Like every day, we would again like to draw your attention to filmsthat are particularly worth seeing. Some of them will screen again on Monday or Tuesday but why wait?
Among entries in this year’s documentary competition is also I Am the People (Je suis le peuple), a feature-length documentary by Anna Roussillon, a young filmmaker who grew up in Cairo, Egypt, but later moved to Paris. Choosing an unusual angle to explore the Egyptian revolution, the filmpans away from the crowd protesting against President Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square and instead pulls the focus on the residents of a remote village in the Nile valley near Luxorwho follow the revolution through their TV sets but go on with their everyday peasant life that unfolds between hope and disappointment, where change is a long time coming; these are the people whose lives are not affected by the revolutionas easily as those in its epicentre who believe it only takes the tyrant’s head to change the society. The picture will screen at 10.45 in Kino Lumiére (K2).
At 13.30, Kino Mladosť will screen Mustang, a feature-length debut by Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven that not only made it among the three finalists of this year’s LUX Prize but also competes in our festival’s fiction competition. Set in a village in northern Turkey located a thousand kilometres from Istanbul and a century from any notion of women’s rights, the film tells a storyof five sisters who innocently begin to fool around with some boys while walking home from school one summer day; however, their perfectly harmless play is viewed as something deeply immoral by their parents and sets off a scandal of unexpected magnitude and consequences. Having sparked a vivid debate among experts and laymen alike, the picture became France’s official nomination for Academy Award for the best foreign language film.
The Made in Slovakiasection also features The Cleaner (Čistič), the latest film by talented Slovak director Peter Bebjak that discusses problems in communication between peopleand shows how strongly our adult life can be affected by childhood events. The story revolves around Tomáš, a young funeral service employee who cleans death scenes. This stereotype suddenly stops when the circumstances force him to hide in one of the homes he has cleaned. Tomáš develops a habit of staying in his customers’ homes and secretly spying on the lives of the bereaved from the inside; this bizarre hobby slowly turns into obsession. Since Bebjak is very much at home in the genre of spooky films as he directed the first-ever Slovak horror three years ago,we decided to screen the film at 16:00 in Kino Mladosť so that you won’t be afraid to go home afterwards.
Finally, those who are keen on guessing and discussing potential Oscar nominations should mark red the 18.15 slot at Kino Lumiére (K1), which will show Spotlight, a film from the Cinema Now section that tells a riveting true story of Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of child abuse within the Catholic Church that would uncover a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston’s religious, legal and government establishment and eventually cause a crisis in one of the world’s oldest and most trusted institutions. Having already clinched Brian and Silver Mouse awards at this year’s Venice IFF,the film might well become a directorial break through for versatile American filmmaker Thomas McCarthy (Visitor, 2007; Win Win, 2011) who has become known also asa talented actor (Guru, 2002; The Year of the Dog, 2007) and a gifted writer (Up, 2009 – Oscar nomination for best original screenplay).
