By Alex Deleon, Miskolc
September 19, 2013
As befits an international film festival, Cinefest Miskolc offers a mixed bag of new international features in conpetition, a cache of old classics, non-competition information films, a strong slate of docs and shorts, a goodly turnout of international directors here to present their films, and seminars withh prominent visiting professionals. The media presence is still primarily from within Hungary but can be expected to expand in the future as this ten year old festival becomes better known.
A listing of films viewed so far with directors, country and basic themes:
Halima's Way, Anton Ostojic, Croatia; Jugoslav war.
Krugovi, (Circles)' Serbia, Sedan Golubovic; Jugoslav war.
Young and Beautiful, (Jeune et Belle) François 0zon, France:
sex between young female and older men, pornography.
Floating Skyscrapers, (Plynace Wiezowce), Tomasz Wasilewski, Poland;
sex, gayness between males, bisexuality, pornography.
Il Futuro, (the future) Alice Scherson (Italy) / sex, young female and much older man, (Rutger Hauer!), pornography => [Note: pornography plays a role in all of these sex-oriented fiĺms ...pointing up one of the accepted ills of contemporary society]
Iron Sky, Tino Vuorensala, Finland; Sci-fi, Nazis (A highly imaginative comedy to say the least -- surviving Nazis now live on the dark side of the moon ! -- (Shook many people out of the doldrums at Berlin last year)
Glorious Deserters, (Deserteurs), Gabriele Neudecker, Austria;
The Nazis in retrospect, from an Austrian perspective, told as first-person narratives by young men who were ostracized after the war.
You and the night, (Les rencontres d'après), Yann Gonzalez, France;
Avant garde experimentalism, sex, surrealism, weirdness
with - Alain Fabien Delon, son of a famous father! (as its principal
saving grace)
Sugar, Ryan Fleck/Anna Boden, USA; [Info] Immigration, race relations, and baseball ... after a fashion. xlnt non-professional black cast.
Ex-Jugoslav Directors go Head to Head in friendly competition:
Two strong dramas from neighboring former Jugoslavia dealt with the aftermath of the war that made that multi-ethnic country break up into half a dozen descendant states.
"Halima's Way", by Croatian director Arsen Anton Ostojic, takes up the question of the proper reburial of Bosnian war massacre victims in mass graves and was previously viewed at the Southeast European film festival in Los Angeles. The film was accorded a standing ovation here and director Ostojic informed me that he has now traveled to over a dozen festivals with Halima where it has picked up no less than 17 awards. "Halima" will be the Croatian entry in the 2014 Oscars in Hollywood.
The Serbian drama "Krugovi" (Circles) is so named because of the ripple of after effects permeating the lives of people now widely scattered, who witnessed or participated in the murder of a Serbian soldier by his own comrades when he tried to save an innocent Moslem storekeeper from being beaten to death in the public square of a peaceful country town twelve years earlier. An extremely complex story that is structured like a whodonewhat thriller because the key evidence of the public square brutality is not revealed until the very end. Director Srban Golubovic, is one of the leading new directors in Belgrade and this picture shows why.
Both of the above films are based on actual events that took place in a horrible civil war whose memories still all too fresh in the minds of those who went through it. Interestingly Srdan and Arsen are competing against each other both here and again in the next Oscars. My feeling is that "Circles" will grab the honors here, but I may be slightly prejudiced because I have old friends from the Montenegran town of Trebinje where Circles is centered, and have always wondered what that far away place looked like. Trebinje and the surrounding area is very much a character in "Krugovi".