BIFF 2013 #18: Faith, Love and Whiskey (Bulgaria/US 2012)

Eli and Val – lovers re-united?

It’s the second year of the New European Features competition at Bradford and just like last year there is a Bulgarian entry. The two films are remarkably similar in institutional terms if not in plot and narrative. Avé last year had a director with some US background/training, a young woman with some international experience and a story concerning a journey and decisions about where she wanted to be in the future. All those three elements are also present in Faith, Love and Whiskey. The director is Kristina Nikolova and this is her first feature – although she has been working as a cinematographer for ten years. Her co-writer and editor is Paul Dalio. They met on a course at New York University Film School (there are several stellar names on the film’s “thanks to” list).

In the interview below, posted on YouTube, Kristina Nikolova tells us that the film is partly autobiographical and its title refers to a Bulgarian saying in which ‘Faith, Love and Hope’ is altered to replace ‘Hope’ with ‘Whiskey’. The film marries two strong ideas. One is universal – a romance about a young woman who must choose between security and passion. The director tells us that she thinks the film is more ‘mainstream’ than it is a ‘festival film’. I think that she is right but the specific Bulgarian flavour makes it special. She tells us that many young people leave Bulgaria looking for a better future but that they return each summer to spend a few weeks drinking like crazy and enjoying meeting old friends. I’ve forgotten the reference but I also read a review of the film that quoted an Economist article claiming that Bulgaria was the ‘unhappiest country’ in the world when income levels and happiness indices were correlated. I also found this entertaining article which suggests that the Bulgarian problem is a combination of poverty (comparing income to other EU countries) and a native ‘superstition and fatalism’. It’s easier to be miserable and to avoid problems by going out and getting smashed. Looked at this way, the film’s narrative makes a lot of sense.

Eli (Ana Stojanovska) is a vivacious and attractive young woman who has a relationship in New York, but who has come back to Sofia to see old friends. She meets them in a bar and goes clubbing and soon finds herself back with the wild and romantic Val with whom she takes a trip into the beautiful countryside. Back in Sofia, however, her American fiancée has arrived and is looking for her. On a basic plot level it’s all very straightforward. The romance is well presented. It’s sunny and hot, there are cool streams for bathing and the booze flows freely. The film was shot on Super 16 with saturated colours and it looks great. I also liked the music, much of it guitar music reminiscent of deranged surf guitar or the work of Link Wray. Val (Yavor Baharov) is a charismatic romantic lead on the edge of oblivion and John Keabler is the stuffy but wealthy American. The local culture is represented in several ways that recall Avé. Eli has lost her parents (there is an interesting reference to her mother) and the one person she really cares about is her grandmother who brought her up. Bulgaria seems to be a society of the aged waiting for the return of the young – there doesn’t seem to be a generation between.

One of the best scenes in the film, which seems to sum up the whole narrative, doesn’t involve Eli. She has gone out and left both John and Val with her grandmother. Val is forced to translate for the old woman and the American. We feel for Val who must tell John, in English, how delighted the grandmother is that Eli has found her rich American. The subtitles tell us that Val is translating correctly, avoiding the opportunity to damage his rival. Then at one point he forgets which language he is using and has to stop to correct himself. It’s a brilliant piece of cinema with so many issues about identity compressed into facial expressions and a slip of the tongue.

This is another shortish feature running just 75 minutes and therefore difficult to place into distribution. I think I read that the film was likely to get distribution in Bulgaria but I think it is unlikely in the UK. I decided on reflection (and thinking about the migration issues) that I liked the film a lot. The plot is simple, the theme is important and the execution is very good.

Interview with the filmmakers at Slamdance, February 2012:

BIFF 2013 #10: Vegetarian Cannibal (Ljudozder vegetarijanac, Croatia 2012)

Rene Bitorajac (left) as the gynaecologist with one of his drug-dealing police friends

It’s difficult to write about a film that I had to watch through my fingers on several occasions. I have a phobia about scenes featuring surgical operations and there are plenty of those in this film set in a leading clinic in Zagreb. Those green gowns and spurting blood are too much and if this film hadn’t been in the European Features competition, I would have given it a miss. None of this is meant to imply a criticism of  the film. In fact, I thought it was rather good. The title refers to the central character who is indeed a vegetarian and is mocked because of it by his friends in the police force. But he’s not the stereotype veggie – indeed his appetites are voracious. He seeks sex, drugs, bling and fast cars. He relaxes by drumming on his professional kit and working hard in the gym. No doubt he is actually a highly competent gynaecologist and a cultured man but unfortunately he is so wrapped up in corruption that he can’t extricate himself.

This was the Croatian entry for the 2013 Academy Awards – which says something about the Croatian sense of identity. I’ve seen American reviews of the film which go with the character’s greed for money (and frequently compare him to the protagonist of American Psycho), but in the UK that isn’t really the issue – I think we home in on the questions about professionalism and what the subtitles refer to as ‘collegiality’. But of course neither Anglo or American perspectives can really explain the Balkan cultural issues. I’m guessing that somewhere in here is a metaphor/allegory for Croatia’s debate about joining the EU (which happens this Summer). There is still a great deal of baggage from the Yugoslavian past to work through before Croatia can be properly accepted. The issues highlighted in the film include blatant racism in the treatment of a Jordanian doctor in the clinic, the ex-military commanders trafficking young women from Ukraine etc. and the corruption and brutality that seems to permeate everything including a sporting culture that includes illegal dog fights.

The cinematography is mainly hand-held and though I find this difficult to watch, I can see that the approach is appropriate here. The film moves at a breathless pace and I find it hard to believe that it was only 85 minutes – I felt like I got more than 85 minutes of action. Rene Bitorajac as the central character, Danko Babic, is excellent. I kept finding him likeable even though I despised everything he was doing. That’s charisma. This is a strong contender for a prize – just like the other two films in competition that I’ve seen.

BIFF 2013 #6: A Night Too Young (Prílis mladá noc, Czech Rep 2012)

The two boys, unaware of the events to follow

One of the six entries in the European Features competition at BIFF, A Night Too Young is certainly distinctive but it will face problems because of its short length and possibly its subject matter. 65 minutes used to be the generally accepted point at which a film became a ‘feature’ rather than a ‘short’ – at least in France. At that length it presents a commercial distributor and exhibitor with the task of building a programme around it. In a festival like this it can be boosted with a longer ‘short’ alongside (as it was here).

The subject matter brings together adult partygoers and two 12 year-old boys. The boys are on the cusp of puberty as their discussion of sex in the opening scenes reveals. It’s the afternoon of December 31st in a small Czech town and they are playing on their sleds in the snow when they meet two men and a young woman. She asks the boys to buy some vodka for her from the store and to bring it to her apartment. They innocently do so and find themselves in a party situation with booze and dope and some serious tension in the air.

The director Olmo Omerzu is a Slovenian who has recently graduated from FAMU, the film school in Prague. It’s unusual that a graduation film gets to this length and even more that it gets into a big festival like Berlin and that’s down to some extra funding. Omerzu says that his influences include the Czech New Wave and that he cast the two boys partly because of the way that they seemed at times to resemble the two older men. The boy who plays Baluška (Vojtěch Machuta) has the most extraordinary face, sometimes impassive but at other times seemingly that of a much older man. The script is quite sparse in terms of dialogue and the whole narrative has the feel of a Pinter play. Our attention is drawn to the boys and we wonder what they are making of the events surrounding them. Omerzu has a background in “drawing comics for a Slovenian magazine” and there is something fantastical about how he visualises the mundane setting as the night draws in. New Year’s  Eve is when we might expect a stranger knocking at the door and being invited in to join the party. It isn’t always clear what is actually happening and what is being imagined – and who by. The narrative isn’t quite linear – though I have difficulty remembering what happened and in what order.

I think I drew two main conclusions from watching A Night Too Young. First, this is what the industry often terms a ‘calling card’. In its present form it is unlikely to escape the festival circuit, but its strange attractions are likely to help Olmo Omerzu get funding for his next projects and I think we will see more of him in the future. (In another interview he suggests that this film has achieved distribution in Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic). Secondly, I was reminded of what a rich film culture there is in Central Europe and how we don’t see enough of it in the UK.

LFF 2012 #8: Children of Sarajevo (Djeca, Bosnia-Herzogovina 2012)

Marija Pikic as Rahima

My final film during my festival visit was programmed in the ‘Debate’ strand, though again, I fail to see what the debate might be – except that we might want to argue that most of us who live comfortable lives ought to appreciate much more how difficult other lives can be. But that can’t really be contested, can it? Children of Sarajevo is a dark film but the strong performances, especially by Marija Pikic as the central character Rahima, make up for that and give us a sense of hope.

Produced with support from production companies and funding agencies in France, Germany and Turkey, Children of Sarajevo still ranks as a relatively low budget film and most of the action takes place indoors or on local streets at night. Rahima is introduced as a young woman wearing a headscarf and from the inserts of video footage of the war in Sarajevo in the 1990s, we deduce that she survived the war (but lost her parents) and has turned to her faith in an attempt to make sense of her life.

Rahima has problems. She is the only breadwinner in her household and works hard as a chef in a large restaurant. She returns home to housework and the latest calamity to befall her young brother Nedim, still at school. The neo-realist narrative driver in this film is a broken iPhone – belonging to the son of a local wealthy politician, but broken, allegedly, by Nedim in an attack on the boy. We don’t know exactly what is in Rahima’s background, but she is treated badly by the school headteacher and by the corrupt politician, both of whom expect her to pay for a new iPhone. Nedim doesn’t appear to be a ‘bad lad’, just not very aware of everything his sister has to do for him and he starts to make the wrong decisions about getting involved in local criminality.

On the other hand, Rahima is very much part of a community, with a potential suitor and close supporters in her housing block. I’m not really sure that I appreciated the significance of the hajib she wears. (I live in an area where muslim women wear all kinds of combinations of veils and scarves.) Rahima is the only one of the women in the film to do this and she clearly has female muslim friends. I found a review of the film written after its successful Cannes screening (the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard competition) that discusses this issue and quotes the film’s writer-director, Aida Begic (who is also photographed wearing a headscarf). The East European Film Bulletin review by Collete de Castro suggests that: “In wearing the veil, Rahima is at once closer to God and further away. Hiding from the world, she is at once protected and exposed.” The director is quoted as saying that the idea for the film came to her when she realised that “we don’t believe in the reconstruction of our society any more, we’ve replaced dreams with memories”. That makes sense. The world she depicts in the film is no longer at war as such, but it certainly isn’t a world that is at peace with itself and there appear to be great inequalities.

This is an intense film that requires attention to detail. I hope it gets a wider exposure. Here’s a trailer:

UK trailers 2012

A few years ago a friend from the United States explained to me how the trailers there were now providing an almost complete skeleton of the film’s plot. It sounded as if you knew all about the movie before you went along to the screening. Now this approach seems to have arrived in the UK. An example would be the trailer for Carnage (2011), a film where four characters play through the breakdown of social courtesies and niceties. I liked Roman Polanski’s film but I would have enjoyed it more if the gradual social disintegration had not been blatantly signposted in the trailer.

So I was really impressed with Artificial’ Eye’s trailer for Bela Tarr’s latest and final grim masterwork, The Turin Horse (A torinói ió2011). The substantive trailer is a long take of an oil lamp gradually going out – a visual metaphor for the film which does not pre-empt either the narrative or the ending. My congratulations to whomever designed this. I should add that there is a slight indication of a lack of confidence, because this long take is followed not just by a title credit but a further frame containing quotes from reviews.

Still it is a trailer worthy of the film.

Here it is on YouTube:

BIFF 2012 #12 Bread and Circuses (Kruha in iger, Slovenia 2011)

The quizmaster and Mrs Novak tête-à-tête

This was the last of the six entries in Bradford’s ‘New European Features’ competition. I don’t expect it to figure highly in the judge’s considerations, but that does not mean that the film isn’t of interest. It’s a mainstream popular film – a form of broad social comedy with many familiar and universal elements. As such it’s exactly the kind of film I want to see.

I’m not sure if this is a significant trend but, like Adalbert’s Dream, the film focuses on the period just before the end of communist rule in the region. It’s 1987, the year before Slovenia began its move towards complete autonomy and away from the Yugoslavian federation. The Novak family, who live in the small town of Velenje, discover that they have been selected to appear on a TV quiz show in the capital Ljubljana. Mother and teenage daughter are keen but father and older student son are not. Nevertheless, the family travel to the capital, getting involved in a silly incident with two policemen (because they are in fancy dress for a carnival edition of the quiz) and then with the TV celebrity who comperes the programme. In some ways the conventional quiz show is transformed into a version of a daytime ‘talkshow’ as the contestants squabble amongst themselves.

Communist Yugoslavia was part of the non-aligned movement in the 1970s and Slovenia was possibly the most market-orientated part of the federation, so there is little mention of the socialist system directly in the film. More important is the perceived metropolitan bias of the TV professionals in the capital towards the working-class contestants from the sticks. There is also a clear generational conflict between the father who has celebrated 30 years working in a factory making TV sets and a son who wants to break away from what he sees as his father’s self-imposed sense of inferiority.

I enjoyed the film for what it was. The ‘official website‘ suggests that the film is “a comedy with a scent of nostalgia about socialistic Yugoslavia’s last breaths looking forward into brighter future days than they appear to be at the moment”.There is nothing surprising about the film and in a way it looks like a film that might have been made anywhere in Central Europe at the time when it is set – i.e. in the late 1980s.

Slovenia has a small population (2.0 million) so producing a perfectly acceptable mainstream film is an achievement in itself. Director Klemen Dvornik has considerable experience in TV but this was his first cinematic feature. The only other Slovenian film that I’ve seen was much more ambitious but arguably less successful. Having said that I’m not sure that Bread and Circuses would find an audience in the UK.

BIFF 2012 #11: Adalbert’s Dream (Visul Lui Adalbert, Romania 2011)

Iulica (Gabriel Spahiu) as the engineer in the coat on the factory floor with two of the machinists who he is persuading to do a little personal job for him.

For some obscure reason I seem to have missed all the major films of the Romanian New Wave, so I was pleased to get the opportunity to see this film. As far as I can make out, it isn’t typical and in fact seems to be a conscious attempt to create a contemporary version of the pre-1989 satires of East European communist states.

The plot (based around a real incident) follows a day in the life of a middle manager, a ‘comrade engineer’ in a Romanian factory. The date is precise and important: May 8th 1986, the day after Steaua Bucharest beat Barcelona in the European Cup. Our hero Iulica has videorecorded the match (in which the Steaua goalie made four saves in the penalty shootout) and hopes to show it for his boss at the factory and other colleagues after the ‘festivities’ for the 65th anniversary of the Romanian Communist Party. (The videorecorder itself being a rare and desirable object.) Iulica has a role in the festivities as well – as the producer of two films made in the factory, one a ‘health and safety’ documentary and the other an ‘artistic’ film, again about health and safety, which provides the overall title of Adalbert’s Dream. Things don’t go quite as planned.

I enjoyed the film which I thought came to life once we reached the factory and met Iulica’s boorish but entertaining boss. After a while, I realised that the tone of the film was familiar, combining elements from the Czech New Wave films of the 1960s such as Milos Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball (Czechoslovakia 1967) and also Dusan Makaveyev’s wonderful and surreal Switchboard Operator (Yugoslavia 1967). Gabriel Achim, director of Adalbert’s Dream, captures the absurdity of social relations in these particular communist societies. He does this both in the interactions of characters and in his decisions about formats. The film was shot on various video formats including S-VHS and Beta SP in Academy ratio to match the propaganda and health and safety films of the period.

I confess to a certain nostalgia in watching a film set in a factory with lathes, men with oily rags and overalls, smartly-dressed women from the office etc. By 1986 in the UK factories on this scale were disappearing – and with them aspects of working-class culture. Some of what was lost won’t be missed, including the sexism and the drudgery of some work patterns. But what the factories did provide was employment and a sense of community and belonging. The best factory systems also provided a social and cultural life for the workers and this is something that is important to recognise when watching Achim’s satire. All of those possible pluses are there but they aren’t allowed to be fulfilled because of the underlying problems associated with Romanian communism. Everything is focused on pleasing the political bosses, but because everyone’s individual desires (and beliefs) are very different – and because the system is ‘broken’ in terms of the quality of goods and services it produces – the sucking up to the party boss is doomed to failure. Achim brilliantly crystallises this analysis in his use of the Health and Safety Film, examples of which, with their bureaucratic pedantry, crop up throughout the film. I won’t spoil the film by listing all the ways in which the issue is presented – but Achim is able to end the film with a very striking sequence. I should say that several scenes are also very funny.

I’m not sure how the film will fare in the Bradford competition or how it will be read by younger audiences, but once I’d properly tuned in to the film I realised that it works very well.

A brief trailer:

BIFF 2012 #8: Avé (Bulgaria 2011)

Kamen and Avé have missed the last ferry across the Danube

Avé is a teenage girl who arrives at a roadside outside Sofia and starts to thumb a ride. Already there is art student Kamen and he isn’t too keen to have competition. Inevitably though, the two get a ride together and the adventure begins. This is a road movie/romance/coming-of-age drama with a leavening of humour, mostly supplied via the performances of Andjela Nedyalkova as Avé and Ovanes Torosian as the long-suffering Kamen.

As the journey continues, Kamen discovers that Avé likes to reinvent herself for every new situation and he tries to separate from her when her fantasies threaten to involve him. But we know he can’t – this is a road movie and they’ll get back together. A prologue has already hinted at Kamen’s need to travel to the town of Ruse on the Danube across from Romania for the funeral of a friend, but it’s some time before we learn the reason for Avé’s journey – and should we believe her anyway?

I’m not sure if I’ve seen a Bulgarian film before but I recognised the region. The ‘Scope digital print looked very good and I enjoyed the film very much. It’s a first feature by co-writer and director Konstantin Bojanov who has previously been involved in documentary production. It was a pleasure to take in long shots of landscapes. Although Bulgaria isn’t at its best viewed from major roads, there is still a sense of adventure and who can resist a story that holds out the promise of a trip to Varna (from whence came Nosferatu/Dracula)? Avé tells us at one point that she has lived in Delhi and that you can find Indian girls in Bulgaria. Again this could be a fantasy but it is a road movie staple, that sense of wanting to be somewhere else. In reality, the distances the couple travel are not very long (300 kms from Sofia to Ruse) but they seem greater in narrative terms.

This interesting interview with the director reveals that the film was completed for around 600,000 Euros and that it s story was partly based on his own experiences. Bojanov has lived in New York for the last 15 years but he tells us that his self-education in films (he was at art school in Sofia) was of 1960s and 1970s European and American New Wave films. He cites Y tu mamá también as the kind of modern road movie he likes – and that makes sense. I’m not sure if Konstantin Bojanov is a diasporic director as such – are there Bulgarian communities in the US? – but his film certainly has both a ‘local’ and a ‘global’ feel. Nice music too.

Avé is a specialised film, not a commercial mainstream film so don’t expect a Hollywood ending. I’m glad about that because it meant I could leave the screening thinking about travelling by train through Bulgaria and wondering what happened to Kamen and Avé. I expect to see more of Andjela Nedyalkova who has genuine star quality. This is one of the six films in competition in Bradford and it stands a good chance of winning. It has already been picked up for distribution by Network Releasing so watch their website for details of screenings.

Here’s a pretty good trailer: