SFIFF53: Michael Hawley's Review Capsules

After weeks of anticipation, the 53rd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) is finally set to launch this Thursday, April 22. I'm looking to catch 30 or so films during the next two weeks and hope to file a wrap-up report when it's all over and done with. Meanwhile, here's a fistful of capsule write-ups of films I've had the chance to preview on DVD screener (except where noted). These 14 films represent only a fraction of what's on offer, so pick up a festival mini-guide, browse the entire roster of films on the festival's website, or check out my previews of the line-up here, here and here. Also, if you're interested in knowing which films are screening in 35mm and which ones will be digitally projected, be sure to have a look at the Film on Film Foundation's indispensable Bay Area Film Calendar.

Air Doll (Japan dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)
A blow-up sex doll comes to life and discovers that having a heart is heartbreaking in this perhaps destined-to-disappoint follow-up to 2008's masterful Still Walking. Kore-eda laboriously overworks his premise here to deliver a gnarly parable about loneliness. Still, the film looks great and is a choice vehicle for Korean actress Bae Doo-na (Linda Linda Linda, The Host), whose gifts for pathos and physical comedy are put to sublime use in the title role. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)

A Brand New Life (South Korea/France dir. Ounie Lecomte)
Based on the director's own childhood spent in a South Korean Catholic orphanage, this powerful and affecting film is a testament to the adaptability of youth. In 1975, nine-year-old Jin-hee (adorably resolute Kim Sae-ron) is brought to an orphanage by a father who can no longer care for her. Over the course of the film, we witness her disbelief and anger painfully transform into resignation, and finally acceptance. Realizing her father will never return, Jin-hee intuits that her best bet is to play the system and present herself in a way that will facilitate a foreign adoption. Remarkably unmanipulative considering its subject matter and engaging throughout, the film should be a strong contender for the festival's New Directors prize. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)

Cairo Time (Canada dir. Ruba Nadda)
The talents of Patricia Clarkson aren't nearly enough to save this hokey tale of a Western woman's reawakening amidst an exotic culture. Magazine editor Juliette gets waylaid in Cairo while waiting to be joined by her U.N. relief worker husband, meanwhile vaguely falling for the handsome Egyptian assigned to watch over her. Clunky dialogue, an overwrought score, and lack of chemistry are among its chief problems. The only winner is Cairo itself, which is beautifully photographed. (Seen at a festival press screening.)

Father of My Children (France/Germany dir. Mia Hansen-Løve)
A beloved art-film producer commits suicide after becoming financially overextended, leaving family and business associates to deal with his legacy in this splendid Special Jury Prize winner from Cannes (Un Certain Regard). The film kicks off with a bravura sequence detailing a day in the life of producer Grégoire Canvel, as he chain smokes, juggles multiple cell phones, irons out production snafus, evades creditors and smoothes the ruffled feathers of temperamental actors and directors. He has a loving, if exasperating relationship with his wife and three daughters, which renders the suicide at the film's exact mid-point all the more tragic. The second half almost seems like an anti-climax in comparison, as Canvel's wife tries to salvage the production company and a family secret is discovered by his eldest daughter. The film was inspired by the life and death of Hubert Balsan, whose list of productions includes films by Claire Denis, Youssef Chahine and Lars von Trier. I found it a big step up from Hansen-Løve's debut film All is Forgiven, which certainly had its ardent admirers. Father of My Children will be of special appeal to those interested in the economics of contemporary art film production. (Seen at a festival press screening.)

The Invention of Dr. NakaMats (Denmark dir. Kaspar Astrup Schröder)
Yoshiro Nakamatsu holds the world's record for patents–3,357 and counting–as compared to Edison's paltry 1,093. This snappy and entertaining bio-doc follows Nakamatsu in the months leading up to his 80th birthday and the debut of his latest invention, the B-Bust Bra for small breast enhancement. Brilliant and eccentric, the good doctor also comes off a sardonic self-promoter and pompous ham. He's best known for inventing the floppy disk, an idea that came to him, like many others, while swimming underwater (he takes notes on his waterproof notepad, which of course, he invented). Among his other creations are spray-on aphrodisiac Love Jet and a vehicle that runs on water. A dapper dresser who does all this "out of love" for humanity, the doctor gets by on four hours sleep and one meal per day (he won a Nobel Prize in nutrition after photographing and analyzing every single meal he ate for 34 years). "I think that nothing is impossible" is his credo and this film will convince you he sincerely believes it. With a fun music score by Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo, Pee-wee's Playhouse).

Marwencol (USA dir. Jeff Malmberg)
In 1993, Mark Hogencamp was viciously attacked outside a Kingston, NY bar and consequently spent nine days in a coma. His face had to be rebuilt and all his motor skills had to be relearned. Hogencamp's mental recovery from this trauma has been precipitated by Marwencol, a miniature, doll-populated WWII-era Belgian village he's built outside his trailer home. Marwencol and its inhabitants are the subject of a captivating and poignant film that recently won the jury prize for best documentary at SXSW. Hogencamp works through emotional issues by staging and photographing elaborate dramas with dolls, many of whom represent people he knows in "real" life. One day there might be staged catfights at "The Ruined Stocking" bar, and the next day might find Hogencamp's avatar doll being stripped and tortured by sadistic SS officers. Eventually the Art World comes calling–Hogencamp's photos are compiled into a nifty volume and a NYC gallery stages a one-man show. It's then we learn of a "twist" in his story; one that explains a lot about Marwencol and the "reason" for the 1993 attack. Director Malmberg lays all this out in a compelling way, using judicious stop-motion animation and period music to bring Hogencamp's extraordinary creation to life.

My Queen Karo (Belgium dir. Dorothée Berghe)
The ups and downs of communal living are explored in this bittersweet, autobiographical flashback to 1974. Ten-year-old Karo and her Belgian parents help establish a squatters artist commune in an abandoned Amsterdam building. Trouble invades paradise when Karo's father invites another woman to move in and share his bed, sending Karo's less liberated mother into an emotional tailspin. Ideological differences involving money start to strain the couple's relationship as well. A confused and conflicted Karo, who observes the adults having sex in the commune's un-partitioned living space, does her childlike best to navigate a way through it all, with metaphorical swimming lessons providing some needed structure and discipline.

Northless (Mexico/Spain dir. Rigoberto Perezcano)
After being abandoned in the desert by his coyote, Oaxacan Andrés is captured by U.S. immigration authorities and sent back to Tijuana. He falls into work doing odd jobs at a bodega, where a sexual tension develops between himself, the store's female owner and a female helper. Despite having a wife and two kids back home, crossing the border becomes less of an imperative, at least temporarily. The two women are in no hurry to see him go either, each having lost a man to the allure of El Norte. When they finally do help him emigrate, it's in a wonderfully surprising way that, of all things, is scored to Debussy's "Claire de lune." Handsomely photographed and finely acted, this observational and melancholic (but not humorless) film about the toll of economic disparity is the antithesis of last year's heart-pounding immigration melodrama Sin Nombre.

The Peddler (Argentina dir. Lucas Marcheggiano, Adriana Yurkovich, Eduardo de la Serna)
Sixty-seven-year-old Daniel Burmeister rolls into the Argentine Pampas village of Gould driving a beat-up red sedan. For the 58th time in his filmmaking career, he'll make a complete narrative feature using local talent in exchange for lodging, food and the right to sell tickets to a premiere. This sweet documentary takes us through the gregarious and self-effacing Burmeister's entire DIY process–from casting to location scouting, from shoot to showtime–improvising as circumstance dictates. A white sheet doubles as his movie screen and a cemetery ghost costume. A tracking shot is accomplished by having Burmeister dragged across the floor atop a blanket. This is the only Argentine film in this year's festival, which is unusual. Fortunately, this charming and respectful portrait of small town life and one man's passion is worthy of standing alone.

The Portuguese Nun (France/Portugal dir. Eugène Green)
"I never see French films. They're only for intellectuals." So states a minor character in this formalist work that will strike many as overly mannered and pretentious. I was pretty darned transfixed by it, and believe me, I ain't no intellectual. Leonor Baldaque plays a malaise-afflicted French actress who's in Lisbon to make a film about a 17th century nun and her affair with a military officer. She wanders the city like a doe-eyed somnambulist and has a series of life-changing encounters with a suicidal man, a genuine Portuguese nun and a six-year-old waif–not to mention a one-night stand with her co-star. Among director Green's cinematic tactics are 360° pans, emotionally flat dialogue delivery, two-shot conversations spoken directly to the camera, focal shifts within single shots and a fascination with legs and feet. Green also portrays the director of the film within the film, one Denis Verde. All this will drive some people bonkers and I predict walk-outs. What might keep them in their seats are several live music interludes and the fact that Lisbon has never looked more ravishing on film than it does here.

Presumed Guilty (Mexico dir. Roberto Hernández, Geoffrey Smith)
The SFIFF staff was so impressed by this look at the horrors of Mexico's criminal justice system that they pre-awarded it the festival's Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Documentary. It's easy to see why. This powerful and moving film follows the trials of one José Antonio Zuñiga-Rodriguez, a thoughtful young man wrongly arrested and convicted for a 2005 homicide despite a myriad of judicial injustices–not the least of which is several dozen witnesses putting him miles from the crime scene. When it's discovered that his original lawyer was practicing with a forged license, "Toño" is granted a retrial that the filmmakers are miraculously permitted to record–and what an eye-opener that is. The "courtroom" is merely one section of a large, open and chaotic office space and his judge is the same guy who convicted him in the first place. Of particular interest is the trial's cara a cara, in which the accused is permitted to question and confront, literally face-to-face, his accusers. It's shocking, but not unsurprising when the retrial results in a second conviction. The case then goes to a court of appeals, where the retrial film footage is submitted as evidence. You'll have to see the film yourself to learn their ruling. During the end credits it's revealed that 95% of Mexican verdicts are convictions, and 92% of those are not based on any physical evidence.

To Die Like a Man (Portugal/France João Pedro Rodrigues)
Middle-aged transvestite performer Tonia has problems. Her infected breast implants are killing her, her junkie boyfriend is ripping her off, her AWOL solider son has committed murder and her once-adoring public is no longer interested. In this hyper-stylized melodrama, Portuguese provocateur Rodrigues (O Fantasma, Two Drifters aka Odete) precariously walks the fine line between hooty camp and deeply affecting emotionalism–and largely succeeds. Since the film premiered in Un Certain Regard at last year's Cannes, it's accumulated an equal share of haters and defenders. Chances are if you disliked his two previous films, you're not gonna like this one either–and vice versa. I can't wait to see it again. After you've seen it, be sure and check out The Evening Class' Michael Guillén's interview with Rodrigues from the Toronto Film Festival. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)

The Wind Journeys (Colombia dir. Ciro Guerra)
Following the death of his wife, taciturn accordion maestro Ignacio sets off on a mission to return his accursed instrument to its original owner. He begrudgingly tolerates the company of aspiring teen musician Fermin, and their episodic misadventures en route shape this dazzling, roadless road movie that was Colombia's 2009 Oscar submission. The journey takes them through a variety of landscapes–desert, mountain, plains and seaside–all breathtakingly filmed in wide screen. They also come into contact with various cultures and their music. A frenetic battle-of-the-accordion-players at a village music festival is one of the most joyous and thrilling things I've seen at the movies this year. Visually, The Wind Journeys is a stunner, with meticulously framed compositions and intricate camera choreography that at times borders on show-off-y. I regret not being able to fit a big-screen experience of this into my festival schedule.

You Think You're the Prettiest, But You Are the Sluttiest (Chile dir. Ché Sandoval)
While this film isn't anything we haven't seen before in such vignette-structured youthful gab-fests like Slackers and 25 Watts, it is genuinely funny and an accomplished achievement for its 25-year-old director and largely non-pro cast. Protagonist Javier (a revelatory Martín Castillo) is a pesky, motor-mouthed overthinker whose bravado masks a pathetic vulnerability. It's not really his fault that best friend Nicolás is way cooler and hotter and keeps stealing his girlfriends without trying. In addition to romantic advances and retreats, the film tracks Javier through a series of prickly social encounters. He allows a frustrated friend to punch him in the face for nine dollars, and then pays a gay guy at a bus stop to quit bugging him. Most memorable is a tender interaction between Javier and an aging prostitute who's waiting for a taxi after a hard night's work. I was sure the film couldn't possibly live up to its fabulous title. I was wrong. This will be another solid contender for the festival's New Directors prize.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

SFIFF53 2010—Michael Hawley's Line-Up Preview, Pt. Two

Peering at the SFIFF53 films from non-French speaking Europe, I'm especially glad to see a pair of German entries. Maren Ade's Everyone Else won a Silver Bear at last year's Berlin Film Festival and follows the dissolution of a young couple on holiday in Sardinia. The film would have been a natural for our now-defunct Berlin & Beyond festival, and I'm assuming it didn't make the recent German Gems program because SFIFF already snagged it. If you've read the reviews and also caught Ade's debut The Forest for the Trees at SFIFF five years ago, you know this is going to be special. The other film is Turkish/German director Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen, which is said to be quite different from his previous works like Head On and The Edge of Heaven. This one's a comic look at the efforts to save a failing family restaurant and stars my two favorite German actors, Moritz Bleibtreu and Birol Ünel.

I caught Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues hyper-stylized transsexual melodrama To Die Like a Man at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and loved it. Many loathed it. If you dug his previous works (O Fantasma, Two Drifters aka Odete) you sure don't want to miss this. In his review for the New York Film Festival, critic J. Hoberman called it "the kind of film Pedro Almodóvar should be making." Also Portuguese, at least in title and setting is Eugène Green's The Portuguese Nun. I'm totally unfamiliar with the work of this U.S.-born French director who seems to be known for his formalist approach to filmmaking. Ostensibly, the film is about a French actress making a film about a 17th century nun in Lisbon, with Green portraying the director. Variety gave it a scathing review, but I'm planning to give it a chance.

The big Italian film this year is Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton as the unhappy wife of a Milanese industrialist. It's been compared to the works of Luchino Visconti. Uncoincidentally, the lone SFIFF screening of I Am Love takes place immediately after a restored print revival of Visconti's Senso at the Castro Theater on Sunday, May 2. If you're unable to make the showing, I Am Love opens at a Landmark Theater on July 2. The other Italian film I'm anticipating is Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's La Pivellina, in which a group of circus performers find and keep an abandoned child. Also of interest from Italy is Giorgio Diritti's WWII massacre movie The Man Who Will Come, which won both Grand Jury and Audience Prizes at last year's Rome Film Festival

From elsewhere in Europe we have Serbian director Vladimir Perisic's Ordinary People, a multi-fest prizewinner and (Bruno) Dumont-ian parable of ethnic cleansing and the human potential for brutality. At an opposite extreme lies Nina Hedenius' Way of Nature, a near-silent meditation on life at a remote Swedish farm. According to some reports I've read, the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia might be the next international hotbed of inspired filmmaking. SFIFF53 has programmed one title that keeps popping up, Rusudan Pirveli's Susa, a neo-realist tale of a 12-year-old bootleg-vodka delivery boy. Also from Georgia is the documentary Russian Lessons, which examines the 2008 Georgia-Russia armed conflict.

2009 was a quiet year on the Latin American filmmaking front, with virtually none of the region's major directors releasing new films. I'd hoped to find the Mexican omnibus film Revolución in the line-up, but perhaps it's too soon after the film's January premiere at Berlin. That reasoning wouldn't apply, however, to the absence of Claudia Llosa's sublime The Milk of Sorrow, which won Berlin's top prize in 2009 and was one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. One wonders, did the programming team really deem this film unworthy of our fest or were other factors involved? Oh well, I'm darn glad I saw it at Palm Springs.

Headlining what Latin American cinema we do have at SFIFF53 is surely Brazilian director Walter Salles' receiving the Founders Directing Award, along with screenings of his 2008 Linha de Passe and also a new work-in-progress. Also from Brazil come the narrative feature The Famous and the Dead and the musical documentary Simonal: No One Knows How Tough It Was, about the "spectacular rise and infamous fall of the undisputed king of Brazilian popular music." From Colombia there's Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journeys, in which a man and teenage boy set off on a roadless road-trip to return a cursed accordion. I've watched this on screener and it's visually stunning. Usually we get a bunch of titles from Argentina in the festival, but this year there's only one. The Peddler documents the work of Daniel Burmeister, a traveling septuagenarian filmmaker who uses local amateur talent to create genre movies. Rounding out the South American roster is You Think You're the Prettiest, But You Are the Sluttiest, a Chilean comedy about the pitfalls of being young, horny and male.

While we may not have gotten Revolución, there are three other Mexican films in the SFIFF53 line-up, two of which I've previewed and heartily recommend. Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith's documentary Presumed Guilty is an exposé of the Mexican criminal justice systems that follows one young man's efforts to reverse a homicide conviction. In Rigoberto Perezcano's meditative feature Northless, a young man's determination to cross into El Norte gets waylaid by the female proprietor of a Tijuana grocery store. The film I haven't seen is Pedro González-Rubio's docu-fiction hybrid Alamar, in which a half-Mayan boy spends a final summer with his father and grandfather along the Caribbean coast. The film has won a slew of festival awards, most recently a Tiger at Rotterdam, and I'm saving it for a big-screen festival experience (the underwater cinematography is by Alexis Zabé, who also shot Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light and Fernando Eimbcke's Lake Tahoe).

OMFG! was the reaction I had to seeing two particular Asian titles in the line-up—and I'm using "Asian" here in its broadest geographical sense. In 2006 I was blown away by The Forsaken Land, a film by Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara for which he won Cannes' Camera d'or for best first feature. I've had fingers and toes crossed that his new film Between Two Worlds would show up at our 3rd i South Asian Film Festival next fall, but I'm just as ecstatic to see it at the SF International. The other title that got a rise out of me is Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof's The White Meadows. Rasoulof directed the phenomenal Iron Island, which the fest screened in 2006. I won't even attempt to synopsize what these two allegorical films are "about". Just read the program capsules and prepare yourself for an other-worldly cinematic experience. A million thanks to the programmers for securing these. (Mohammad Rasoulof, by the way, was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran along with director Jafar Panahi on March 1 and released 17 days later).

There are a handful of other Asian films I'm looking forward to. In 2006, Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang made a big splash with Last Life in the Universe. His two follow-up films took a critical beating and never made it to our neck of the woods. Now he's made Nymph, which garnered mixed to favorable reviews, and I'm really pleased to have the chance to see it. One of the highlights of the 2005 SFIFF was a sidebar devoted to New Malaysian Cinema. One of the directors feted that year was Woo Ming-jin, and his new film called Woman on Fire Looks for Water has come our way. It's described as an "utterly gorgeous meditation on yearning and regret set amid a small fishing village." I caught Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll, a wistful social comedy about a blow-up sex doll come to life, at Palm Springs. It's an inevitable disappointment coming on the heels of the director's undisputed masterpiece Still Walking, but is well worth seeing for the lead performance by bug-eyed South Korean star Bae Doo-Na (The Host, Linda Linda Linda). There are two more Iranian films I might catch if time allows. Nader Takmil Homayoun's Tehroun is a crime thriller set in Tehran's slums, while Babak Jalali's Frontier Blues is an absurdist portrait of life along Iran's northern frontier. Anyone with a penchant for star-studded Chinese historical epics probably won't want to miss Bodygyards and Assassins and Empire of Silver.

Finally, we have some films that don't fit in any of these geographic categories. The top prize winner at last year's Venice Film Festival was Samuel Maoz' Lebanon, a film set entirely inside an Israeli tank during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. SFIFF53 also has this year's Grand Jury Prize winner from Sundance, Debra Granik's Winter's Bone. Set in a poor rural Ozark community, a 17-year-old girl must find her meth-cooking father to keep from losing the family home. Ted Kotcheff's 1971 once-considered-lost Australian exploitation shocker Wake in Fright (Outback) has been restored and revived with the hope of appalling a new generation of moviegoers. 2008's Baghead finally sold me on the talents of the directing Duplass Brothers and the festival will be screening their latest Cyrus, starring Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly. Another (truly) American indie film that's sounds promising is Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us, the story of an ex-Black Panther returning home to Philadelphia in the year of the bicentennial. Finally, it you're as freaked out about Colony Collapse Disorder as I am, you won't want to miss Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn's documentary Colony.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

TIFF09—DISCOVERY

I balance my satisfaction with the tried and true by exploring the up-and-coming auteurs in TIFF's Discovery Program. Feedback encouraged.

The Angel / Engelen (Margreth Olin, Norway/Sweden/Finland). NFI website. A young mother (played brilliantly by Maria Bonnevie) struggles with a history of drug abuse in this exquisitely rendered and deeply compassionate piece, the first fiction film from one of Norway's most respected documentary filmmakers. IMDb. YouTube trailer. World Premiere.

Applause / Applaus (Martin Pieter Zandvliet, Denmark). Official website. Paprika Steen delivers a tour-de-force performance in this devastating drama about an alcoholic actress trying to put her life back together. At Twitch, Todd Brown notes the film's acclaim at the 44th edition of the Karlov Vary International (where Applause won the non-statutory Europa Cinemas Label) and observes that—despite the film's "somewhat standard plot line"—it is fully redeemed by Paprika Steen's performance (which won her Karlov Vary's Best Actress award). He offers the Danish trailer. Dispatching to Screen Daily, Dan Fainaru concurs: "Steen has just the right kind of mature intensity needed for the part, fearlessly plunging into its darker corners and successfully invoking both sympathy but also mistrust in her audience. Though the script isn't always challenging enough for the actress, she is nonetheless Applause's main asset. …Steen gives the character all she has, making her abrasive, manipulative, fiercely egocentric, but at the same time highly vulnerable. Constantly in need of reassurance, she is terrified to deal with her age and face up to herself in the mirror or in other people's eyes." Unfortunately, Fainaru adds that Applause tends to "lag and soften" in the film's second half. IMDb. YouTube excerpt. North American Premiere.

Bare Essence of Life / Urutora mirakuru rabu sutôrî (Satoko Yokohama, Japan). In this original fusion of black comedy, surreal fantasy and feel-good drama about a mentally challenged hero, Japanese heartthrob Kenichi Matsuyama plays a strange farmer who finds an unexpected path to the miracle of love. An unheard-of romance, it is the story of the explosive, reckless love of an eccentric young farmer and a nursery teacher from Tokyo who is unable to overcome the trauma of losing her boyfriend in a car accident. Giovanna Fulvi writes in her program capsule that Bare Essence of Life is "filmed with true empathy" and that it "renders a vivid portrait of rural Japan." IMDb. International Premiere.

Beautiful Kate (Rachel Ward, Australia). Official website. In order to make peace with his combative, dying father, a writer must return to his childhood home and confront long-suppressed memories of the mysterious deaths of his brother and twin sister. Wikipedia notes: "Rachel Ward adapted the script from a 1982 novel of the same name by Newton Thornburg; this was the first novel by Thornburg used for a movie since Cutter's Way (1981)." The film was shot on location in the Flinders Ranges and premiered in June 2009 at the Sydney Film Festival, where Frank Hatherly dispatched to Screen Daily: "Actress Rachel Ward's debut feature is a handsome and intense love story, a gothic tale of buried guilt and family dysfunction set in Australia's outback. With lashings of sex played out amidst long-buried secrets, Beautiful Kate is awash with Ward's own spiky, brittle dialogue, delivered with relish by her cast." IMDb. YouTube trailer. International Premiere.

A Brand New Life / Ye Haeng Ja / Une Vie Toute Neuve (Ounie Lecomte, South Korea/ France). An impressive debut by French-Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte who, inspired by her childhood, recounts the emotional journey of a little girl abandoned by her father in an orphanage. Cannes synopsis: "Seoul, 1975. Jinhee is 9. Her father has placed her in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. The little girl has to deal with the ordeal of separation and the long wait for a new family. As the seasons pass, the departures of adopted children allow her to glimpse the dream that awaits her but shatter the friendships that she has just formed. Jinhee resists because she knows that the promise of a brand-new life will separate her for good from those she loves." Complaining that the film's imperfect DV-to-35mm transfer minimizes the film's impact, Variety's Rob Nelson nonetheless commends the film as "an admirably un-manipulative drama about the impermanence of relationships and the resilience of kids in the face of it." Nelson adds: "Excruciatingly sad at points, Lecomte's film is nonetheless possessed of a pleasingly light touch that suits her tale of a buoyant girl's survival. It proceeds at an agreeably slow pace, adhering to emotional details at every turn." At Screen Daily, Jonathan Romney writes: "A heart-tugger rather than a full-on tearjerker, A Brand New Life is a sure-footed story of a childhood abandoned, and a striking debut by Korean-born French director Ounie Lecomte." AsianMediaWiki. IMDb. North American Premiere.

Crab Trap / El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Oscar Ruiz Navia, Colombia/France). Treading a fine line between documentary and fiction, Crab Trap is a meditative look at daily life in a remote village on the Pacific coast of Colombia that explores the nuances of social and racial relations in one of the most isolated areas of the country. As Diana Sanchez writes in her program capsule: "Oscar Ruiz Navia's debut feature captures a part of Colombia rarely seen on film, the black communities of its Pacific coast. …Elegantly enhancing the distance between the locals and the foreigners, Ruiz Navia uses non-professional actors from the area to contrast with the two outsider characters, who are played by professionals. Crab Trap registers the languid pace of these remote villages while alerting us to the oncoming clash with modernity and how it is beginning to disastrously affect the lives of local peoples." As I reported earlier on The Evening Class, Crab Trap was provided completion funding by the Global Film Initiative in 2007. World Premiere.

The Day God Walked Away (aka Rwanda April 7, 1994) / Le Jour où Dieu est parti en voyage (Philippe van Leeuw, Belgium). Offering a new take on the Rwandan genocide, acclaimed cinematographer van Leeuw's directorial debut recreates the first-person experience of one woman as the horror descends. IMDb. World Premiere.

The Day Will Come / Es kommt der Tag (Susanne Schneider, Germany/France). Thirty years after giving her daughter up for adoption to join the terrorist underground in Germany, Judith is tracked down by her now adult daughter Alice to a vineyard in the Alsace where she is living with a new family and a new identity. IMDb. International Premiere.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (J Blakeson, United Kingdom). Two ex-cons kidnap a woman, but the tables turn and turn again in this tight, smart tale. This film is a terrific little thriller starring Eddie Marsan, Martin Compston and Gemma Arterton. IMDb. World Premiere.

Eamon (Margaret Corkery, Ireland). Zanita Films website. A family holiday brings to a head the destructive love triangle between Eamon, a little boy with behavioral problems, his selfish mother Grace and his sexually frustrated father Daniel. Eamon won the Independent Camera Award in the Forum of Independents section at the 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As reported at the Irish Film Board, Ivana Novotna, Festival Programmer at Karlovy-Vary commented: "Margaret Corkery is a very talented and promising Irish filmmaker and we were very happy to screen her first author debut in the competitive section Forum of Independents. In her film she managed to unfold the story of three disparate characters in an unhurried tempo with minimal essential dialogue; everything important happens under the surface or inside the protagonists. The director leaves room for the viewer to ponder their motivations. Unostentatious and impressionistic, the film's original outcome makes it worth watching to the very end." At the Karlovy-Vary website, Corkery conducts a video interview. IMDb. North American Premiere.

Every Day Is a Holiday / Chaque jour est une fête (Dima El-Horr, France/ Germany/Lebanon). From Lebanon, this is a striking debut about three women, strangers to each other and each with very different motivations, on the same bus headed for Marmal Prison to visit their imprisoned men. Mixing real politics and stark absurdity, El-Horr announces herself as a major new voice in Middle Eastern cinema. As I reported earlier on The Evening Class, Every Day Is A Holiday received completion funding from the Global Film Initiative. As reported at Limitless Cinema in Broken English, Dima El-Horr was interviewed by her friend Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the published volume FilmVirus after he saw her earlier film The Street, which he liked. TIFF capsule forthcoming. IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

Five Hours from Paris / Chamesh Shaot MeParis (Leon Prudovsky, Israel). In a suburb of Tel Aviv, an Israeli cab driver who longs to fly and a Russian music teacher who is soon to board a plane find out that romance is only a cab ride away. In her program notes, Jane Schoettle assures the film delivers a sweet, thoughtful romance "in spades." IMDb. World Premiere.

Gigante (Adrián Biniez, Uruguay/ Germany/Argentina/ The Netherlands). Security guard Jara falls in love as he supervises staff through the closed-circuit cameras at a supermarket. First voyeur, then guardian angel, he protects and pursues the cleaning woman who has unknowingly captured his heart. Hailing from the same creative ensemble that produced 25 Watts (2001), Whisky (2004), The Dog Pound (2006) and Acné (2008), Gigante is a "fresh, laugh-out-loud funny" romantic comedy that "combines sublime moments of tenderness and vulnerability with evocative reflections on dull jobs" and "reflects on the possibility of change and hope despite modern-day tedium." Winner of the Grand Jury Prize Silver Bear, Best First Feature Film, and the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 2009 Berlinale, Gigante has been picked up for distribution by Film Movement. David Hudson gathered the surprisingly lukewarm Berlinale reviews for The Daily @ IFC. At The Hollywood Reporter, however, Deborah Young claimed the film was "impeccable … [with] inherent charm." And at Undercurrent, Borislav Andjelic states: "[T]his slow paced and subtle story, which counts on audiences to fill in the gaps, [is] a warm-hearted elegy of solitude. Biniez shows a great sense of a visual style and color contrasts with the help of the camera of Arauco Hernández-Holz, and with careful framing, has created another striking image of a lonely man in a gallery of such personalities presented lately by new Latin American films." IMDb. YouTube excerpt. North American Premiere.

The Happiest Girl in the World / Cea mai fericita fata din lume (Radu Jude, Romania/The Netherlands). Cineuropa synopsis: "Eighteen-year-old Delia Fratila comes from a poor family in a small Romanian town. She has won an expensive car in a promotional competition by mailing in three labels from juice bottles. To prove that the beverage company really is handing over the prize, a video is to be shot showing Delia and the car. Delia and her parents make the long trip to Bucharest for the video shoot, but what seemed at first to be a lucky event becomes for Delia an extreme and emotionally painful situation, in which she has to rethink and question her relationships with her family." As Dimitri Eipides writes in his program capsule: "There's a big obstacle on the way to auto-fulfillment: your parents. They've taken the wheel before you even had a chance to figure out where you wanted to go. …Drawing uncomfortable parallels between real life and a not-so-unreal movie universe, The Happiest Girl in the World is a gleaming jewel in Romanian cinema's no-nonsense crown."

Dispatching to the Jigsaw Lounge from the Berlinale, Neil Young noted that—though The Happiest Girl in the World "is sensitively accurate on the family's internal dynamics, their snipings: each line pulls its weight in a notably economic script that unfolds bit by bit"—he complains that the film bogs down after about an hour and "ultimately becomes disappointingly tiresome." He concludes: "Momentum gets lost in repetition." Peter Brunette concurs at The Hollywood Reporter: "The Happiest Girl in the World works the well-worn territory of the Corneliu Porumboiu's worldwide festival hit 12:08 East of Bucharest, but much less successfully. Drenched in the de rigueur ironies of contemporary Romanian cinema, it simply isn't as funny as the earlier film and the satire isn't nearly as biting." At Film Comment, Nicolas Rapold adds: "The scenario of interminable re-shoots suggests that not every Romanian film can pull off absurdity and pathos through reiteration and real-time drama."

The project won the prestigious NHK Sundance Award in 2008, was selected for the Forum at the Berlinale 2009, and also won the FIPRESCI award at the 2009 Sofia International Film Festival. Tonci Valentic wrote that win up for Undercurrent: "One of the most touching elements in this movie rests precisely in its straightforwardness. The simple and ostensibly unexciting story about the making of a promotional video unexpectedly reveals many different layers of the post-socialist reality and its myriad of problems. For example, the family arrives in Bucharest in their old Dacia, while the trophy car, made by the same company, symbolizes the shift to a new era of affluence. Radu Jude uses the brief conversations during the recesses between the takes also as discrete and subtle commentaries on the differences between the new and the old times. The objective shots from a still camera position seem to always portray the main characters from a certain distance. Thus, construed as a neutral observer, the viewer is purposefully denied any emotional engagement even with the most intense scenes of the heated family quarrel." IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

Heliopolis / Masr el gedida (Ahmad Abdalla, Egypt). Official website. An Egyptian art film with some major stars, Heliopolis weaves together portraits from one of Cairo's most storied neighborhoods. IMDb synopsis: "The events of one day in the lives of a number of Cairo residents is a portrayal of unfulfilled dreams and frustrating details of life in the overpopulated Metropolis. Their paths cross and their stories overlap but they are caught up in their struggle and are oblivious to one another against the background of what used to be one of Cairo's most glamorous neighborhoods. The City's vanishing glory and fading history is documented through the characters strife to make it through one day in Heliopolis. The one thing they all share is the knowledge that they will probably have to confront the City again and again over the following days." Jay Weissberg dispatched to Variety from Cannes: "A labor of love for all concerned, helmer Ahmad Abdalla's Heliopolis reps a respectable debut feature that focuses a sharp critique of Egyptian society matched by a nostalgia-drenched longing for life before the 1952 Revolution. Far more influenced by the Euro arthouse reflections of Yousry Nasrallah than the meller styling of popular Egyptian pics, Abdalla adheres to his roots as a film editor with nice montages and a generally skillful handling of the story's choral nature, affectingly exposing the malaise of Cairo's middle class." Weissberg concludes: "While most perfs are solid—special nods go to Yousef, Soliman and Abol Naga—thesping styles aren't unified. Likewise, sections are not without a certain clumsiness, and though Abdalla's editing background comes to the fore, he occasionally cuts off shots sooner than warranted; the final scene however is especially strong. He's also good at capturing the physical sense of Heliopolis, with its turn-of-the-century splendor just about holding out against recent shoddy architecture." IMDb. YouTube teaser. World Premiere.

Kelin (Ermek Tursunov, Kazakhstan). A love story among the ragged steppes of ancient Kazakhstan is told in beautiful and poetic images, as a young love struggles to survive in the face of uncontrollable external factors. A woman is led by her family to her new husband's home, to live with, presumably, his elderly mother and younger brother. Despite being forced into the marriage, she discovers that he is not such a bad catch after all but domestic bliss does not last long. IMDb. North American Premiere.

Last Ride (Glendyn Ivin, Australia). Official website. A desperate father and his 10-year-old son flee into the wilderness of the desert and the human heart in an effort to avoid the law, battling the elements, the past and each other. In 2003, Glendyn Ivin's first short film Cracker Bag took home the Palme d'Or from Cannes. According to Matt Riviera at Last Night With Riviera, Last Ride confirms Ivin's promise and establishes Ivin as a talent to watch. At Screen Daily, Frank Hatherly writes: "A gritty father-son road movie, Last Ride goes down some of the bumpiest, least-traveled roads in Australia. With Hugo Weaving on top form as the aggressive, unpredictable father, and impressive 10-year old newcomer Tom Russell as his at-risk son, Last Ride delivers considerable dramatic tension amidst some amazing locations. …Mining an Australian mythology of nomadic masculinity, exemplified by such classics as The Sundowners and The Shiralee, Last Ride depends greatly on the powder-keg force of Weaving's mean, troubled Kev, and the actor delivers." IMDb. International Premiere.

Mall Girls / Galerianki (Katarzyna Roslaniec, Poland). When a 14-year-old girl arrives at a new high school, she is typecast as an outsider from the sticks. Survival means working things out with a clique of girls who troll the local malls and score the latest in consumer toys and clothes by trading sexual favors for cash with the men they find there. This appears to be a fleshed-out version of her earlier short of the same title, which won both a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Polish Film Festival and a Special Mention at the 2008 Aubagne International Film Festival. IMDb. International Premiere.

The Man Beyond the Bridge / Paltadacho Munis (Laxmikant Shetgaonkar, India). A lonely man finds a companion in a mad woman in a dense forest in the Western Ghats of India. When she becomes pregnant, a conflict arises between a society that refuses to take responsibility for one of its members and one man's endeavor to integrate her in his life. World Premiere.

My Dog Tulip (Paul Fierlinger and Sandra Fierlinger, USA). Official website. Christopher Plummer and Isabella Rossellini voice this vividly animated, touching tale of friendship between an elderly bachelor and his German Shepherd. As Colin Geddes writes in his program capsule, My Dog Tulip is based on J.R. Ackerley's celebrated 1956 novel and is "at once a portrait of the dog lover and a provocative meditation on the wonders of nature" and "a playful and moving ode to man's best friend." The film premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival earlier this year. The Fierlingers have created the first animated feature to be entirely hand drawn and painted using a paperless computer technology TVPaint, at whose website Asaf Agranat interviews Paul Fierlinger. Wikipedia. IMDb. North American Premiere.

My Tehran for Sale (Granaz Moussavi, Australia/Iran). Shot underground on location in Tehran, the film tells the story of modern-day Iranian youth struggling for cultural freedom. Marzieh is a young female actress living in Tehran. The authorities ban her theatre work and—like all young people in Iran—she is forced to lead a secret life in order to express herself artistically. At an underground rave, she meets Iranian born Saman, now an Australian citizen, who offers her a way out of her country and the possibility of living without fear. IMDb. International Premiere.

Nora (Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, USA/United Kingdom/ Mozambique). Official website. Zimbabwean dancer Nora Chipaumire stars in this beautiful and rigorously choreographed fable based on her own life and shot on location in Southern Africa. Winner of multiple awards, including the Eileen Maitland Award from the 2009 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the 2009 Black Maria Film and Video Festival, the Prize for Creativity at the 2009 Montréal International Festival of Films on Art, the Jury Award and Special Prize at the 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival and an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Nora will be screened with Saint Louis Blues. IMDb. Toronto Premiere.

Northless / Norteado (Rigoberto Perezcano, Mexico/Spain). Andrés reaches the Mexican border to cross into the United States. As he waits between crossing attempts, he discovers the complicated border world of Tijuana. As he waits there, Andres is not only confronted with his feelings and what he left behind, but also with those he meets. IMDb. World Premiere.

La Pivellina / The Little One (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, Austria/Italy). A small abandoned girl is sheltered by a circus woman in this tale of courage, loss and togetherness. La Pivellina won the Label Europa Cinemas Award at Cannes. Boyd van Hoeij reviews the film for Variety; Lee Marshall for Screen Daily. IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

Samson & Delilah (Warwick Thornton, Australia). Official website. Teenagers Samson and Delilah live in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert. Their outsider status draws them closer together and they come to depend on each other when tragedy strikes. Samson & Delilah won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, associated with the film through its Investment Fund. Des Partridge wrote up the film's hometown premiere in Alice Springs, Australia for The Courier Mail. After its screening to a standing ovation in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and a warm reception by international critics, Thornton won the Camera d'Or for Best First Feature. An emotional Warwick was on hand at the ceremony to collect the award from French actress Isabelle Adjani. The President of the Camera D'Or Jury, Roshdy Zem, said, "...probably the best love story that we have seen in many years. An immensely memorable film." In late June, Warwick won the Blue Angel Award for Best Director in the Feature Competition at the 17th Art Film Fest Trenčianske Teplice–Trenčín. S&D's production designer, Daran Fulham, accepted the award in Bratislava while Warwick was busy filming in Arnhem Land's Maningrida at the top of Australia. The film's official website has been gathering reviews and offers several "behind the scenes" YouTube videos, as well as the pressbook in PDF format. The soundtrack is available at ABC. Wikipedia. IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

Shirley Adams (Oliver Hermanus, South Africa/USA). Official website. This intimate, precise portrait focuses on a mother in Cape Town, South Africa, whose son is disabled in a neighborhood shooting. Dispatching to The Hollywood Reporter from the Locarno Film Festival, Ray Bennett opines that veteran South African actress Denise Newman's extraordinary performance "will set the bar for best actress awards this year." Bennett adds that—though deliberate—Shirley Adams is neither slow, melancholy nor depressing, but rather "a penetrating study in fortitude and optimism in the face of desperate odds." IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

Should I Really Do It? / Bunu gerçekten yapmali miyim? (Ismail Necmi, Turkey). Official website. The concepts of real life and fiction, documentary and drama, are explored in this real-life feature which follows the unbelievable life of Petra, a German woman living in Turkey. IMDb. YouTube trailer. North American Premiere.

La Soga (Josh Crook, Dominican Republic/USA). Official website. This gritty and gripping drama explores political intrigue, love, death and the power of memory, set in the Dominican Republic. Wikipedia. IMDb. YouTube trailer. World Premiere.

Saint Louis Blues / Un Transport en commun (Dyana Gaye, France/Senegal). In this sparkling and surprising Senegalese musical, Dyana Gaye turns a shared taxi ride from Dakar to Saint Louis into a confection that could have been made by Jacques Demy. (This film will be screened with Nora.) IMDb. North American Premiere.

Toad's Oil / Gama no Abura (Koji Yakusho, Japan). Official site (Japanese). The story of Takuro Yazawa, a day-trader who claims he can earn hundreds of millions of yen in one day, and those around him as they attempt to cope with the death of his son and somehow find a way to benefit spiritually from the experience. Giovanna Fulvi describes Koji Yakusho's "original and fascinating debut" as "an affectionate portrait of ordinary lives during difficult times" with "a contemporary fantastical aspect and novel visual appeal that mark the solid beginning of a new career path for Yakusho." At Twitch, Todd Brown writes: "The simple fact that Gama No Abura is the directorial debut of Japanese leading man Koji Yakusho—westerners know him from Babel, Japanophiles from most of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films and a slew of others—would be enough to generate a whole lot of notice. That it actually looks really damn good doesn't hurt, either." Mark Schilling talks to Koji Yakusho for The Japan Times. IMDb. YouTube trailer. International Premiere.

Together / Sammen (Matias Armand Jordal, Norway). The tragic death of a mother causes her family to shatter when they struggle to cope with the loss. In his program notes, Dimitri Eipedes characterizes the film as a "tumultuous tragicomic adventure" that explores what happens when people are torn apart. Wikipedia. IMDb. YouTube trailer. International Premiere.

The Unloved (Samantha Morton, United Kingdom). Official website. Morton shifts from actor to director in this stark portrait of a young British girl plucked from an abusive family and thrown into the hands of government care. The Unloved was produced for Channel 4 and shown in May 2009 as part of its "Britain's Forgotten Children" series. It provides a child's eye view of the U.K.'s government-run care system for orphans and children in danger. Wikipedia. IMDb. International Premiere.