Nisimazine

Encounters

Lucia Ros Serra — 2013-05-14T21:52:06Z

“The Attack” by Ziad Doueiri

Fernando Vasquez (Portugal) — 2013-04-23T07:57:38Z

This is not your usual anti-war film either. Yes it condemns both terrorists and occupiers, but it throws you enough subliminal hints to show you that nothing is that black-and-white in the Middle East.

The Israeli and Palestinian conflict has always been a fertile ground for documentary filmmakers, yet the same cannot be said for the realm of fiction. There are exceptions of course, such as Scandar Copti´s Ajami, but generally fiction filmmakers have always struggled to dig deep in the complexity of the conflict.

Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri does not seem to mind to be a pioneer of sorts in the field and has produced what may very well be the most effective attempt so far.

The film is based on Yasmina Kadra´s controversial novel about a respected and secular Arab doctor living and working in Israel, whose life is turned upside down when his beautiful wife is accused of being a suicide bomber. Determined to either prove her innocence or discover the men who manipulated her into such an atrocity, he ends up experiencing a journey of self-identity and reasoning in a sometimes insane part of the world.

Contrary to most fiction and non-fiction pieces on the conflict, The Attack avoids leaning towards either side, preferring to show how both of them are wrong. Yet this is not your usual anti-war film either. Yes it condemns both terrorists and occupiers, but it throws you enough subliminal hints that show you that nothing is that black-and-white in the Middle East.

Doueiri follows no agenda but his own, focusing primarily on the human and existentialist inner battles during times of conflict. The setting is almost irrelevant, what is truly important is showing how an intelligent man struggles to maintain his own common sense while everything around him seems to be falling apart.

The result is a thrilling and engaging film that takes no prisoners, asks all the right questions and shows enough respect for the audience by not feeding it all the answers.

With an extraordinary powerful performance by Ali Suliman and a pace more reminiscent of Hollywood thrillers then classic Middle Eastern cinema, The Attack will surely catch you off guard, as it carries within enough appeal and intelligence to become a film we´ll talk about for years to come.

Review by Fernando Vasquez

"Dead Europe" by Tony Krawitz

Fernando Vasquez (Portugal) — 2013-04-10T14:40:15Z

Dead Europe is refreshing and subversive in the sense that it chooses to rethink part of Australian culture through the present experiences and images of a stagnant old continent in the midst of a cyclical economic, social, political and cultural crisis. In doing so it produces one of the most chilling portraits of modern day Europe, including the details we all frequently prefer to ignore.

There is something dark and intriguing emerging within Australian cinema that is increasingly beginning to feel like a daring underground phenomenon. The box office and critical sensations Animal Kingdom and Snowtown are just the tip of the iceberg.

The trend began back in 2005, with the success of Greg McLean´s visceral Wolf Creek, which marked a final departure from the resilient echoes of the Ozploitation era. Films such as Samson and Dalilah, The loved Ones and Hail are less successful but nevertheless impressive examples of how a unique scene, spearheaded by a new and youthful breed of filmmakers, has been progressively laying its foundations Down Under.

Tony Krawitz´s Dead Europe is the latest of these ventures that seem to have found a keen audience around the world.

Based on the bestselling novel by Christos Tsiolkas, the film portrays the strange voyage of a gay Australian photographer who travels to Europe in order to return the ashes of his dead Greek father back to his homeland. In the process he ends up facing some of the demons that led his family, like so many others, to immigrate to the southern Hemisphere.

The film is not without its faults, trying to cover way too much ground in little time, leaving the audience slightly lost at points. Yet, it is captivating in the sense that it is light years away from the inward look so typical of the Australian insular mentality.

Dead Europe is refreshing and subversive in the sense that it chooses to rethink part of Australian culture through the present experiences and images of a stagnant old continent in the midst of a cyclical economic, social, political and cultural crisis. In doing so it produces one of the most chilling portraits of modern day Europe, including the details we all frequently prefer to ignore.

Like its recent predecessors Dead Europe is, above all, about creating a dark atmosphere of constant disturbing threat. It does so brilliantly, covering its inherent failures by pacing its mood to perfection, seasoned with provocative and highly sexual undertones.

With his second feature, Krawitz shows us that all the hardwork and boldness displayed by himself and his piers could be a sign of a new found maturity, that could just lift this “movement” from the underground and into the international limelight.

Review by Fernando Vasquez

"Talea" by Katharina Mückstein

Aleksandar Radovanović — 2013-03-29T14:13:12Z

This is a lean piece of work which does not swerve, but executes its goals with elegant precision. Mückstein builds tension adeptly, interspersing high drama with delightful bits of comic reliefs.

Young Austrian director Katharina Mückstein presents herself to the world with Talea , a gentle coming of age story which has garnered considerable attention at this year's Diagonale. Talea (Italian for “sprout”) is a tale of pursuit of identity among young people raised in foster families and deprived of the staples of individuality that parents should instil.

Jasmin is a disassociated fourteen-year-old whose mom has recently been released from prison. Naturally persistent, she manages to win over her mom's attention but soon realizes she cannot command it. They both remain deeply submerged in their own perspectives with little willingness to yield to the needs of the other, so it takes a lot of small steps to bridge the gap built over the years. Both of them are outsiders meant to find support in each other, so the film grows into one person's discovery and another's re-discovery of the self.

As mother and daughter retreat to nature, Jasmin enjoys maternal love for the first time and finds bliss in her garden of Eden. Initiation rites run smoothly and she immerses herself into adulthood, as mom introduces her to cigarettes, make-up and dancing. However, the idyll of the odd couple is soon broken by the appearance of a handsome local. Jasmin makes it clear that three is a crowd, but her mom feels otherwise and an awkward love triangle is established.

The film has gone from a rough draft to a finished product within a mere ten months, but one will struggle to recognize signs of haste in it. Quite the contrary, the director impresses with her sense of structure and methodical approach to the psychological development of her characters. This is a lean piece of work which does not swerve, but executes its goals with elegant precision. Mückstein builds tension adeptly, interspersing high drama with delightful bits of comic reliefs.

In two memorable scenes, Mückstein defies the aesthetics of her mentor, Michael Haneke, by employing music for characterization. Both scenes play like meditative music videos, yet remain precisely in function of Jasmin's growth.

For those who feel they have already seen the story countless times, the film is pleasingly devoid of stereotypes of the genre in which great lessons are learned and teenage angst dissolves overnight. Talea is a realistic piece of cinematic poetry, a contemporary fairy tale which is warm, touching, occasionally poignant, but never sliding into sentimentalism that such stories are prone to. Its protagonist is an offshoot, promising to grow into a sturdy beautiful plant, unwavering in the winds to come, just as Talea itself is a worthy debut indicative of great work ahead.

BY Aleksandar Radovanović

Interview with Katharina Mückstein

Aleksandar Radovanović — 2013-03-29T14:12:15Z

Katharina Mückstein debut feature, one of the highlights of this year's Diagonale, is getting a quick buzz and is expected to be shortlisted among the finest releases of Austrian cinema in 2013. We met her at Diagonale and talked about her educational background with Michael Haneke, the production of Talea and the aesthetics behind it.

Where did the story of Talea originate from ? Selina Gnos wrote a treatment which was inspired by the case of a Spanish woman living in Vienna who killed two of her lovers and buried them in the basement. She was pregnant when she was arrested, which raised a lot of speculation in the gutter press about the future of the child. Selina had the idea of telling the story fourteen years later, when the mom gets out of jail and she and the child get to know each other.

Were you intimidated by the fact that it was going to be your first feature ? For some of my team, Talea had to be the final work at the Vienna Film Academy. I studied there with Michael Haneke and quit two years ago, as I felt ready to direct the first film out of school. We never planned a feature, so I didn't care about the length. I was simply interested in relying on myself and making a film without teachers. We started in April and had about 100,000 EUR, so we knew we had to work fast and finish the film within months.

What prompted your choice of leaving the academy ? After six years in Haneke's directing class, I felt I had to make a move of emancipation. As much as he is a great filmmaker and good teacher, he is also, in a psychoanalytic way, the father you cannot get rid of.

Does he impose strict rules as a teacher, because he does have a very specific aesthetic code ? Maybe he doesn't intend to, but simply by being himself and getting all the attention he does, he exerts a strong influence and is very dogmatic about the way he works. He showed me how to question myself all the time and reduce things to the essence of meaning. I'm grateful for that. I was glad when I started studying with him because I was looking for someone who would say that in order to be a filmmaker you need to be not only talented, but also strict and disciplined. It's not about waiting for the right moment to do something, but working every day. The work is sometimes very technical and even boring, but Haneke was the first who admitted to me that it is partly just like an office job : sit down, do your work till it's done and next day do it all over again. For me, that was a big relief, because a lot of people had given me an impression I was too pragmatic to be an artist.

How did you manage to make the film within only ten months ? I'm fond of making decisions. I don't like sticking to a project too long, because at some point you start doubting yourself and I don't think that makes the film any better. We had to build the shoot around the spare time of our actors, because we couldn't pay them much and they were busy with other projects.

How difficult was it to make the choice for a lead girl among the masses of applicants ? I cast over a hundred girls. I gave them a mother-daughter scene, so I played the mother for at least 200 times. Sophie was the fifth one I saw on the first day. Looking for a 14-year-old actress is hard because they lack experience, but Sophie acted like a grown-up. She was really impressive with the way she reacted to instructions.

She was excellent, indeed, especially in the comic bits she initiates, which are so refreshing in the film. Were those moments originally in the script or did you create them on the set ? They grew from getting to know Sophie as a person. In real life she is totally different to the character. She is confident, good at school, acts a lot, has a perfect family and a perfect little life. The more we talked, the more elements of her real personality she offered for the role. It was beautiful working with her, because she put so much thought into the character.

Symbolism was also instrumental in developing the characters. How did you chose swimming and biking as central metaphors for coming of age ? I talked a lot with my script consultant about what it really means for a teenager to have grown without parents. We realized we had to talk about insecurities, the roots that are missing. There are a couple of things you teach your child. You start with walking, then riding a bike, as a gift of liberty, and finally, there is swimming, a gift of survival in water. Since we always wanted to make a film about a girl who is strong, she would have probably taught herself riding a bike. Swimming, however, is too dangerous to learn on your own, so I thought that could be the background wound of the character.

The long tracking shot on the bicycle is one of the most memorable scenes in the film. Did you decide to accompany it with music as an act of defiance of your educational background ? In a way. Before my studies, I made a couple of music videos and enjoyed working with music. In the directing class I lost touch with music, but afterwards I decided I had to use music in my films and I put a whole song in that scene. It touches me every time I see it, as it expresses all the anger that Jasmin tries to get rid of. It reminds me of how your body feels when you are a teenager, full of energy and emotions. It was important to me to emphasize the aspect of becoming a grown-up person and show the girl's body as strong rather than frail and beautiful. We shot the scene on the first day and it took only three takes. Everyone was very excited about how it looked.

Interview by Aleksandar Radovanovic

That is what always goes on with the people and does not with the animals

Nino Kovačić — 2013-03-21T10:35:26Z

What starts off as a semi-thriller search story evolves into a narrative experiment on exploration of what is identity.

Certainly the film with the longest title at the Diagonale Film Festival, as well as probably the only one written and directed by a brother and sister, That is what… is on the margin of (not) being a short film (45 min), but nevertheless an interesting and original piece.

A police investigator and five characters speak of a women they knew and who is gone missing. We discover that the missing person had at least four alternative identities. Done in a fake documentary form, the film is a set up in a series of parallel talking-head interviews intermixed with a number of docu-fiction shots.

A mosaic of the woman's' identity is being put together piece by piece through the interviews, but no final picture is established and it is even questionable if, considering the multitude of her parallel lives, it could be done so.

Descriptions given by her boyfriend, best friend, a clergy woman and pretend-to-be father and mother present different 'truths' on her through others memories, thus creating her identity with contradictions. The characters speak of how they were affected by the missing woman, turning her real identity irrelevant considering the fact that her intervention in their lives was important and profound.

The characters themselves and their relationships to the women are constructed by a dramaturgically craftful diversity. Especially interesting (and best acted) is the couple involved in a theatrical experiment with the missing woman, where they agreed to play a family of three, playing her mother and father in everyday situations.

What starts off as a semi-thriller search story evolves into a narrative experiment on exploration of what is identity : a construct built on the interactions, comparisons and memory of others.

Also, the script, dramaturgy and questions posed are more interesting then the execution of the film itself. At moments is becomes repetitive and thus too long, and a lot of space is left for technical and directing improvements, as well as playfulness with cinematic forms, when it comes to the eternal question of identity. Although not brilliantly filmed, the story´s potential of Jan and Anna Gross definitely holds a promising future for them. By Nino Kovačić

Heritage

Nino Kovačić — 2013-03-21T10:34:12Z

One must ask hard but fundamental questions on responsibility and its consequences, as well as how they interact and respond to common principles and ethics.

Max and his pregnant wife visit his well-off grandfather and the discomfort that is set from the beginning of the encounter reveals itself to be a great family burden. The grandfather is facing trial for crimes against humanity, as he was a former Nazi concentration camp guard.

A lot of 'big' issues are touched upon this miniature 17-minutes piece, fore mostly considering the German legacy of the Second world war as well as that of the 'responsibility' to first take care of ones own family.

In Max's case, his old family's heritage is a burden to his identity, while his new, young family is his foremost responsibility (expecting a newborn). His grandfather, by offering Max a gold bar melted in an unnamed camp during the war, puts him into a test position, where he has to make a very doubtful choice.

By creating this situation, which the grandfather believes to be similar to his own during the war, he would like to make Max understand that he did what was best for the family, especially in the situation "where everybody was doing it", and in a way, compensate for his wrongdoings by getting the recognition from his grandson.

While Max is doubtful on taking the bar, his wife is resolute and wants nothing to do with the grandfather and his offer ; she is the moral vertical and the opposite pole to the grandfather. She is also the strongest reason for Max to take the bar, as well as not to take it, thus becoming the character who creates a stronger structure of ambivalence in Max's dilemma.

At the end of the film we only see a black screen and the grandfather's off-voice at the trial. He claims, to his own defense, as did Adolf Eichmann in the Jerusalem trial, that he was "only doing his job".

Heritage asks the crucial question of "the banality of the evil" and conformism : who is right ? In this case the 'trick' is in the question : one must ask hard but fundamental questions on responsibility and its consequences, as well as how they interact and respond to common principles and ethics. The golden bar represents a heritage of an entire nation (and not only German !) and its unsolved past, an intangible paradox of responsibility of those who were "only" supporting the Nazis.

By Nino Kovačić

CARTOON MOVIE 2013

Lucia Ros Serra — 2013-03-14T10:50:22Z

As animated film cements its ever growing position in the film industry, our reporter Lucia Ros visited the influential CARTOON MOVIE event to get a sense of what is coming up in the world of animation this year.

Last week was held, in Lyon, the 15th edition of CARTOON MOVIE, one of the most important forums in the world dedicated to animated film, where every year filmmakers go on the search for producers and funding to complete the post –production phase or simply look for distribution deals, in the case of completed productions.

One of the things that catches your attention when you arrive at the venue is the passion that permeates among all its participants: directors, producers, distributors and sales managers from all over the world gather to learn about projects who will hit the screens in the next two years and to find interesting proposals to present in their respective countries.

It is interesting for someone like me, who is not very up to date on the animated film field, to be part of an event like this, to realize the diversity and international talent that you can find in animation cinema. During my stay at Cartoon Movie 2013, I saw the presentation of many diverse and interesting projects. Animation cinema has long ceased to be a child's play and although no shortage of projects aimed at children were presented (Marco Macaco from Denmark, Capture the flag from Spain or Little Princess and the Legend of Blue Foot from United Kingdom), what caught our attention were the proposals aimed at young and adult audiences.

So, we ran into projects such as the Italian The Art of Happiness by Alessandro Rak, the story of a retired musician converted in a taxi driver who will overcome the death of his brother thanks to discussions with different clients of his cab; or The Prince and the Demon-Kings of Pascal Morelli, an epic tale inspired by 14th century novel; Outlaws of the Water Margin, that will tell the story of a 10-year-old prince who, helped by twelve outlaws, will get armed to defeat tyrant leader, a particularly interesting project because of it´s technique that combines 2D and 3D animation, later to be integrated into real action and real sets already filmed in China.

There was also time to enjoy screenings of films already completed that were aimed to potential distributors:

Ernest et Célestine by Benjamin Renner (France)

We caught up with the 2013 César winner of the best animated film award Ernest et Célestine by French filmmaker Benjamin Renner, the tender story of friendship unthinkable a little mouse and a bear. Traditional animation combined with the tenderness of the use of watercolor makes this film enjoyable by both children and adults.

Aya of Yop City by Clément Oubrerie and Marguerite Abouet (France)

"Aya of Yop City" portrayts the difficulties of women in Cote d'Ivoire in the 1970's, where a 19-year-old girl will fight against the postcolonial African traditions to follow her dreams.

Animation film is not usually covered in major international film festivals, even though it has been around for a while and is increasingly becoming a major power within the film industry, breaking box office records year by year, making this a particularly interesting and vital moment to follow up on forums like Cartoon Movie.

New article

Fernando Vasquez (Portugal) — 2013-03-14T10:28:33Z

March 2013 is promising to be yet another nonstop month for Nisimazine, after a quick recovery from the Berlinale blues the previous month.

Our teams keeps traveling around the continent in an endless search for what is new out there, with our usual and recognizable focus on young filmmakers.

Our first stop was at the famous and leading CARTOON MOVIE forum in France, where animation took center stage, reflecting, in many ways, the growth the format has been taking within the industry.

We also had time to stop at FANTASPORTO, an iconic event that for the last 33 years has been shinning some much needed light in the dark world of fantasy and horror cinema, much to the delight of its fans.

Last but not least, as we speak, we have a team roaming and raiding the exciting Diagonale Film Festival in Austria, looking out for all its hidden pearls and treasures.

So sit back and enjoy traveling with us through the film festival world, with lots of new content in the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile you can always take a look at our coverage of the short film program at the Rotterdam Film Festival and some of the new features that premiered at the Berlinale.

Yuri Ancarani

Eirini Nikopoulou — 2013-03-14T10:00:32Z

Italian director Yuri Ancarani is fast becoming a reference in the world of experimental filmmaking. This year in Rotterdam he brought us a unique film about the fine line between the automated and the organic in modern medicine, “Da Vinci”, which quickly became one of the most talked about films in competition. Eirini Nikopoulou caught up with him to find out more about his latest work.

E: Did you study Medicine or something like that? Why did you decide to depict real time surgery?

No, absolutely not! My first encounter with the surgery room was traumatic! Gradually I got used to it, as I spent much time with the doctors in that surgery room. What appealed to me the most was the fact that inside a human body it is possible for a machine, a robot, to work.

E: It is very interesting that during the surgery we see no blood, or red colour anywhere. We can only see blue instead. Was that made on purpose?

There is so much blood! Everywhere! However, I didn't want to create feelings of disgust or fear in the audience. I wanted them to watch the “clean” parts. Regarding the blue colour, it was a mistake I made. There were three cables and I mistook the red with the blue! Nevertheless, nothing changes. It might be better this way actually because it allows you to do this trip. The doctors themselves who saw the film told me that they would rather watch this relaxing blue colour while operating, instead of red all the time. So, I am going to propose this to hospitals around the world!

E: Your film has already been described as an “informal success”. Why do you think the audience is intrigued that much by your film?

I think people are interested because this is the first time they are able to watch a needle from the other side. Also, what is really important for me is that during the last scene, the domino scene, the music is composed by a young and talented musician, Lorenzo Senni, who has used different pieces of sounds used in videogames during the last 20 years. This is like a representation of our generation. This is kind of a paradoxical situation because we have considered in the last few years that playing videogames is a waste of time, but actually it appears as a very precious skill.

By Eirini Nikopoulou