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Like every summer, it's time for the Munich Film Festival again. Last year I was in Mongolia and missed it, but this year I can attend, and have already seen several movies worth watching. My two favourites so far have in common that they: a) include a child as one of the main characters, hence icon, b) are a first outing of their respective directors (who were present for a Q & A afterwards, another great thing about the Munich Film Festival), c) are currently shown in festivals and one or two countries but haven't already started the road to world wide distrubution, so here's hoping the festival will get them the necessary attention, because they're both deeply moving and fabulous. Mind you, while both are present day stories, they might as well be set in different worlds, due to their locations.
Everything We Loved: directed by Michael Currie, who also wrote the script, shot and set in New Zealand. This one is hard to talk about without getting spoilery about the central premise, and the film is very clever in luring you in during the opening sequence before gradually making it clear what is actually happening, so I'd like to at least try. It's a story with three main characters, all three sympathetic and easy to empathize with, a family - and yet not because there is a terrible lie and crime at work. (Disclaimer sadly necessary in this day and age: the story has absolutely nothing to do with pedophilia. Child abuse is so not what it's about.) It's a story about loss and grief and the actions it can cause, about illusion and reality, both in a metaphorical and literal sense, because Charlie, whose initial deed drives the plot, is a stage magician and his wife Angela is sharing the act with him (also in more than one sense.) The actors who play them, Brett Stewart and Sia Trokenheim, are amazing, but the movie wouldn't work if Tommy, the five years old played by a real life five years old, Ben Clarkson, wouldn't be a natural whose reactions to the two adults feel entirely real. In the Q & A afterwards, director Michael Currie mentioned that his sponsors were very nervous because of the central role of a child that young (and with a first time director, too), and at first wanted him to make the child older, but then the story wouldn't have worked. Having watched the movie, I agree. It wouldn't have been believable with, say, a nine years old.
What's also fantastic is that the film - despite having these serious themes - never feels anvil dropping or heavy handed, but has all those moments of joy and light together with the underlying thread of what's actually happening and how it must end. Very very captivating to watch, and I'm really glad I picked it as one of the movies to see. Here's the movie's website, so you can check out whether it's already shown in your part of the world.
Giraffada: directed by Rani Massalha, script by Xavier Nemo: this year's sole Palestinian contribution, co-produced with German, Italian and French studios. This story is centred around an older child than the last one, Ziad (played by Ahmed Bayatra, who is another amazingly gifted child actor), who is the son of the vetinarian working in the sole zoo inside of the Palestinian Territories (Saleh Bakri, quite dashing). At its heart, this is a very tender father-son story, with the relationship between Acinede the doctor and his son Ziad reminding me very much of the Siskos from Deep Space Nine, Ben and Jake - the open affection between them, Ziad's father being a widower who raises him alone and tries to give him some normality and stability in a very instable and war-torn world, for the movie is set at the shortly before and during the early stages of the second Intifada. (Btw, while it took five years to produce it was shot only recently, and that means there is a slight anachronism there, because at several points you can see "Pope, Welcome To Palestine" graffitti on the walls and the papal visit of course happened this year, not during the second Intifada.) You have the world of the zoo where Ziad helps his father caring for the animals - his favourites are the two giraffes, and he gets mercilessly teased by the boys at school for loving giraffes instead of lions -, and you have the every day world of children throwing stones, Israeli soldiers, checkpoints and their humiliations, nightly gunfire and bombings (which is when one of the giraffe dies because it panicks and hits its head fatally). But of course they can't be kept separate, they're inextrabibly intermingled. When the surviving female giraffe refuses to eat, and all attempts to heal it fail, the only remedy is to organize another male giraffe. And the only one available lives in the Ramat Gan Safari Park in Israel (where the vet is a pal of Ziad's dad, and also the movie's good guy Israeli character). At which point the movie becomes a caper/heist story, and it's a sign of quite how effient it is that you absolutely believe in the insane quest of kidnapping a giraffe and bringing it across this war torn country, because Ziad wants it to so much and it's such a symbol of hope in a hopeless world for him.
The movie was shot on location in Israel and the Palestinian territories, except for the giraffe for the last third which was shot in Germany using green screen for obvious plot reasons. According to the Q & A, all the earlier sequences with Ziad feeding and petting the giraffes in the zoo really had the boy actor interacting with animals; he cared for them for about a month before shooting started so they'd get used to him and it shows, because both boy and animals are absolutely fearless with each other. Getting the footage of the checkpoints was done via pretending to shoot a documentary (Rani Massalha said they were allowed to film for about two hours before being sent away, which was enough to get the shots he wanted, because he didn't feel rebuilding a checkpoint in a studio would convey what it's like in the same way). Ziad and his father are fictional characters, though there really was a Palestinian zoo at the beginning of the second Intifada with two giraffes, one of which died in the same way as it does in the film. (The other, as opposed to the film because there was no real life giraffe-napping, pined away and died afterwards.) The movie's sole non-Palestinian, non-Israeli character is a French reporter played by Laure de Clermont, who becomes involved with father and son and ends up helping them with the caper; there is some attraction between her and the doctor but it's played very delicately (they don't as much as hold hands, but there are some very telling looks), which you rarely see in the movies these days. All in all: both a fairy tale and a real life tale, with the fairy tale winning at the critical moment but at a powerful cost. Another very moving film, and one I hope will make it into international distrubtion. A trailer is here.
Everything We Loved: directed by Michael Currie, who also wrote the script, shot and set in New Zealand. This one is hard to talk about without getting spoilery about the central premise, and the film is very clever in luring you in during the opening sequence before gradually making it clear what is actually happening, so I'd like to at least try. It's a story with three main characters, all three sympathetic and easy to empathize with, a family - and yet not because there is a terrible lie and crime at work. (Disclaimer sadly necessary in this day and age: the story has absolutely nothing to do with pedophilia. Child abuse is so not what it's about.) It's a story about loss and grief and the actions it can cause, about illusion and reality, both in a metaphorical and literal sense, because Charlie, whose initial deed drives the plot, is a stage magician and his wife Angela is sharing the act with him (also in more than one sense.) The actors who play them, Brett Stewart and Sia Trokenheim, are amazing, but the movie wouldn't work if Tommy, the five years old played by a real life five years old, Ben Clarkson, wouldn't be a natural whose reactions to the two adults feel entirely real. In the Q & A afterwards, director Michael Currie mentioned that his sponsors were very nervous because of the central role of a child that young (and with a first time director, too), and at first wanted him to make the child older, but then the story wouldn't have worked. Having watched the movie, I agree. It wouldn't have been believable with, say, a nine years old.
What's also fantastic is that the film - despite having these serious themes - never feels anvil dropping or heavy handed, but has all those moments of joy and light together with the underlying thread of what's actually happening and how it must end. Very very captivating to watch, and I'm really glad I picked it as one of the movies to see. Here's the movie's website, so you can check out whether it's already shown in your part of the world.
Giraffada: directed by Rani Massalha, script by Xavier Nemo: this year's sole Palestinian contribution, co-produced with German, Italian and French studios. This story is centred around an older child than the last one, Ziad (played by Ahmed Bayatra, who is another amazingly gifted child actor), who is the son of the vetinarian working in the sole zoo inside of the Palestinian Territories (Saleh Bakri, quite dashing). At its heart, this is a very tender father-son story, with the relationship between Acinede the doctor and his son Ziad reminding me very much of the Siskos from Deep Space Nine, Ben and Jake - the open affection between them, Ziad's father being a widower who raises him alone and tries to give him some normality and stability in a very instable and war-torn world, for the movie is set at the shortly before and during the early stages of the second Intifada. (Btw, while it took five years to produce it was shot only recently, and that means there is a slight anachronism there, because at several points you can see "Pope, Welcome To Palestine" graffitti on the walls and the papal visit of course happened this year, not during the second Intifada.) You have the world of the zoo where Ziad helps his father caring for the animals - his favourites are the two giraffes, and he gets mercilessly teased by the boys at school for loving giraffes instead of lions -, and you have the every day world of children throwing stones, Israeli soldiers, checkpoints and their humiliations, nightly gunfire and bombings (which is when one of the giraffe dies because it panicks and hits its head fatally). But of course they can't be kept separate, they're inextrabibly intermingled. When the surviving female giraffe refuses to eat, and all attempts to heal it fail, the only remedy is to organize another male giraffe. And the only one available lives in the Ramat Gan Safari Park in Israel (where the vet is a pal of Ziad's dad, and also the movie's good guy Israeli character). At which point the movie becomes a caper/heist story, and it's a sign of quite how effient it is that you absolutely believe in the insane quest of kidnapping a giraffe and bringing it across this war torn country, because Ziad wants it to so much and it's such a symbol of hope in a hopeless world for him.
The movie was shot on location in Israel and the Palestinian territories, except for the giraffe for the last third which was shot in Germany using green screen for obvious plot reasons. According to the Q & A, all the earlier sequences with Ziad feeding and petting the giraffes in the zoo really had the boy actor interacting with animals; he cared for them for about a month before shooting started so they'd get used to him and it shows, because both boy and animals are absolutely fearless with each other. Getting the footage of the checkpoints was done via pretending to shoot a documentary (Rani Massalha said they were allowed to film for about two hours before being sent away, which was enough to get the shots he wanted, because he didn't feel rebuilding a checkpoint in a studio would convey what it's like in the same way). Ziad and his father are fictional characters, though there really was a Palestinian zoo at the beginning of the second Intifada with two giraffes, one of which died in the same way as it does in the film. (The other, as opposed to the film because there was no real life giraffe-napping, pined away and died afterwards.) The movie's sole non-Palestinian, non-Israeli character is a French reporter played by Laure de Clermont, who becomes involved with father and son and ends up helping them with the caper; there is some attraction between her and the doctor but it's played very delicately (they don't as much as hold hands, but there are some very telling looks), which you rarely see in the movies these days. All in all: both a fairy tale and a real life tale, with the fairy tale winning at the critical moment but at a powerful cost. Another very moving film, and one I hope will make it into international distrubtion. A trailer is here.
