The 11th edition of the European Film Festival begins next week and offers local audiences a chance to catch some of best and most acclaimed international releases.
The programme, which includes festival hits like Italian refugee crisis drama Io Capitano, bawdy Irish-language hip-hop anti-hero comedy Kneecap and elegantly old-fashioned French-food-ode The Taste of Things, also has several less celebrated but equally intriguing surprises in store. Here are four of the undercard attractions to look out for.
GREY BEES
Based on a novel by Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, director Dmytro Moiseiev’s restrained drama is shot through with moments of deep pathos and empathy in its exploration of the personal lives and relationship between two old men who are the only remaining residents of a village in the Donbas region, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Living in this “grey zone”, the two men, one Russian and one Ukrainian, former childhood rivals, later miners and now lonely pensioners eking out an existence without electricity, luxuries or family, are forced into an uncomfortable relationship of mutual dependence that may be the only thing that can save them from the impending clouds of war that are gathering beyond the frame.
There is much humanity in their portrayal, something of the absurd spiky co-dependence of Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon in their interactions, and it’s a credit to Moiseiev that he manages to allow for slivers of hope to shine through the grey.
It’s a war film that implies rather than shows the war it deals with and is all the more effective for it, focusing instead on the broader but equally pertinent question of what the emotional and psychological effects of war are on both those of us watching from afar and those unwillingly swept up in its wake.
CITIZEN SAINT
Georgian director Tinatin Kajrishvili’s dour but perceptive parable about the hypocrisies of faith is set in a small, unnamed Georgian mining town where the tragic effects of a past accident continue to cast their morbid shadows well into the present.
What hopes the residents still have finds expression in their devotion to a statue of a saint perched on a hilltop above the entrance to the mine. Miners ask him for protection before they venture into the dangerous bowels of the earth, elderly couples from far away travel to offer tribute to him and local gangsters use the statue as a means of absolving themselves from their crimes. When the statue is taken down and delivered to the local museum for restoration, the saint’s devotees are flummoxed as they wonder what to do in the statue’s absence.
The statue disappears from the museum and a mute stranger arrives in town, who the villagers believe to be their saint made flesh. What begins as a miracle soon turns into a nightmare as the townspeople realise that having a messiah in their midst, one who has been privy to their whispered confessions and personal secrets, may not be a good idea.
Firmly controlled in its execution, masterfully shot, atmospherically scored and allegorical in the best sense, Kajrishvili’s film echoes the wry philosophical cinema of European art house masters — from Bergman to Kieslowski — while putting its own spin on the question of whether those who devote themselves to faith at the expense of reality deserve their prayers answered and what they would do if they were.
SWEET DREAMS
Bosnian-Dutch director Ena Sendijarevic takes sharp and droll aim at the dysfunctional nature of colonial relationships in this darkly absurd and elegantly visualised comedy set in the early 20th century Dutch East Indies.
When a sadistic Dutch sugar plantation owner dies after yet another night spent in the bed of his housekeeper, his wife summons their inept son to come and run the family sugar factory. Arriving with his heavily pregnant wife in tow, the son soon finds that his father has delivered a final humiliation from beyond the grave by naming his illegitimate son by his housekeeper as heir.
The façade of civilised rationality that the colonial family so prides itself on quickly slips as the family goes all out to plot a way to maintain control of their wealth in the face of this betrayal. Conveying the sweaty climes of its setting and the fever-dream hallucinatory atmosphere that quietly boils over, pushing everyone towards inevitable madness, Sendijarevic’s film conveys the sense that the colonisers are under threat not just from the people they subject to their nefarious will but also from the landscape they have tried to tame.
THE OTHER WAY ROUND
Jonás Trueba’s anti-rom-com romcom harks back to the middle-class angst of Annie Hall, transferred to millennial generation Madrid. It is focused on the strange decision by its central couple — a filmmaker and her actor partner — who have decided to separate, after 14 years together as everyone’s ideal couple.
Looking to make the change from perfect couple to perfect exes, the two decide that the best way to mark this decision is to throw a big “break-up party”. There’ll be live music, all their friends and family will be there and they’ll show everyone that break-ups don’t have to be messy and bitter.
As they go about their busy lives full of editing suite hours, auditions, English lessons, apartment hunting and, of course, party planning, their friends and the audience begin to realise that this perfect break-up plan may not be so easy to execute. As they begin to question their decision and are forced to accept that they’re like everyone else, despite their hubris, the two lovers leave us and their friends wondering if the only thing to do is stay together.
Breezily acted with able chemistry by its central leads, smartly scripted and wryly observed it’s an intriguing light comedy that manages to ask some big questions about the ways in which we twist our lives around each other in order to peacefully and beneficially coexist.
• The 11th European Film Festival takes place from October 12-22 at The Zone Rosebank in Johannesburg, The Labia Theatre in Cape Town and Gateway in Durban.
A selection of films are also available for streaming online. For more info visit eurofilmfest.co.za
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