Chevalier at the 21st Sarajevo SFF

It is quite frosty on the  Aegean Sea...

Aboard a luxurious yacht,
friends are spending a week
of fishing and leisure.

To make time pass,
the six men decide to compete
in an unusual game.

One that would prove who is...
the most excellent man...

Every gesture, every habit, personal tastes
and even  blood
will be analyzed and voted for.

Once back at shore, the preeminent man

will be the victorious “chevalier”...

“Chevalier” by Athina Tsangari, presented at the 21st Sarajevo SFF,
enlightens male competition,

the bonds and the complicity

between men...

...tells about male worries and beliefs...

...about male sexuality,
about gambling,
about male sensitivity...

...about the strength of muscles...

...and male astuteness or idiocy...

...about male wellbeing or maladies...

CHEVALIER by Athina Tsangari is not only a film about Greek men...

...It is a colorfull movie about he human being with its arrogance,

about psychological blackmail,

about feelings of inferiority

(or superiority)...

A sincere portrait,

self-deprecating,

wise,

that demolishes prejudices

and preconceptions

about the common vision
on the alfa male...

A most unexpected and intriguing plot...

Where one can smile to the many circumstances

and the inevitable immaturity that emerges...

Where one can be so troubled

by the absurd tensions

that erupt on this yacht,

demonstrating that even
an unpretentious game
holds a strong potential risk.

When preferences and habits are examined

under a microscope,

a sort of animal instinct detonates

and gives way to a series

of small disasters.

But CHEVALIER is such a stunning exploration

of the male of the new millennium!

A male sometimes female,

sometimes "macho"...

...sometimes just a child,

sometimes terrified,

sometimes valiant,

sometimes on display,

and other times confidential,

sometimes noble,

sometimes damaging,

sometimes with a uncovered soul,

sometimes wearing his body as an armour,

sometimes in the nude,

sometimes dressed in spirit....

Between a joke and another,

no one will come out unscathed

from what soon turns out to be

a massacre game

with no valid winner.

It is a film breathing

with an undefined tension

pulsating

in a world of men,

aware of their

complementary role

to women...

....All in the same boat.

by Giulia Ghica Dobre

@21st Sarajevo SFF

PS: In Sarajevo at the 21st SFF the ensemble cast of "Chevlier": 

Yorgos Kéntros, Vangelis Mouríkis,
Panos Kóronis, Makis Papadimitríou,
Yorgos Pyrpassópoulos, Sakis Rouvás

won the

Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Male Acting.

and
SPECIAL JURY MENTIONCHEVALIER
Greece
Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari

Son of Saul at the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival SFF

The ultimate punch in my stomach

at the 21st Sarajevo SFF

came from watching “Son of Soul”.

This Hungarian film of a very young team

tells the story of a man,

of whatever remains of him,

in an extermination camp…

So many times stories on this topic were told.

Always in a 'simplistic" style.

According to the sacrosanct imperative of the "do not forget"...

Works that have banalized

the retorics of death

into a show..

...generating copious tears...

..rarely due to deep reflexion...

Nemes makes the choice of a different narrative:

one single deported, Saul,

 and his experience in the brief gap of time before death.

Not just a deported.

But a member of the Sonderkommando,

a group of prisoners that for some small privilege

were undertaking auxiliary roles

in the management of the crematoria.

People living in a hybrid intermediate sphere

between victims and perpetrators

one that Primo Levi called " the gray area".

Saul assists one day to a prodigal episode.

 A teenager, among the piles of gazed bodies,  

is gasping and trying to hang on

to what little breath he has miraculously preserved.

But then he is manually finished by a Nazi doctor.

Saul Ausslander becomes convinced that

it is his son

by a woman

who is not his wife.

That useless, that desperate attempt to survive

seems to revive the prisoner from the state of hypnosis

to which the atrocious routine

had imprinted him.

And it restored in him

a residual capacity

to appreciate and decide.

Saul elaborates a plan.

He needs to steal the corpse

(and it does not matter if he is his son or not ),

to find a rabbi to celebrate the funeral,

and to give him a burial.

He thus begins his absurd run in the feverish Hell of Auschwitz,

even though he endangers his fate

and that of other inmates.

An endless wandering,

with no other conclusion than death.

But for him,

an extreme,  

a stubborn declaration of will,

the implementation of a project,

at the face of the arbitrary.

So this pure mission will become

the only mean to recapture, even partly,

and for the last time,

an identity.

One suppressed by the humiliating rituals of the lager.

There is always something that escapes us,

something creepy,

yet precious.

Something that the blurry concentrated smile of Levente Molnar’s character is almost disclosing…

...But no..

The Hungarian director focuses on Saul,

while convoys of trains of death row inmates

arrive to Auschwitz.

It is obviously a very well run system of extermination.

Its reconstruction is careful and accurate…

...and yet the story is

unsustainable hypnotic…

Was it really the son of Saul,

what is now only a corpse without a name

and without any identification?

The other prisoners often raise the question.

As if a true biological link

could really make this venture

less absurd than it is.

But while we fall deeper and deeper

into that abyss

alongside Saul,

we understand his need

and his urgency.

His determination is the same as the film conveys.

Saul will devote every drop of energy

he is left with,

to his compassionate gesture.

Laszlo Nemes unfolds an obsessive care

to the technical means.

The result is a state of the art in terms of acting,

set design,

cinematography,

editing and sound…

Nemes does not choose a subjective approach.

But he is stalking his character.

He keeps a close up on the neck and, rarely,

on the face of his protagonist.

A 4: 3 tight and suffocating…

...while relegating the concentration camp in an out of focus, 

hazy and indistinct…

...in a hellish world of roars, gasps and groans…

...that compound a creepy and vivid image...

Indeed,

it is precisely on this recursive geography ,

fumigant and labyrinthine

as a Dante's circle,

that develops an unprecedented revival.

At the face of all the aberrant mechanics

of the extermination camps…

Skilled in building large sequence shots,

the director uses expressive key length.

They produce an almost physical resistance in the viewer

(gimmick that betrays the school of Doktor Tarr)…

…and for the dynamism

and the unity of the whole movie,

Nemes intertwines long shots,

centripetal movements

and swirling.

He manages to create a work deeper a

nd more important than its cinematic form:

…a chronicle that is not analytical,

but directly experiential…

… immersive…

… and without mediation…

One that puts the individual

in front of abomination .

The result is not just original,

but shocking and significant.

It is a historical terrible scene,

out of any specific coordinate.

 And that is why it is a piece of work

brutal and necessary.

By Giulia Ghica Dobre

In Sarajevo

At the 21^st SFF "SON OF SOUL" was awarded:
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
SON OF SAUL / SAUL FIA
Hungary
Director: László Nemes
Financial Award, in the amount of 10,000 €, is provided by Agnes B.

ZVIZDAN at the Sarajevo Film Festival

Could genuine relationships between people 
last
and intensify
and actually push them ahead
in their destinies?

This is the question that crosses
from beginning to end
ZVIZDAN
(international title THE HIGH SUN),
the croatian film
selected in Un Certain regard in Cannes
and presented these days at the groovy 21st Sarajevo Film Festival.

Dalibor Matanić's work is divided in 3 acts,

corresponding to 3 decennies

in the history of a village

in the Balkans (1991, 2001, 2011).

On stage, with minimal variations,

is the forbidden relationship

between a Serbian and a Croatian.

The names of the characters change,

but they are relentlessly played
by the same actors
( Goran Markovic and Tihana Lazarovic).

And this is only to underline
the cyclical nature
of human affairs
and their universality...

War stays out of frame.

In 1991 it had not bursted yet.

In 2001 it was already over.

Conflict was in the air though already

and its dark wings were beating henceforth...

But Matanic is not interested

in doing memorial work...

... or in excavating

among the ethnical divisions

of yesterday or today.

What he cares about
is to make us FEEL IT in the air..

...he cares about isolating the pulsions
of such a background 
and transforming the frame
in a champ de forces...

A cinema, his cinema,
moved by a violent sensual energy, by an erotic tension
that nor history
or cultural differencies
could contain...

It is a metahistorical vision

supported flawlessly

by the screenplay...

An indefined village at the border,

suspended in time

and submersed in a balmy light...

summerish...

pregnant with epiphanies...

The chemistry between the two actors

is ideal.

The way they use their bodies,

the looks they launch at each other...

....they repel
and they sniff each other,

with that spark

of the authentic

and the extraordinary...

The contrast with the flat

and calm nature around

is overwhelming...

.... a reservoir of unrest

in the peaceful neutrality of nature...

...Because for Matanic,

the world existed before any me,
or us,
or them...

...a finding that is

more than reassuring...



by Giulia Ghica Dobre

in Sarajevo

at the 21st SFF in Sarajevo,
"THE HIGH SUN" was awarded:
CICAE AWARD

John Turturro picks up Lifetime Award at Jerusalem Film Festival

John Turturro picks up Lifetime Award at Jerusalem Film Festival