feature director Karamizade, splitting the difference between a traditional Iranian social drama and an inquisitive look at the corruption that makes true wealth possible. A film composed of small gestures yet wide panoramas, intimate reflections and epic implications, it fails to balance its state-of-the-nation address with convincing social drama.
Full review over at Journey Into Cinema.
Unexplainable Orthodoxies in Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife.
Seasoned documentarian Alexandru Solomon begins Proxima Competition entry Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife (2023) with a priest bemoaning homosexuality’s effect upon the country, threatening the very fabric of Romania itself. The cult icon behind these views is the iconic priest Arsenie Boca, praised for his resistance to communism and devotion to traditional values. Dying just before the revolution of 1989, his visage forms part of the Orthodox Church’s stranglehold on Romanian rhetoric.
As a Jewish man shocked by the dangerous attitudes that have taken over politics and television, Solomon’s previous attempts to confront such sentiment haven’t worked — one priest shockingly tells him he can just convert to Christianity. In his latest film, he tries a different tack. He attempts to get into the heads of the devoted instead, creating a fascinating, rather pessimistic hybrid documentary exploring the paradoxes and mysteries of faith.
Full review over at Journey Into Cinema.
Underseen Festival Favourites 2023
Covering films all year round makes me realise there are simply so many films. Therefore, to try and keep up with the noise, especially with summer blockbusters and Oscar bait around the corner, I’ve made a super-list of all the underseen festival favourites, covering Berlinale, Cannes, TIFF, and even Karlovy Vary itself.