Reykjavik International Film Festival 2008: The Films

In trying to decide how to cover our trip to Reykjavik, I’ve decided to divide it into two entries. In the first, I’ll dis­cuss the films that we saw. Unfortunately, des­pite our best inten­tions, we didn’t see as many films as we’d planned. It’s under­stand­able when you realize that for us this was first and fore­most a hol­iday, but there were still a number of films that I regret missing. Nonetheless, here are my impres­sions of the stuff we actu­ally got to:

Slepe Lásky (Blind Loves) (2008, Director: Juraj Lehotsky): I missed this at TIFF and heard good things, so I’m glad I was able to catch this film. A doc­u­mentary that soon becomes a “doc­u­mentary,” Blind Loves tells the stories of sev­eral blind couples and one blind teenage girl and their exper­i­ences with love and romance. Told so ima­gin­at­ively (including the filming of a blind man’s dream sequence) that we quickly become aware that it can’t be a tra­di­tional doc­u­mentary, the film actu­ally blends true stories and non­pro­fes­sional blind par­ti­cipants to create some­thing com­pletely unique and compelling.

Official site of the film
Trailer

(9/10)

Mr. Big (2007, Director: Tiffany Burns): This very per­sonal doc­u­mentary exposes the use of a par­tic­u­larly nasty invest­ig­ative tech­nique used by Canada’s RCMP to obtain con­fes­sions from sus­pects. In “Mr. Big” scen­arios, under­cover police lure people into what they think are crim­inal net­works and then use coer­cion and often fear to get them talking about crimes they may or may not have com­mitted. The director’s young brother was implic­ated in a double-murder through the use of one of these sting oper­a­tions, and we meet sev­eral other con­victed sus­pects whose claims of inno­cence may be jus­ti­fied. We also learn that these tac­tics would be illegal in the US or Britain due to the danger of entrap­ment. This is not par­tic­u­larly soph­ist­ic­ated film­making, but it does what doc­u­ment­aries are meant to do, to shine a light into dark corners where injustices exist. Hopefully more people will see this film in Canada and per­haps we can get the Justice Department to recon­sider the leg­ality of these sorts of tactics.

Official site of the film

(7/10)

Missing (1982, Director: Costa-Gavras): Though some of the acting seems a little over the top (seem­ingly a common trait of films from this period), Missing tells the com­pel­ling true story of the dis­ap­pear­ance of American Charles Horman during the 1973 mil­itary coup in Chile. A brave film for its time, Costa-Gavras exposes American com­pli­ance in this human-rights dis­aster, and the audi­ence was left won­dering what’s really changed in the world when inno­cent people can simply be “dis­ap­peared” and killed without anyone knowing why. Though Criterion is bringing out a brand new spe­cial edi­tion of the film this month, the print shown was appar­ently the director’s own scratchy copy, with French sub­titles burned in.

Here’s the Q&A with dir­ector Costa-Gavras from after the screening:

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Duration: 24:01

(8/10)

Über Wasser: Menschen und gelbe Kanister (About Water: People and Yellow Canisters) (2007, Director: Udo Maurer): Co-written by Michael Glawogger, whose 2005 film Workingman’s Death (review) this is very remin­is­cent of, About Water is struc­tured as three sep­arate epis­odes about our world’s most valu­able liquid. In Bangladesh, the problem is too much water, with yearly floods eroding much of the arable land, and for­cing vil­la­gers to move their houses or risk being swept away. In Kazakhstan, we hear about the diver­sion of water by the Soviet Union that res­ulted in the dis­ap­pear­ance of the once-huge Aral Sea. Images of ships rusting in the desert speak volumes about the folly of human envir­on­mental med­dling. And in Kenya, water is a com­modity, bought and sold at offi­cial and unof­fi­cial “water points” by “busi­nessmen” that have done nothing except tap into a water main. Unfortunately, this film didn’t look its best due to the pro­jec­tionist showing it at the wrong aspect ratio. Widescreen cine­ma­to­graphy that should have dazzled looked ter­rible squeezed into a 4:3 frame.

(8/10)

Kamienna cisza (Stone Silence) (2008, Director: Krzysztof Kopczynski): This doc­u­mentary about the alleged stoning of a woman for adul­tery in Afghanistan attempts to get to the bottom of the case, and fails miser­ably. Muddled and con­fusing. A dis­ap­point­ment. Also, another example of bad pro­jec­tion. This widescreen film was also shown in 4:3 ratio and there­fore whatever redeeming qual­ities the film’s cine­ma­to­graphy may have offered have also been lost.

(6/10)

The Story of Stuff (2008, Director: Louis Fox): Hosted by Annie Leonard, this anim­ated short film is a great intro­duc­tion to some of the envir­on­mental issues facing us. It’s avail­able to view and down­load for free on the web, and deserves a wide audi­ence. I see it as being par­tic­u­larly aimed at stu­dents, and the site provides lots of addi­tional resources. Recommended.

Official site of the film
Trailer

(8/10)

The last three were part of a pro­gram of Icelandic shorts, although the only Icelandic con­tri­bu­tion to Varmints was the soundtrack, written by Johann Johannsson:

2 Birds (Smáfuglar) (2008, Director: Rúnar Rúnarsson): An incred­ibly beau­tiful, dis­turbing, heart­breaking and heart­warming story of a young man’s first love, told in 15 minutes. Rúnarsson is a huge talent, as is his young actor Atli Oskar Fjalarsson. This reminded me quite a bit of Aaron Katz’s Dance Party USA (review).

Official site of the film

(9/10)

Naglinn (The Nail) (2008, Director: Benedikt Erlingsson): A man suf­fers the con­sequences after acci­dent­ally driving a nail into his fore­head. As we dis­cover the man’s respons­ib­il­ities, the con­sequences grow more comic. This was enter­taining though slight. Notable, though, was the fact that it was filmed in the very house in Reykjavik where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1985 to sign a peace agreement.

(7/10)

Here’s the Q&A with dir­ectors Benedikt Erlingsson and Rúnar Rúnarsson from after the screening:

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Duration: 16:14

Varmints (2008, Director: Marc Craste): Based on a book of the same title, Varmints is an anim­ated short film that evoc­at­ively tells the story of one small creature’s struggle to live in a world full of pol­lu­tion and indif­fer­ence. That it com­mu­nic­ates this with images and not words makes this uni­versal story even more uni­versal. Despite my slight unease with the char­acter designs, I foresee huge acclaim and suc­cess for this, at least among anim­a­tion fans.

Official site of the film (includes trailer)

(8/10)

Tagged as: iceland, reykjavik, RIFF, slovakia