Festivals        54th Kalrovy Vary International Film festival

EAST OF THE WEST COMPETITION:
Original authorial film works

This section consists of premieres of first or second feature film from, as the title implies, the ‘eastern’ region from the West. The geographic concept has, however, evolved to become more flexible and the segment of East of the West has for a few of years now also included films from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and the Middle East. This year’s East of the West competition was a high-quality selection, with distinctive authorial voices and diverse artistic approaches, rarely found at other film festivals, demonstrating the dedication of Artistic Director Karel Och and his creative team. The competition screened 12 films in total, with eight world, three international, and one European premiere, and eight debuts features: Aga’s House, Arrest, Bull, Passed by Censor, Silent Days, Mamonga, My Thoughts Are Silent, Nova Lituania, Last Visit, Scandinavian Silence, A Certain Kind of Silence, Zizotek

Out of these 12 films, particularly stand out Passed by censor (directed by: Serhat Karaaslan, Turkey / Germany / France), Aga’s House (directed by Lendita Zeqiraj, Kosovo / Croatia / France / Albania), Nova Lituania (directed by: Karolis Kaupinis, Lithuania, 2019), Silent Days (directed by: Pavol Pekarčík, Slovak Republic / Czech Republic, 2019),  Arest (directed by: Andrei Cohn, Romania, 2019,), Scandinavian silence (directed by: Marti Heide, Estonia?France?Belgium, 2019), My Thoughts Are Silent (directed by: Antonio Lukich, Ukraine, 2019) and Mamonga (directed by: Stefan Malešević, Serbia / Bosnia and Herzegovina / Montenegro, 2019). It is interesting to note that four out of twelve films bear the word “silence” (or its semantic analogies) in their titles: Scandinavian silence, A certain kind of silence, My thoughts are silent and Silent days: whether this obsession with silence is an accident or a transnational cinematic trend reacting against the global socio-political climate of fake news remains to be seen.

Nova Lituania is a powerful black-and-white feature debut by Karolis Kaupinis, set in the 1938 Luthuania, a new war looming, when Geographer Gruodis comes up with an ‘original’ proposal to create a “backup Lithuania” overseas, a place where the country’s population could move in case of danger. This masterfully crafted drama about a man trying to save his homeland while forgetting about his private life bears universal resonances.

Arrest is a sinister, claustrophobic, tension-packed and formally inventive and highly theatrical drama (filmed almost in its entirety in a prison cell), in which the confined space of a prison cell with two prisoners only, epitomises the absurdity of totalitarian regimes

Silent days is a touching four-stories drama by Pavol Pekarčík on the characters on the most extreme margins of the society: Roma hearing-impaired children, whose inner lives are touchingly conveyed by a stunning visual narrative, blending both fiction and documentary aesthetics.

My thoughts are silent is a wonderful, thrillingly hilarious road-movie comedy revolving around twenty-five-year-old protagonist Vadym, who works as a sound recordist and his relationship with his, euphemistically put, unconventional mother. His tragi-comic adventures start when a generous job offer comes along which could help him fulfill his dream to move to Canada, and then he sets out to record the sounds of animals in the Carpathians…

Mamonga is an interesting, visually refined triptych film debut, with a loose narrative, challenging the viewer’s perceptions and final interpretation.

Scandinavian silence (maladroitly titled film) is another non-linear narrative, presenting three versions of the same story, focused on brother and sister, a refined minimalist family drama on the difficulties of communication with the closest ones, set against icy cold and visually stunning winter landscapes.

A certain kind of silence is a visually conventional but thought-provoking drama, inspired by true events, on religious cult of “12 tribes” and the ensuing abuse of children by their own families in order to make them conform to their religious fanaticism.

FEDEORA AWARDS: EAST OF THE WEST COMPETITION

This year’s FEDEORA jury, consisting of Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, Pavlina Jeleva and myself, gave two awards: for the best film to Passed by censor (the closing film of East of the West section) and special mention to Aga’s house (the opening film of East of the West competition). Passed by censor is, seemingly, a prison genre drama on police forces working as censors, who read each day dozens of letters, carefully blacking out everything not meant for the eyes of those serving time. But when protagonist Zakir discovers a photo in one of the envelopes that catches his eye, the narrative becomes a fine multilayered and visually complete personal drama of obsession with the life of total strangers and a nuanced psychological study of an individual who gradually loses touch with the social reality and becomes embroiled in his own fantasy world. The film does not refrain from socio-political critique of dictatorial regimes, with its corollaries of provincial and homophobic mentality, conveyed through tragi-comic scenes with Zakir’s ignorant colleagues. The open ending of the film leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether too much of creative imagination can lead to too obsessive forces that will eventually destroy one’s life or this fantasy dreamy world might be the best way to escape the harsh reality of the cruel censoring systems.

Aga’s house, directed by feature-debut director Lendita Zeqiraj (known for her highly successful shorts, Fence, Balcony, Amnesia) is a touching, empathetic and sophisticated drama on Kosovo’s turbulent wartime past and enduring ethnic tensions in the Balkan region, centred on a diverse group of women living in a remote and isolated mountain village. Masterfully written, the camera follows several hours in the lives of five women of different generations - Emira, Lumija, Gjyla, Kumrija and Zdenka (brilliantly played by Rozafa Celaj, Adraian Matoshi, Melihate Qena, Shengyl, Ismaili and Rebeka Qena, respectingly) living together in “Aga’s house” (sheltering from something?, the viewer might wonder), who chat about their every-day life, reminisce on their past love stories, sexual adventures (sometimes using deliberately coarse language), laugh together, reprimand each other, peel peppers, make food, polish nails, fight, smoke cigarettes and sing. The youngest of them, Emira (Kosovo’s promising Juliette Binoche) even clumsily smokes marijuana, procured by Aga of the title, a nine-year old boy touchingly played by very talented Arti Lokaj, the only male character besides a grown-up ruffian Cera (wonderflully played by Basri Lushtaku) in this authentic portrayal of women’s lives on the margins. Amongst many visually mesmerising sequences, one particularly stands out: when Emira and Lumija, after fighting, reconcile and have a core bonding talk while sharing the same cigarette together, sitting on a cave stone outside the house, with their backs turned to the camera, which films the vast rugged and harsh mountain landscape spread before them and inviting the viewer to concentrate on the verbal narrative of their crucial story moments, while simultaneously enjoying the framed paysage.

It is this Chantal Akerman-esque film directed by a highly talented female author Lendita Zeqiraj that the former Yugoslav region has long been waiting for. Beautifully filmed, thanks to masterful photography of Sofian El Fani, prevailingly with close-ups, which convey not only the author’s empathy with all her characters, but encourage the viewer also to be in the minds of women and sympathise with them, even when nothing ‘much’ is happening, especially in some of the most memorable scenes of one of the most visually stunning films of the recent Balkan cinema. These extreme close-ups contribute to feeling as close as possible both to the group of women and to the boy, but also underline the existence of three sub-films within a film: The first ‘film’ is about a boy, the second ‘film’ is the women’s different individual stories and the third ‘film’ is a film of close ups, leading the viewers to feel as close as possible to these women before they hear their harrowingly painful stories at the end.

The accumulated tension among women, on the one hand and between the boy and his mother on the other is gradually mounting towards the end, in spite of the women’s singing and dancing together, and culminates when the truth of their life is told via an interview for the mainstream Western media. The touching and bleak ending of this post-war women’s drama is balanced and mitigated by witty scenes permeated with intelligent humour and sarcasm, almost bordering on powerful parody of the audience abuse by mainstream media, the corruption of regional political regimes, re-emergence of hate-speech amidst ethnic tensions in the former Yugoslav region set against somber and futile realities, with not much hope left for those on the margins of the society.

Maja Bogojević