54+ EN OLD — Mreza Festivala

Film reviews

54+ participants about films in competition for Adriatic Audience Award

Film Beads of Love

Irina Dobnik

In the program of the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region, three exceptional film creations: Pink Moon, Alma Viva, and Wet Sand were strung as beads of a universal necklace of the imaginary embrace of life and death. The seal of that necklace is love. Wrapped in a veil of mystery, the striking film scenes created incredible life situations, which, through unlived and complex emotions, brought the unthinkable closer to the real, brought dreams closer to reality, and "hell to heaven".

Pink Moon, directed by Floor Van Der Meulen, has a strong dramatic beginning. After a shocking statement by Jan (Johan Leysen) during the family's celebration of his 74th birthday that he was tired of life and wanted to end it, daughter Iris (Julia Akkermans) tirelessly strives to restore her father's meaning of existence, spending a lot of time with him. Very strong emotions are born through touching scenes of daughter and father. The grieving Iris experiences a catharsis of painful truth and an outpouring of desperate weeping, which, through forced maturation, leads her to the unknown within her. Throughout the film, the music excellently follows the main character. This exceptionally directed and well-played Dutch film teaches us that humans work in mysterious ways and that surprising forces lie within us.

Alma Viva directed by Cristèle Alves Meira is a powerful debut film the structure of which stems from the subjective world of the main character, the girl Salome (Lua Michel). She is from France, but spends the summer with her family in a Portuguese village, observing strange faces and unusual situations there. The girl is often accompanied by her beloved grandmother Avo, a mysterious and controversial figure, who teaches her magic. Salome's love for her grandmother and her work seems impressive, and she, by experiencing surreal states in a religious setting, becomes the connective tissue of that world. The grandmother continues to live through her granddaughter, pushing her into an act of revenge. Particular strength is given to this great, timeless film by not expressing the main character's motivation for her works. Salome's calmness and reactions through silence are in complete contrast to the noisy discussions, complex family and neighborly relationships that were fantastically acted. Amazingly beautiful are the close-ups of Salome, who absorbs the world around her with her eyes wide open, while the film tells the story of her growing up through a charming film story colored by black humor.

Wet Sand by director Elene Naveriani is a love story with detective elements, wrapped in the mist of the mysterious. The film is a humanist talk about the fight against discrimination, and the director skillfully builds film suspense. In the opening scene of the film, we listen to pleasant music and watch the handsome and elegantly dressed Eliko who writes a letter in a nice apartment and packs a bottle of drink. The scene ends with the sound of a knock on the door. This is followed by an unexpected thematic capsule, i.e. suicide, which draws us into the intriguing world of the Georgian coastal community. The community is led by the enigmatic owner of the tavern, Amnon (Gia Agumava). His mysterious solitude and sudden appearance look strange, as well as his appearance in a ceremonial suit beside the catafalque of the deceased and the final, discreet caress of Eliko. Interesting dramaturgical twists, intertwined with lies and truths, gradually break the long-standing chain of secrets. Eliko’s granddaughter Moa (Bebe Sesitashvili) transforms her grandfather's funeral into the fulfillment of his wish. Wet Sand is a film about the dignity that strives for absolute freedom. Encouraged by true love, Moa becomes a symbol of her generation fighting for personal identity. The community is beginning to “smell” of bursting change. It's a film about an individual's right to freedom of choice in love.

To me, these three films, each in their own current way, purified the soul, turning the impossible into the possible, pain into understanding, and sadness into happiness. In Pink Moon these were tears, in the Alma Viva,rain, and in Wet Sand, sea water.

Intregalde

Silvija Čičak

Intregalde is a new film by multi-award-winning Romanian director Radu Muntean. The film tells a story about a group of volunteers who deliver humanitarian aid in the Romanian backwaters in a witty and somewhat sarcastic manner along with unexpected twists, Intregalde literally means “between two rivers”. It is a lucid pun for the title of the story of two worlds that each remain on the banks of their own river, where lives flow parallel and close, but never touch.

Armed with youthful optimism and sacks of humanitarian aid, and consumed with pre-Christmas generosity, the Bucharest humanitarians, Maria, Ilinca and Dan get stuck in the mud of the Transylvanian crags, literally and metaphorically. They would surely agree with Anton Chekhov who wrote that the unpleasant side of the forest is that it teaches a man to think when it is too late. Common concerns of the main protagonists are questions like which car to buy or how to get a sheep to celebrate Christmas, or lamenting over their emotional failures. Although they show sympathy for the people they come to help, the giving of the aid takes place routinely, and even without trying to really understand the poor people. Their, essentially benevolent idea of providing help, is in line with the needs of the inhabitants of the mountains. Thus, in one of the scenes, an old woman with a badly injured hand is given a tightly tied bag, which, in later circumstances, they themselves, with both healthy hands and a knife, barely manage to open. This dark miniature from the beginning of the film mirrors the misunderstanding between the two worlds during the entire humanitarian adventure.

The wide shots of the Carpathian Mountains and valleys, used in the film, make the Apuseni National Park idyllic. The enjoyment of the limitless beauty of the landscape is gradually eliminated by bringing the camera closer to the mud of the forest roads, where the encounter with a peculiar old man opens up the plot. With a sure step, but with not so sure memory of a senile old man, the director takes us in a new direction. His appearance is a trigger that directs the characters in unexpected directions of tense conflicts and heated discussions. The turning point is created by choosing the wrong forest path. A cold night with sounds that evoke fear and dark scenes that are illuminated only by a small hiking lamp, in some of them awoke expectations of thriller or horror scenes. The characters are pressed with fear and lose self-confidence and control over events and make irrational decisions. New features are revealed in their personalities: Maria, Ilinca and Dan are good, altruistic and generous, but at the same time vain and hypocritical. With a dynamic and tense change of situations, the intensity and manifestation of one or another character traits change. The climax of utter loss in the dark night is counterpointed by an idyllic morning scene of dazzling fresh snow, heralding a happy ending.

Muntean, following Hitchcock’s advice that "there is no better way to face fear than to make a movie about fear", did a good job. Intregalde is a story of primordial fear, before which goodness retreats.Watching the movie, I doubted whether kindness was a gift from one's own or someone else's surplus?Or is it a small, intimate bookkeeping of receiving and giving, aimed at achieving long-term mental and emotional balance? Or is kindness only selfless one, in the biblical sense, as spontaneous giving without any thought or expectation? Are we lucky to have and be able to give, because happiness is multiplied by sharing?Radu Muntean, with a certain dose of humor, asked a lot of good questions, and everyone will have to look for answers in themselves.

Hope for a better tomorrow

Nada Piacun

It is lonely and quiet at night on the Black Sea, which is illuminated by the moonlight, and rolls menacingly in front of the cafe "Wet Sand". Blue and yellow neon inscriptions, and one illuminated room, penetrate the darkness. While Amnon, the café owner, looks out into the sea, the next scene brings us into the house of an elderly gentleman in a bathrobe. In the musical background, we listen to Swans' song "Our Live Lies", while the dim light of the lamp illuminates the face of the old man in front of whom there is a glass of red wine, and fish and bread in the plate: New Testament symbols. The man is called Eliko and writes a letter, wraps it around the bottle as a label and wraps it as a gift with a decorative ribbon. Then a mysterious knock is heard and everything exudes an atmosphere of mystical danger.

The film slowly introduces us to the plot through the landscape which raises feelings of expectation, while at the same time hinting at sadness. It is a picture of a small place by the sea after the departure of noisy tourists: abandoned hungry dogs that they once fed, wood and plastic debris on the sand, puddles of country roads, once magnificent and bright houses that have faded under the sun in the meantime. It all reminds us of things that fade away and decay if you don't take care of them.

The internal struggles of the protagonists develop and open up in a very interesting manner. Amnon has been watching rural men drink beer and play board games for more than twenty years, and he probably has as much to endure as his derogatory remarks, giving him strong traits of sadness and loneliness. However, not only was Amnon considered a freak by the rural community, but his waitress, Fleshka, was not spared derogatory comments. An unusual young beauty hopes to sell the house and walk away following the principle written on the back of her jacket: “Follow your fucking dreams.” In a small isolated community, where everyone supposedly knows each other very well, the majority considers encroaching on traditional values and any difference, however small as a thorn in the heel. The village is ruthless to the living and the dead. The characters of the locals act as a community of specific people.

The drama grows with the arrival of the granddaughter of the deceased Eliko, Moe, from the capital Tbilisi, who comes at the invitation of Amnon. We learn that her mother kept secret her grandfather's existence and the first encounter at the bus stop awakens a hunch into the special relationship Amnon and the late Eliko had. Moe will "shake" the village. This young city woman, with short hair and in jeans, fashionable, straightforward, and not at all shy, will not hesitate to oppose the villagers. Regardless of the resistance, she will bury her grandfather.

In this dark picture of a traditional society that is not limited to Georgia only, we are won over by beautiful lines of light and hope. One of them is the lovely relationship between Amnon and Moe that deepens when a young woman discovers and accepts the fact of a secret love that has existed between her grandfather and Anmon for more than two decades. Moreover, even after all the unexpected twists, for the first time she discovers true unconditional love.

Wet Sand opens up many topics: from love and sexual issues to the issues of free choice of the individual, but its greatest strength is the struggle with identity issues. The film shows how true feelings can become a powerful weapon against conformism and a message that in the future there is hope for freedom to live. This film by Georgian director Elene Naveriani is a hymn to freedom of life and love, a cathartic melodrama in the Georgian atmosphere of melancholy and solitude where genres of drama and mystery mix. It represents a subtle struggle for individual freedom, and has a powerful message of hope for a better tomorrow.

Pink Moon

Damir Škrjanec

The feature-length debut of Dutch director Floor van der Meulen, through the prism of family relations, challenges the issue of personal freedoms, the limits to which they can go without being detrimental to the people with whom we are connected. During the family dinner, father Jan announces to the children that he has decided to kill himself. Why would he want to do that? Does he have a right to do that, how this will affect his children? Where does personal freedom end and responsibility for others begin?

Although the topic of the Pink Moon is difficult, even a bit morbid, the film successfully balances on the border of comic and tragic. This is partly due to the musical background imbued with contemporary, soft music that seems to be devoid of excess drama, and leaves the impression that everything is alright. On the other hand, the characters let us know through their behavior that nothing is alright.

Young, single daughter Iris reacts very violently to her father's announcement and is ready to do anything, literally anything, to change his mind. This reaction initially looks like an expression of love, but as the plot unfolds, we learn that it may not be so. Iris is unhappy, her life is chaotic, and she searches, but fails to find meaning. The father figure seems to be the only stable point in her life, so in this light her reactions take on a new dimension and are more an expression of need than love.

Unlike his sister, Ivan peacefully accepts his father's decision at first, finding comfort in his own family. His peace and coldness are a little creepy. As the film's plot progresses, his defense loosens, culminating in a scene in which he cries uncontrollably and is unable to move. This gives him a softer trait, while emphasizing the difference in comparison to his sister. He loves and respects his father, but he doesn't need him as much as Iris does.

The behavior of Iris and Ivan opens up a space within which we can judge the idea of suicide. Depending on the angle of view and the situation in life, the father's act may or may not be acceptable. It's easy to take sides, but the director made sure none of the sides are too comfortable to take. The character of the father inevitably entails the question - why does he not want to live? He tries to explain it, but he fails to convince his daughter or me as a spectator. His arguments are empty, especially when we compare how clear and logical he is in other situations. There's still doubt, why won't he tell the truth? The solution may be in front of us all the time, so close that we don't even notice it. The father is healthy, relatively wealthy, lives an active and seemingly pleasant life. Although a little cold, his relationship with his children is pretty good. The only thing that is really missing is meaning, a goal that you could devote yourself to. If that's reason enough to commit suicide, we have to figure it out for ourselves.

Apart from the personal level, the film can also be seen as a critique of modern Western society. We've built a civilization of abundance, we're trying to act rationally, but we may be moving away from our biological heritage, from basic human emotions. This is well illustrated by a 14,000-year-old femur found in the Red Deer archaeological site in southern China. It is notable because traces of fractures and remodeling were found on it, the bone tells the story of a prehistoric family who decided to take care of their injured father. They carried him to safety, fed him and guarded him until his leg healed. Community's concern for the individual is considered one of the first signs of civilization. Can we today, a thousand generations later, let that same father just go away? At this point, we don't have a clear answer to that question. Personal freedoms are a great achievement, we have the task of shaping them and aligning them with the needs of the community. Pink Moon in this sense makes us think, it encourages us to explore and try to understand the nature of our own humanity.

Road movie through the struggle of hypocrisy and humanity

Dejan Šapić

At the beginning of the new film by Radu Muteanu, Intergalde, we see three nice young people, Maria, Dan and Ilinca, riding on muddy and difficult to pass mountain roads to distribute humanitarian aid to elderly locals in remote villages. Moving towards the village of Intregalde, they constantly talk about their own lives. All challenges begin when they encounter a senile old man, Kente, on the way, whom they accept to take by car to a nearby sawmill.

The film deals with the relationship between extremely poor villagers and solidly situated middle-class residents from the city. The question of the true sacrifice and humanity of the three characters in the film is best shown in the darkness of the forest, around a car stuck in the mud, in unfamiliar territory without GPS. Then we see the true character of our heroes, how good they are to those they want to help and how compassionate they are to each other.

There is a noticeable fluctuation of characters between boredom and fear, and then frustration about the situation they are in. It is the powerless and bewildered Kent that is the point of their disagreement, and their relations are reflected through this old man. Do you leave him in the woods or take him, do you go looking for him, how to treat him during a long and cold night in a stuck off-road vehicle? At times, the tension intensifies with elements of horror (when unfamiliar screams are heard, knocks from the outside in a closed car...), which raises in the viewer mind additional concerns and uncertainty for the fate of the heroes. What's going to happen to them? It shows the hypocrisy and selfishness of each of the three heroes. Their humanitarian trait from the beginning of the film disappears and we perceive it as a routine, socially acceptable trend to “help the poor.” Also, through their relationship with the elders in the village, we see an elementary misunderstanding of the problems these people are in.

Intergalde is tense but full of comical situations and long discussions between the characters, which is inherent to the Romanian wave, where the characters and nature of individual actors are shown through seemingly innocuous topics. While in most Romanian films by authors such as Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristian Mungiu, this realism among the talkative heroes takes place at celebrations, in apartments, in the corridors of buildings, but here the realism is relocated to the countryside and later into the night of a forest. The atmosphere was conjured up by the excellent cinematography of Tudor Vladimir Panduru who worked in the films of leading Romanian directors such as RMN and Graduation by Cristian Mungiu, and in several long scenes of Malmkrog by Cristi Puiu. Particularly noteworthy is the demanding night sequences in the heroes' dialogues in the car. The noticeable absence of music and the appearance of individual sounds amplifies overall realism.

Introducing the old, non-professional actor into the film is a nice refreshment that takes the film to a higher level. His spontaneity and relaxation, which is typical for remote areas where time practically stands still, is a contrast to the busy city heroes who want to get the job done as soon as possible. His very appearance is a critique that people like Kent are the burden of society left to themselves, for which no one has the time or the desire to devote themselves. Of the city's three heroes, the main character is Maria, who launches the search for Kente and spends the most time with him. She shows herself to be a true humanitarian and is the most devoted to him of all three characters.

At the end of the film, attention is drawn to old man Kente, who is portrayed as a man without excessive demands and expectations, unlike the city's three heroes. That's why the film ends with Kente being metaphorically the embodiment of purity and humanity. Romanian director Radu Muntean, initially, turned the innocuous and routine ride into an exciting drama of various characters sliding toward tragedy. Until the very end, he manages to skillfully keep it at the very edge of the actors' self-control, to stay in their right mind in extreme situations.

Wet Sand

Boris Abramović

Wet Sand, directed by Elene Naveriani, was screened at the jubilee twentieth edition of the Zagreb Film Festival as part of the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region, which consisted of three other excellent films: Alma Viva, Intergalde and Pink Moon. All films deal with the topic of death and old age, which is best summed up in a sentence from the film Alma Viva: “the living close the eyes of the dead, and the dead open the eyes of the living.”

In the opening scene of the film Wet Sand, old man Eliko writes a letter after watching in melancholy the sea and moonlight and wraps it around a bottle of wine as a gift. The scene is accompanied by the extremely suggestive and dark music of Swans, which gives the scene great strength and a dose of mystique. In the morning, Eliko is found hanged, and with the arrival of his granddaughter Moe, who is coming to organize the funeral, we slowly begin to uncover pieces of a mosaic of secrets kept hidden by a small Georgian village on the Black Sea coast. Moe is someone completely different from the seemingly warm-hearted people who enjoy a quiet life outside the city chaos she came from. Although she is aware of the apparently unprogressive atmosphere of the community she finds herself in, she is still surprised to find herself confronted with a complicated web of lies and betrayals. There is a brutal intolerance in the community and a rejection of diversity which is considered an unacceptable flaw that needs to be addressed at all costs. Initially, she did not manage well in what she came to do and accepted the help of local innkeeper Amnon and his assistant Fleshka. But the spirit released from the bottle of secrets slowly begins to stand in the way of everyone.

As she slowly unravels the secret of her grandfather's life, Moe searches for her own identity, and Fleshka and a local police officer want to find a way out of the life they are currently living through her. The small and conservative environment of the Georgian village does not easily forgive derailment from conformist rails, which is the reason why some people base their lives on lies. As Eliko says in his farewell letter: “See you in paradise, or some other place where we will no longer have to hide.”

A cathartic ending in which each side gets something, but at the same time loses, is one of the most impressive parts of the film. In Fleshka (and vice versa), Moe found a new sense of life in which she would no longer have to hide, lie and suppress her own identity in favor of the cruel and ruthless conformism of the small environment.

Bebe Sesitahsvili as Moe and Gia Agumava as Amnon played great roles in this film. It can be said that the sea plays an almost equal role in this film, which, like other characters, has its own secrets waiting to be revealed. The film began with the scenes of the sea, and ends with them, as we watch the sea wash away the sand on the shore and life can move on.

In addition to the aforementioned acting achievements and impressive photography, in the film, which is a great ode to love, it is necessary to additionally mention excellent music. Swans and Gira literally scream in the song "Our Love Lies "...They suffer for love, and they're sick to death, God save us now, we Believe in love..." The director very impressively raises and lowers the rhythm and dynamics of the film with the music, so she speeds it up with the songs of Foo Fighters, for example, and skillfully slows it down with the music of Dinah Washington.

The heroes of this film do not fight for some higher cause, they simply fight the entire time only for what belongs to them. Sometimes what we're fighting for comes at a price, and in this movie, that is the truth. The dead allow the living to finally live their lives with dignity, as they may not have been able to before, and the Georgian province can, unfortunately, be recognized with this theme in many parts of the world. Wet Sand is an extremely deep and touching love drama imbued with mystery and elements of a crime story that is also a wonderful hymn to diversity. That is why the universal message that the film gives us is important: Feelings and truth are crucial in the fight against conformism that suffocates identities that are “different.”

The Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region – Female Protagonists

Sergeja Šorli

The four films screening in the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region Section at this year's Zagreb Film Festival ostensibly feature very different stories, but after seeing them we realize that they share several common characteristics. The principal characters are women, (non)death serves as the vital catalyst for the protagonist’s growth, the films show different types of purification; a conclusion can be drawn that the driving force behind modern civilisation is the self-actualisation of strong women.

In the Romanian Intregalde, the story is driven forward by Maria, who, based on her seemingly irrational need to help others, threatens her own and her colleagues’ lives. The plot is rather uneventful, but this is what leaves room for reflection on the meaningfulness of Maria's actions, creating a suspense that culminates in the protagonist’s psychological maturation at the end of the film. The film invites reflection on the point at which humanitarian aid transcends its mission.

Moe, the protagonist of the Georgian Wet Sand, builds her love relationship from the ashes of her dead grandfather and his love affair. Moe represents a modern woman who is able to take advantage of the options available to her and successfully pursues her goals while confronting new challenges. While being accountable primarily to herself and her own feelings, she does care about other people and leaves a space for them in her own, different, world.

The task awaiting little girl Salome, the protagonist of the Portuguese Alma Viva, proves even more challenging. She has to bury her dead grandmother with whom she shared a very special bond. While Alma Viva could classify as a children's film, portraying the world from a girl's point of view – the camera is lowered, the sounds and language of adults is perceived with a childlike intensity – the topic is occasionally explored in a way that might intimidate children. In a largely female household, the youngest female is subjected to the greatest ordeal, as she struggles with the ghost of her vengeful grandmother, the lack of her mother's attention and the indifference of her aunts. The film points to the undermined family integrity that must be restored before the crucial event takes place. But when the casket is finally lowered into the grave, we cannot shake the feeling that Salome was the one who summoned the rain that washes away all the sins of this world.

The protagonist of Pink Moon, Iris, endures the most dreadful ordeal. A dynamic opening is brutally suspended by her father's decision to end his life, and the wish to fix a suitable date for his departure with his children. At first, the absurdity of the situation provokes ripples of laughter from the audience, but towards the end we sympathize deeply. The father does not reveal any compelling motives for his decision, and this brilliant omission in the script opens up a space that renders Iris's subversions perfectly possible and meaningful. The viewer is at the mercy of the strong pull of the film even long after the closing credits. Iris stays with us, we are wondering how her wounds would heal, and whether the film is visionary, and the future does hold a possibility of bidding a premature farewell to our loved ones...

Female protagonists confront either primitive communities or their own demons. They are searching for a meaning of life, and although they overcome evil and develop their potential, we realize that their journey has only just begun. I wonder whether these films reflect a new division of roles, given that female characters assume a vital position in vastly different communities. At the same time, I am optimistic because the protagonists are constantly dealing with the topic of death, but never fall victim to it. This indicates that their ideas are worth pursuing. Although featuring different social backgrounds, the films underline a uniform, dominant thought: all life must be respected, because we are all indispensable cogs in the social wheel, in a society that needs to build a more humane world.

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