The 8th Annual Biffes wound up on the 4th
of Feb. Scroll down for my top 5 picks from the festival.
This edition of the fest definitely went large. Barring a few technical glitches and irate audience members, it seemed to be a pretty smooth affair. Kudos to the organizers.
We'll miss watching the best that world cinema has to
offer, and the fact that you could just enter a darkened room without prior
knowledge of the movie being screened (which is how I like to operate, most of
the times) and be whisked off to faraway exotic places, with actors mouthing
lines in strange tongues and yet acknowledge our common humanity (that sounded clichéd
as fuck).
In case you needed it, this festival definitely serves as a
reminder to cut the cord, and explore film industries other than our own and
Hollywood. And move away from the sanitised, polished, nonsensical mainstream.
As mentioned earlier,
the venue was a nightmare to get to, however the films screened were all top-shelf
(most of them at least). So without further ado, my top 5 films + shorts from
the fest (a reminder: these are my personal picks from amongst the films and
shorts that I watched).
The Films:
1.Phoenix
A tale of a Jewish woman - in post World War 2 Germany - seeking out her husband, who might have betrayed her to the Nazis. Haunting music, memorable scenes and an accurate reconstruction of what a post war city might look like, all make this the pick of the lot for me.
This is also a study of the Jews on one hand - with some of them wanting to go back to the way things were before the war and the concentration camps, and others wanting nothing to do with Germany or Germans, yet unable to let go of the past and move on – and the Germans on the other, with their widespread denial of the knowledge of the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews.
2. Taxi Teheran
This more or less takes place
within the confines of a Taxi (driven by the director, Jafar Panahi). He
pretends to be a taxi driver in this docufiction, and secretly films his
various passengers. It offers a fascinating insight on Iran and into the lives
of its average citizens, and the oppressive regime that they live under.
To be honest, I hadn’t heard of
Jafar before this film. I did some digging around, post my viewing, and it looks like
real life is stranger than fiction. It turns out that he was arrested by the
Iranian govt. In 2010 and sentenced to a six-year jail sentence and also
prohibited from making films for 20 years. All his films since then have been
made in extreme secrecy and taken out of Iran in a clandestine manner, as he’s prohibited
from traveling, as well. This government interference into filmmaking is
tackled in a humorous sequence in the film, when his niece talks to him about
the various dos and don’ts of filmmaking, as instructed by her teacher.
3. Absolution
A Finnish film, Absolution
tackles themes of loss, guilt, conscience, revenge etc. It proves that a film
can be entertaining without having to spoon-feed its audience with dull minutiae.
The actors are excellent with their eyes and body language doing most of the
talking, established through tight close-ups.
4. Victoria
Reviewed earlier.
5. Mustang
A Turkish coming-of-age film, it
focuses on the lives of five sisters growing up in a conservative society. It
reminded me of a lot of movies that Star used to play back in the day –
the-coming-of-age of young females against a repressive, conservative society. It
follows the same patterns, and you can see the story developing a mile away.
One complaint is that time doesn’t seem to lapse logically, and spaces between events
seem to be cut short just to fit a particular narrative. However, the leads
were all very good, and seemed to live their parts, and the way the film has
been shot is gorgeous. It makes me want to pack my bags and head to Turkey
immediately.
The Shorts:
To be precise, I should say “Short”. Out
of the 3 shorts that I watched, “Leeches” is by far the best. I reviewed it in
a previous post, and you can find it here.
Well, that’s about it for this edition of the Biffes. It's time to sail the friendly seas again, argh. Cheers
until next time.
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