Somehow I ended up watching all 12 films at the week-long European Film Festival 2014. Perhaps because the theater was walking distance from our home, but as the joke goes, every place is walking distance if you have the time. Every day I attended two shows (my daily damages: Tk200+200 = Tk400) joined by four or five new unknown strangers on each screening. Reading might be a solitary activity but film seldom is - even if the theater is empty, you have the ushers or the projectionist or perhaps the Annabelle doll from “Conjuring” watching along with you. Most people’s idea of a good time might not include renting a chair for two hours in a dark room to stare at a wall. However, on two outings I was able to cajole a friend (a Friday-friend and a Saturday-friend) – the best gift a friend can give us is their time. All the films at the festival were played back from DVD’s except for “Selfish Giant” and “All that Glitters.” I must say the standard of the films were quite high, these are films I would have never seen if not for this festival. Last year I watched about thirty Hollywood films at the theater (many are reviewed here: youtube.com/thegreenreviews) and in comparison these European films range from “just as good” to “much better.” The power of film is not in its budget, it’s in its memorability- if it stays in your heart it can become the stuff dreams are made of. So thank you European Union for arranging it. We want more. I want to say it again. We want more.
Two of the films at the festival were released just about six months ago, at the end of 2013 (“Selfish Giant” & “Recycling Lily”), two were 2006 releases (“White Palms” & “Near East”) and all the rest fall in between. The weakest film in the festival was probably the war melodrama “Blitz” (initially they played the wrong movie so I went to the manager and after fifteen minutes of failed rhetoric I said, “I’ll inform the Dutch Embassy about your mistake,” that did the trick). The second weakest film, according to me, was “El Próximo Oriente / Near East,” a Spanish film about a Bangladeshi family, where the Bangladeshis were speaking Bengali with a thick foreign accent. It made me flinch each time. I guess the director didn’t think a Bangladeshi would watch the film and question its authenticity.
If I were asked to rank all the films then it would be:
12. Blitz (Netherland); 11. Near East (Spain); 10. You kiss like a god (Czech Republic); 9. 99% Honest (Norway); 8. Almanya (Germany); 7. Loose Cannons (Italy); 6. Recycling Lily (Switzerland); 5. All that glitters (France); 4. Hijacking (Denmark); 3. White Palms (Hungary); 2. Palme (Sweden); 1. Selfish Giant (UK & Ireland).
Here are brief reviews of my top three favorites:
3. FEHER TENYER / White Palms (Hungary 2006)
This is to gymnastics what “Black Swan” is to ballet. It’s a film about giving unconditional love to children regardless of their achievements. Everyone cannot be the best, everyone cannot be world champions, and everyone cannot be superstars. What about the rest of us who are second best or third best? Should they just end it all? No. It’s important to live one’s life, to keep trying is to keep living. The movie is also about the common story of the abused becoming the abuser. At the end of the movie in an incredible twist of fate, both the trainer and the trainee compete for the same title (excellent juxtaposition of past and present). I would have liked the movie to end there, but it goes on for another five minutes and ends at an obscure note. But that’s fine too. Could the movie be reedited and made even more exciting by a studio? Sure. But should we take children away from their parents just because others can do a better job? Absolutely not.
2. PALME (Sweden 2012)
This magnificent documentary should be a model for History Channel and Discovery Channel for study and analysis- how to bring a person back to life with just archival footage and photographs. This is a biopic documentary about the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme who was assassinated in February 28 1986. After watching this you will feel as if you know the man. My favorite bit is where Palme faces the students and debates with them to resolve their problem. A great piece of work.
1. THE SELFISH GIANT (UK, Ireland 2013)
This is made exactly the way it should be made. It tells us the story of Arbor and his best friend, two kids from lower middleclass families. Arbor has a medical condition that makes him a misfit. He has only one friend. Eventually both of them gets expelled from school and they find themselves stealing scrap metal and selling it to a guy called Kitten who also owns a horse. Horses are very important in this movie, they are the metaphor for life itself. The ending moved me to tears. The merit of a good director is not necessarily in his ability to make everyone like the movie; it is in his ability to make the movie exactly as he set out to make, and he must fight for it till the end. I later learned this film was directed by a woman.
