Young and excited Spike feels like a conqueror when he catches his first mud crab. Now all he has to do, in this simple but very smart animation, full of details, is cling to it without being caught by its ruthless clawss. A trap for the animal and for man too. (A. P.)
Through a vigorous sequence shot we see a group of men. They don’t speak, but behave as if they were performing a ritual. It is a mournful elegy in a construction area. So we are not surprised when Kavanagh, who we know for the masterful At the Formal (IndieLisboa ’12), pushes from the absurd to reality. (M. V.)
Looking for a flat to rent, Benoît is temporarily staying at a hotel. Having noticed that apartments are rather allocated to couples than to singles, he asks Jeanne, his next room neighbour, to act as his girlfriend. He falls under the charm of this young lady, keen on gambling on horses, and lets himself be led into a dangerous amorous bet.
Although he hasn’t got a clue about film, François writes reviews for a small local weekly in the Vallée de Joux. Rosa is a well-known critic working. A kinky relationship develops between the two of them, leading François to discover the inner workings of desire: desire of a woman, of a critic, and ultimately of his own.
In the late summer of 1980, Alda and her sister Maria, at the age of 16 and 17, arrive in Lisbon to escape the civil war in Angola. Left to themselves, they must learn to survive in a foreign city. Alda and Maria, from scratch will build a new life and become women. When problems nearly become unbearable dreadful news fall upon them. Paradoxically, it’s those terrifying news that gives them the strength to decide their own fates. (Pocas Pascoal)
Alps is the name of a company that its employees are taking the place of recently deceased in the way that their relatives cope easily with the sudden loss. In the film’s primary logic, the characters turning into dead people is absurd. The absurdity and irrationality within human existence is the main concern of the auteur, Yorgos Lanthimos (director of Dogtooth) expressed in a brilliant manner. Bringing in mind on the theatre of the absurd, the characters keep rehearsing their parts building a metaphor based on humor and surprise. Characters argue using false logic to convince themselves and others as if little by little they are turning into Rhinokeros. However there is one member of the company desperate to maintain her individuality thus humanity. The athlete of rhythmic gymnastics as a current Beranger refuses to become Rhinoceros just because she wants to dance pop, signifing the existence of life. (Nina Veligradi)
Reality and fiction are confused, the same situations repeat themselves. The methodology of this young Mexican filmmaker reveals itself to the viewer. What matters to Pereda is the transgression of the conventions of classical narrative cinema. Fiction is an excuse to get closer to the thoughts of his actors (not actors/models) and achieve a certain emotional rawness. The story is simple: Gabino Rodriguez tries to memorize, repeat tirelessly in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, the titles on a romantic Mexican songbook disc which he intends to sell. We also see the return(s) of parents after several years of absence. The film works in an amazing way the processes of representation and repetition of reality and how we relate to it. The Goldberg Variations accompany this major work of contemporary cinema that we should always come back to. (A. I. S.)
Vincent and Rebecca are 18 years old and live a carefree life. But two months later Vincent’s body is found in the Rhone, and Rebecca disappears. The investigation of the case is taken up by the 48-year-old policeman. He stands before a fundamental decision that could completely change his view on life.
17 teenage girls take together an unexpected decision that will change their peaceful little lives and leave them misunderstood by the boys and adults around them: they decide to get pregnant all at the same time. This is based on a true story that occurred in 2008.
Punk’s Not Dead. Not is the oldest punk in Europe and has a brother, Dead, who is fired from a store where he was a mattress salesman, and ends up living with his brother on the street. The two decide to launch into an open war against the consumer society and all its capitalist dreams. Together they want to be free and lead a revolution… their way. Le Grand Soir is a poetic road trip set in the peripheral, commercial zone of a city. A satirical and demanding film, from the duo of Belgian filmmakers, which proves that their filmography is absolutely unavoidable and urgent to see in this 10th edition of the festival. With this film, punk spirit is invited and with it, so are all of its spectators. We are not dead. (A. I. S.)
When Robin notices that his front neighbor looks like his dead mother, he starts filming her obsessively and compulsively. He shares with us his daily life by the window, watching the balcony, waiting for something he knows so little about. (M. C.)
After the film about the Arctic Desert, Anna Abrahams leads us to the mountain peaks. The journey is sacred, seeking the unknown, guided by adventurers phrases where each one has his own way of experiencing the climbing to the top of a mountain, the landscape and the mystery. (Miguel Cabral)
In a documentary about the passion for books, surprising characters intersect and gradually call us to their unique universes. A film that proves that when you love your profession, no one retires, not really, even though continually claiming that the time has passed. Meanwhile, a young punk is trying to find the right tone in the opera aria that he studies. (P. C.)
After the debut at the Jeonju festival, Chinese authorities tried to buy the film in order to prohibit its international circulation. The filmmaker’s family was summoned by the police and answered interrogatories. The director is currently living in exile in Hong Kong. A young man, Yang Jia, was arrested and beaten by the police in Shanghai for cycling without a license. After undergoing various pressures, he enters a police station and kills six policemen. He was sentenced to death without trial. This case concerned the Chinese activists and the Ai Weiwei studio even produced a film to denounce this tragic event. When Night Falls tells the story of this real case. Jia’s mother, played by fabulous actress Uma Nei, was detained in a psychiatric hospital for 143 days, so she wouldn’t testify in favor of her son when he got out of prison. What is wrong with this society?” she cries. It’s a question that China doesn’t want to answer. (A. I. S.) “
The rhythm of a nuclear power station is monotonous. Men drive trucks with toxic wastes, women undertake the decontamination of the station. But this job, as dangerous as it is difficult, is what Sergey and Sveta do. For them there is no rest and even sex is merely operative, an action like any other. (M. V.)
Yumen, situated in arid northwest China, is now a ghost town, once a prosperous city that grew because of oil exploration. Shot in 16mm, JP Sniadecki’s film, co-directed with Xu Ruotao and Huang Xiang, walks through the ruins of this city, a mixture of poetic documentary with fiction. The ghosts seem to inhabit the interiors of abandoned spaces in the aridity of the surrounding landscape. The walls that are still standing serve as canvas for artistic inspiration. The narrative collage of gestures, performance art and urban realism builds the originality of Yumen, making this film a unique work which leads us to reflect on the rampant growth of cities around industries which then decline and lead to population exodus. (C. C.)
A film about absurd working routines. Rafael’s story is not much different from Lidia’s. He has been cleaning the same factory for thirty years and on his last day of work he wears a new pair of shoes to celebrate the occasion, only to find out that he will not receive a pension. Lidia is a maid in a rich Mexican’s house who dies and leaves everything to her dog. The dog becomes Lidia’s new employer. José Luis Valle makes us feel close to these characters and admire their strenght.
O Fim do Mundo was made as an experiment of inserting a fictional skeleton in a given reality, to be filled with documental flesh – a group of young people in a social neighbourhood of Setúbal, an industrial city in the south of Lisbon. (Pedro Pinho)