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Czech Rep
When banker Libor loses his job and is threatened after financial indiscretions and irregularities, he must go on the run with his wife and their two precocious, wise-cracking kids. In Robert Sedlacek’s Long Live The Family (right) we sense their desperation, watching them fleeing for their lives, meanwhile getting closer as a family, and more quirky and endearing to the viewers. The tone is far bleaker in a co-production with Slovakia, MADE IN ASH, the first feature from writer-director Iveta Grofova. Slovakian Roma girl Dorota is happily working in a factory on the Czech-German border when she and her fellow immigrant workers are suddenly made redundant. She can’t go back home, her boyfriend has melted away, and her money is running out. Her friends are turning tricks or lap-dancing. But can she bear an alternative future with a keen, lonely German man who is older than her father? Bleak, gritty, yet never judgmental, this intersperses the harsh reality of the New European economy with animated renditions of Dorota’s dreams.
Hungary
Bleaker still is Bence Fliegauf’s Just The Wind, based on the grim, true acts of violence against Romanies just a few years ago, in which many people were attacked, and six died. Fliegauf’s drama explores their persecution, which happens despite their hard-working, ordinary existence. A mother and her two children live as outsiders, cowed by racial tensions and lawless policemen, with danger, dread and menace constantly hanging in the air. Naturalistic performances from these non-actors make it all the more shocking when the tension builds to a dramatic climax.
Germany
Filmed in Germany and Argentina, My German Friend also stretches across decades, but starts crucially in the post-war period, with a young Jewish girl, Sulamit, falling for her German neighbour, Friedrich, in their swish Buenos Aires suburb. As they grow up, he finds out more about his father’s Nazi past, while she is set upon by German youths. We follow them as they both get scholarships to study in sixties Germany, where he becomes increasingly politicised, before returning to Argentina as people start to be “disappeared” by the junta. Theirs is a love story, carnal and spiritual, played out across a huge canvas, and the main two actors, Celeste Cid and Max Riemelt somehow manage to be convincing from youth through to their middle years.
Made by Australian director, Cate Shortland (best known for Somersault), Lore also foregrounds a prominent Nazi’s family, when they try to find safe haven as the war ends. Abandoned by their parents, the four younger children are led by their resourceful teenage sibling, Lore, who is forced to barter for their lives on their hellish journey. And even as she is confronted by the horrific photographic evidence of what her SS father has done, she remains conflicted by her attraction to a Jewish youth who is also on the run. Wonderfully shot by Adam Arkapaw, of Animal Kingdom fame, sensitively directed by Shortland, this is very much Saskia Rosendahl’s film in the title role.
Austria
Starring Martina Gedeck (of The Lives of Others and Baader Meinhof Complex), The Wall is a psychological, almost supernatural, study of one woman who cannot escape from her remote country chalet and its surroundings. There is an invisible wall physically stopping her, forcing her to confront internal truths as she documents her daily life in a diary. Adrift in utter isolation, with only a dog and cow for company, we also wonder if she can survive or if she is perhaps already dead… Based on a fifty-year-old novel, Julian Roman Polsler’s film and Gedeck’s performance leave you thinking long after it’s ended.
Ireland
If it’s isolation you want, then Pat Collins’ uncategorisable Silence is for you. An obsessive soundman (aren’t they all?) moves from bustling Berlin to the silence of wild, rural Ireland, drawn in particular to Tory Island. He meets locals, strolls around, communing with nature in a sort of spiritual homecoming. The isolation is less welcome in Gerard Barrett’s debut feature, PILGRIM HILL, focusing on a lonely, unmarried farmer, Jimmy, tenderly played by Joe Mullins. Never bitter, he’s forced to work the farm alone while looking after his bed-ridden father. The repetitive toil of his labours is poignant, especially when contrasted with his one shiftless friend, and at any time Jimmy could be overwhelmed by financial disaster.
Deliberately made as a slice of life fiction rather than a documentary, this is Barrett’s tribute to the uncles and aunts across Ireland who are struggling on, farming solo in an unchanged world – and he admits that the film has been too close to home for some Irish audiences. As with Garage, director Lenny Abrahamson has focused on a very particular Irish crowd for What Richard Did. This time it’s middle class youths on the cusp of higher education, living in a bubble, with summer parties and bucolic fun stretching before them. It starts as an unassuming, quietly romantic film, reflecting young Richard’s easygoing character. He’s besotted by Lara, hanging out with chums, when suddenly one drunken fight erupts into something terrible. Will those few seconds of madness ruin Richard’s entire future? Should he and his friends pretend it never happened, or will the guilt consume him?
Saudi Arabia
On the surface, Wadjda is the story of a young girl determined to get enough cash to buy herself a bicycle. But when you bear in mind that it’s set and filmed in Saudi Arabia, where cinemas themselves are banned, and that it’s made by a female, first-time director, Haifaa Al Mansour, who often had to instruct her stars by walkie-talkie while hidden behind vans, then it’s remarkable that it was made at all. The larger story is of this bright girl, Wadjda (the extraordinary Waad Mohammed) who cannot be constrained by her Islamic school’s strict rules, who has an endearing sense of humour, and a good role model in her own mum. There is fear lurking around the edges of their lives, but nevertheless Wadjda sees that she can achieve her dream if she wins a Spellbound-style school competition about the Koran. This is the first feature film made in Saudi Arabia, and Al Mansour says that she wants to inspire girls to follow their dreams, and she’s also hoping that Wadjda might just open some doors as the country changes. But it’s worth seeing as a brilliant coming-of-age film in its own right.
Egypt
Ibrahim El-Batout’s tense political thriller, Winter Of Discontent, shows what happened in the years leading up to events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring of 2011. Through different points of view, but principally through the eyes of an activist (Amr Waked), we see the torture, the police state and the control of the media, with the brutality of January 25 2011 as the tipping point, when the crowds started swelling in the final days of President Hosni Mubarak.
Morocco
Horses of God, directed by Nabil Ayouch, is set in Casablanca and based on the real terrorist attacks in 2003. It shows how two ordinary brothers grow up and gradually become radicalised, turning into suicide bombers – or martyrs. And it’s all shot in such a normal, matter-of-fact, credible fashion that it seems all the more shocking.
Senegal
Underpinned by a terrific musical soundtrack, played on the kora, Jeremy Teicher’s Tall as the Baobab Tree is based on true stories about a poor farming family who need to pay the medical costs for their son’s broken leg. The father decides that their only option is to sell his younger daughter into marriage, but the older daughter looks for an alternative solution, saving up any money she earns. The ending may not be quite what we expect, but this is a lovely, lyrical film that doesn’t prettify poverty. TEY is an even more dramatic, imaginative film, from Alain Gomis, who shows one man, Satche (Saul Williams) reliving the key moments of his life when he knows it is his last day on earth.
Mozambique
Set in 1975, when Mozambique is emerging from colonial rule, Licinio Azevedo’s Virgin Margarida shows how many women were arbitrarily rounded up – mainly prostitutes, but also ordinary girls like Margarida – and taken into the forests to be “reeducated”. Which basically meant being systematically abused and brutally disciplined with hard labour, here ironically under a female commander. A few moments of humanity shine through in the midst of oppression and homogenisation, but Azevedo’s documentary background means that we never go far from the grim truth of this largely untold story.
South Africa
Of course, there has to be the odd stinker in the festival, and Barry Berk’s Sleeper’s Wake is a film I cannot recommend in any way. Nominally covering the subject of a survivor’s guilt after a tragic accident, this is unpleasant and unconvincing, with psychological and physical violence, unbelievable relationships and some rather poor acting. Tonally it’s also uneven and jarring, with a sense of impending doom broken up by misfiring comic moments – and from the overall subject matter right down to the music cues, it’s one to avoid.
Canada
Museum House is a little gem from film essayist Jem Cohen, focusing on middle-aged museum guard, Johann (Bobby Sommer) and set in the impressive Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna. Every day seems much the same for him until a visitor, Anne, played by one-of-a-kind Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, comes into the gallery and starts asking him questions. She’s visiting while her cousin is in hospital, is a stranger in a strange land, and Johann helps her navigate her way around the museum, the city, the language, and even this juncture in her life. And as he reveals his own past to her in measured observations, they connect as friends, mulling over the Brueghels and other paintings, sipping coffee in what feels like a cultural exchange. Part improvised and based on their own experiences, this is a rare study of friendship, perfectly played by two movie novices, who clearly relished discussing life and art. Fans will already know that O’Hara has good pedigree as the sister of comic actress Catherine O’Hara, and will enjoy her breaking into song a couple of times.
Australia
Loosely based on a rather incredible true story, The Sapphires proves that it is Chris O’Dowd’s moment right now, and there is no use fighting it. A gifted trio of young and feisty Aboriginal singing sisters – later joined by their snooty cousin – unjustly lose a talent competition, but are spotted by the sozzled DJ Dave (O’Dowd), who offers to manage them. To be honest, it’s every rags to riches, overcoming prejudice, musical biopic movie you’ve ever seen. But that doesn’t stop it being fun, featuring rock-solid sixties soul songs, ticking all the feelgood boxes, and emerging as a kind of Aboriginal Commitments on tour in the midst of the Vietnam War.
Another side of Australia emerges in Underground, director Robert (Balibo) Connolly’s biopic of the teenage Julian Assange in his pre-Wikileaks life. Set just before the first Gulf War, and with Rachel Griffiths playing his free-spirited, politically motivated, activist mum, you begin to see where the junior hacker got his motivation. Basically a cool, smart TV movie, it paints Assange (Alex Williams) as a somewhat saintly young James Bond/Alex Rider-type with his own gang of subversives. And it’s lifted from being merely humdrum by the acting not only of Griffiths, but also Anthony LaPaglia as the hapless investigating cop who is always one step behind.
Go to page 3 for more films in the look at the London Film Festival 2012 Part 2.