The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Gro Swantje Kohlhof in “Sleep.” credit: Junafilm
So, there’s a nice, small modern-ish hotel in Stainbach, Germany, a forest area south, near Austria, the Sonnenhügel. It’s owned by a lovely older couple, Otto (August Schmölzer) and Lore (Marion Kracht). The thing is, it’s haunted; in fact, so haunted that it haunts flight attendant Marlene’s dreams and sense of sanity after having only looked at a picture of the front of the hotel in an advertisement in the airline’s in-flight magazine. So haunted that, in fact, the three founders of the hotel (built in 1975) all committed suicide there not long after its opening. Marlene (Sandra Hüller) tells her daughter she has a long round-trip in Istanbul, but she really goes to the Sonnenhügel to solve herterrifying nightmares problem. Bad things happen. The hospital calls Marlene’s daughter Mona (the impressive Gro Swantje Kohlhof) in Hamburg; she comes to stay at the same hotel while doing what she can for Mom, starts inquiries to discover WTF, and some even worse things happen to her.
Michael Venus seems to have started his film career roughly twelve years ago with a series of short films, then took a period of time, and now presents his first feature film, Sleep (Schlaf) (Germany, 2020). It’s a very good film, scary as hell without resorting to the kind of freely-spattered gore typical of the genre. The past is returning to take revenge on its generational heirs, while a vaguely fascist strongman does his best to eradicate the past and create a different future. Superstition and scandal weave their way through the local culture, in its small businesses, through its close-knit neighbors, and even in its choral concerts and children’s’ songs. Mona has a lot to sort through before starting to grasp the threads of the generational horrors here, venturing even further than her mother was able to. As inventive as a great deal of it is, however, Venus and his co-writer, Thomas Friedrich, start to overload and overthink many of those ideas – spontaneous orgies here, spontaneous combustion there – and the end becomes somewhat of a mish-mash. It’s too bad – ideally Venus will see his structural and narrative flubs in the doing of this first film and really nail it further down the line. He’s not far. Technically, the film’s really impressive. Problematic, but an admirable and undeniably entertaining spookhouse, especially good for an October weekend’s night.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director Michael Venus is available to watch here.
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Luigi Lo Cascio, Alba Rohrwacher, Giulia De Luca and Joshua Cerciello in “The Ties.” credit: Gianni Fiorito / mk2films.com
Daniele Luchetti is a steadily-working, well-respected director in Italy and Europe, but, beside the occasional U.S. film festival, his films get little if any distribution over here. His latest, The Ties (Lacci) (Italy, 2020) is a grueling but righteous examination of one marriage over a twenty-five-or-thirty-year period. It’s been adapted for the screen from Domenico Starnone’s novel of the same name (the novel’s English translation is by Jhumpa Lahiri, by the way) by Starnone, Luchetti and Francesco Piccolo, and there’s a specific edginess, a sense of moment-to-moment urgency and risk, in the overall narrative that strikes an unusually specific and unique tone for what might otherwise be a potentially formulaic portrait of a warts-and-all marriage and family, and the damage the people within it can inflict on each other.
Aldo (Luigi Lo Cascio) is a PBS-style radio commentator in Naples (mostly doing literary content – book reviews, interviews, etc.) with a lovely family – wife Vanda (Alba Rohrwacher), their daughter Anna (Giulia De Luca at 8, and Sveva Esposito at 11) and son Sandro (Joshua Francesco Louis Cerciello at 6 and Giovannino Esposito at 9). A few minutes into the film we witness Aldo confessing to Vanda that he’s slept with another woman. She asks a reasonable question – if you don’t love her, and you’re not leaving me, then why the hell did you tell me that?! What do I do with that?! As things move on, we see these two in progressively uncharitable perspective – Aldo’s not being exactly forthright about where he and the other woman really are, and Vanda’s reactions to Aldo’s slow-motion dereliction puts herself and the kids in real peril. The more extreme Vanda becomes, the further Aldo disengages, and we have real difficulty deciding whether these are even likable people. But their behaviors ring so true, and the emotions are so genuinely rough-edged, that we can’t help but keep watching and listening.
Later episodes of the same story present Aldo (Silvio Orlando) and Vanda (Laura Morante), still together, roughly 25 years later, living in modest but well-managed retirement. The kids are grown, and the years have taken off some edge, but their younger dynamic, their specific emotional wavelength, is still in play, passively and aggressively. These episodes are interspersed within the younger timeline, especially dealing with Aldo’s, yes, it turned out, adulterous ongoing relationship with Lidia (Linda Caridi). Why these two people end up with each other again, and where their two grown kids end up (they’re now portrayed by Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Adriano Giannini) may not necessarily evince acceptable, or even credible, present circumstances, but the subsequent results are honestly arrived at.
There’s a lot to like here; the fact that Luchetti actually found this unique tone and maintained it throughout is impressive, and any adaptation of a novel will inevitably involve some condensing. But the narrative feels like a series of stops at the story’s major landmarks, rather than a genuinely smooth accumulation of events, experiences and naturally shifting personalities. It’s shot in a series of informative, and admittedly moving, chunks, with the real work of the storytelling, I suspect, being left to the editing. There’s an internal cohesion missing from the narrative that has nothing to do with the otherwise well-done flashback-to-present-to-flashback structure. The technical aspects of the film are excellent; Ivan Casalgrandi’s photography looks great, and the artistic direction from Andrea Castorina is seamlessly complementary to the narrative. I only wish the screenplay had been as well-structured as the rest of the production. I found it to be a problematic but worthwhile film that’s still well worth seeing. Ambitious, unheralded veterans like Daniele Luchetti should be supported, if not rewarded, for work on this high order.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director Daniele Luchettiis available to watch here.
Antonio Pitanga in “Memory House.” credit: chicagoreader.com
Cristovam (Antonio Pitanga) is an indigenous black Brazilian who has been working as a laborer for the Austria-based Kainz Dairy for quite a few years, mostly in his small village of Goiás, but recently relocated to a sprawling modernized factory in Brazil’s rural south in a town primarily inhabited by Austrian émigrés. He lives in a small shack that he’s apparently squatted, and his neighbors are crude rednecks who recognize him as a northerner, insult and harass him, violate his home, and even allow their teenaged kids to do him a bit of violence. But Cristovam retains vestiges of his traditional northern culture, as physical objects and memories, and, slowly and mysteriously, other objects, animals, images and shamanistic visions slowly infiltrate Cristovam’s home and mind.
Memory House (Casa De Antiguidades) (Brazil, 2020), the debut feature film from João Paulo Miranda Maria, starts out bleak and gets progressively bleaker. But it’s a dark and involving surrealist fable you just can’t take your eyes off of. Like the films of Pedro Costa, much of what transpires is shaped by the specter of colonialism and racism, and the brutally imposed isolation of transplanted people from different, and to them familiar, cultures. But Miranda Maria clearly has his own perspectives and priorities. He’s assisted admirably by the talented cinematographer Benjamín Echazarreta, and some astonishingly evocative sound design from Léo Bortolin. It’s as visually sophisticated a film as I’ve seen here, and a compellingly associative “show me, don’t tell me” gem. It’s a rigorous but rewarding experience you won’t soon forget, and I highly recommend it.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director João Paulo Miranda Maria is available to watch here.
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Katja Herbers in “The Columnist.” credit: Aleid van der Heiden
The Columnist (De Kuthoer) (Netherlands, 2019) was a major disappointment for me. Ivo van Aart seems to have paid some dues with shorts, documentaries and some consistent television work; this would be his first full-length feature. The film follows online columnist Femke Boot (the very good Katja Herbers, going above and beyond her call of duty here), whose work is earnest, day-in-the-life musings, but hardly button-pushing polemic. Yet she nonetheless draws a small audience of comment-section trollers who spare themselves no shame in insulting her, degrading her, threatening her and her teenaged daughter Anna (Claire Porro) and even accusing her of pedophilia. Femke herself is trying to make the jump from columnist to novelist, and her publisher is pushing her brand with TV appearances, including one with well-known goth horror writer Steven Dood (the Dutch word for ‘death’). On the show, Dood (Bram van der Kelen) is a contentious black-clad mascara-wearing provocateur, but off camera he turns out to be a lovable sweetheart named Erik Flenderman, just working his own brand, who advises Femke to never read the comments section. Ever.
But as Femke does battle with willing her novel into existence, she can’t get her mind off of the haterz who keep dogging her online posts with hateful invective. When she discovers that one of her most prominent commenters has just moved next door to her, the hatred she’s been masochistically absorbing leads to a decidedly un-equal opposite reaction; she kills him, then escalates to become a serial killer, “souvenirs” and all, on the hunt for each and every “loser with a laptop” she can track down and kill.
I didn’t suspend disbelief for a single word of it. Van Aart and writer Daan Windhorst string together a series of maliciously shallow episodes that have little narrative foundation or dynamic; they have a cool idea that’s darkly funny to follow for the latter two-thirds of the film, but nothing in the early going creates honest motivation for what ensues. Katja Herbers gives it her best, but Windhorst doesn’t give her much to go on. When the killing starts, it’s not fierce or clever enough to be taken seriously, nor is it instructively funny enough to get us on her side, and stuff like this only works if you have both. Her victims are almost exclusively white men, but the seemingly notable exception isn’t even acknowledged. “Why can’t we just have different opinions and be nice about it?” Femke asks a potential victim at whom she’s levelled a shotgun. But there’s no irony here, no satiric distance, and little if any has been structured into the story. Nothing elevates Femke above the same virulently reactionary stupidity to which her victims acquiesce. This film wants you hate what it hates while cheering on genuinely hateful responses to what you’ve now both agreed to hate. It doesn’t want you to be challenged, surprised or amused. It just wants you to be complicit. That’s not funny.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director Ivo van Aart is available to watch here.
Natasa Stork in “Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time.” credit: chicagofilmfestival.com
As agreeably intriguing a film as I’ve seen in some time, Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time (Felkészülés Meghatározatlan Ideig Tartó Együttlétre) (Hungary, 2020) is Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát’s second feature film.
A Budapest native, Dr. Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork, in a performance of admirable stillness and precision) is a superb neurological surgeon working in New Jersey. She’s at the top of her field, but it’s left the rest of her life wanting. When she meets the handsome and engaging fellow Hungarian Dr. János Drexler (Viktor Bodó) at a medical conference, a plan is devised for them to meet in Budapest one month later to the day. Márta, taking a huge leap of faith, arrives at Budapest’s Liberty Bridge at the designated time, but János is a no-show. When Márta finally catches up to him through no small effort, he declares that they’ve never met and he doesn’t know her. Despite her profound disappointment, she, nonetheless, stays.
Márta is now a surgeon at the same hospital as János, but, even though her skills are evident, she’s still the new arrival in a department full of older male doctors. Case by case, she builds confidence and camaraderie, including some attention from the med-student-son of one of her patients. The film becomes a blend of her initial hopes (stood-up, or did she invent the whole scenario?), her new home and everyday life (despite his denial, János starts to ingratiate himself with his new colleague) and what new and strange shapes her new life may take. There’s a very gauzy, almost noirish atmosphere to the narrative, almost like the earlier metaphysical travelogues of Marcelo Gomes (I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You, 2009) or José Luis Guerín (In the City of Sylvia from 2007), where the pragmatic reasons to travel to a destination become secondary, or even immaterial, to the memories, experiences and expectations that the traveler has brought with them into the new environment, and how they shape the traveler’s present state-of-mind. Horvát chooses to explain much of her mystery near the conclusion, and I was disappointed she felt the need to do that. But it’s in no way a dealbreaker.
Horvát’s marvelously atmospheric mise-en-scène is aided immensely by the fine work of cinematographer Róbert Maly, as grainy, shadowy nightime exteriors or magazine-crisp facial close-ups or everything in-between; it’s masterful stuff. And Gábor Keresztes is equally informative in its way, richly evocative without being showy or intrusive. (The slightly-out-of-tune prepared piano snippets are genius.) This may be my favorite film of the fest.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director Lili Horvát is available to watch here.
Sarah Spale and Lia Wagner in “Of Fish And Men.” credit: Dschoint Ventschr
The spirit of hard-boiled American author Jim Thompson is apparently alive and well in Northern Switzerland if writer / director Stefanie Klemm has anything to say about it. Her first feature, Of Fish And Men (Von Fischen Und Menschen) (Switzerland, 2020), presents us with a rural working-class mother and daughter who are blamelessly violated by the thoughtless evil that surreptitiously flows under our day-to-day lives. Judith (Sarah Spale) has been working at her family’s rural fish farm for years. Divorced, she’s raising her 6-year-old daughter Milla (Lia Wagner) on her own. When the determined and hard-working ex-con Gabriel (Matthias Britschgi) arrives to help out while he’s on probation on drug charges, there’s a chance it could be good for both of them. But when Gabriel’s lower-than-low-life brother David (Julian Koechlin) arrives, uninvited, he leads Gabriel back down the heedless criminal rabbit-hole and headlong into tragedy.
There are some remarkably obvious things Gabriel could do to make things right, but his self-loathing prevents it. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool screw-up, and it’s now far more the fabric of his identity than any kind of conscious choice he can change. Judith is devastated, but not so much that she won’t commence her own vengeful inquiries when the feckless local police provide no help. We eventually encounter her ex-husband and his new family, and Judith’s sister Sophie (Sarah Hostettler), who do their best to lend support, but their lives clearly have little in common with Judith’s.
To say much more about the narrative would spoil some well-earned twists, but the resolution of the film is impressive – Are Judith and Gabriel resigning themselves to the darkness, or is there some kind of forgiveness and redemption possible here? Klemm leaves things open, having given you everything you should know to decide for yourself. Her good work brought to mind the similarly complex narratives of Erick Zonca or Jacques Audiard. Kacper Czubak’s handheld camera work is very well done, smartly forwarding the narrative unobtrusively, while Marcel Vaid’s musical accompaniments are equally tasteful. Fill out your viewing list by giving this very good film a shot.
The recorded Livestream Q&A with director Stefanie Klemm and producer Sereina Gabathuler is available to watch here.
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
“Dear Comrades!” credit: Sasha Gusov/AP
The 83-year-old Russian director Andrey Konchalovsky is still creating films of a very high order. His most recent film, Dear Comrades! (Dorogie Tovarishchi!) (Russia, 2020) follows Lyuda Syomina (Yuliya Vysotskaya, the director’s wife, excellent here), a loyal Communist official, a member of her local Regional Committee and an avid acolyte of the hard-nosed Lenin / Stalin model of Communism. But even she, discreetly, senses the erosion of those presumed high standards in Soviet governance. Forthright and resourceful, she keeps her ear to the ground and fosters her informational resources diligently, occasionally even sleeping with them. As the primary breadwinner for herself, her daughter and father, she works her longtime friends and acquaintances to reasonable advantage when it comes to the basics of food, clothing, grooming, etc., and graciously returns the favors. Even among local friends and neighbors, any time a government creates restrictions or prohibitions, smaller black markets are created to counterbalance them.
The Central Party has recently declared (it’s 1962, by the way) that the prices of general goods will be raised, which also coincides with the announcement of wage reductions at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant. A labor strike is declared there, much to the surprise and indignance of government officials from Lyuda’s local cohorts to Nikita Khrushchev and his inner circle. But, despite thousands of protesting workers entering the city, Lyuda, even then, is confident that the government will handle the uprising… until the gunfire starts and bloody bodies start dropping; then she realizes that her daughter Svetka is in the middle of it all. After the uprising is quelled, Svetka is still missing. Lyuda undertakes her own fevered search for her daughter, even as Party officials, the military and the KGB start erasing evidence that any such event even occurred.
This event, the Novocherkassk massacre, actually did occur, but Khrushchev’s party successfully covered it up until the 1990s. Konchalovsky’s screenplay, written with his frequent collaborator Elena Kiseleva, is a masterful dissection of how totalitarianism degrades common humanity, and how difficult that humanity is to regain once lost. There’s dark humor as we watch competing party dignitaries scrambling to present themselves as strongmen while simultaneously protecting themselves from any real consequence. But Konchalovsky never winks or diminishes the seriousness of the overall narrative. Lyuda, our protagonist, is a marvelous character, even if, like many of our own wrong-headed politicians, her overarching convictions must “evolve” once those aforementioned consequences hit home, literally. It’s also a beautifully looking movie, shot in the square ‘Academy’ 4:3 aspect ratio by Andrey Naydenov. This excellent film joins the others I’ve seen so far as highly, highly recommended.
The recordedLivestream Q&A with director Andrei Konchalovskyis available to watch here.
Hiam Abbass and Salim Daw in “Gaza Mon Amor.” credit: es.unifrance.org
The Middle East has no shortage of repressive hotspots, and it’s only natural for filmmakers to create tense thrillers or tragic dramas out of these circumstances. So, it’s a pleasant surprise that the Nasser Brothers, Arab and Tarzan, have fashioned a somewhat old-fashioned romantic comedy within this environment. Playfully referring to the great Alain Resnais film of fatalistic romance overshadowed by tragedy, Gaza Mon Amour (Palestine, 2020) introduces us to Issa (Salim Daw), a 60-year-old modestly-living fisherman whose living is as threadbare as everyone else’s on the Gaza Strip under Hamas rule. Nonetheless, Issa decides to improve his own personal life by taking a wife. He has long admired Siham (the wonderful Hiam Abbass), and starts a tentative courtship with her. Siham works in a retail women’s clothing store and does a fair amount of tailoring, helped by her divorced daughter Leila (Maisa Abd Elhadi). Neither Issa nor Siham are what others might think of as marketable prospects, but one night, while dragging his fishing nets within the three miles he’s allowed into the Mediterranean, he pulls up a bronze statue of Apollo – a notably erotic bronze statue of Apollo. It’s no doubt an historical treasure, but Issa’s only interest in it seems to be as a good omen for his own romantic aspirations. But Hamas military officials get wind of Issa’s find, and predictably complicate things.
There are rarely laugh-out-loud elements in the story, but the Nasser Brothers are very good at presenting the gentle philosophical humor that peeks out from under the hard shells their characters have understandably developed, and there’s a well-earned happy ending. It’s an extraordinarily likable film, and recommended.
Livestream Q & A with directors Tarzan & Arab Nasseron Thursday, October 22st at 4:00 pm.
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Ivan Trojan and Juraj Loj in “Charlatan.” credit: marlenefilmproduction
Agnieszka Holland is a solid veteran filmmaker who is happy to work across many genres. Born in Poland, she did her film studies in Prague. She’s probably best known for her early 90s films Europa Europa (1990) and Olivier Olivier (1992), and her 1993 version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. She’s also a television veteran as well, having directed episodes of The Wire, The Killing, Treme and the highly praised Czech-language Burning Bush (2013).
Our film today, Charlatan (Šarlatán) (Czech Republic, 2020) is a fictionalized biography of Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan), a renowned horticulturalist and healer who drew throngs of afflicted people to his rural clinic for therapeutic counsel outside of conventional medical practitioners. He has learned an exacting and effective diagnostic technique; the visual examination of urine samples to identify various pathologies, their likely origin location in the body, and which herbs and physical treatments are called for to heal the affliction. He diligently learned this from his mentor, Mülbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), a terse but gracious woman who drew the same long lines of patients before him but rarely took payment. Mikolášek isn’t as altruistic as she was, but Holland and Czech writer Marek Epstein insist he’s no swindler, either. Holland gives us a portrait of a genuinely committed healer who never wants to do anything else with his time or life. Making no distinctions between rich or poor, or Nazi, or Communist or labor unionist, Mikolášek treated all comers, somewhat humorlessly but devotedly, starting from treating his own sister’s gangrenous leg in the 1930s to having his career cut short in 1957 with the death of another loyal patient, Czech president Antonín Zápotocký. Without his patronage, other ambitious Communist officials decide Mikolášek is too independently admired by too many people to be of any constructive use towards the party’s own narrow goals, and he’s arrested.
Mikolášek has a devoted assistant, František Palko (Juraj Loj) who eventually becomes his lover as well. (The script from Czech writer Marek Epstein is very good, clearly well-researched, but there’s a fair amount of fictional speculation here as well; Mikolášek’s marriage was not a happy one, and Palko, also married, lived at the clinic for years.) The trauma of his early military experiences figures into his demeanor as well. He’s supremely confident in his own abilities, bristles at any potential criticism, and can be cruelly dismissive in his dealings with both patients and authority. The film throws a lot of sometimes incongruent information at you; the narrative hews convincingly loyal to its fascinating protagonist, but leaves space for you to draw different conclusions. A very good film by a smart, artful and honest pro; not a great one, but well worth seeing.
Mohammad Valizadegan and Mahtab Servati in “There Is No Evil.” credit: taxidrivers.it
The very talented Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof continues to contend with issues of potential incarceration in his homeland. In 2010, he was imprisoned for a year after having been sentenced to six. (This was ostensibly for shooting film without a permit,) In 2017, they confiscated his passport, making travel impossible. In 2019, his 2017 film, A Man Of Integrity, was found to evince “participation in social and political activity,” and he was charged with “gathering and collusion against national security and of propaganda against the system”. This charge was under appeal until March of this year, when he was, again, sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, and a two-year ban on any filmmaking activity. He has filed another appeal, and refuses to hand himself over for incarceration due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During all of that, he still managed to create There Is No Evil (Sheytan Vojud Nadarad) (Iran, 2020), which won Best Film (the Golden Bear) at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. There’s an instructive interview with Rasoulof here.
While he certainly doesn’t promote or condone executions in Iran, There Is No Evil doesn’t directly address the issue of capital punishment so much as it addresses how unchecked authority renders its own citizenry complicit in immoral decisions the authorities themselves have made. Rasoulof tells us four stories in his film; in “There Is No Evil,” Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) is an even-tempered nice guy, a good husband, father and son, spending his non-working time devoted to caring and providing for his loved ones. The occupation that allows him to do this in relative middle-class comfort…? The second story, “She Said, You Can Do It”, follows a soldier named Pouya (Kaveh Ahangar), who has been conscripted into his mandatory two-year military service, as are all young Iranian men – failing to complete this service generally means no passport is issued, jobs are difficult to land, and a host of other disadvantages. But, typically, some conscripted soldiers also carry out penal executions, and Pouya, in line to do just that, is desperate to avoid having this shameful act on his conscious. “The Birthday,” involves Javad (Mohammad Valizadegan), who has earned a three-day pass from his military service to visit his love, Nana (Mahtab Servati) and her family to celebrate Nana’s birthday. But the celebration is overshadowed by another tragedy that has befallen the family, one that has unexpected consequences for Javad as well. And in the final episode, “Kiss Me,” we meet a family – Bahram (Mohammad Seddighimehr), his wife Zaman (Jila Shahi) and their daughter Darya (Baran Rasoulof) – for whom a past decision, concealing a shameful truth, has traumatic repercussions twenty years later.
Rasoulof’s film, despite the seriousness of the subject matter, isn’t particularly dour or defeatist, but he doesn’t shy away from strong medicine, either. He’s most interested in the general goodness and common-sense morality that most people conduct their lives with. It’s only the faceless institutions that govern the shapes of our lives that narrow our options in the world, and often create intractable necessities that train us to act contrary to our better natures. This is the overriding motivation for most of Rasoulof’s recent films, and it’s sadly understandable that Iran’s ruling religious regime doesn’t like that idea being reinforced. Do what you can to support Mohammed Rasoulof’s work – he’s a terrific filmmaker who richly deserves it, and, as a bonus, the films themselves, including this one, are excellent.
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Mala Emde in “And Tomorrow The World.” Credit: Oliver Wolff
Julia von Heinz has been making films for theatrical feature and television over the last seventeen years in Germany. Her latest film, And Tomorrow the Entire World (Und Morgen Die Ganze Welt) (Germany, 2020) is an especially convincing display of her film expertise, writerly skills and heartfelt political smarts. It’s the fictional chronicle of a small progressively-minded commune in Mannheim, Germany, from the perspective of a new member, Luisa (Mala Emde), a first-year law student brought into the group by one of her best school chums, Batte (Luisa-Céline Gaffron). The collective provides a lot of practical community services, but their primary function is to combat the rise of fascist neo-Nazi racism and violence by confronting it in public. Within the group is an ongoing struggle between keeping things non-violent (signs and banners, shouting speakers down and the occasional pie-in-the-face) and/or meeting, and if need be, escalating, the violence their efforts are continually met with from both the right wing and law enforcement. Most of the commune are in the former camp, but the charismatic Alfa (Noah Saavedra) starts his own surreptitious protest projects with the reliable Lenor (Tonio Schneider) and the newly-inspired and starry-eyed Luisa, vandalizing cars and property as well as engaging in out-and-out fights and violence. They get moral support from an erstwhile anarchist/bomber, Dietmar (Andreas Lust), who has “gone straight” but still helps out on the side. “Don’t get me wrong, but beating up Nazis is just scratching the surface,” he intones, lamenting the overall dilemma and his own resignation to it. And, as their ambitions escalate, so too do the oppositions’. Discovering the resurgence of a long-underground fascist leader, their investigations lead to a cache of munitions safeguarded by a cadre of the hardest of the hardcore militants.
Luisa comes from a privileged background; it can be argued that these are indulgences she can afford, which isn’t the case for working-class Lenor, or the very few other members of color. And Alfa, he of the most passionate furies on display, may be the biggest opportunist of all of them. von Heinz is clear-minded about exploring the inherent contradictions here, but her criticisms of a timid, seemingly even-handed media, and how government institutions enable the worst tendencies of their own constituencies, are skillfully and convincingly woven into the narrative. The film looks great, well-shot by Daniela Knapp across a daunting variety of environments and conditions, it’s got a nicely-varied dynamic in both editing and performances, and von Heinz’ script (written with John Quester) is smart and sharp. I highly recommend this film.
Livestream Q & A with director Julia von Heinz on Sunday, October 18th at 2:00 pm.
Tanya Zabarylo in “Becoming Mona.” credit: Nelleke Driessen
As explained in the press notes, the original Dutch title of Becoming Mona (Netherlands, 2020), Kom Hier Dat Ik U Kus (Come Here That I Kiss You), expresses a secretly loaded sentiment: “I’m not coming to you, but if you come to me you can get a kiss.” It’s old-school family, and, as such, lovingly but extraordinarily manipulative. Young, smart, empathetic Mona (portrayed by Olivia Landuyt as a child, and a terrific Tanya Zabarylo as the adult Mona) learns to defer her own needs and feelings at an early age (compounded by the death of her mother) to shore up the deficiencies of her beloved father Vincent (Tom Vermeir), her stepmother Marie (a superbly unsettling Wine Dierickx), and, later, friends, lovers and artistic collaborators, in order to keep her various families together. But everyone she befriends, everyone she works with – even her theatrical mentor Marcus (Stefan Perceval), for whom she makes her living as a playwright, and her lover Louis (Valentijn Dhaenens), a successful novelist she ardently loves and admires – all manage to suck the oxygen out of her life.
But this is most certainly not the history of a doormat. Rather, it’s an exemplary portrayal of how white Western nuclear-family privilege heedlessly coarsens the very emotional and institutional ties it aspires to uphold. There’s a bit of Robert Bresson in this admirable collaboration between writer / directors Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Niels van Koevorden (who is the film’s artful cinematographer as well), but Mona ultimately emerges as a compelling survivor here, striking out into her own new unknown at long last. It’s based on the Dutch novel Mona In Three Acts by Griet op de Beeck, but I suspect Bakker and van Koevorden have done the material justice. It’s a rigorous film, make no mistake, but the committed writing, direction, visual chops and excellent performances recommend it, as do I.
Livestream Q & A with directors Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Niels van Koevordenon Wednesday, October 21st at 4:00 pm.
Aris Servetalis in “Apples.” credit: Alpha Violet
Apples (Mila) (Greece, 2020) is the feature film debut of Greek director Christos Nikou, a consistently busy AD now coming into his own as a filmmaker and bringing along an impressive script co-written with Stavros Raptis. It’s founded on a great idea: like other viral pandemics, the present-day Greece of our film here is going through a mysterious increase of cases of amnesia. People instantly forget the cars they’ve abandoned in the street, or which songs or figures are associated with Christmas; enormous amounts of individual memory, history, associations and experience seem to have vaporized. The film follows Aris (Aris Servetalis from 2018’s The Waiter), who has gotten on a bus with no idea of where he’s going, who he is, or why he might even choose to get off at some point. Luckily, there are relief programs established – the bus driver calls the hospital, they come and pick him up, and he’s enrolled in the ‘New Identity’ program at that hospital with other amnesiacs who haven’t been claimed by searching families. The doctors and social workers can’t bring the original selves back, but they can help the patients create new lives for themselves. So as the patients interact with each other, and start re-entering the world one step at a time, they encounter a lot of “new” things for, seemingly, their first time. And they start new friendships and relationships without the histories and baggage that typically keep them from prioritizing their own happiness and stability first. Slowly but surely, we realize that this “plague” of amnesia can be seen as far more blessing than curse; less an affliction than a cure for something else.
Nikou has done his homework; the script is minimal, well-structured and efficient. The film looks great and establishes some forthright visual strategies (the cinematographer is Bartosz Swiniarski), and the performances evince the work of a strong director whom the actors clearly trust. We have another terrific film here; so far, the festival has presented some rich options here. Add this to your viewing list – you’ll be glad you did.
Livestream Q & A with director Christos Nikou on Saturday, October 17th at 4:00 pm.
Abolfazl Kahani in “Careless Crime.” credit: Nasrine Médard de Chardon
And speaking of forthright visual strategies, there’s an attention getting sense of well-choreographed narrative urgency in the criss-crossing, time-scrambling Careless Crime (Jenayat-e Bi Deghat), Shahram Mokri’s powerful third feature film, written with Nasim Ahmadpour. (Iran, 2020). Throughout the film, there are references to the Cinema Rex fire of August, 1978 in the city of Abadan, Iran; four men, knowing the theater was overcrowded, rigged the exit doors and set the fire, killing over 420 people. The film shown that day was The Deer, a 1974 film starring Behrouz Vossoughi. The tragic incident set off the insurgencies that eventually deposed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and brought about the Islamic government ruled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In present day, a large, remodeled modern cinema is preparing to re-open – its staff is working hard, publicists are hanging posters and a crowd of spectators is gathering. They’re showing a film called “Careless Crime.” In this film, three Army soldiers, investigating a report of an unexploded missile, are stranded in a hilly desert area with a flat tire. They end up inspecting a nearby set-up for a makeshift screening deep in a mountainous wood; a group of women do this screening every year, apparently, and invitees will attend their film tomorrow night; The Deer.
Meanwhile, the day before, another, dark smaller neighborhood theater has shown a film called “Samad” – in that theater, four men plan to set a fire, emulating the Cinema Rex fire. But the plan goes awry, they leave, and target another theater for the next day.
These three threads – stories within the story, a film within another film – are the narrative landmarks for all of the characters and other events surrounding them. Mokri and Ahmadpour have a lot to say about intellectualism vs. fanaticism, magic vs. science, community and isolation, honest labor and arrogant authority. The film is rich with symbols and metaphors, but it’s genuinely compelling whether you pick them all up or not. The open-ended conclusion will frustrate many, but I found the kaleidoscopic plot and intriguing visuals genuinely thrilling.
Livestream Q & A with director Shahram Mokrion Sunday, October 18th at 9:00 pm.
Marisol and Jean Seberg in “The Corruption Of Chris Miller.” credit:moviesandmania.com
Much like Murder In A Blue World, Juan Antonio Bardem’s The Corruption of Chris Miller (La Corrupción De Chris Miller) (Spain, 1973) draws a great deal of its style and tone from contemporaneous giallo films from Italy. In fact, the screenplay is from the prolific Santiago Moncada, a Spanish novelist, playwright and screenwriter who also wrote Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) for Mario Bava, worked on All the Colors of the Dark (1972) for Sergio Martino and wrote Claudio Guerín’s A Bell From Hell. A renowned filmmaker in his own right, J. A. Bardem’s (he’s Javier’s uncle) best-known work is Death Of A Cyclist (1955), a classic Spanish drama where an adulterous couple accidentally hit-and-run a bicyclist, and conceal it to keep their affair a secret. This film is pretty slow going for the average giallo viewer, but has enough visual expertise and good ideas to merit viewing.
The film opens with a fairly messy murder – a beloved entertainer, Perla, is unexpectedly set-upon in her home by her jilted lover, who is wearing a Charlie Chaplin mask and suit she made famous in one of her musical numbers. After a grisly volley of scissor stabs, he leaves the body, discards the costume and flees in the rain.
Jean Seberg in “The Corruption Of Chris Miller.” credit: mondo-digital.com
Meanwhile, in a nearby small country estate, we meet Ruth Miller (Jean Seberg) and her stepdaughter Chris (grown Spanish child actress and singer Marisol). A year or so ago, Ruth’s husband, Chris’ father by his first marriage, abandoned them. Chris is obsessed with the idea that he’ll return, and accuses Ruth of hiding letters from him. Ruth, however, knows he’s likely gone for good, and acts out her persistent rage in a different way – subtly tormenting and gaslighting Chris (a rape survivor as well), while pretending to always be about her best interests, both maternally and, perhaps, sexually.
One day, Ruth discovers a handsome drifter sleeping in the barn, Barney Webster (Barry Stokes). He’s come from the U.K. to Spain for “anthropology,” but it’s far more likely he’s studying the mating rituals of women he’ll never see after the next day. Ruth gives him handyman chores and the spare bedroom and keeps him around for a while, for both her own indulgences and to provide more disruptive distraction for the twitchy Chris. You’d think this clichéd fox-in-the-henhouse scenario must run out of cinematic steam at some point, but it’s a tried-and-true boiling pot of emotion and contradiction, and that’s how it effectively works here.
Barry Stokes in “The Corruption Of Chris Miller.” credit: vinegarsyndrome.com
And just in case you were drifting, that murderer re-appears in a long black poncho to slaughter a nearby farm family with a hand scythe, leaving yet another gouts-of-blood-and-corpses home redecorating project. Surely this can’t be Barney, but he’s really the only candidate here in these otherwise placid rural glens and meadows; Chris often takes afternoon-long horse rides from a nearby stable, leaving Ruth to her illustration artwork.
Bardem’s direction is solid here, and seasoned cinematographer Juan Gelpí gives everything a lush gothic sheen, almost Hammer-studios-like. But at close to two hours, the film is a bit sluggish – Marisol does good work here, but Seberg, despite her dogged professionalism, just can’t muster the high-melodrama goods the role requires. Perhaps no twentieth-century actress, outside of wartime, got a rawer deal than Jean Seberg having to contend with J. Edgar Hoover’s and the F.B.I.’s constant and debilitating persecution while she lived in Europe. It’s worth looking up if you’re not familiar with the story.
The film’s not so much a whodunnit as it is an examination of the distorting power of repressed rage, and the “banality of evil” that everyday businesspeople can fall into – two sides of the western-capitalist-cultural coin. The film’s not particularly successful – there’s more blood and skin onscreen than there is invested in the film’s conceptual conceits – but it’s an entertaining time-waster that has smart ideas and intentions.
Ewa Aulin in “Death Smiles On A Murderer.” credit: eskalierende-traeume.de
Our next film is Death Smiles on a Murderer (La Morte Ha Sorriso All’Assassino) (Italy, 1973), Credited to Aristide Massaccesi (his real name), this is an early work by gore-and-erotica exploitation king Joe D’Amato, filmed soon after his collaboration with Luigi Batzella on The Devil’s Wedding Night (Il Plenilunio Delle Vergini), another entertaining variation on the Countess Elizabeth Báthory vampire legend. D’Amato wrote the story and recruited two other screenwriters to help him knock out the actual screenplay. Exploitation geeks used to D’Amato’s trademark transgressive strong medicine from Porno Holocaust, Anthropophagous, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals or Beyond the Darkness won’t find much here to get their blood going, but I actually found it to be a really satisfying piece of low-budget gothic horror entertainment. And, of course, as we learned with Massimo Dallamano’s What Have They Done To Solange?, he’s an impressive cinematographer as well – the film looks great despite its modest budget.
Sergio Doria, Ewa Aulin and Angela Bo in “Death Smiles On A Murderer.” credit: unpoppedcinema.blogspot.com
While lounging in the back garden of their country estate, Walter (Sergio Doria) and Eva (Angela Bo) witness a mysterious black horse-drawn carriage careening down the adjacent country lane. The driver is struck by a low-hanging branch, the rig lurches out of control, crashing, and the driver is impaled on the shattered forward harness. Inside the sedan is a beautiful young woman, Greta (always-alluring B-movie veteran Ewa Aulin) (Deadly Sweet [1967], Death Laid An Egg [1968]). She’s brought into the house, made comfortable, and Dr. Sturges (Klaus Kinski, making his usual indelible impression in a small role) is summoned to examine her. He discovers she’s wearing a small pendant with engravings relating to an ancient and arcane system for reviving the dead. This explains the film’s opening segment, where we see Greta dealing with her scientist brother, an obsessive and eccentric abuser who nonetheless reanimates her after a tragedy that seems to have occurred three years earlier. Sturges is shocked that someone had succeeded with the process he’d been working on for quite a while, and throws himself into feverish mad-scientist mode.
Angela Bo in “Death Smiles On A Murderer.” credit: thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com
Meanwhile, both Walter and Eva are each smitten with Greta, and pursue their own amorous assignations with her. But when one of them lets jealousy get the best of them, things take a decidedly Edgar Allen Poe-inspired turn, and the rest of the film becomes a pretty convincing supernatural revenge thriller. We learn that that tragedy Greta encountered three years ago involved Walter’s wealthy father, Dr. von Ravensbrück (Giacomo Rossi Stuart), and the whole von Ravensbrück family is about to encounter a vengeful dose of blood-spattered karma.
The supernatural elements threaten to pull this out of giallo categorization, but, like Mario Bava’s Hatchet For The Honeymoon (1970), its gothic stylishness, the socio-carnal psychological underpinnings and the cumulative body count all recommend it. The narrative is well-structured, but can be a little scrambled if you’re not paying attention, and Berto Pisano’s musical score is spare but memorably effective. Overall, I found this to be a very pleasant surprise, and I recommend it.
Susan Scott in “Death Carries A Cane.” credit: deliriahungaria.blogspot.com
Ahh, the vagaries of the filmmaking process. Death Carries A Cane (Passi Di Danza Su Una Lama Di Rasoio, or Dance Steps On A Razor Blade) (Italy, 1973) would seem to be another entry in Luciano Ercoli’s succession of giallos featuring Susan Scott (aka Nieves Navarro), co-starring Simón Andreu, and featuring a hybrid Spanish / Italian production crew. But Ercoli is absent here, as is screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi – we’re a league or two down from their usual work. The credited director is Mauricio Pradeaux, a journeyman writer/director of dubious genre accomplishments, but this awkward patchwork of a not-so-thrilling thriller feels like it was shot in separate chunks by two or three different directors before Pradeaux finished the job, such as it is.
Robert Hoffmann in “Death Carries A Cane.” credit: italo-cinema.de
Kitty (Susan Scott, reliable as always even here) is a sculptor and photographer; her husband Alberto (Robert Hoffmann, an undeniably handsome but stiffly generic loaf of Wonder Bread) collaborates with Kitty and another mutual friend, Marco (Simón Andreu) on performance art pieces and music videos. One day, while Kitty is showing Alberto’s uncle and wife the touristy sites in Rome, she witnesses a murder with one of those coin-operated telescopes through an apartment window blocks and blocks away. They take their information to the police (which, in most giallos is a complete waste of time), and Kitty tells her reporter friend Lydia (Anuska Borova, impressive in her only film role), who is also Marco’s partner. They have a partial address, identify a few people near the crime scene (a chestnut vendor and a customer), and suspect the murder is tied to a previous unsolved case. But, despite the patchy descriptions, the killer does everyone a favor by starting to kill the witnesses Kitty identified – black trenchcoat, hat, mask, gloves, straight razor, you know the drill. Forensics also reveals that the killer left evidence of the use of a cane, and anyone with a cane or a limp becomes a suspect: Alberto with his twisted ankle, Lydia’s twin sister Silvia (also Anuska Borova, of course), whom, it’s suggested, suffered a debilitating injury at a dance academy that two of the murder victims attended, and even a cane-bearing police commissioner, who screws up a sting involving Kitty as bait for the killer. The dance academy becomes central to the investigations, and it’s there that the crimes are explained in what aspires to be a thrilling conclusion.
Anuska Borova in “Death Carries A Cane.” credit: altyazi.org
Alas, no luck. The solution is out of left field, and totally bereft of any previous hints or clues. The awkward sequences of hand-held camerawork, arty overhead shots of staircases, slipshod red herrings, generic and indifferent gore effects and unmotivated nude scenes all blend together to become instantly forgettable. There’s a nod or two here and there to Hitchcock, but it’s all pretty thin soup. It’s really only watchable for Susan Scott completists.
Periscope In The Bathtub 