JFL

This activist documentary was made as an attendant work of a project of the same name aimed at turning the public's attention to sexual violence in military conflicts. The focus of the documentary’s individual chapters ranges from rape as a tool of degradation of the enemy in Syria, through interrogation methods in Ukraine and Guantánamo, to prostitution in war zones. The film’s provocative concept, clever use of animation and appropriately agitating tone serve the ambition to open people's eyes and bring the frequently relativised and trivialised aspects of the topicto the same level as those that are generally condemned. The animation here serves not only to illustrate audio interviews, but also for appropriately and suggestively manipulative symbolic short scenes. Zero Impunity is simply a documentary that has a clear objective and employs every device to achieve it, which in and of itself is respectable, though the film will look better not in the cinema, but online, from which it draws many stylistic elements.

Pure beauty, absorbing, intoxicating, physical and wonderful. A captivatingly intense, tactile film that can be a crucial initiation experience for a young person and restore an older person’s faith in film, recalling the power of this medium. It is an encounter with respectable talent that sets forth a completely original vision, which is at the same time thought out and refined to the smallest detail without losing anything from the immediate magic of raw creativity. I Lost My Body is a film after which you want to immediately move from the screening room to a wooden igloo on the roof and let everything sink in for a long time and let the scenes get under your skin. This suggestive odyssey across the beautiful and merciless corners of a single city and a whole life never runs out of ideas and the viewer will never have the upper hand. Not only is this an enthrallingly unpredictable story imbued with melancholy as well as humanism and beauty standing apart from the usual clichés, it also uncompromisingly pulls the viewer into a spiral of a distinctive vision that one can only yield to and admire.

The animation in Les Hirondelles de Kaboul is used in a completely non-conceptual manner solely as superficial gilding without visual ideas or poetics. With its shallow appeal and watercolour blurriness, it further trivialises the entire narrative. In so doing, it directly points out the superficial, calculated nature of the film, which relies on toothless melodrama and a festival-gratifying theme. I can’t tell if it’s a deviation of the adaptation or if it was already present in the original source work, but Les Hirondelles de Kaboul is not a pleasant surprise with its optics and story. Instead of the anticipated narrative about the fate of women in a society controlled by the Taliban, the story crystallises into an absurd, whinging melodrama about a guy who gripes about the Taliban, or rather one of its capos, because he can’t enjoy a romance with a woman he has a crush on because he saw her without her burqa. Women are depicted here as either selfless wives with a romantic understanding for the protagonist’s philandering thoughts or as ethereal beauties representing absurd conservative variations of manic pixie dream girls.

Paradoxically, Loach’s perfectly escalating, realistic drama of a disintegrating family may come across as the director’s indictment of a billing system that, in a buck-passing manner, denies responsibility for employees and, at the same time, pushes them to work overtime, be available at all times and subject themselves to stress. But it can also serve as a powerful contraceptive showing, as a fundamental obstacle to the happiness of two adults,that they have kids for whom they sacrifice everything and who in turn grow up to be egocentric brats.

This Russian post-war drama about physical and mental wounds and how those wounds can set off another cycle of pain is both a welcome and necessary departure from the bombastic Russian propaganda of war epics. Furthermore, it also stands on its own as a depressing drama with claustrophobically vented emotions. A separate chapter presents the precise, masterful craftsmanship, from the dramaturgy of the colour palette and interiors through the excellent camera work to outstanding acting performances. The consistently implemented form can to some extent draw attention away from the core of the film, which is the weight of guilt and the futile attachment to a vision of happiness.

A 90% great contribution to the category of crime thrillers from the French banlieues that distinguishes itself from the competition by its effort to portray a broad spectrum of relationships between different factions and generations, which are connected by a disparate trio of police officers. But where other films ended, Les Misérables prepares the ground for a climax that will push the whole story to much stronger, more serious and more sophisticated heights. This feature-length debut, expanding the director’s short film of the same name into a more complex fresco of contemporary France, thus brings forth provocative contemplation on more general themes connected with education, patterns of behaviour and pride and rage. The themes that Mathieu Kassovitz addressed years ago in the ground-breaking Le Haine are now back with a vengeance in Les Misérables.

With an appropriate runtime, Vivarium would perhaps be fine as an episode of The Twilight Zone, whereas the format of a ten-page comic book would suit it even better. But for a feature-length film, there is not enough material here, while being too literal and having zero overlap. It suffices to have a look at the credits and see the production company, and then it’s no wonder. XYZ Films, which like the Twitch Film website, now known as the boastful Screen Anarchy, was founded by company owner Todd Brown, has made a trademark out of elevating genre flicks with fresh ideas. Unfortunately, all of its projects lack development, dramaturgy and maturation of the theme, which are precisely the ills that befall Vivarium. It’s nice that XYZ Films is engaging more big-name actors, but it would be much more essential to hire a script editor for its productions.

Bacurau is a properly viewer-friendly and, at the same time, agitatingly angry contribution to the category of folk murder tales and primitive (not in the sense of stupid, but as a way of communicating with the lowest levels of the audience) socio-political metaphors. Therefore, it has room for straightforward symbolism, elements of trash genres, unique characters, blood and shallowness, as well as motifs associated with the sense of togetherness of rural communities and pride in their history and heritage.

Every festival is a collection of compromises, politics and external influences and interests. In spite of that, however, sometimes you just have to shake your head at what must have convinced the selection committee to include a particular film in the programme and expose the audience to it. Once in Trubchevsk is a low-budget exercise in banality about infidelity that captures only fragments of the open-air museum quality of the Russian village environment used in the film. Otherwise, it is about absolutely nothing.

Noé got a pile of money from Yves Saint Laurent with a single assignment: to make a short film cast with the brand’s faces. But, as expected, Noé did the whole thing his own way, so instead of a standard commercial stylised into a quarter-hour film, the result is a 50-minute auteur pun reminiscent of browsing Cahiers du Cinéma while tripping, where Noé pays tribute to the paramount creative vision which, despite the mad chaos and personal interest of individuals, gives rise to true works of art that will become milestones of cinema.