The Empire (Bruno Dumont, 2024)

Having strayed from his home turf for 2021's largely Paris-set France, director Bruno Dumont once again finds himself on the familiar territory of the Opal Coast with The Empire (curiously, Dumont's Outside Satan was filmed under the same working title).  As with Outside Satan, The Empire is concerned with the age-old battle between good and evil.  Yet despite sharing the same broad theme and setting, the two films are very different from one another, with Outside Satan's Bressonian austerity nowhere in evidence as The Empire firmly aligns itself with the absurdist comedies Dumont has been making for the past decade.  Out of Dumont's post-Camille Claudel 1915 output, only 2019's Jeanne can be classed as a mostly "straight" film, but even that punishing, rigorous exercise was the sequel to a deranged heavy metal musical centring on Joan of Arc.  

Dumont's shift into comedy began with the 2014 miniseries Li'l Quinquin, which kicked off a loose trilogy that is now capped with The Empire (in between came a second TV series, Coincoin and the Extra-Humans).  These three works are linked by a pair of bumbling cops, Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and Carpentier (Philippe Jore), who over the course of the past ten years have been investigating increasingly bizarre crimes.  Coincoin and the Extra-Humans introduced a sci-fi element to proceedings, and The Empire sees Dumont make the leap to full-bore science fiction, with his latest film playing as a Ch'timi take on Star Wars, lightsabres and all.  As far as Dumont's oeuvre is concerned, it has been posited that The Empire is a mix of Ma Loute and The Life of Jesus, but it is difficult to see much of the latter—barring the general locale—in this light divertissement.      

At its most basic level, The Empire pits two alien factions against each other as they vie to take control of Earth.  The Queen (Camille Cottin) spearheads the benevolent 1s, while Beelzebub (Fabrice Luchini) is the leader of the nefarious 0s; each side has taken a foothold in a small fishing village by inhabiting the bodies of locals.  Thus, 0-fuelled fisherman Jony (Brandon Vlieghe) has fathered a baby who, it is foretold, will lead the dark side to triumph—sound familiar?  Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei) works on behalf of the 1s, and is devoted to preserving mankind; she has a sidekick in the form of Rudy (Jeanne's Julien Manier), while Jony is backed up by Line (Lyna Khoudri).  Although these otherworldly beings should have loftier matters on their minds, their earthly bodies serve as a major distraction—particularly when opposing numbers Jane and Jony develop a mutual attraction.   

Just as France saw its male lead replaced prior to the start of filming, Dumont was forced into recasting no less than three of The Empire's main roles, with Vartolomei, Khoudri and Cottin replacing Adèle Haenel, Lily-Rose Depp and Belgian actress Virginie Efira, respectively.  While Vartolomei is the standout performer here, it is a pity that the film gives Pruvost, Jore and Cottin so little to do, especially as Luchini has way too much screen time as the tiresomely unfunny Beelzebub.  The Empire marks Luchini and Dumont's third collaboration together, but there's a sense that this time the director has indulged his star to the point of the film's detriment.  As a coda to the Quinquin cycle, The Empire possesses a sloppy charm, and while it's certainly the slightest entry in the trilogy, there is nevertheless some fun to be had from its splicing of the fantastic with the workaday.     

Darren Arnold

Images: ARP Sélection

London Film Festival 2024: Programme Launch

The 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) today announced the full programme line-up, which will be presented in cinemas and online across the UK. Over twelve days from 9–20 October, the LFF will invite audiences to return to its flagship venues in the heart of London – BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which between them host Galas, Special Presentations and Official Competition titles. Films and Series from all strands of the Festival will screen in many of central London’s iconic cinemas, with global film talent in attendance. A curated selection of features will also be showcased at 9 partner venues across the UK.

Almost every feature and series will screen to audiences in the UK for the very first time, with many shown publicly for the first time anywhere in the world. As in previous years, the feature film programme is organised by strand to encourage discovery and to open up the Festival to new audiences. These are: Love, Debate, Laugh , Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta , Family, Shorts and Treasures. Audiences can also find new and exciting series programming in many of the strands. Premieres include 39 World Premieres (15 features, 2 series, 19 shorts, 3 immersive), 12 International Premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European Premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts).

World Premieres from filmmakers and artists include: Steve McQueen’s BLITZ which opens the festival, Ben Taylor’s JOY starring Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton and Bill Nighy, the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation’s restoration SILENT SHERLOCK, Family Gala THAT CHRISTMAS directed by Simon Otto and starring Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker and Bill Nighy, Eloise King’s eye-opening investigative documentary THE SHADOW SCHOLARS, Manchester-set debut feature from Gino Evans TREADING WATER, and the BFI’s restoration of one of the UK's greatest animated films: Martin Rosen’s WATERSHIP DOWN.

Audiences will enjoy a rich programme of fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, short film, newly restored classics from the world’s archives, and exciting international works made in immersive and episodic forms. LFF for Free will return to the Festival with a compelling range of talks and short films alongside imaginative, playful events and filmmaker Q&As, in-person at BFI Southbank and at gallery@oxo. The Festival will also be accessible UK-wide via free short films on BFI Player, including the films nominated for Best Short, which viewers will be able to enjoy from 9–20 October.

Source/images: BFI

The Night Visitors (Michael Gitlin, 2023)

Since the mid-1980s, experimental filmmaker Michael Gitlin has steadily worked away on an eclectic series of projects, including Duplicating the Copy from Memory, The Birdpeople, The Earth Is Young and That Which Is Possible.  Over the decades, Gitlin has seen his work selected for numerous international film festivals, including the London Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.  It is at the last of these where Gitlin's latest film, The Night Visitors, played as part of the 2024 edition's Harbour strand, in which it took its place alongside the likes of festival opener Head South, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's eagerly awaited horror The Soul Eater, and Rotterdam favourite Amanda Kramer's new film, So Unreal.  Having received its Dutch premiere at the festival, The Night Visitors had its third and final IFFR outing in early February, when it screened at the city's KINO.

The Night Visitors is a documentary all about moths, and in less than 75 minutes Gitlin's film casts its net (ha!) far and wide as it examines these nocturnal lepidopterans.  Given that there are around 160,000 species of moth, the film can only look at a relatively small sample of these inscrutable creatures, but Gitlin sprinkles The Night Visitors with some striking examples: the tree-munching spongy (formerly gypsy) moth (Lymantria dispar); the giant, silk-making Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus); and the gorgeous, brightly-coloured rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda).  While there are plenty of fully grown moths on show, the film is punctuated with fascinating footage of several instars as a caterpillar undergoes its transformation.  The Night Visitors is an experience that allows us to get up close and personal with its title characters, with the superb cinematography befitting of a top-class nature documentary.     

Indeed, there are times during The Night Visitors when you have to remind yourself you're watching the work of a video artist known for his avant-garde efforts, as the film almost plays as a straight, linear piece of nonfiction—albeit one that exhibits the odd experimental flourish.  A fair chunk of the running time is devoted to the curious story of Frenchman Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, an astronomer and amateur entomologist who perhaps should have stuck exclusively to the former role, given that his botched efforts at silk harvesting led to the spread of the aforementioned spongy moth.  Trouvelot brought some of the now-invasive species' egg masses into the US from Europe and was raising the moths in controlled conditions when some of the larvae escaped; with the catastrophic damage done—the caterpillars now defoliate over a million acres of forest every year—Trouvelot lost interest in entomology and eventually returned to France, where he remained until his death.    

The Night Visitors also references Edgar Allan Poe's "The Sphinx", a New York-set tale in which the protagonist encounters the badass outsider that is the death's-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos)—even if the species wasn't, and isn't, to be found in the United States.  As Gitlin wryly observes, "never let geographical distribution get in the way of overwrought symbolism" (while there are several voiceovers on the soundtrack, this particular nugget—like much of the film's most interesting information—is relayed via concise onscreen text).  The Night Visitors' inclusion of "The Sphinx"—which is here given a brief, witty precis—provides a tangible link to Gitlin's 1996 film Berenice, a freewheeling adaptation of Poe's eponymous short story.  As experimenta goes, The Night Visitors is certainly one of the more accessible examples; it's a fluid, engaging and beguiling work, one which provides a very welcome insight into the opaque lives of these remarkable insects.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

You Promised Me the Sea (Nadir Moknèche, 2023)

Nadir Moknèche's debut feature Le harem de Mme Osmane was released nearly 25 years ago, and the director followed that film with the Belgian co-production Viva Laldjérie, which played at the 2005 edition of IFF Rotterdam; since then, he's directed several solid features (Lola Pater, Goodbye Morocco, Délice Paloma) en route to his latest effort, You Promised Me the Sea (French: L'air de la mer rend libre).  Moknèche's new film was one of the selections for this year's BFI Flare, where it screened alongside several other strong examples of francophone cinema including Chloé Robichaud's Days of Happiness, Edith Chapin's Sex is Comedy: The Revolution of Intimacy Coordinators, Jérémy Piette's The Blue Shelter, and Paul B. Preciado's Orlando, My Political Biography.       

Moknèche's previous film, the aforementioned Lola Pater—which starred the legendary Fanny Ardant and featured a juicy role for the excellent Belgian actress Lucie Debay—hinged on a parent who'd long kept a secret from their adult son, and in You Promised Me the Sea this scenario is inverted as twentysomething butcher Saïd (Youssouf Abi-Ayad) goes to great lengths to hide his homosexuality from his mother and father.  Saïd's efforts to keep a lid on his clandestine life extend as far as acquiescing to an arranged marriage to Hadjira (Kenza Fortas), a rather reserved young woman who has recently completed a stint in prison.  Given their respective circumstances, there's a sense that the marriage may prove useful to both Hadjira and Saïd—that said, they still have to go through the experience of living together.

Hadjira and Saïd aren't particularly fond of each other to begin with, and the pair soon settle into an unhappy domesticity in which Hadjira becomes increasingly isolated as the distant Saïd spends his evenings arranging hookups via a dating app.  It's clear that Hadjira, who is unaware of her husband's real sexual identity, would like to make a go of the marriage and start a family, but Saïd is both physically and emotionally absent, and the couple make little progress.  As someone who was jailed largely on account of her ill-judged relationship with a drug dealer, Hadjira views the situation as a chance for a fresh start, but Saïd has no interest in becoming someone else and isn't looking to embrace a heterosexual relationship—although he does at least try to maintain the façade, lest his parents discover the truth.  

With You Promised Me the Sea, Nadir Moknèche has created a subtle, engaging tale, one in which the simplicity of the setup belies the effectiveness of the end product.  The film is underpinned by a wonderfully sympathetic turn from Kenza Fortas, an actress previously best known for both playing the title role in 2018's Shéhérazade and her substantial part in Cédric Jimenez's exemplary action thriller The Stronghold.  Youssouf Abi-Ayad is also very good, and he has a tougher task on his hands as he vies to make the slippery Saïd a likeable, relatable character.  The two leads are backed by a fine supporting cast, of which Zahia Dehar and the fine, stalwart Zinedine Soualem are the most memorable performers.  As with Lola Pater, Moknèche here presents the viewer with very little that is new, but there can be few complaints when a film is as well-crafted as this.

Darren Arnold

Images: Pyramide Films

Object 817 (Olga Lucovnicova, 2024)

Somewhere deep in the Urals, abandoned buildings are holding more than just memories of the past. They also bear witness to a secret that has plagued the community since the Stalin era. Local people speak about strange events that occurred decades ago, leading to the gradual extinction of their once-bustling community. We discover a group of people on home footage taken at the local police station in the 90s. They examine an unusual creature, believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. Its appearance inspires fear and fascination, and soon it reaches a cult status. “The Kyshtym Alien” has its own monument, poems and songs.

Director's Statement

A few years ago, I discovered a declassified CIA document from the 1950s about the most secret city in the Soviet Union. It became the most monitored point on Earth from the sky by CIA satellites, sparking my curiosity and prompting an immediate decision to visit. In 2021, upon reaching the region, I found a driver who offered to give me a ride. He appeared peculiar, resembling and behaving like a retired KGB officer. He refused to be filmed or recorded and divulged nothing about himself. However, he suggested I interview his friend, a former police officer who, in the 1990s, discovered an alien. 

This alien became a landmark in the region, with locals erecting a monument in its honour. Some come to pray, while others come with anger to destroy the monument. As I delved deeper into this story, I uncovered strange hidden facts about the place. Witnesses reported strange flying objects, leading various ufological organisations to conduct expeditions tot he region. Additionally, the body of the alien was found near a huge secret object behind the fence, built in the 1950s. Since its construction, villages around it began to disappear, and people started dying young from mysterious illnesses. They became prisoners of a long-lasting secret that claimed the lives of their families from one generation to another.

Source/images: Flanders Image

Orlando, My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado, 2023)

Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography has previously been adapted for the screen by both Ulrike Ottinger (Freak Orlando, 1981) and Sally Potter (Orlando, 1992).  While Ottinger's effort veered towards the experimental, Potter's relatively accessible work quickly outgrew the arthouse box it had initially been placed in, and the film became a box-office success as it cemented the star status of Tilda Swinton.  While Swinton—who was hitherto best known as Derek Jarman's muse—was joined by an eclectic supporting cast (Quentin Crisp, Lothaire Bluteau, Billy Zane), Orlando proved to be a rather brittle, hollow experience, and Potter ultimately hit the same hurdle as Ottinger: the novel is one in which much hinges on the title character's interior life.  That said, the essentially private nature of Woolf's coded book is somewhat tempered by its high-concept premise.

For Orlando: A Biography is a work in which its eponymous male hero—having reached the age of 30, or thereabouts—metamorphoses into a woman, and goes on to live for several centuries (the story begins in Elizabethan times and ends on the day the novel was published).  It is not hard to see why this back-of-a-beermat idea would appeal to filmmakers—even those as cerebral as Potter and Ottinger—yet the ease in which the basic outline of the story can be adapted for the cinema is soon offset by the knotty details in Woolf's writing.  Largely inspired by Virginia Woolf's complicated love affair with her fellow writer Vita Sackville-West—Orlando's dual existence is said to represent the two sides of Woolf's lover's personality—Orlando: A Biography is a roman à clef that has no particular interest in giving up the secrets swirling around its key.        

The latest filmmaker to take a tilt at Orlando: A Biography is first-time director Paul B. Preciado, who opts for a refreshingly different approach from those of Potter and Ottinger in his attempt to crack the novel's subtext.  Orlando, My Political Biography is a documentary in which Preciado presents 20 or so different trans and non-binary people, each of whom inhabits the Orlando character while narrating the events of their own life (while Woolf's pioneering book explored the concept of transgender identity, it operated strictly in binary terms).  Via this setup, Preciado actively leans into Woolf's surprisingly complex novel, and the results are satisfying in a way that soon outstrips both of the aforementioned film adaptations of this text; it's as if the director has realised that a more aggressive style is required to reach the heart of Orlando: A Biography.    

There's a real sense that this is the first screen version to successfully grapple with the source novel's central tenet; perhaps Preciado realised that, while Orlando: A Biography is classed as a work of fiction, its hero is a proxy for a real person and, as such, real people were needed to tease out what Virginia Woolf was driving at.  Thus, a fictional biography is both explored and augmented by a documentary film, and it's fascinating to witness the insights provided by each of Preciado's subjects.  As an adaptation, Orlando, My Political Biography is both daring and worthy; it's a slippery work, one that effectively plays Woolf's novel at its own game.  This ambitious film is one of the most original debut features in recent years, and a late, joyous appearance from author and filmmaker Virginie Despentes ensures it sticks the landing.

Darren Arnold

Images: The Party Film Sales

Raindance 2024: Dog War

Touching and action packed, Raindance selection Dog War follows a team of war-hardened, canine-loving combat veterans fighting to stop the dog meat trade in South Korea. Covertly and overtly, they infiltrate hidden farms and markets to rescue as many dogs as possible. The film’s wide range of interviewees—activists, politicians, dog meat farmers and vendors—provide a 360-degree view of this complex issue. Dog War is not just about dogs, but the clash of perspectives about what is right, ethical, and even natural or cultural. 

Director Andrew Abrahams: “My films often focus on hidden stories of suffering, places where boundaries or assumptions collide, and where new life can spring forth. Dog War can be intense and disturbing, but avoids demonizing a people or culture—or showing the brutalization of dogs, which could turn off viewers. Rather, it gives us a window into a country in transition, asking universal questions about animal rights vs. human livelihood, heroism vs. vigilantism, and the breach of contract with man’s best friend.”

The dog meat trade is most widespread in China, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Nagaland in northern India. This trade is well-organized, with high numbers of dogs being stolen or taken from the streets, transported over long distances and brutally slaughtered. In South Korea, dogs are also intensively farmed for the meat trade. Dogs are also known to be eaten in certain African countries, but nothing compares to the sheer scale of the trade across Asia.

Source/images: ARPR

Raindance 2024: Sting Like a Bee

It is now almost twenty years since Leone Balduzzi—better known by the mononym Leone—made his short film Splendida Giornata, and in the intervening years he's directed several other shorts including French Toast and Tram Stories.  The sometimes large gaps between his films can be accounted for by both Leone's prolific work as a photographer and his role as the publisher of C41 magazine.  With Sting Like a Bee, Balduzzi steps behind the camera for his first feature as director; this assured debut, which was filmed in Leone's native Italy, is one of the selections for this year's Raindance Film Festival, where it has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature award.  

Sting Like a Bee unfolds in and around Leone's hometown of San Salvo, a southern Italian resort on the Adriatic coast.  The film's opening stretch focuses on the Piaggio Ape, that distinctive three-wheeled light commercial vehicle favoured by many Italian youths; in Italy, you only need a moped licence—available to those aged 14 and over—to drive one.  The Ape ("bee") is basically a scooter with a cab, and it's the slightly younger sibling of Piaggio's ever-popular Vespa ("wasp"), with both models having remained in continuous production since the mid-late 1940s—a period when, with the economy having tanked on account of WW2, Italians were in need of cheap transport options.  

Apes aren't so cheap nowadays, and the youths featured in Sting Like a Bee spend much time and money on all kinds of after-market modifications for their prized vehicles.  As Leone goes about interviewing a selection of San Salvo's Ape enthusiasts, Sting Like a Bee feels very much like a garden variety documentary—albeit a highly engaging one.  But once the film has settled down into familiar territory, a very different picture emerges, one in which the director sets about casting some of these Ape-mad teens in a film centring on first love.  Thus, Sting Like a Bee morphs into a hybrid work where these young adults attempt to navigate the choppy, uncharted waters of dating and romance.  

In a sense, the film's slippery blend of reality and fiction recalls Ben Petrie's The Heirloom—another Raindance 2024 title—in that there are times when it isn't clear if what we are watching is scripted or simply documented.  Parallels can also be drawn between Leone's film and Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna: each work was commissioned as a piece of branded content—Piaggio sponsored Sting Like a Bee, while Noé received funding from Yves Saint Laurent—before it veered off into very different territory from what its financer had expected.  This charming, engrossing film plays on Thursday, when it is showing at the Genesis cinema; the screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Leone.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Raindance 2024: The Heirloom

Having had its world premiere at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam—where it took its place alongside the likes of Jonathan Glazer's Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's horror The Soul Eater, Kaouther Ben Hania's documentary Four Daughters, and Sean Durkin's biopic The Iron Claw—Ben Petrie's The Heirloom plays at the Raindance Film Festival tomorrow, when it screens at London's Prince Charles Cinema.  In terms of the festival's prizes, The Heirloom has been nominated in the same categories as Dorka Vermes' Árni, with both films up for Best Debut Director, Best Performance in a Debut, and the Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature.    

Prior to The Heirloom, Ben Petrie had made half a dozen shorts, the most recent of which is also the best known: Her Friend Adam (see trailer below).  Heavily reliant on a DIY aesthetic, Petrie's feature debut feels like a very natural progression from his short film work.  In The Heirloom, the director himself stars as Eric, a filmmaker labouring over a script he started some years earlier.  As in Her Friend Adam, the writer-director's real-life partner Grace Glowicki plays Petrie's character's companion, and as Eric toils over his screenplay, Glowicki's Allie is desperate to get a rescue dog.  Eric has some misgivings about such an endeavour but eventually agrees, and the wheels are set in motion.

With lockdown looming, the race is on to secure a dog before the pandemic makes such a transaction impossible, and Allie and Eric arrange to rehome Milly, a whippet from the Dominican Republic.  Given the restrictions that are in place on account of COVID, Allie and Eric need to collect Milly directly from the airport; cue a vaguely threatening nocturnal scene in which the couple meet their new pet on the wintry tarmac.  Once this tense sequence passes, Milly is taken to Eric and Allie's home and, as you might expect, it takes some time for her to get used to these new surroundings.  Milly is a sweet girl, but one lacking in confidence, and Allie and Eric work steadily to integrate the dog into their lives. 

As Milly becomes established in the couple's home, Eric—who now firmly states his desire to achieve a work-life balance—abandons his moribund screenplay in favour of making a film about the couple's relationship with their pet.  From this point on, The Heirloom turns into a most slippery metafiction, one in which we're never entirely sure if what we're watching is simply the film, or the film within that film.  There are a few clues here and there—a stray boom mic, multiple takes of Allie reacting to Milly urinating on the floor, the diegetic noise of a drone engine as it films an overhead shot—but it says much about Ben Petrie's filmmaking that The Heirloom works so fluidly.  The screening will be followed by a Q&A.

Darren Arnold

Images: IFFR

Raindance 2024: Árni

Dorka Vermes' debut feature Árni has already enjoyed outings at both the Hong Kong International Film Festival and La Biennale (the film was developed by Venice's Biennale College Cinema initiative), and it continues to play the fest circuit with a screening at this year's Raindance Film Festival.  As of now, Raindance has been moved from its traditional autumn berth in the festival calendar, and the 2024 edition will occupy a midsummer slot, running June 19–28; shifting the festival away from the crowded autumn season seems a sensible move, although Raindance 2024 is very much a pilot edition as far as its timing is concerned.  A ticket for Wednesday's UK premiere of Árni includes a nice extra in the form of a Q&A session with the film's director.

Vermes, who previously directed the short films Anyák napja and Alba Vulva, has made a remarkably assured film in Árni , in which the lead role is played by the excellent Péter Turi—an actor who provided the inspiration for both the title character and film.  Turi's Árni is a handyman at a travelling circus, and he appears to be the only non-family member in the setup.  The circus itself is a truly joyless spectacle, one populated by forlorn animals and grim-faced humans, and Árni appears to have more in common with the creatures he cares for than the family circle he sits on the fringes of.  Árni is a hard worker: in addition to looking after the circus' animals, he is tasked with various other jobs such as putting up advertising boards and recruiting local manpower to help erect the big top.   

While Árni says very little, it's clear that he's a much deeper thinker than most of his colleagues, who are content to party the night away once the day's business has been concluded (it doesn't take very long to tot up the daily sales of souvenir pictures and bags of popcorn).  But Árni's quotidian drudge is interrupted by the arrival of a python, who the family have ordered for the circus' reptile show segment; the snake is way bigger than expected, and as such the owners of the circus are wary of incorporating it into their act.  Yet Árni forms a bond with the reptile, whose presence seems to unnerve many of the other workers.  The film's final stretch sees it take a sharp left turn as it moves into an extended trance-like sequence in which Árni, for once, takes centre stage in his work milieu.   

I'm not sure if this closing passage is entirely successful but, for the most part, Árni is a highly compelling work.  Wednesday's screening of the film takes place at the Curzon Soho—one of five London venues being used for this year's festival (the others being the Genesis, Prince Charles and Curzon Mayfair cinemas, with the industry hub based at Wonderville on Haymarket).  Made under the auspices of none other than Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies, The Turin Horse), who, seven years ago, was the subject of an exhibition and retrospective at Amsterdam's EYE Filmmuseum, Árni is nominated for several awards at this year's Raindance: Best Debut Director, Best Performance in a Debut, and the Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature.  Don't bet against it winning at least one of these prizes.  

Darren Arnold

Images: Proton Cinema

Raindance 2024: Eternal You

What if a person's death did not mean their end of life? What if their loved ones could still talk to them long after their body has been cremated or is lying lifeless in the ground? Eternal You—which screens tomorrow as part of this year's Raindance Film Festival—accompanies people who use AI to ‘connect with the dead’. Offering a powerful commentary on the commercialisation of grief, from the perspectives of ethicists and technologists to entrepreneurs, the film follows Joshua who chats day and night with the digital clone of his deceased first love and lets her take part in his everyday life; Christi, who just wants confirmation that her late best friend is doing well in heaven, but has a harrowing experience with his AI likeness; and Jang Ji-Sung, who meets the VR clone of her daughter. 

The inventors of the services deny any responsibility for the profound psychological consequences of those experiences. Numerous competitors hope for a lucrative market, with major players such as Microsoft and Amazon entering the race for afterlife-related services. A new, secular narrative of salvation through ‘digital immortality’ is emerging, as religious and collective forms of mourning lose relevance. From the multi-award-winning directors of The Cleaners (2018), Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, Eternal You is an exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product—and in turn the possibility of the end of human finitude.

Source: Margaret London

Images: Max Preiss / Konrad Waldmann

Queendom (Agniia Galdanova, 2023)

Jenna Marvin, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Jenna stages radical and dangerous performances in public to change people's perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. Queendom is a breathtaking portrait of creative courage. "I’m proud and excited to share this important coming-of-age story of this fearless artist Jenna Marvin who celebrates queerness and fights Putin's regime," states director Agniia Galdanova. "Her art is unique, rebellious, and hopeful, while her life story is urgently timely."

Queendom is produced by Agniia Galdanova and Igor Myakotin with executive producers Jess Search, David France, Arnaud Borges, and James Costa. It is a Galdanova Film production in association with Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, International Documentary Association, InMaat Productions, Doc Society, and Sopka Films. Greenwich Entertainment's Andy Bohn negotiated the acquisition with Submarine's Ben Schwartz on behalf of the filmmakers. The film received its World Premiere at SXSW, followed by screenings at numerous festivals including BFI London Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Greenwich will release the award-winning film in cinemas and everywhere you rent films on June 14, 2024.

Source: DMAG PR

Images: BFI

Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2023)

Earlier this year, acclaimed filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughters (Arabic: Banāt Olfa; French: Les Filles d'Olfa) fell slightly short in its bid to win the Oscar for best documentary feature.  Ben Hania is no stranger to the Academy Awards, as her 2020 narrative film The Man Who Sold His Skin was nominated for best international feature; centring on a Syrian man who went to desperate lengths to reach Brussels, the film was based on a bizarre true story and starred Monica Bellucci and Belgian actor Koen de Bouw.  The Man Who Sold His Skin would eventually lose the Oscar race to Thomas Vinterberg's excellent Druk (AKA Another Round), and Four Daughters also faced some stiff competition in March when it came up against Maite Alberdi's The Eternal Memory, Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo's Bobi Wine: The People's President, Nisha Pahuja's To Kill a Tiger, and eventual winner 20 Days in Mariupol.

Four Daughters'  Dutch premiere took place in January, when it played in International Film Festival Rotterdam's Limelight strand, which also included such titles as Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw and James Nunn's One More Shot.  This year, the Limelight section opened up its scope beyond Rotterdam, with audiences in Arnhem, Groningen, Maastricht and Den Bosch getting the chance to catch an advance screening of a film from the strand's eclectic selection.  Ben Hania's film focuses on a Tunisian family headed by single mum Olfa Hamrouni, who, as per the title, has four daughters.  In the wake of the First Arab Spring (which began in Tunisia, the only democracy to emerge from the uprisings), Olfa's two eldest girls—Rahma and Ghofrane—were radicalised and left home for a jihadist training camp in Syria.  Understandably, this left a huge hole in the lives of Olfa and her other two daughters, Eya and Tayssir.

In Four Daughters, actresses Nour Karoui and Ichraq Matar respectively take the roles of Rahma and Ghofrane, while Eya and Tayssir play themselves as events from the four girls' past are restaged for the camera.  While this is all quite straightforward—in essence, the sisters are joined by proxies for their absent siblings—matters get much cloudier when it comes to the mother's part in the film: even though Olfa is still very much present in the family home, she too is played by an actress (Hend Sabry), but the real Olfa is always ready to interrupt a scene when she feels it isn't playing out as she remembers.  It's suggested early on that Sabry's function is to act in those episodes which are too painful for Olfa to relive, although Eya and Tayssir are afforded no such safety net.  Given its slippery mix of fact and fiction, some may have been slightly surprised to see Four Daughters nominated for the best doc Oscar—it is certainly more of a docudrama than a strict documentary—but on balance it is fair to say that the film always has reality at its core.

As formally interesting as it is sincere, Four Daughters is sadly lacking when it comes to providing genuine insight into why these two girls decided to join Daesh; in this regard, Benedetta Argentieri's The Matchmaker—which documented the story of student Tooba Gondal, who left London to link up with ISIS in Syria—offered a more compelling look at the radicalisation of young women.  With her novel setup established, Kaouther Ben Hania appears wary of doing anything that could upset the metafictional apple cart, and the upshot is that the form eclipses the content.  But the quasi-family dynamic presented here is both moving and undeniably impressive, and there is much to like about the ways in which the performers interact with Olfa and her two remaining daughters.  Surprisingly, given its grim subject matter, Four Daughters is not without humour, and several of the reënactments elicit genuine laughter from all involved.  Yet no amount of hilarity can obscure the keen sadness at the heart of this fitfully engaging film.

Darren Arnold

Images: Jour2Fête

1st MIFF (30/5/24–2/6/24)

The inaugural edition of MIFF runs May 30th–June 2nd in London’s Leicester Square. Championing the narratives of international Muslim filmmakers and highlighting their compelling stories, the Muslim International Film Festival is also a platform for productions inspired by Muslim culture and faith, embracing filmmakers of all backgrounds. At a time of polarised public opinion and a prevalence of negative portrayals of Muslims in the mainstream media, MIFF has arrived on the international film festival circuit with a mission to celebrate and amplify the diverse voices that explore the rich tapestry of Muslim experiences via the medium of film. 

This first edition showcases the breadth of Muslim storytelling with premieres of acclaimed new features set throughout the world including the UK, Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Jordan, and Sudan. MIFF is supported by UK Muslim Film (UKMF), a charity working to change perspectives by championing underrepresented talent and voices, both onscreen and behind the camera. UKMF recently worked as cultural consultants with C4’s comedy drama Screw, ITV’s Good Karma Hospital, C4’s Hollyoaks, and Columbia Pictures’ Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, ensuring that cultural and faith-based aspects of storylines are portrayed accurately. 

  

Sajid Varda, Festival Director of MIFF says: “We’re absolutely thrilled to bring this festival to London, where we’re on a mission to weave together cultures through the magic of cinema. MIFF is not just a festival; it’s a vibrant celebration of cultures and stories from across the Muslim world, providing a spotlight on talented emerging and seasoned filmmakers from all corners of the globe. As we bring together the film industry and filmmakers alike, our line-up features some of the most courageous and creative minds – each one bringing their A-game to the big screen. These are stories that pack a punch, that resonate deep within, and remind us that there’s more that unites us than divides us.”

 

The 1st MIFF opens with the London premiere of Belgian co-production Hounds. A multi-award winner including Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, it portrays a father and son in the suburbs of Casablanca who get by on petty crimes for a local mob. Acclaimed supernatural drama Behind the Mountains sees a man who violently breaks free from his banal environment, evading society with its principles, codes and institutions. A multi award-winner at festivals including Cannes and Red Sea International Film Festival, Inshallah a Boy (pictured above) sees a widow pretend to be pregnant with a son to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan’s patriarchal inheritance laws.

Source: Stuart Haggas

Image: BFI

IFFR: Hubert Bals Fund Announces HBF+Europe Titles

The Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced the ten co-productions awarded €60,000 each through its HBF+Europe support schemes, with eight supported for co-production and two for post-production. The selection comes with a strong commitment to emerging talent, supporting a majority of first or second time feature filmmakers and covering a wide geographical spread, with filmmakers from Singapore, Turkey, Lebanon, Chile, Tunisia, Mexico and Argentina. 

Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the HBF: “While demonstrating an impressive range of artistic approaches, all the projects in this selection call for the need to make our world a better place. Each production team follows a complex path to bring projects to fruition, and in cases like the two supported projects from Argentina, these funds will prove crucial to realising ambitious, artistically driven work. I am proud to make the HBF part of these strong collaborative efforts between international producers and selected filmmakers.”

The topic of migration is present throughout the selection, notably in Love Conquers All; Marie & Jolie similarly deals with movements of people. Bruno Santamaría presents a 90s-set story in Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul; another period tale is Hijas únicas. The ghosts of the Paraguay War haunt the community in El mundo es nuestro. Olivia tackles the theme of disappearance; Agora is the second project supported for post-production. One of the eight projects selected for Co-production Support must remain anonymous.

Two of the projects selected are Netherlands co-productions, both debut features. As Shadows Fade by Turkish filmmaker Burcu Aykar is a poetic, multilayered narrative that deals with queer issues and women’s liberation in 1990s Turkey, and is co-produced by Amsterdam’s Isabella Films. Set in an all-girls school in Singapore, Amoeba by Siyou Tan is supported for the third time by the HBF, following development and NFF+HBF funding, and is co-produced with Rotterdam’s Volya Films. 

Source/images: IFFR

Beyond the Raging Sea (Marco Orsini, 2019)

Beyond the Raging Sea follows the harrowing tale of Egyptian adventurers Omar Nour and Omar Samra (Team O2) as they take on the Talisker Atlantic Challenge, an unsupported 3,000 nautical mile journey from the Canary Islands to Antigua.  After two years of preparation, with little open water experience, Team O2 embark on the world’s toughest row. Sponsored by DHL, and in collaboration with UNHCR and UNDP, they dedicated their journey to the displaced people who face peril crossing dangerous seas.

On Day 9, 600 miles into their journey, disaster strikes when Team O2 is hit by 45-knot winds and 8-metre waves that cause their boat to capsize. As they struggle to maintain their grip on a barely inflated life raft, Samra and Nour face the same dangers and decisions as the refugees they seek to aid, in this daring true-life rescue story. A survival story of epic proportions, Beyond the Raging Sea is a gripping first-person account of that experience narrated by those who lived it, capturing what they endured, what they felt and what it meant.

Beyond the Raging Sea was written and directed by Marco Orsini, whose Gray Matters screened as part of Design Museum Brussels' 2022 CineDesign programme. He is the writer, director and producer of seven acclaimed documentaries. Starting his career in television in the 90s, Marco produced 60+ hours of primetime programming for US and South American markets before turning his talents to writing and directing. His award-winning films and scripts have been translated into French, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish.

Omar Nour is an entrepreneur and retired professional triathlete. He represented Egypt on the Olympic triathlon circuit from 2010–2017. In business, he is the co-founder of VENTUM—a performance bike company—and the founder and chairman of Enduro Supply. Omar Samra is an adventurer, mountaineer, entrepreneur, inspirational speaker and future astronaut. He is the first Egyptian to climb Mount Everest and the Seven Summits and ski to both the geographic south and north poles (the Explorers Grand Slam).

Source: Springer Associates PR

Images: Ben Duffy