Locarno International Film Festival

'Kaili Blues' Trailer: Watch Bi Gan's Dreamy Vision of His Childhood Village In China

Riyad Mamedyarov — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 19:15:24 GMT

One of the most striking films of the year, Bi Gan's fantastical new drama 'Kaili Blues' will definitely put this young filmmaker on the map.

READ MORE: Grasshopper Film Picks Up New Directors/New Films Premiere 'Kaili Blues'

Hailing from China, Gan's debut feature is a visually stunning homage to his childhood home and China's anachronistic village lifestyle. The film tells the story of country doctor Chen Sheng, as he travels to the outskirts of major metropolitan cities in search of his brother's long-lost child, finding along the way a new sense of purpose and meaning to his mundane life. Meandering between past, present and future, as well as reality and imagination, Chen is thrown into a dreamlike world that forces him to question his sense of actuality.

Watch Indiewire's exclusive trailer above before heading to the Metrograph to catch the 'Kaili Blues' week-long engagement, starting May 20, which will be followed by a nationwide rollout.

Women Dominate Inaugural Industry Academy International

Casey Cipriani — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 14:00:00 GMT

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno International Film Festival have announced the participants the inaugural Industry Academy International U.S. and the group includes eight women out of a total of ten participants.

According to the Film Society's announcement, the selection committee was so impressed by this year's applicants that they raised the acceptance number from six to ten.

"Creating a more inclusive industry is an essential challenge facing film culture today," said Film Society of Lincoln Center Deputy Director Eugene Hernandez. "With this program we aim to empower and support a new generation of leaders within the film community by offering direct engagement with leading professionals as well as prime networking opportunities during New Directors/New Films, a festival that showcases work by emerging artists. We were thrilled at the response to the program and are excited by the group of young industry professionals who have been selected for this inaugural initiative."

The eight women selected are: Charlotte Henskens (Fortissimo Films Netherlands), Rachel Kiner (MGM Studios), Asha Phelps (IFC Center), Zahra Phillips (Broad Green Pictures), Rebecca Ray (The Film Sales Company), Hannah Thomas (BAMcinématek), Tiffany Vazquez (GIPHY) and Natalia Winkelman (Indiewire).

The Industry Academy takes place from March 20-23 and will include screenings and panel discussions exploring the fields of international sales, marketing, distribution (online and traditional), exhibition and programming.

As the announcement states, the Industry Academy signifies the ongoing dedication The Film Society and Locarno International Film Festival have to "engaging a new generation of key players in the independent-film industry, helping them attain a better understanding of the industry’s challenges while also extending their network of contacts and building bridges across different markets. The program will focus on increasing diversity within the film industry and film culture -- one of the greatest challenges facing the film business today -- and support and nurture women and people of color who are looking to gain a foothold in the industry."

But the Industry Academy isn't the only place where women can dominate. The Locarno Film Festival Critics Academy is taking applications now through May 9 for aspiring film critics from around the world. We here at Women and Hollywood encourage all of you female film critics out there to apply.

[via Film Society of Lincoln Center]

Attention, Aspiring Film Critics: Apply Now for the 5th Annual Locarno Critics Academy

Eric Kohn — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:49:24 GMT

READ MORE: Meet the Locarno Critics Academy Class of 2015

This summer, Indiewire will continue its efforts to support the next generation of film criticism with the fifth edition of the Critics Academy at the Locarno Film Festival. Applications will be accepted between now and May 9, with selected candidates notified by May 27. Produced in partnership with the Film Society of Lincoln Center with support from Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance for Film Journalists, the Critics Academy provides 10 aspiring college-age film critics the opportunity to attend one of the oldest film festivals in the world and write about its program while networking with the international film community.

The job market for film criticism was never an easy one to crack. But with more films screening at festivals around the world than ever before, the demand for savvy viewers able to champion great cinema and conversations surrounding the art form has never been higher. Enter the Critics Academy, which has quickly emerged as one of the critical stepping stones for enterprising film journalists in the 21st century.

Since 2013, over 50 writers have participated in the Critics Academy workshop, many of whom have gone on to write for major publications around the world. Others have pursued related careers in distribution, programming and other areas of film industry. The Critics Academy provides a unique opportunity to engage with global film culture and explore the many ways in which passionate, critically-minded viewers can find their roles in it. Participants will engage in five days of roundtable discussions with working professionals before spending the rest of the festival writing for several publications, guaranteeing that they emerge from the experience with a healthy volume of clips, plenty of contacts and a deeper understanding of the work at hand.

Travel expenses as well as noon and evening meals will be at the participants' expense. The festival will provide housing and some meals. Participants must commit the time to attend the festival for its entire 10 day-run. During that time, they will be able to explore the various programs at the festival, cover press conferences, interview talent and meet the other participants in the festival's related workshops hosted by Locarno's Summer Academy.

Your application must include the following ingredients as attachments:

A completed version of this form.

Motivational letter (300 words or less): Tell us who you are and why you're interested in this particular opportunity. You have a limited amount of space, so don't waste it. If you have produced any work beyond written criticism (such as podcasts or video essays), we encourage you to mention it here.
Curriculum Vitae (1 page): The most recent version of your resume.

3 Articles/Film Reviews Written in English (Swiss participants may submit articles in German, French or Italian): Show us your ability to write about movies. Please refrain from including lengthy academic papers or other scholarly materials that may not give us an accurate reflection of your capacity to succeed in this workshop.

Please send the individual components of your application as a series of attachments by May 9 to summeracademy@pardo.ch.

You may also reach out to Eric Kohn with any questions surrounding the application process at eric@indiewire.com.

Werner Herzog's Wild Internet Doc 'Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World' to Close L’immagine E La Parola

Elle Leonsis — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 15:49:48 GMT

READ MORE: David S. Goyer Explains His 'Graphic Novel' Approach to Renaissance Intrigue in 'Da Vinci's Demons'

For its fourth year, the Locarno Film Festival's spring event L’immagine E La Parola ("The Picture and The Word") will run this March, complete with a special focus on celebrating the realm of the graphic novel.

Masters of short animation tales such as "Il Signor Spartaco," "Murmur," "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" and "El Rumor De La Escarcha" Blutch and Lorenzo Mattotti have coordinated the four day mini-festival to bring comic artistry to the forefront. The festival will feature various screenings, creative labs, discussions and masterclass for both aspiring and established artists and writers.

The event will conclude with the international premiere of Werner Herzog's latest work, "Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World." The documentary, which was recently well-reviewed at this year's Sundance Film Festival, outlines the ramifications that the internet has had on human relationships. Herzog invites audiences to question the future generation's dependence on the internet; news that has been ironically brought to you thanks to the internet.

Check out the full schedule for the festival below.

Thursday, March 10
"The Wind" by Victor Sjöström, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

Friday, March 11
Workshop with Blutch, Auditorium Monte Verità, Ascona

"La Guerre Est Finie" by Alain Resnais, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"Comme Un Avion" by Bruno Podalydès, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno – Introduced by the director

Saturday, March 12
Workshop with Lorenzo Mattotti, Auditorium Monte Verità, Ascona

"Light Years Away" (Les Années Lumière) by Alain Tanner, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"The Cinema According to Lorenzo Mattotti: A Route Via Film and Graphic Novel," public conversation, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"Peur(s) Du Noir" by Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti and Richard McGuire, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno – Introduced by Lorenzo Mattotti and Blutch

"Dramma Della Gelosia" by Ettore Scola, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

Sunday, March 13
"Pinocchio by Enzo d’Alò," Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"La Pattuglia Sperduta" by Piero Nelli, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"Jekyll & Hyde," Performance from the book by Mattotti e Kramsky, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

"Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World" by Werner Herzog, Teatro Kursaal, Locarno

The fourth edition of L’immagine E La Parola will take place March 10-13. The Locarno International Film Festival will run August 3-13.

Click here for more information about the event and find out where to sign up for classes.

READ MORE: Locarno Film Festival to Highlight Polish Filmmakers This Summer

Watch: Lola Kirke Takes Us Inside the Mind of an Epileptic in this Surreal Short Film

Jonathan Kieran — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:33:32 GMT

READ MORE: Watch: The Best Part About Suicide is 'The Going Away Party'

Indiewire has partnered with NoBudge, a site dedicated to showcasing innovative low budget filmmaking, to present some of the most exciting new work in independent film. Each month actor/filmmaker Kentucker Audley will select a highlight from the NoBudge film library and premiere it right here on Indiewire. Check out this month's short, "I Remember Nothing," above, and be sure to watch more great films at www.NoBudge.com.

Zia Anger’s short film, which appeared last year at Locarno, New Directors/New Films and AFI Fest, uses conceptual daring and an uncommon wit to paint a kaleidoscopic portrait of a young woman in trouble.

In a move that calls back to Luis Bunuel’s "That Obscure Object of Desire," and Todd Solondz’s "Palindromes," Anger enlists a series of five women to don the auburn wig and softball jersey of Joan, a college student and undiagnosed epileptic. Though she doesn’t know it, the onset of Joan's night is also the beginning of a cycle that will culminate in a seizure, and as each new phase ticks over, the moment draws nearer and a new actor gets her at-bat as Joan.

"I Remember Nothing" pairs its abstract glimpses of Joan's fractured senses (shot with a good deal of verve by Miranda Rhyne) with semi-surreal scenes of her daily life. Through it all, Joan seems to exhibit various stages of youthful vacancy — sleeping in class, erotically distracted in the outfield, getting high in the van. On the brink of unconsciousness, the version of Joan played by Lola Kirke ("Mistress America," "Mozart in the Jungle") runs afoul of a shadowy Frank Booth type played by Michael Cavadias, who triples as a smarmy T.A. and a female exchange student of mysterious nationality.

Even as she burrows deep into the stuff of Very Serious Films — illness and alienation, multiple identities and altered realities — Anger maintains an incongruous sense of fun. She lingers with obvious mirth over a classful of student’s half-calculated responses to a poem, or a loopy rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." More than just garden-variety irreverence, there’s a healthy defiance of self-seriousness at the heart of this film that gives it an unusual combination of severity and charm.

READ MORE: Springboard: Lola Kirke on 'Mozart in the Jungle' and Noah Baumbach's Secret Project

Locarno Film Festival to Highlight Polish Filmmakers This Summer

Elle Leonsis — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 16:01:05 GMT

READ MORE: How Did a Black-and-White Polish Film Become the Year's Surprise Foreign-Language Hit?

The Locarno Film Festival has announced it will be collaborating with the Polish Film Institute and Fundacja Polskie Centrum Audiowizualne to bring five to seven films in various stages of post-production to the festival this year in order to be developed. The endeavor is part of the festival's annual mission to aid aspiring filmmakers from a set region of the world. Previous years have focused on helping filmmakers from Israel (2015), Brazil (2014), Chile (2013), Mexico (2012) and Columbia (2011).

The creative minds behind the chosen projects will have the opportunity to screen their work to veterans of the industry and compete for completion and distribution aid. During the Industry Days portion of the festival, which will take place August 6-8, sales agents and buyers will attend premieres of the selected Polish works. A jury, including Cameron Bailey (Toronto International Film Festival Artistic Director), Bero Beyer (Rotterdam International Film Director) and Wieland Speck (Director of Panorama at the Berlinale), will decide who wins this year's First Look Award.

It's been quite the exciting time for Polish cinema in recent years, and any future success at Locarno could carry on the momentum already thriving after Pawel Pawlikowi's Academy Award-winning "Ida" and Jacek Lusinski's "Carte Blanche."

The Polish Film Institute will accept all submissions for competition until May 1. The 2016 Locarno Film Festival will take place August 3-13.

READ MORE: For Its 4th edition, Locarno's Carte Blanche Initiative Puts the Spotlight on Brazilian Cinema

Locarno Film Festival to Honor Oscar-Winning Composer Howard Shore

Elle Leonsis — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:08:46 GMT

READ MORE: Memo to Distributors: Buy These 10 Movies From The 2015 Locarno Film Festival

The 69th annual Locarno Film Festival will honor Howard Shore at this summer's festivities with the Nescens Vision Award. The award is given each year to a mastermind from the music world. Shore has been given the recognition for exemplifying "an intuitive feel for film and [a] know-how [that] has left its mark on film history." In addition to receiving the award during the festival, Shore will also give a masterclass, the date of which has yet to be announced.

Shore's creative genius behind Peter Jackson's "The Lord of The Rings" franchise famously earned him three Academy Awards, two for score and one for best original song, but his legacy extends far beyond just Middle Earth. The legendary composer is an Officer de l'orde des Arts des Lettres de la France and was one of the original creators behind "Saturday Night Live," serving primarily as musical director from 1975-1980. His notorious musical collaborations with David Cronenberg has resulted in 15 memorable scores, from "The Fly" to "Crash" and " Naked Lunch," and his other projects include "Hugo," "The Departed," "Se7en," "Silence of the Lambs" and "Mrs. Doubtfire."

"Howard Shore’s career has been so rich and varied that any brief introduction to his work risks coming across as reductive," said Carlo Chatrian, the Artistic Director of the Locarno, in an official statement. "In the tradition of the great composers who can produce such unforgettable and varied themes, Shore is much more than a creator of music. While working with traditional notation modes – the pen and the musical score – he has been able to come up with harmonies that suit the most diverse imaginative worlds, giving substance to scenes and characters in inimitable style."

The Locarno Film Festival takes place August 3-13 this year.

Locarno Film Festival Announces Homage to Post-WWII West German Cinema

Elle Leonsis — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 15:17:52 GMT

READ MORE: Attention, Filmmakers: Learn How to Replicate Fritz Lang's 'Beam of Light' Effect from 'Metropolis'

In collaboration with The Deutsches Filminstitut, Frankfurt am Main and Cinémathèque suisse, the 69th Festival del film Locarno has announced that it will feature a retrospective based on West German Cinema 1949 to 1963.

The program will be a part of next year's festival and is intended to shed light on forgotten stories of the era. The retrospective has been curated by Olaf Möller and Roberto Turigliatto, who initiated their endeavor in pursuit of analyzing national cinemas.

Industry icons, including directors like Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, will be showcased in the retrospective; most notably because they ended their successful careers in Germany and influenced the next generation of innovative filmmakers like Géza von Radványi, Harald Braun and Peter Pewas. The retrospective will be conclude with films that delve into ambiguous genres that were overlooked in their time, including animation, documentary and avant-garde/experimental cinema.

Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Festival del film Locarno said of the announcement, "West German cinema, to which we are devoting this cinematic journey, is a prime example of an art too promptly rejected for being a purely commercial product. 'Beloved and rejected' however demonstrates the diversity and richness of a national cinema that has not only marked an entire generation seeking to reconstruct an identity, but was also able to leave its imprint on current practice, as shown by recent films made by Petzold and Graf."

The homage to post-WWII West German Cinema will span throughout the globe even after the festival concludes. Institutions, like the Cinémathèque suisse in Lausanne, the Filmpodium in Zurich and the Rex cinema in Bern, the New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center and the National Gallery of Art in Washington have all confirmed to host events showcasing the retrospective's features.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview, and News Items Posted During Run of Festival

2016 Locarno Film Festival to Honor Open Doors Initiative

Elle Leonsis — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:50:56 GMT

READ MORE: Memo to Distributors: Buy These 10 Movies from thE 2015 Locarno Film Festival

The Locarno Film Festival has announced that it will operate slightly differently next year; in order to abide by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation's creation of the Open Door Initiative, it will now showcase films and directors from Southern Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This will be the first major undertaking for Sophie Burdon, who will be hosting the event for the first time.

The policy, which was developed by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, will last from 2016 until 2018. The Locarno Film Festival intends to focus its program on a single region "in order to increase and further enhance opportunities for collaboration and exchange for professionals from the region."

The program's new revamp is threefold; it includes the Open Doors Hub, Lab and Screenings. Each year, up to eight projects from South Asian countries will be chosen to participate in the Open Doors Hub. The projects’ producers and directors will be able to meet potential co-producers, sales agents and distributors and find funding to make their films. The Open Doors will culminate with an award ceremony worth 50,000 CHF, which will be financed by the Swiss production fund Visions Sud Est (also supported by the SDC) and the City of Bellinzona.

The Open Doors Lab will offer an exclusive program for a small group of professionals from some of the region’s countries, with priority given to emerging producers and filmmakers, possibly with a project in development. These professionals will also benefit from contact and networking with the Festival’s European and international industry guests. In 2016, the Open Doors Lab will concentrate on Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal.

Lastly, the Open Doors Screenings will present to the Locarno audience a selection of particularly representative films of their cinematic world.

Applications for Open Doors Hub and Open Doors Lab 2016 can be submitted here. The 69th edition of the Festival del film Locarno will be August 3-13, 2016.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During Run of Festival

Chantal Akerman Remembered By the Programmer of Her Final Film

Carlo Chatrian — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 16:36:31 GMT

READ MORE: Philip Lopate on Why Chantal Akerman Mattered

Editor's note: A version of this piece was published on the website for the Locarno Film Festival in Italian. It is reprinted here in English with permission.

In retrospect, I think back to the faces of all those people attending the recent edition of the festival. Most of them are smiling. As it should be. Festivals are happy, celebratory occasions. But today those smiles seem shadowy. Scarily, more like grimaces.

Today, I can't help but overlay them with Chantal's slight yet so very genuine smile just after the screening of her last film, "No Home Movie." She asked: "It went well didn't it?" And I replied that it had. And it was true, the massive Fevi auditorium had responded well to her film, which is so powerfully hard-hitting that at times it can be difficult to absorb.

Now that she is no longer with us, I think back to that moment of joy, of sharing, when she added, "I'm happy to be here." I tell myself I should have overcome my shyness and embraced her. Shame on me!

But what remains with me is her film.

What remains with me is that image of the little tree, withstanding the buffeting wind, which fills me with a sudden tenderness. What remains with me is that gentle voice of hers, when she is talking to her mother via the computer screen. What remains with me is that lightning bolt remark ("Today I want to talk about how these days there are no distances left in the world"). What remains with me is her body of work, which speaks so resonantly, and more than any other, about the world and about images at the end of the age of cinema.

"No Home Movie," like all her preceding films, opens doors and imagines new ways of dramatizing the eternal question of what a presence before the camera means. Of how to give meaning to that presence, which is a way of giving meaning to existence.

I look back through notes I made about her films. From the overwhelming discovery of "Jeanne Dielman" (1975), a film that offers very little (in terms of powerful images and its story) yet which is so singularly powerful: its impact growing so quickly after seeing it. That's how it is with most of her films — it is only when they are over that they start working on us.

I have uncovered a note of something she said: "The way I film is closer to the sacred than to idolatry. I ought to be able to explain myself better in this respect, but I don't think I ever will be."

What strikes me in Chantal's work is precisely that notion of mystery, the mystery of being. What we are shown might have something of the sacred about it because it is anchored in existence, because it goes beyond what we usually see to reach a zone that is so very precious to us precisely because it is invisible, whereas so much of what we see today is, like the biblical golden calf, resplendent but empty.

That is why the loss of Chantal is already such a great loss to us all.

READ MORE: Landmark Belgian Filmmaker Chantal Akerman Dies at 65

In New Films From Israel and Sri Lanka, Faith Struggles in the Shadows

Andreea Patru — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 18:45:34 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

Religion is a story we choose to believe in. Though it is told as a kind of fairy tale in which good battles evil, often narrated by prophets in a patronizing tone, religion is a more challenging question of faith than it might appear to be. It is no wonder that movies dealing with such an ambitious topic resort to fables and allegories, including several from this year's Locarno Film Festival.

Two films in particular from the International Competition, "Dark in the White Light" (Vimukthi Jayasundra) and "Tikkun" (Avishai Sivan) deal with the most pressing question for the faithful: life after death. The most profound rite of passage, death, is treated differently by different religions (Buddhism and Judaism), yet similarly in relation to God: the believer shouldn't defy His will.

”Dark in the White Light" describes several connected stories. The focus is on a Buddhist monk, who seeks enlightenment, and his opposite in terms of character: a corrupt doctor who is accomplice to illegal kidney transplants. The variety of characters include a charlatan who organizes the illegal trafficking of organs, a student who wants to become a doctor, and the silent driver, who is the ally of the unscrupulous doctor. Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundra deals with a round story, framed within a discussion between villagers in the jungle, as if a legend or a myth has come to life on screen. It seems the dark interlaced stories we just saw are a product of their oral culture, stories ignorant people tell about the afterlife.

Some characters are so briefly depicted that they might be identified with one another. Jayasundra works with doubles, as if reincarnation gives each one another chance. The medical student who gave up his studies, realizing how little doctors know about life and death, is doubled by the abject character of the doctor, who assaults prostitutes and even rapes his helpless patients. The young monk is doubled by the one who reaches Nirvana in the jungle. Jayasundra's characters come in pairs, and the ones who don't have a correspondent are just agents of the Angel of Death.

Jayasundra's style has changed from the contemplative contemporary cinema in "The Forsaken Land" to a darker type of filming. He is now more interested in the construction of intricate plots and the gradual changes in his characters. He says in the movie's press kit, "We often think of the world in terms of rigid distinctions between life and death, body and mind, spirituality and materiality. But I have always been interested in questioning those fixed totalities, exploring their complex intersections and the political as well as philosophical issues underlying them. In this regard we can see this film as an exploration of one and the same character in its multiple guises." In this regard, he explores the character who doesn't want to see what is beneath death, the doctor, for whom death comes as a relief after a meaningless life, and one who cares about the afterlife, the monk. Death is just a concept. For one, it is important because he is seeking God, and for the other, death comes as a punishment for the ruthless life he chose.

As in "Tikkun," wide framing and the single take are Jayasundra's choices in unusual situations. Important moments of pure violence occur in the extreme background of a frame; key dramatic moments break the slow pace of the movie. The aesthetic is symbolic: The doctor looks indifferently at a fetus in a jar; the monk is dressed in a powerful orange robe; a woman who is raped is filmed while she is banged against the window of a car. We are speaking about a very organic film; the sounds of wind and the movement of leaves accompany this fable with beautiful poetic contrabass and violoncello. Kim Ki-duk's "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring" is similar in terms of relating to the Buddhist cycle of life. Moments of cruelty break the peaceful, organically filmed image in a similar way and the nature blends with the ferocity of the character of the doctor. Jayasundra fails to achieve the same poetic, conceptual art as Kim's, but provides a full, complex story. The humanity of this heinous surgeon, his impotence in front of death, his fight with his own demons, his struggle with his weakness, avarice and other sins, are beautifully depicted by his perpetual shouts of despair and inutility. The symbolic contrast between fire and orange and this dark, unbearable feeling of resignation is sometimes too allegorical, even if it's assumed.

"Tikkun" is also a depiction of a crisis of faith, which achieves a more profound insight with less obviousness. Using powerful black and white, Avisai Sivan tells the story of a Hasidic Jew who doubts his belief in God after a near-death experience. He explores the questioning of faith through Haim-Aron (Aharon Traitel), a fervent Yeshiva student. He is often depicted as a solitary figure, absorbed by his studies and shot in very crowded settings full of books. His faith consumes him in a journey from devotion to doubt.

Haim-Aron is almost fanatical, fasting and purifying to the point of exaggeration. The only time he fails by the rules of his religion is when he masturbates in the shower, and his gesture is punished as he falls in the bathtub, clinically dead. After the pointless intervention of the paramedics, Haim is brought to life by his loving father, who can't let go and resuscitates him. This experience marks leads him to question his faith, but we don't know if his lost appetite for religious studies is a consequence of what he did or didn't experience in his short passage through death.

While in "Dark in the White Light" Jayasundra brings to the table the randomness and irrationality of death and our powerlessness against it, Sivan chooses to raise deeper questions. Through this modern allegory, Sivan introduces some controversial questions: Is there life after death? Which is the meaning of life? Is God's will above everything? How far should love for God go? How do you separate paternal feelings from incorruptible faith? While in the Old Testament God tested Abraham's faith by requesting him to sacrifice his own son, Haim-Aron's father isn't prepared to do it. Abraham was willing to give up his son and a merciful God stopped him, so instead he burnt a ram caught in a thicket as a sacrifice. For his irrefutable faith, he was blessed with many descendants and prosperity.

By flouting God's will, Haim's father is faced with the fear he didn't do the right thing. Unlike Lazarus, another biblical character risen from the dead, Haim is not rewarded by death. His father breaks the spiritual equilibrium by defying God's will, and the transfiguration of his son is another consequence of breaking this rule. At some point the father even claims his son has "two souls in a lifetime."

According to the strict rules of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Haim-Aron acts with immodesty. He stops eating meat, which is an affront to his father who is a kosher butcher. He starts to hitchhike and is even tempted by prostitutes. Haim-Aron's resurrection is his second birth into a more honest, earthly kind of understanding divinity. The realistic way to deal with any kind of religion is the constant doubt of the believer, his struggle to obey and to live by rules which don't necessarily seem logical or rational. Certainties are left behind, and this is unacceptable for Haim-Aron's family, who hesitates between tradition and paternal love.

The camera strikingly depicts Haim-Aron in his solitude, wandering the streets of Me'a She'arim, one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, or illustrating him with the calm gaze of fixed camera shots in the midst of the night. Traitel successfully portrays this confused soul in his search for a meaning. Haim-Aron's father dreams of killing his son in order to re-establish the order of the universe, and his inner voice communicates via an alligator emerging from the toilet. Closer to Lynchian imagery, the alligator is matched by a surreal apparition of a horse on the streets of the neighborhood or a disturbing scene of Haim-Aron molesting a dead body in the mist, Avishai manages to provoke and to raise questions.

Both films address natural doubts because religion is a concept of choice. We also choose to believe in life after death. The significance we give death depends on tradition and personal devotion. The character's actions, morally or socially accepted, are relative, which this is why "Tikkun," the Jewish concept of atoning for past wrongdoing after death, is a universal one, expressed equally in Jayasundra's film.

In the end, neither "Tikkun" nor "Dark in the White Light" tries to criticize social aspects of particular religions, but to analyze the concept of death and its meaning. In "Tikkun," the believers learned their lesson: they should abide by God's will. It is pointless to resist. Resistance is pointless in "Dark in the White Light" as well: we are condemned to repeat the past.

This Young Israeli Filmmaker Shot This Short Film Under the Radar of the Military

Pierre Hagmann — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 20:43:52 GMT

Nitzan Zifrut was 18 when she was obligated, as are all Israeli men and women, to join the country's military service. During the two years she served, she said, she had to put on a mask of toughness in order to survive. "As every human with a gentle soul being compelled to become part of military enviroment, I had to leave my gentleness in a box and keep it away from me," she explained. "And the same with my femininity."

Indiewire met Zifrut at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival, where she was participating in its annual Filmmakers Academy -- and where her first film "Stationed," inspired by her military service, was shown at a private Academy Meeting. The film will have its International Premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September.

Zifrut explained how she came to filmmaking after a tortuous path. Following her military service, she traveled from Panama to Guatemala in -- perhaps an effort, she said, to find her former self. Upon returning to Israel, Nitzan headed to buzzing Tel Aviv, working as a bartender until she decided to become a writer and eventually was accepted into a screenwriting program at Sapir Academic College. She dropped everything, moved to the South of Israel and found a much slower pace of life.

The first year, she said, "I didn't know what to do with myself." She then discovered a new passion for cinema and soon after was ready to start her first film project. She said she needed the solitude of the south to "hear my inside voice – that's not possible if it's too loud outside." Today, Nitzan lives in a Kibbutz in Nir-Am, next to the Gaza Strip, with about 100 other families.

"Stationed," a 24-minute film, was her graduation film and it took her one year of work. It tells the story of Ruthie, an Israeli girl in a military base in Hebron, struggling to fit in, because there is no space for her in this environment, no room for femininity.

To make a movie, Nitzan said, is challenging enough, but working with the military is even harder. "It's like the whole universe stands up against you to make you fail. If the Israeli military is part of that universe, things get really tricky," she explained. All of her requests for collaboration or support, financially and otherwise, were denied. The consequence: Her graduation-project became a guerilla project.

The film was realized with the help of a bank loan plus 15 "strongly committed" crew-members, according to Nitzan. She was aware that she would not see any of the invested money again, but she had a story to tell. "It's my personal story," Nitzan said. "Instead of going to a therapy, I did this film. Now I have my box back."

In order to create an authentic scenery, the crew had to steal some of the equipment. "It was crucial to create an authentic scenery," Nitzan said, "You can’t fake it for the Israeli audience, they won’t buy it." Without authorization to do so, an officer friend helped her organize some of the necessary military props. "Things like helmets or IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) bulletproof vests are hard to find," she said.

The film was shot in various locations, a few of them real military sites like the sanitary facilities. Though it was not possible to shoot in the original military base in Hebron in the West Bank, where the story takes place, Nitzan and the sound designer hitchhiked with a Jewish settler from Jerusalem to Hebron and managed to sneak into the base with a zoom device to record original sound. The Muslim prayers heard in the movie are authentic. The exterior scenes were shot in a abandoned post site in an Arab village, where they were granted unauthorized access by the same officer who pretended to be using it for training with his unit.

Doing a film under the radar meant that adrenaline rushes were a regular experience. "You never know at the beginning of the day what you will get," she said. "It can be scary."

In the year since the film was finished, Nitzan has been working as a set designer and attending Israeli film festivals. She's already preparing for a new short film with another focus on the same subject: life in a military defense tower which has not been abandoned since 1948. "After this, maybe, I will be ready for a first feature film," she said.

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

You'll Want to Know These Up-and-Coming Filmmakers from Around the World

Indiewire — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 17:55:11 GMT

The recently wrapped 2015 Locarno International Film Festival's Filmmaker's Academy highlighted the work of a crop of international filmmakers you'll be hearing from more in the coming years.

Through the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival, Indiewire has profiled nine burgeoning filmmakers who span the globe -- from Serbia to Switzerland, from Argentina to Morocco and beyond.

Below, in no particular order, are links to those stories:

Here's the Turkish Filmmaker You Need to Know: Serhat Karaaslan's short films have screened at Toronto, Locarno, Montpellier, Sarajevo, Istanbul and other festivals. He's now working on his first feature film. Karaaslan is a passionate storyteller and very much devoted to his home country, which plays a crucial role both as narrative tool and as cinematic background.

Here's Why This Costa Rican Filmmaker is Getting International Attention: Ernesto "Neto" Villalobos' first feature screened at more than 30 international film festivals and now he's working on his follow-up.

Here's How Music and Sound Set the Scene for This Singapore-Based Filmmaker: Vietnamese-born and Singapore-based filmmaker Linh Duong's bleakly enigmatic and dream-like works exist in the space between art and film. Though she has only made a handful of short films, a pattern has already been established: Mythical, abstract and emotive stories that push the limits of narrative.

This Serbian Director Embodies a DIY Spirit: Katarina Stanković lives through her art. In turn, her movies depict the reverse: the world as a stage, living itself as a form of creating art. Indiewire spoke to the Serbian director during her visit to Locarno Film Festival as part of its Filmmakers Academy and as a filmmaker in the shorts program with "Las cuatro esquinas del círculo."

Here's What It's Like to be a Female Filmmaker in Morocco: Rim Mejdi is ready to make her mark in the Moroccan film industry. Faced with the challenges of being a young woman making films in a small industry, Mejdi has not let that stop her. Two of her short films have screened at the Locarno International Film Festival, "2=1=0" (2010) and "En dehors de la ville" (2014).

This Argentinian Actor-Turned-Director Lets His Characters Lead the Way: Argentinian director Leonardo Brzezicki gave up acting for filmmaking. And so far, the decision has paid off. His first feature "Noche" was commissioned by CPH:DOX and was nominated for the Tiger Award in Rotterdam International Film Festival and his short film "The Mad Half Hour" won this year's "Best Short Film Award" in Berlinale.

Why This Filmmaker Isn't Afraid to Challenge Bela Tarr: The German filmmaker Youdid Kahveci has an eye and passion for poetic stories with a surreal touch. She also had the guts to argue with esteemed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Two of her shorts premiered at international film festivals: "Rough Grounds" in Locarno in 2012 and "Poema del dia" at Hot Docs in Toronto in 2015.

This Up-and-Coming Filmmaker Bridges Taiwanese and Filipino Culture: Rina Tsou is from Taiwan, yet she also has ties to the Philippines, and her feature project is built around relations between these two countries.

The Best School for This Filmmaker? Life: This Swiss filmmaker found fortuitous slip-ups and unplanned circumstances pointed him in the right direction for a filmmaking career.

This Young Israeli Filmmaker Shot This Short Film Under the Radar of the Military: Indiewire met Zifrut at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival, where she was participating in its annual Filmmakers Academy -- and where her first film "Stationed," inspired by her military service, was shown at a private Academy Meeting. The film will have its International Premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

The Best School for This Filmmaker? Life

Nathalie Codina — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:17:24 GMT

Film school provides you with pre-packaged toolkit and a handy piece of paper that certifies that you are a filmmaker. This might be the shortest, but certainly not the only or even necessarily the best way to establish a filmmaking career.

Young filmmaker Manuel Almereyda Perrone – born in Switzerland but by now, a citizen of the world – bears it out with his own story where the detours of life, fortuitous encounters and occasional missteps have proven to be a far better school.

READ MORE: This Serbian Director Embodies a DIY Spirit

With Almereyda Perrone the starting point was a slip-up which turned into a stroke of luck. "At 18 I went to Burkina Faso and Senegal to tour with a Theater Company, and after six months of obstacle course I understood I needed to take acting classes," he said recently at The Locarno Film Festival where he was participating in the Filmmaker's Academy.

This detour led him to the Acting School first in Bruxelles and then in Padova where he learned the Lecoq method, and then shifted to Anthropology studies at the University of Neuchâtel. "What the anthropological approach and storytelling have in common is that instead of judging the outer world you learn to observe it with scientific attention, seeking for anything atypical and fascinating that is worth telling," he said.

At that time he shot his first school documentary "Nel nome del pane (In the name of bread)" and learned the basics of editing. Even more importantly, he met Pietro Botte, a Neapolitan kitchen hand with whom he created a street show that, ironically, took them to Locarno where they performed during the Locarno International Film Festival. "There we performed unofficially everywhere in the streets and earned more than 8,000 bucks in 10 days: that was my grand debut at an International Film Festival," he said.

READ MORE: Why Go to Film School When It's Cheaper to Just Make a Movie?

With this money, Almeyreyda Perrone bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires, where he struck up a friendship with theater director Adhemar Bianchi, who served as a mentor. Bianchi allowed him to stage theater pieces with the actors of his company.

In Argentina, with no money and little experience, Almeyreyda Perrone started shooting a documentary where he follows a group of elderly amateur actresses performing in public spaces while disguised as nuns. "I can say that 'El Habito (The Habit)' has been my real life Film School: at the beginning it looks like a poor TV documentary, while towards the end it properly turns into cinema the more I realize how much lights, good framing and camerawork matter in this complex language."

Already, the director has found success with his second project, a compilation of five short movies called "Rêves d’occasion (Occasional Dreams)." One episode, "Santex," has been bought by Canal + while another, "Adios Muchachas" won a prize at the Nice Short Film Festival. With almost no budget, "Rêves d’occasion" was shot in a second-hand superstore with the actual salespeople playing themselves.

More recently, Almereyda Perrone has just concluded "Golconda," a cabaret-like short movie that is starting to travel on the festival circuit. Starring his lifelong friend and now clown for the Cirque du Soleil Pietro Botte, the film was shot in two days and the production expenses were minimal.

The filmmaker is hopeful that this will be the last no-budget movie of his career, although he appreciates how limited resources can be a boon for creativity. It "undeniably triggers the imagination because it requires you to find original solutions to carry out your over-ambitious ideas," he said.

With three feature screenplays complete, Almereyda Perrone said they are more like loose outlines. He explained, "my stories need to keep evolving before and during the shootings according to the places, the circumstances and the people which make them. They have to stay open to receive the unforeseen errors that might create the magic in a shot."

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

Locarno Honors Forgotten Soviet Master Marlen Khutsiev

Christopher Small — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:30:00 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

Pitched somewhere between the floating temporal worlds of Terences Davies and Malick, with a start in monochrome portraits of malaise as lugubrious and mysterious as Antonioni's, the cinema of Soviet master Marlen Khutsiev enjoyed an intense all-35mm revival at this year's Locarno Film Festival, where the 89-year-old ex-Soviet director received a Golden Leopard for lifetime achievement.

The retrospective consisted of six films, moving backwards from his last completed feature, 1992's "Infinitas", and finishing with his first solo venture, 1958's "Two Fjodors." The program also featured such rarities as 1983's exquisite "Postscript," a Slovenian print of the otherwise all but unseeable TV movie "It Was the Month of May," and the long version of his acclaimed "I Am Twenty," which tied for the Jury Prize at the 1965 Venice Film Festival with Bunuel's "Simón of the Desert." The latter ostensibly an unmissable classic of '60s Soviet cinema, I missed its only screening in Locarno due to its three and a half hour running time clashing with anything and everything else in my schedule. Looking at the film on DVD now, I realise that the callousness encouraged by as packed a program as Locarno's is not always an impulse to be yielded to.

Since his successes with "I Am Twenty," "Infinitas," and his 1966 masterpiece "July Rain," which also showed at Locarno as, suitably, a thunderstorm pounded the frail roof of the theatre with rain, Khutsiev's star has faded in the Western world, eclipsed by that of Tarkovsky, his obvious analogue. But where Tarkovsky's worlds are atmosphered by religion — his spirituality and doubt often both the start and end point of the movies — Khutsiev's work remains defiantly, serenely, even unfashionably secular.

In "Infinitas," a sort of drab proto-"Tree of Life," the same winsome junk we see again and again in Malick and Tarkovsky — curtains billowing into a room, camera tracking backwards; slim, female cipher frolicking away from the roaming POV shot, her over-the-shoulder glances meeting the lens' and the hero's shared gaze; the yellow heads of wheat-stalks swaying in the breeze as a character strides into the centre of the field as if wading through time itself, etc.—take on a humble, materialist dimension in Khutsiev. Likewise, the shades of Antonionian melancholy in "July Rain" are understood, unlike Antonioni's ethereal glumness, as practical components of his relaxed visual and emotional cartography; his concerns are with charting despondency when it appears and only then transforming it into something poetic.

Since 1978, Khutsiev has taught in VGIK, the famous Moskow film school. One of his most famous students, Abderrahmane Sissako, the director of "Timbuktu," "Waiting For Happiness," and "Bamako," credits Khutsiev as having "recognizing something in [me] that others failed to see" and for allowing him to stay at VGIK — where like many African students he had earned a scholarship to study film — after several failed projects caused alarm. In his time at VGIK, Khutsiev has also mentored such directors as the late Vasily Pichul and Bakur Bakuradze, whose films have competed twice in various sections at Cannes and once — this year in fact — in Locarno.

Today, Marlen Khutsiev is a sprightly octogenarian with fond memories of his ease and success working in the Soviet film industry and a sincere gratitude for this late-stage revival of cinephile interest in his work. Watching "July Rain" is a baffling experience first and foremost: it appears that only the alien quality of its Soviet background, and accordingly its non-existence outside of discreet private trackers, blocks it from being considered the classic it is.

In this year's festival of populist retrospectives exploring brassy, hyper-masculine auteurs and their violent sensitivity (Peckinpah, Cimino) and respectable, studious explorations of adored European arthouse figures (Bellochio, Bulle Ogier), the mystic cabal that stalked day after day through the 33°C heat and gathered at the secret chamber of La Altra Sala, the most remote cinema in Locarno Film Festival, to share the experience of watching the sober, sombre films of Marlen Khutsiev, unearthed treasures whose preciousness was unrivaled anywhere else in Locarno. All that's left now that the retrospective has left its faint but definite trace is for these recondite riches to be offered humbly up to the rest of the whole cinephile world.

In 'Entertainment' and 'James White,' Losers Undo the American Dream

Justine Smith — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 16:46:38 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

Ranging from the pitiable to the subversive, the manchild has become a fixture in popular culture over the past ten years. Even framed in a narrative that forces them to grow up, like Seth Rogen in "Knocked Up," the gaze upon them is uncritical. Losers, on the other hand, are immediately less palatable though on the surface they share a lot of character attributes with the man-child. Losers are often unlikable and confront audiences with unhappy truths rather than coddle them with the reassurance that everything will be okay.

It should be no surprise that the Locarno International Film Festival showcases losers rather than manchildren, fulfilling the festival's mandate to challenge rather than to patronize. Framed against retrospectives devoted to Sam Peckinpah and Michael Cimino, whose movies are loaded with problematic but engaged masculinity, the American loser was in many ways an unheralded centerpiece to this year's edition. Where manchild movies, as Steve Rose wrote in the Guardian, reassure viewers that "the so-called grown-up world is one big con," movies about losers attack our conception of the American dream.

In Josh Bond's feature debut, "James White," Christopher Abbott's character can't get his life together. His loving and caring nature are undermined by his personal failures. He's a thirty-something unemployed New Yorker caring for his mother, who is relapsing with an aggressive form of cancer. His life is stalled in part by his care for his mother, but he's not a particularly reliable son. More often than not he's in bed, phone on fire with calls and texts because he's slept in, leaving his mother alone and unable to take care for herself.

While "James White" remains fairly straightforward and palatable, "Entertainment," the new film from Rick Alverson is an affront to audience expectations; it's no more conventionally entertaining than Alverson's "The Comedy" was a comedy. "Entertainment" focuses on a traveling comedian, based on the cult character known as Neil Hamburger, created by Gregg Turkington. While Hamburger has found renown through his collaborations with Tim and Eric, and success in the U.S.'s hipper comedy scenes , Alverson transforms this ironic hack into a tragic figure of detachment and American resignation. He is not a loser in the same sense as James White but embodies a sort of failed commitment to the real world — one that Alverson twists to reflect the troubled American identity.

In both films, loserdom is defined by a cyclical nature and an inability to move forward. Both characters are defined by absent family members and a trajectory that does not encourage personal growth. For James White, that is his absent father and his mother's disease, which thrusts him continually into instability. In the case of Neil, his incessant touring and solemn calls to a daughter who never answers the phone mark a man without growth.

"James White" is more straightforward in addressing its character's flaws, a fairly conventional film that transcends a feel-good conclusion because it doesn't reassure the audience that everything will be all right. "Entertainment" is a bit more difficult to stomach because it doesn't adopt a straightforward narrative. A mostly silent road trip interrupted by the crass, hackish and hilarious comedy of Neil Hamburger, it presents a mundane but troubled America that fails to move forward. Failures in communication, linguistically or interpersonally are at the heart of this portrait.

Neither of these leads is appealing: they are not underdogs with hearts of gold, but troubled men trying to get their lives together. Neither character really transforms throughout the process. Neither character finds a happy ending. Their endless pursuit of unattainable goals, in one case keeping his mother alive and the other launching a career in comedy, drives their doomed journeys. From the start, there is a foreboding sense that neither men will accomplish their goals. A true cinematic loser cannot walk away a winner at the end. The real victory is often beyond their reach, even when they may fall into a temporary one.

In "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," also shown at Locarno as part of the festival's Sam Peckinpah retrospective, Benny (Warren Oates) bemoans before setting forth on a misguided adventure, "Nobody loses all the time." By the end of the film, Benny is a world away from where he started, but what has he gained? Staring down the barrel of a gun, what does he have to look forward to? In American cinema, losers are a subversion of the American dream. They poke holes in the idea that if you work hard and be the best you can be things will fall into place. By refusing to let the characters regress in the comfort of stalled childhood, they don't allow us to feel better about the world we live in.

This Serbian Director Embodies a DIY Spirit

Christopher Small — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 15:51:40 GMT

Katarina Stankovich lives through her art. In turn, her movies depict the reverse: the world as a stage, living itself as a form of creating art. Indiewire spoke to the Serbian director during her visit to Locarno Film Festival as part of its Filmmakers Academy and as a filmmaker in the shorts program with "Las cuatro esquinas del círculo."

Can you describe the process that lead you to making films and that's ultimately brought you here?

Well, I came into filmmaking quite late because I studied Fine Arts first—Audio Visual studies in San Francisco and Amsterdam. My work was more in a gallery context. And then I slowly switched to film, I was already 25 or 26 when I applied for the school for Masters Studies in Cologne. It was a non-classical film school: they don't have departments for scriptwriting, editing, directing and so on. It's more that they create the conditions for you to find your own way, making films, organizing everything yourself, giving you equipment and just the opportunity to do so. But then you have to find your own team. So that's how I made my first three films...

And how big was the crew?

The crew for my graduate film, "Zima" was just me, the cameraman and the sound guy. We didn't even do any lighting for that. The light was beautiful at the location. There was no set design, no costume design, makeup, etc. I just brought my friends, and the cast too was basically made up of friends. The house where we shot belongs to an artist—and the house was already incredible, so we just felt that if we were to do something to it we would just destroy it.

Later on, when I finished my studies, a couple of years later I applied to Filmuniversity Konrad Wolf in Potsdam and that's how I made this project ["Las cuatro esquinas del círculo"]. It's part of that study, just the graduate work. It's project-oriented study—I don't have to go to classes, I just have to make my film and write a thesis. The reason I did it was that my basic studies were Masters and I just thought that if I do this project I can use the school again.

I've always just applied to these schools not to learn how to direct—I don't think it's something that you can learn, I think you have to find your own way—it's just to have the opportunity. Because it's so expensive to make films, but now we have free equipment, post-production for free. Then basically I'm just using it to find my own way. Last year, I was in Cinéfondation in Paris, to write my feature script and the Filmmaker's Academy is part of it—after finishing Cinéfondation, you're invited here to the Academy. I was offered a place last year but had to postpone because I was shooting in Mexico. So I wasn't exactly selected here on the basis of my work. It sort of came automatically.

READ MORE: Here's the Turkish Filmmaker You Need to Know

What was the project in Mexico?

Again, it was accidental, as part of Cinéfondation we were invited as guests to Guanajuato International Film Festival—all 12 of us for the Spring and Fall session of Cinéfondation. Because I knew it was such a long trip, I decided to use the opportunity—stay in Mexico a little longer and use the fact that I had this flight paid for by the festival. To stay longer, to experiment—to try and shoot something. So again, it was a two-man show: me and a friend of mine from New York who's a cameraman. And we spent another two weeks after the festival. The story of the Mexican part is based on a true story, of a friend of mine, whose dying friend asked him to take him around the city to say goodbye to the city for last time. He wanted to visit places that evoked certain memories...

Coming from a fine art background, do you think of ideas in terms of images—rather than stories—that you then realize into movies?

Visuals first. I'm worse as a storyteller than of an image-maker. My strength is more in shaping the story to images, rather than really writing the story in a classical way. If you believe in the world of images and words, and that images can only be expressed in words—then you're going to have a straight, one-line film where everything is too explicable. But I also believe that not every story can be expressed in words, and there are certain coincidences or synchronicites, or other mysteries that we don't understand, what law governs them. But somehow they are there, they are present. In a way, I feel them and I'm always in situations where these kind of coincidences surprise me.
Do you like working in films where you're in control of the schedule, where there's a small crew, where post-production is a slow process?

Yes, you might have enough time generally to work on a film—that is, mathematically and technically. But sometimes you have to let the project sit, you have to let it sit. Time passes and you go back to your work and judge it. That is why editing takes so long for me. Technically, you can say, "It's a short movie, 24 minutes, it shouldn't take more than a few weeks." But actually it does take two and a half months, because you are making breaks. You fall into a depression at the beginning, then you have to pull yourself out of it. Doing scene by scene, then you have to put them together. And this putting together probably takes the longest time. You have to calculate and organize it in a way that you feel comfortable. And also not rush for festivals.

Has that slow pace ever caused a problem?

I haven't done many films. I'm not sure if I can answer that. But with my last film I felt that I was more mature than in the past.

More so than with the others...

Yes, there's more experience. Knowing what awaits me, knowing that I have to take all these things into consideration. And you really have to do everything: to be the control freak, to know everything, to do everything—from scrubbing the toilets after everybody has left to promoting the film in a festival in a silky dress. Because nobody will care more about the film than you.

And when the film is finished?

After the shooting and post-production, I was really tired so for "Las cuatro esquinas del círculo" I was for one month on an island in Croatia, in a wild camp so I didn't have to pay. It's not like I'm coming from a rich family who are giving me a fortune to do this. I went there because I was broke after the movie. So I spent the whole time sleeping on the ground and reading. Not entering four walls, dark studios, not being on the computer, drinking only water from the source that isn't processed or bottled. It cleanses you completely—you get rid of all the shit from filmmaking. I was rubbing fresh Aloe Vera on my skin, swimming, eating fish. No carbohydrates apart from fruits—no milk, no bread. This is also important for filmmaking.

You need to recover after a shoot to continue working, to be able to move onto another project. Because you can be trapped into reliving the traumas of making the film—it can make you even more angry and stressed than before. So you need to find a way to rejuvenate yourself, to forget, to recharge your soul and your mind and your body.

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

EXCLUSIVE: Watch the First Trailer for Elisabeth Scharang's Philosophical Thriller 'Jack'

Inkoo Kang — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 15:08:54 GMT

There are a lot of "bad boys" in literature, but Jack Unterweger is the real deal: he's as famous for being a killer as he is an author.

In director Elizabeth Scharang's thriller, Jack becomes a model of criminal rehabilitation after serving a 15-year term -- until a series of prostitutes are found dead, and he comes under police and tabloid scrutiny again. Can a person fundamentally change? Will society let him change?

Scharang had interviewed the real Jack Unterweger for radio when the writer committed suicide in 1994. The filmmaker then turned to fiction to tell her version of his story. "Each and every Austrian has an opinion on Jack Unterweger," she said, "and as soon as I mention his name, the views spit forth like an eruption of lava."

Screen International described the film as "an accomplished, quietly compelling portrait of a convicted killer and whether he can escape the long shadows of his past or the expectations of a society both fascinated and repelled by his actions."

"Jack" will compete at this year's Locarno film festival and screen at TIFF.

In Films From the Balkans, Archival Footage Bears Witness to War

Clara Miranda Scherffig — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:12:42 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

Although a crucial part of Europe's recent history, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia still seem to be an uncomfortable topic for contemporary cinema to address directly. It is perhaps for this reason that three films presented at the 68th Locarno film festival explored the subject through a common formal choice: Brat Dejan," "The Waiting Room," and "Moj Brate" all made use of archival footage, either to visually mark historical events and memorial recollection, or to characterize narrative detours.

The two latter films included factual video material from the early and mid '90s, but "Brat Dejan (Brother Dejan)" employed "visual evocations" that mimic the aesthetics of archival footage but were artificially produced for fictional purposes. "Brat Dejan," directed by Georgian Bakur Bakuradze, depicts the last 12 months of Dejan Stanić, a former Serbian army general, who went underground following the end of the Balkan War. After ten years spent hiding from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the general finds shelter among a group of old friends determined to protect him. He is old and sick, allegedly devastated by the horrors he inflicted in the past, but in fact still stubbornly attached to the authority he once embodied. As we follow him from one refuge to another — where the squalor of the indoor settings appears the only grisly downside of being a "privileged" fugitive — we don't grow empathetic with Dejan or with his supporters.

There is no room for penitence, we feel, not even when national TV starts reporting the re-appearance of the general in the streets of Beograd. Bakuradze revealed that the story was freely inspired by the 2011 capture of Ratko Mladić, a Bosnian Serb military commander who was tried for war crimes in The Hague. Both Mladić and the fictional Stanić suffered family tragedies, and had their wives' support till the very end. Like Dejan's solitary post-war life, Mladić's existence was also marked by a horrific personal tragedy; in 1994, his daughter Ana committed suicide with his favorite gun. As an aesthetic parallel, Bakuradze represents memory with intermissions of archival, lo-fi images from TV news, clearly recalling the existing footage of Mladić paying a visit to his daughter's grave (a rather unsettling video from Bosnian TV program "60 Minuta," still accessible online). Joshua Oppenheimer's "poetry of re-enactment" represents a third form of footage in the film, a formal tool popular when portraying genocidal criminals. However, this choice is not always effective. In different moments we see the director acting out scenes assigned to Dejan, but the protagonist's overwhelming apathy pervades the whole film in such a way that we are left with no precise instructions to what we are supposed to make of such interludes.

However, as the festival of Locarno teaches in terms of cinematic experimentation, a similar type of "video-analogic intermission" – yet again in the form of archival footage – may work in other narrative contexts. It's been argued that the Gulf War initially happened on the television sets of millions of Americans. A similar case is that of the Yugoslavian War, at least from a Central-European perspective. European viewership, following Croatian independence or the siege of Sarajevo, did not experience these events in first person. In other words, we may also argue that the grainy texture of TV reports made the war more tangible in the eyes of those who weren't directly involved.

This might be the aesthetic rational behind the video inserts in two other films premiering at Locarno that use archival footage to situate their heroes' backgrounds in the Bosnian '90s. Presented in the section "Cineasti del presente," "The Waiting Room" is a film by Bosnian director Igor Drljaca, an adopted Canadian like protagonist Jasmin Geljo. Drawing on his real life, Jasmin impersonates an actor who struggles to sustain his family with a series of unfrequent gigs in the Toronto film business. We accompany him from one audition to the other, although we get the impression that his existence is not as bad as he wants us to believe. Jasmin is eager to regain his career as comedian, started in 1991 in native Bosnia just a few months before migrating to Canada. We even get to see some (original!) VHS recordings of his shows. Whilst this footage derives from the real-life experience of the actor, the film deploys such material to underline his migrant background, presenting it as the key element to interpret his desolation. The (audition's) waiting room becomes thus a metaphor for the experience of immigration, which delays personal aspirations and imposes on the actor the demand for a performance he may not be truly willing to carry out.

The analog essence of poor images, in the trembling consistency of tape recordings, informs another film presented at Locarno in the same section. "Moj Brate (My Brother)," the debut work of Italian filmmaker Nazareno Nicoletti, collects some of the important elements discussed so far — brotherhood, distance from the homeland, the Yugoslavian fragmentation — in the story of Alberto Musacchio. Musacchio, who took his life in 2001, was a juggler, actor, poet, archeologist who lived his life to the fullest. After his relocation to Canada, his friends and family in Italy lost his traces: in this sense the film results in a search for truth. Unfortunately the final outcome — regardless of the great human story and archival footage — is rather badly composed. There are indeed the premises for a fascinating study of a common yet complex man, but the cinematic representation annoyingly intoxicates the original material to its core. Different types of visual formats intertwine with the apparent intent of animating the rhythm of narration, while interviews, pensive voice-overs and an insistent music score covers the information we are so keen on collecting. Stefano Gabrini — a close friend of Musacchio's and Nicoletti's professor at film school — is hungry for solo appearances and contributes in making the documentary even more aesthetically incoherent with passé GoPro recordings. We learn that Gabrini and Musacchio spent several months in Mostar carrying out acting workshops with the kids of the city. The footage from those years is the most touching part of "Moj Brate" as well as revealing of Musacchio's human quality, but the documentary doesn't do justice to his legacy as artist and volunteer.

In conclusion, we have the feeling that the insertion of analog and archival footage is needed to reinforce the importance of individual experience in the recent history of the Balkans. "Brat Dejan," "The Waiting Room," and "Moj Brate" are all films in which reality sometimes overlaps with fiction — their outcomes may differ in quality, but they share a view on telling history through cinema. It's an aesthetic view. And Locarno is a good place for these films because it doesn't force them to fall into precise categories. As long as Europe won't accept differentiations based on ethnicity, films like these should continue to challenge the forms through which history can be represented.

This Argentinian Actor-Turned-Director Lets His Characters Lead the Way

Andreea Pătru — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:11:46 GMT

Argentinian director Leonardo Brzezicki gave up acting for filmmaking. And so far, the decision has paid off. His first feature "Noche" was commissioned by CPH:DOX and was nominated for the Tiger Award in Rotterdam International Film Festival and his short film "The Mad Half Hour" won this year's "Best Short Film Award" in Berlinale. Indiewire recently caught up with him in Locarno, where he participated in the Filmmakers Academy, a program which focuses on emerging filmmakers from around the world.

READ MORE: Here's Why This Costa Rican Filmmaker is Getting International Attention

Brzezicki is currently developing the script of his second feature. The struggle to make a film in Argentina has only served to motivate Brzezicki more. He said he has had to work with small budgets and finance his projects with money earned from a variety of jobs.

The shift from actor to filmmaker came naturally for Brzezicki. "I was never really thinking of being an actor, I was more trying. But my real passion was to direct so though I did a North American film I realized I was not enjoying it at all, even with the excitement of getting a job really young and getting to be very well paid."

He isn't very interested in acting in his own films either. Referring to Louis CK, who writes, acts, directs and edits his show, Brzezicki said, "It's very good that some people can do that, but for me it doesn't work, I'm not good at multi-tasking. I realized I was more interested in filmmaking and I gave up acting, but in-between this process I got to do all kind of jobs. I lived in London for a while, I worked in a bar, I did marketing research… After some time I realized that the experience was over and I had this urge to return to Argentina and to make a film."

His first feature, "Noche" was intended as a short film, but it became clear that the story needed more space to develop. "When we started, I saw the rhythm and I saw it was very slow," he explained. "I had 40 minutes, but without really getting to the core of the story and that's when I decided to go back and shoot more days."

The feature is a beautifully shot in memoriam to a sound designer who is present in the film only through his recordings. Brzezicki teamed up with prominent sound designer Leandro de Laredo to add the final touches to the film. "In post-production, we created sounds that were not there in the first place, but the majority of the sound editing was already there, since I edited the image in the first place, so when I showed the material to Leandro, he was already enthusiastic," explained Brzezicki.

Though he hasn't yet received any financial help from the Argentinian Film Fund, Brzezicki avoids self-pity.

"You work with what you have and this is not the problem. It is how it is," he said.

As for finding a place for himself within the Argentinian film establishment, Brzezicki isn't too concerned about that at the moment. "I am in a place where I am more interested in the inside than in the social context," he explained. "Of course, that being said, Argentina influences me unconsciously, but this is the way stories come up in me; from an image, a line, an emotion I want to explore. I can't say where I can place myself in the Argentinian film world, I think I'm still a person living outside, I don't know where I fit, it is too early for me."

Though he already has one feature under his belt, Brzezicki feels that, in some ways, his second one will be like starting fresh. "The first one was not well structured or very strict, it was more like a puzzle and it developed day by day, in parts," he said. "I feel now that I am learning a lot and also I try to write chronologically, and not to try to anticipate the story. I just follow the characters and see wherever they take me."

He hopes that his second film will appeal to a broader audience.

"In 'Noche,' I made a small cut of human nature and I focused on something. This film accomplishes some emotions, but it leaves so many other things aside, that you can't feel the complete humanity of the characters," he explained. "I think the most important thing is to generate that moment of real emotion. It is something that the audience can feel, which is that unnamable thing, so deep that you don't know where it's coming from, but it takes over your body and expresses all those contradictions in life."

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

Do Europeans Make the Best Documentaries About the U.S.?

Clara Miranda Scherffig — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:07:04 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

The American Dream is a fascinating concept, so much embedded in the history of cinema that we shouldn't wonder to encounter European filmmakers exploring the subject. Even so, at this 68th Locarno Film Festival it was an enjoyable surprise to see two European documentaries engaging with the theme once again. After the economic crisis, the values upon which the ideal was built have shown their fragilities. But if the quest for happiness may not be achievable through the ways envisioned decades ago, it still provides a fruitful framework for storytelling. "Above and Below" and "My Name is Gary" take part in such narrative and elaborate on the topic in a twofold way: on the one hand they provide a moment for "outcast voices" to share their stories, on the other hand they seem interested in exploring territories that provide an "environmental," visual counterpart to the experience of marginalization.

The much-praised "Above and Below" premiered this year at Rotterdam and was presented in the Panorama Suisse section. Director Nicolas Steiner has a background in ethnology and one can really sense it. His study of five characters living around Las Vegas speak of a deep human engagement between director and subjects. There is April, a former soldier, who is now a researcher on the Mars Desert Station and investigates the soil of Utah's desert as though she were in space. In another desert, the Mojave, we find Dave, a veteran who transformed a military bunker into a rather comfortable shelter run by solar power. In awe, we watch three homeless residents of Vegas' flood tunnels. There, below the gambling capital, ex-convict Lalo and sweethearts Rick and Cindy have founded their temporary residence. They are all examples of the most compelling humanity (but ultimately, after accurate and humble understanding, who isn't?). This patchwork of outcasts is held together by a thread Steiner declares since the very beginning of the doc: above and below common, regular lives, there are existences worth to know and appreciate. The title refers also to time's coordinates, as the characters appear both longing for future changes and burdened by events happened in the past.

Despite the great (mutual) trust upon which the documentary is constructed, "Above and Below" doesn't touch its viewership in profundity. The confidence assigned by the characters to Steiner is evident and effective, but often — too often — one has the impression they're part of a performance. During the festival Chantal Akerman presented her last documentary and correctly argued that "there is no good documentary without a bit of fiction, and vice versa." Yet in the case of "Above and Below" the aesthetic urgency overcomes the human and narrative one. A beautifully composed love scene between Dave and Cindy doesn't appear like the product of a spontaneous collaboration, but rather of a well written sequence. Cindy's childish wonder in front of a fiber optic lamp or Lalo's philosophizing are impeccable cinematic moments but they seem too contrived to raise sincere empathy. By the time we see a wave of ping-pong balls magically spread along the flood tunnels, we have learned that Steiner is devoted to a mesmerizing cinematography. Anything is legitimate on film. And yet his framing doesn't seem accustomed to filming the boundless American landscape, be it urban or natural, and the anthropological material appears overwhelmed by the force of aesthetics.

With no intention to undermine Steiner's work — which is impressive, especially being a thesis film — it is perhaps worth to mention two recent documentaries equally obsessed with the American landscape. Oddly enough they were directed by two Belgian filmmakers: "Desert Haze" (2014) by Sofie Benoot and "Devil's Rope" (2015) by Sophie Bruneau explore the American West with the same devoted perspective as Steiner's. Still, their outcome is drier, more truthful to history and less indulging with beauty. A similar historical approach is adopted by "My Name Is Gary," presented by Blandine Huk and Frédéric Cousseau during Locarno's Critics Week. In this case Gary is not a person, but a city in Indiana, 25 miles distant from downtown Chicago. Founded in 1906, it may represent for the U.S. what Leeds is for Great Britain: the city of steel industry. (On the same topic, it is mandatory to watch last year's "The Big Melt: How Steel Made Us Hard," by Martin Wallace and Jarvis Cocker.) Gary is known also for being the hometown of the Jackson Five. Michael Jackson's parents moved there in 1949 along with white flight: the doc listed 47 different ethnicities who migrated there, attracted by the economic growth. The labor force didn't only come from Europe.

As the many voices of "My Name is Gary" recount, the black migration arrived from the south too, leaving behind the cotton fields and bringing along the tradition of blues music. The relocation of the "Mississippi vibes" imbued the growing city with energy and the liveliest nightlife: "You'd have the brothel next to the church," as some older resident tells with nostalgic pride. But as the camera wanders around Broadway or lingers on the facade of gigantic buildings, there is no trace of past grandiosity. "Now it's only alcohol, gas stations and churches," laments a young mother. Gary had been a lucky place, blessed by a multiethnic working class and home to one of the first African-American mayors (Richard G. Hatcher, an important appearance in the documentary). "My Name Is Gary" is shot in a rather traditional style. Poverty, unemployment and criminality, which now dominate the city, are dramatized by simple editing: as we observe the empty city center, with its deserted roads and the shut-down shops, the voice-over remembers the cheerful queues for the "Sunday's ice cream," when Gary would attract crowds of people from the whole county.

“My Name Is Gary" isn't as visually daring as "Above and Below," but it maintains the informative and narrative integrity we wished to see in Steiner's debut film. One of the reasons behind that may be the type of engagement Cousseau and Huk sought from their informants. The two French directors clearly intended to produce a choral portrayal, and in this case the people we see are indeed informants, not traditional protagonists. In order to achieve a homogenous collage of voices, we don't really get to know Gary's inhabitants: we see their city, or what is left of it. But the combination of voiceover and "urban postcards" provides a very clever alternative to the much despised talking heads, and aids to manufacture a collective impression of the city.

"My Name Is Gary" and "Above and Below" prove that the American landscape still triggers the most diverse cinematic fantasies. Further, our ability to comprehend marginalized characters (or character that don't belong to our world of reference) is strongly connected to the understanding we have of their background environment. In this sense, both documentaries do a great job in situating the "outcast" within landscapes of great cinematic quality. We grow close to Gary's population and "Above and Below's" crew and we must admit that the merit of such engagement lies also in the importance assigned to the environment. We are left wondering whether these places may receive better representation by those who don't belong there, the European outsiders.

Here's Why This Costa Rican Filmmaker is Getting International Attention

Nicolás Carrasco — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 17:48:40 GMT

Ernesto "Neto" Villalobos' feature debut, "Por las plumas" ("All About the Feathers"), premiered simultaneously at TIFF 2013 and San Sebastian 2013 and was selected by 30 other festivals, including Rotterdam, Vancouver, San Francisco and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Latinbeat series. This deadpan comedy tells the story of Chalo, a security guard who wants to get into the cockfighting game and acquires a rooster, whom he names Rocky.

This year Villalobos was part of the Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation Résidence, where he finished the first draft of his second project, called "El hombre de la mancha." Indiewire recently chatted with Villabos at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival where he was participating in the Filmmakers Academy.

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Tell me a bit about your background.

I graduated in Sociology in Costa Rica knowing that I really wanted to study film. But before studying film, I wanted to study something else. I didn't want to leave the country so young. And when I finished college I went to Barcelona to study film. I studied directing and then returned to Costa Rica and began to work. I started working a lot on advertising and teaching at the new film school. Then the time came when I started to need other things, and that's when I started applying to Talent Campus, first in Berlinale and then I went to BAFICI. I really like workshops.
In your video presentation for the Cannes Cinéfondation, you use the term "deadpan comedy" to identify "El hombre de la mancha," your next project. Could you expand on that?

The term "deadpan comedy" is not a term that I like. I believe comedy is comedy and that's it. I don’t know who invented it, but it refers to a type of "dry" comedy. If I had to say a director that I love or that has affected me in terms of comedy, I think those would be Aki Kaurismaki, Jacques Tati, Emir Kusturica and Roy Andersson, who I discovered recently at the Cannes Cinéfondation Résidence.

In the Cinéfondation video, you also state that you want to talk about "people who live their lives not looking for big dreams, not caring too much about why we do what we do." Is this a declaration of principles?

That's how I try to see life. Once a fellow Résidence trainee asked me why I worked with these people if they aren't close to my reality, but I think he saw it in terms of professions. Yes, I have no links with security guards. I don't come from there, but I think there is actually a point in the way they see life that surprised me in many people I knew in that world, which is not to worry about long-term issues, but to see life as everyday, and how to discover what's going on. I think sometimes large goals are more bourgeois concerns.

Can you talk about your working method in "Por las plumas"?

My way of working is through research, writing a script from research and then to confront it with reality. What I like to do is to find the cast from the characters I wrote and then transform those characters again.

Why did you choose to work with non-actors for this film?

When you can find the personality of a character you wrote, and it works that way, you don't necessarily need an actor. We also had actors on our casting process, but none of them achieved what our cast achieved. I felt more comfortable, even though it meant much more preparation.

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What was your method of working with the performers?

I decided to change the entire script into a basic framework because I couldn't expect the non-actors to memorize dialogues. I don't think it works that way. So what I had clear is how I wanted them to talk, how I wanted to start the scene and how should it end. Then I worked that way: building everything before going back to basics.

So the script became like a structure to work around.

Yeah. I like improvisation, but after you've gone through the entire construction process. I know that with "El hombre de la mancha" (for which I've just finished the first treatment) we'll have a script to apply to film funds, but when I return to Costa Rica and start working with real locations, with real people, things are going to change. And when we start shooting more things will change. But I believe it's also really boring to shoot a movie that's exactly like the script.

How hard is it to make a film in Costa Rica?

Sometimes people tell you: "Oh, how difficult it is to make films in Costa Rica, because you have no government fund and there's virtually no support for cinema," but I think anywhere it's difficult to make films or it could be very easy. What do I mean by that? For example, in Costa Rica we may have few filmmakers and not have many funds, but the fact that there are so few of us makes it easier for us. In Argentina, they may have film funds, but there are also many more filmmakers. So many people applying to funds also makes it more competitive or more corrupt. So I think that, regardless of all those things, it will always be difficult, but you can do it.

Tell me about you new project "El hombre de la mancha."

It's also a comedy. It's a comedy about motorized messengers, about sex on motorcycles, about losing your job, about doing whatever you like. You could say I want to try new things, things I didn't try in "Por las plumas." I want, in some cases, to make it more absurd, in some cases, more violent, but always with the same kind of comedy, without necessarily telling a story with perfect plot points. It's a challenge. I want to rethink many things I learned in "Por las plumas" and to learn what happens if you do things differently.

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire Locarno Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

Bulle Toujours: Locarno's Tribute to Bulle Ogier

Christopher Small — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:51:13 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

A career Golden Leopard award at this year's Locarno Film Festival was given to Bulle Ogier, one the greatest French actresses of her time and one of the cinema's great physical presences. In the English-speaking world, though, one could be forgiven for an ignorance of who and what Ogier is and was. Unlike Isabelle Huppert or Isabelle Adjani, she has rarely made films outside France — and when she did, it was with European masters like Manoel de Oliveira or Raúl Ruiz, typically not working in English. The festival program consisted of an odd line-up of her films, a series that ranged from historical curiosities ("Les Idoles," "Et crac," the Pink Floyd-scored "La Vallée") to her known classics ("La salamandre"), from minor works ("Belle Toujours") to a masterpiece like "Le Pont du Nord." In a career as rich as Ogier's, it's puzzling that all five slots weren't simply allocated to her strongest films; a wide-ranging program could encompass any number of Rivette's best films, Luis Bunuel's Oscar-winning "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie," Fassbinder's "The Third Generation," or the three films she made with Marguerite Duras.

But even in her worst films, Ogier is never anything but fascinating. In "La Valée," directed by Barbet Schroeder, she plays the wife of a French consul in Melbourne who joins a group of explorers in their search for a New Guinea valley "obscured by clouds." Ogier's Vivien begins as a very passive woman, staid in her fragile movements, easily influenced by the men of the expedition. This leads to some consciousness-altering experiences with psychedelic drugs, and her performance enters typical Ogier territory. Suddenly, her acting becomes all about the jarring, unfiltered movements of her skeletal frame and doll-like face; possessed of a new interior energy, Ogier becomes above all a mysterious physical presence, as in Rivette's "Duelle" and the unbeatable 4-hour "L'Amour Fou."

In one "La Valée's" best scenes, Vivian wanders away from the camp where her off-screen friends are deep in their own drug trips and makes her way into the bush. After napping at the foot of a tree, held in the tender embrace of a pair of exposed roots, she spots a beautiful snake lying nearby, picks it up, and studies it with a child's innocence. When the others come looking for her, calling her name through the forest, Vivian is pulled out of the spell cast momentarily by the deadly serpent and — yanking it from its place around her neck — casts it away back into the bush. After her character's awakening, all of Ogier gestures are imbued with the vacant worldliness of a psychedelic experience. As in "L'Amour Fou," in which her character disintegrates and expands into seemingly endless variations on the same romantic struggle, "La Vallée" shows that an Ogier performance, stretched out over the course of a film, is often in contradiction with itself.

Ogier's start was in a theater troupe, where she learned to dance in a variety of styles — with Ogier, as with Jerry Lewis, performance is totally physical — and learned to act as part of an ensemble; to create fiction as a team, as we'd later see in Rivette. Her first film was "Les Idoles," a tin-eared but still pretty funny satire of the celebrity industry directed by Marc'O, the Situationist who also lead her theater troupe. She soon began to work with French New Wave master Jacques Rivette, also directing theater at the time; their first collaboration was on "L'Amour Fou," which integrated almost all of Marc'O's theatre troupe, and later on many others, including "Celine and Julie Go Boating" and "Gang of Four." Ogier would go on to collaborate many times, on stage and on screen, with Marguerite Duras. The residue of her start in such a thoroughly entrenched theatrical space — the mix of classical plays, dancing, singing, goofy comedy — would never disappear; in as late a film as "Belle Toujours," there's no mistaking the specificities of Ogier's special way with outsized gesture.

Locarno's small, strange program of films, perhaps, is best imagined as a showcase for her versatility, pitting "Le Pont du Nord," in which she plays an ex-fugitive, fresh out of jail and with extreme claustrophobia, who finds herself at the heart of a massive conspiracy with seemingly no origin, against the likes of "Les Idoles," where she's working on an almost abstract level of physical performance, set as the film is inside an undefined psychedelic space. Even as "Le Pont du Nord" edges towards abstraction, with Rivette restaging some of his favorite setpieces and concepts from Lang, Hitchcock, and kung-fu movies in his self-conscious way, Ogier's performance remains sensitive and realistic, matching with its ephemeral hints at a subterranean spark of life underneath a dark blanket of depression the political and geographic destruction of a post-1968 Paris that is "Le Pont du Nord's" secret subject.

Speaking at a discussion of her work with Jean-Michel Frodon in Locarno, Ogier reminisced about her time working with her collaborators and about the mix of life, politics, and art that one always sees in the work she produces. Of course, someone alluded to this in a question. Bulle Ogier, her eyes looking playful as they always did in the movies, responded: "Yes, all art is political. Evidently so."

Even in Locarno, Swiss Cinema Fights for the Spotlight

Nathalie Codina — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:39:46 GMT

The article was produced as part of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy. Learn more about this year's class here.

As the most prestigious film festival in Switzerland, Locarno is also a crucial opportunity to draw the attention of the international press and film industry to recent Swiss cinema — a chance that cannot be missed, as unfortunately most of the independent domestic productions strive to gain exposure at other festivals and otherwise access the worldwide circuits of distribution. What I was able to behold in Locarno this year might partly explain why it is so.

"An international exchange and cooperation is vital for Swiss cinema to develop and expand its scope," said Federal Counselor Alain Berset at the annual press conference of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (FOC) in Locarno. To make domestic cinema more attractive for the international marketplace is one of the main concerns of the FOC, which presented a new investment program in cinematography for the next five years with the stated aim of promoting the exportation of our films.

A noteworthy shift in the financial support policy is that in the future the criteria based on success will no longer only consider the sales at the domestic box office, but also the amount of nominations at film festivals around the world: this is a way to concentrate the funding on the films which have (at least) European potential, and it shows that international recognition has become a priority.

At Locarno, the International Competition is the most high-profile window for any nominated movie. This year, "Heimatland" created quite a bit of expectation because of the experimental nature of the project: 10 young promising Swiss filmmakers mingle their voices in one single dystopia, where in a series of intertwined episodes we see Switzerland being threatened by a huge storm which forces people to flee en masse, putting them in the position of the unwelcome refugee, possibly as a sort of ironic punishment for the country's insanely restrictive immigration policies of the last decades.

Although the film has been rather positively received — among others by the prestigious Neuer Zürcher Zeitung — the concise response of the Hollywood Reporter's Boyd van Hoeij at a panel discussion about Swiss cinema's place on the world stage put the finger exactly where it hurts: "The idea is much more interesting than the film is successful in fulfilling its premises." Maybe the task, although fascinating in itself, was simply too ambitious to be carried out properly: The episodes interweave by virtue of the editing, but they remain heterogeneous in their visual quality, atmosphere, rhythm and storylines, so that "Heimatland" seems more like a bunch of short movies stitched together than an accomplished long feature with a proper plot development and escalation of suspense.

At the panel, Variety's Peter Debruge also identified the main shortcomings of "Heimatland" in its fragmentation and lack of suspense, but beyond the cinematic issues he argued that "the film won't probably be able to cross the Swiss border because it engages with local issues in such a self-referential way that no other country could identify with it." The film will probably not contribute to improve the international reputation of Swiss fiction, which is traditionally regardless less favorably than Swiss documentary, but it is also true that it cannot be taken as representative of the year's harvest, since selection in the Competition requires the film to premiere at the Festival and thus the different release timing excludes many from the race.

There is, however, a parallel section at Locarno that provides the necessary counterbalance, though much less prominently, screening a selection of 12 films which, according to a committee composed by the Swiss Film Academy, Swiss Films and the Solothurn Film Festival, should represent the best of current Swiss cinema.

It is significant that with eight nonfiction movies against four fictions, the documentary still dominates the Swiss scene. The most thrilling discovery was, without any doubt, the documentary "Above and Below," the graduation work of the 31-year-old Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Steiner, which premiered at Rotterdam in January, got reviewed in April by Variety as one of "the year's most remarkable cinematic discoveries" and recently found US distribution via Oscilloscope.

In his documentary, Nicolas Steiner enters the everyday life of five characters living off the grid. Three of them shelter underground in the drainage tunnels of Las Vegas – Ricky, Cindy and Lalo – trying to survive as they can out of what they find in the garbage. On the above side of earth two others dwell in the desert: Dave in an ex military bunker fixing up his life and waiting for the possibility of a new start, while April works on the Mars Desert Research Station where she prepares for an expedition on Mars that will probably never occur in her lifetime.

"Above and Below" openly breaks the rules of traditional documentary by introducing staged scenes, by making use of certain highly aesthetic camera movements and craning upwards that haven’t certainly been improvised, or by consciously employing light effects as to achieve a symbolic cinematography (headlamps that glow like an astronaut’s helmet, a fiber optic lamp reminding the stars). The innumerable visual and auditory cross references between the storylines also reveal a writing and editing style that is close to fiction. In his humanistic approach, Steiner lets emerge the universal character inherent to his storytelling and protagonists emerge, making his visual message spread out to a potentially global audience.

By embracing the new trend of the hybrid doc and seeking for his subjects outside of Switzerland, Nicolas Steiner is definitely showing the way for Swiss filmmakers to reach out to the world. Together with an internationally oriented subsidiary politics of the Swiss Government to fuel such productions ("Above and Below" started with no funding!), and the Film Festival of Locarno continuing to provide the necessary visibility to domestic directors, independent Swiss cinema might be able to be more present worldwide in the future.

This Up-and-Coming Filmmaker Bridges Taiwanese and Filipino Culture

Nathan Letore — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:00:00 GMT

The 15 filmmakers selected to take part in the Filmmaker's Academy at this year's Locarno Film festival represented a map of the cinematic world. Hailing from Morocco, Malaysia, Israel, Singapore and elsewhere, these filmmakers have all directed one or more short films and are now working on getting their first feature films made.

But nationality can be reductive, as is the case with Rina Tsou. The program states she is from Taiwan, yet she also has ties to the Philippines, and her feature project is built around relations between these two countries.

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When Indiewire chatted with Tsou recently at Locarno, she discussed her career trajectory and the challenges she faces putting together international projects in a country dominated by Hollywood and local feel-good productions.

How did you get involved in cinema? What's your background?

I come from a mixed family. My father is Taiwanese and my mother is Filipino. I grew up in the Philippines from the age of two to ten, and it was always clear that we would one day go back to Taiwan. But when I got there, it turned out my parents were away from home just as often as they were in the Philippines, and it was hard fitting in at first because I didn't know the slang, that kind of thing. We had cable, so films became my family: mostly Hollywood films, but also a lot of Hong Kong films.

Later on I started studying finance, but I hated it, so at the end of the second year I switched to a film course in another university (NTUA), and chose to focus on directing, but also did some writing and producing. My first short, "Guai Wu" was made in 2011, and that's the one I'm showing here at Locarno. It's quite a dark film, made about a period of my life which was very hard for personal reasons. My graduation short is also about a personal topic: the period of my life that followed my arrival in Taiwan, when I had trouble fitting in.

Now I've written the first draft of my first feature project, a coming-of-age project that happens in the follow-up of the Haiyan typhoon: a 21-year old Taiwanese graduate comes to volunteer in Taiwan and meets a 15-year old Filipino girl, who was the pretty little thing of her village but is now just a young teenager who has lost half of her family. There's this perception in Taiwan that to solve your problems you have to go abroad, so that's what the young man does. They cross paths, then at the end of the film go their own ways; they have changed, but the world has not changed for them. I'll be working on the second draft this month.

What are conditions like in Taiwan for filmmakers in general?

It's funny, because what is considered the Golden Age of Taiwanese cinema in the West, when it was really happening, was actually a really bad time for the industry. Audiences were bigger in the 1970s, there was a local industry. But it's because the industry was doing badly that the directors were freer than they had been.

In 2008 there was a huge popular success, which Taiwanese people came out to see, called "Cape No. 7." That boosted the industry, and there have been a lot of films made since then that rely on the same kind of cute, heart-warming tone, what the Taiwanese call xiao que xing, "small happiness." These are the local box-office successes, and otherwise theaters are dominated by Hollywood films. In the middle there are also American films and Japanese films.

Art-house films are at the bottom and draw small numbers. But there are a lot of film festivals in Taiwan, and that's where art-house films have their premieres. They then show in art-house cinemas, and as for the festivals, many of them are funded by the government or by other institutions. You won't see any of those downtown in the shopping areas, but if you know where to look, they're there.

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What does that mean in terms of challenges for getting a film project off the ground then?

Producers expect you to have commercial or genre elements in your film, and if you're more of an art-house filmmaker it can be harder to find funding. There is government funding which it is possible to get in Taiwan. But the committee meets once a year, and the process of reviewing applications is slow, so you're waiting for a very long time to get an answer.

It's impossible to get actors without money, as actors in Taiwan are still mostly box-office driven. So my strategy is instead to rely on the prestige of international film festivals and then come back to Taiwanese producers and "fight back." I took part in the Produire au Sud workshop of the Nantes Festival des Trois Continents, which had its first edition in Taipei recently, and that was very helpful in getting us pointed in the right direction to get a project off the ground.

In the Berlinale Talents I was able to meet my Filipino producer, who will help open a lot of doors. Of course Filipino cinema is booming at the moment, but since there are so many filmmakers there at the moment, it's actually even more cutthroat than Taiwan!

My producer's strategy is to focus on the specificity of my project as an international one, not just involving the Philippines, but also connecting it to another Asian country, which is not as common.

And then the Locarno Filmmaker's Academy has been good for giving filmmakers a smaller environment where there are only a few of us (Berlinale Talents is huge, for example). The filmmakers in the program have really developed a strong connection so we can exchange notes on funding and applications without feeling that we're competing against each other.

This article is part of a series written by members of the 2015 Locarno Critics Academy, organized by Indiewire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Locarno Film Festival.

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