Filmstelle

From the 6th to the 16th of August, the Locarno Film Festival held its 78th edition, with over 200 films screened during the 11 days. I had the chance to visit the festival for a week, watching around 30 films. Below you find four films that impacted me the most and that will stay with me for a while, be it positive or negative. One from each of the different festival sections I visited.

Le Chantier by Jean-Stéphane Bron, FR/CH, Fuori Concorso / Out of competition

Jérôme Seydoux has the goal of building a new luxury cinema. We follow the design process from very early on as Renzo Piano presents his idea for a class cube, an inverted pyramid, which should stand at the centre of the entrance hall. Through discussion about toilets, cinema seats, and equipment, we follow a variety of characters who only have the goal to get the cinema finished on time. From the billionaire financier to the simple workforce, nobody is omitted from the documentary.

I was initially enticed by the idea of following a cinema getting built. But as it went on, I grew more and more sceptical of Seydoux’s ideas for this monstrosity: a wine bar, huge snack walls, coworking spaces, and expensive toilets (that we sadly didn’t get to see in the end). A lot of the decisions were made on a whim — like the price, a steep 25 euros; it may always be adjusted later if needed, as he remarks.

Instead, I grew more immersed both in the sort of microcosm that opens up as well as the filmmakers› joy in contrasting this expensive project to smaller, more intimate cinemas. In a wonderful scene, we see two older lovely ladies planning the programme for the following weeks, with one of them insisting that they show No Bears by Jafar Panahi to support him. It’s not that the film is attacking the project at all times; it’s more so that in small moments, we get a glimpse of the filmmakers opinions without any of them ever speaking.

It’s a very direct documentary, a fly-on-the-wall approach à la Wiseman. The people speak for themselves; nobody is putting any words in their mouths. It’s a cinema that thus focuses on the people, watching the vastly different jobs and tasks that are to be fulfilled to finish the building. And as we get closer to the deadline, the conflicts get more heated, mostly at the cost of the working men. Training scenes of the employees on how to treat guests, how the wording must be correct, and how all their wishes must be met as best as possible are contrasted with the last finishing touches the workers are applying. Throughout the film, this contrast is what intrigued me most, as the workers are given space and the same importance, if not more, than the people in suits screaming at each other.

In the end, we are left with a finished building, sterile, empty, and filled with bored workers. A stark contrast to the opening shot of the construction workers setting up. We don’t know if it was a success, if people paid the 25 euros to sit in ugly-looking luxury chairs. What we know is who built it, and that cinema should belong to the people.

Grünes Licht by Pavel Cuzuioc, AUT, Semaine de la Critique

Dr Spittler, a neuropsychiatrist, helps people die. He travels to their homes to evaluate if they are of sound mind to make such a decision and, if so, aids them to commit suicide.

What we see for most of «Grünes Licht» are simple conversations between Spittler and the people who wish to die. No music, few camera movements, all very distant. Only occasionally does Spittler speak directly to the camera.
It probably was this distance that made some of the scenes all the more emotional, since it never felt exploitative. Some moments just emotionally break you. Like when a younger man, maybe in his 40s or 50s, battling with severe depression, asks Spittler his opinion on the situation. Very humane, he answers that it would break his heart to aid this man to go, and he would do nothing more gladly than just walk away.
That’s Spittler’s general attitude towards assisted suicide; he thinks it’s the mission of every living being to keep living. But it should also be the right of every person to decide for themselves if they wish to end their lives. He himself stands very firmly in life, a fact he owes to his mother’s reliability. We don’t get to know much else about our protagonist; his parents had a hard life with his father being drafted, he has a wife and fully switched into this field in the 2000s. Apart from that, all we know about is his attitude towards life and death. We don’t need more, as we get a pretty good feeling for his person through the talks and interviews he has with other people. Anything else would be unnecessary.

If this is at all ethical and if it is okay to make a business out of this is discussed, but of course, a final answer can’t be found. At one point one of the interviewees even tells our protagonist that he finds it unethical to make money off of this. Spittler is surprised but responds that he is still sacrificing his time to help those people and asks if he shouldn’t receive some compensation for that. This openness towards it all is the film’s general attitude. The film won’t point the finger at the audience to tell them what opinion is correct. It naturally leans more towards the acceptance of assisted suicide, as we don’t hear too much contra, but as the film clearly focuses on one person, this is easily forgiven. It remains for every one of us to make up our minds about the subject.

In the end this is still a film that makes me cry more than I care to admit. I guess we all will recognise in some shape or form people from our own lives, as it was the case for me. There is this elderly man who, after the death of his wife, lost the will to live. Having passed the assessment, we come to the day where he wants to end his life. We won’t see the actual death, a decision I highly appreciate. But we see him and his son, about 40 min before his death, solving a crossword together. It is a quiet, sombre, beautiful moment that simply destroyed me and, like the whole film, made me aware of the fragility of life.

Don’t Let the Sun by Jacqueline Zünd, CH/IT, Concorso Cineasti del Presente

We find ourselves in the not-so-distant future where the sun has gotten so hot that humans have adjusted their lives to the night. Here we meet Nika and her mother. The two live alone, without a father, a circumstance that seems to be a problem for the daughter, as a school counsellor tells us. As it is not entirely unusual (though we don’t exactly know how common) to have people play roles for you, Nika’s mother hires Jonah to play the girl’s father a couple of times a week. This connection is the starting point for the change in Jonah.

I was excited to experience a new, emerging Swiss filmmaker coming into the scene with a film that seemed more original than most debuts we see (this being Zünd’s fiction debut; she already has some experience with documentaries). The sound design and visuals of a heat-ridden city drew me in nicely. You could feel the sun burning on your skin (this might have been the actual sun in Locarno, but the point still stands). But it quickly turned into disappointment. The story never really goes anywhere and just meanders through little episode after little episode. I am aware that this is in part by design, simulating both the burning heat that makes everyone move slower as well as the character of Jonah being emotionally stuck. This, however, doesn’t justify having characters walk the same stairs 15 times (even if the stairs look cool). Just because you tell your story in an incredibly slow and gloomy way doesn’t automatically make it deep or, more importantly here, art.

On paper, this must have read more interestingly. An examination of fatherhood, interpersonal contact and how we all crave connection. The setup for that is serviceable enough, as the climate change technically could be used as an interesting backdrop. This works insofar as the film now mostly takes place at night, creating a rather unusual atmosphere. But like the film, the city feels empty; only a couple select locations are lived in. The idea of having people take on roles for others is fascinating, really, especially in regard to what this must do to a person, filling holes in other people’s lives. But this is explored in such a shallow way, hiding behind the slowness and symbolism of the pet shop.
This in turn is connected to the film’s biggest problem: the characters. Our three protagonists are nothing but walking ghouls, fighting to not project any emotion so it feels unique or artsy. But that just ends up alienating the viewers, which becomes apparent in the final climax, which tries its damnedest to evoke some sense of emotion but falls flat and leaves me with just a shrug of my shoulders. We are at least able to feel that Levan Gelbakhiani, playing Jonah, for sure has a great amount of talent. His acting being the bright star that outshines even the sun. With what he is given, he tries but is doomed to fail.

The problem is just that this slowness feels forced, an attempt at escaping the ever-same framework of arthouse film only to end up deeper in it. That doesn’t always equal a bad film, but when it is so pressed to be artsy, it all becomes a facade where nothing is real or earnest until I wished I was out in the burning sun and not in the cool cinema.

Dry Leaf by Alexandre Koberidze, GEO/GER, Concorso Internazionale

Irakli receives a letter from his daughter Lisa that she must go away for a while. Worried that something might have happened, he decides to go looking for her. The only thing known is that she was supposed to photograph rural football fields all over Georgia. Together with Lisa’s friend Levan, Irakli sets off on a journey to seek out those fields and, in the process, find his daughter.

For the rest of the three-hour runtime, we see the two driving around the country, through small villages, looking for the football fields, which often consist of nothing more than two goalposts made of some wood. Or rather, we don’t see them. Because, as we learn early on through a narrator, Levan, like many other characters in the film, is invisible. Apart from that comment, this circumstance is never addressed but instead just accepted by everyone in the film. Thus, we, the viewers, also have to simply accept this. But Koberidze doesn’t stop there. The whole film is shot in an unusually low resolution that makes it hard to make out what we see on screen. Only as the camera slowly moves in are we able to get a glimpse of what actually is there, hidden behind the pixels: trees turn into humans, bushes into donkeys, and cars into dogs. An ethereal, otherworldly quality haunts those pictures, evoking a sense of memory and a culture forgotten. But even through all those pixels we can experience the beauty of the images. Koberidze asks what actually constitutes beauty, what is necessary for it — according to him, the quality of images is not defined by technicality but by what is actually shown. Or again, not shown. He places equal importance on the unseen as he does on the seen. This is shown in part through all the invisible characters or unseen ones like Lisa; we will never meet her, never see her; she is a ghost that is everywhere and nowhere. Like the narrator, we only hear her at the beginning and the end, in the form of her letters. She knows her father had been looking for her and is disappointed that he didn’t trust her but also happy since that means he really loves her. Through having been in the same places, Irakli feels connected to her even in her physical absence. This feeling of connecting with people and places is key; Irakli often spends too much time in one place, becoming absorbed by nature, the people, the football fields, and the country. More often than not, he has to be reminded by Levan to move on, to keep searching. Koberidze isn’t concerned with any narrative or creating a sense of urgency. He wants us to focus on those low-resolution images, as the actual search becomes secondary, even for the characters.

And while there is beauty in all of this, if we as the viewer allow it to happen, there is also a sadness. The pitches are often being abandoned, forgotten, or built over, leaving less space for the kids and the sport. In Lisa’s letter near the end, she talks about the sadness of seeing a sports school being demolished and the despair in her father’s eyes as it was happening. Dry Leaf dwells in that sadness but also in hope; Irakli asks some children where they will play now that their field will be destroyed, and they simply answer “everywhere”.

In the end, Dry Leaf is a poem about seeing, amateur sport, beauty, and a country. A three-hour search for meaning in low-resolution images. If one is willing to let it happen, the mesmerising flickering of pixels creates a rhythm that is impossible to escape. The upbeat soundtrack is only adding to that. But it is also a work about travelling, about connecting with people, places, your daughter, or a whole country. As Irakli says so poignantly at the end, «How wonderful it is that there are roads.»

The festival

Overall, it was a lovely experience to finally visit the festival for more than just one or two days. The whole scenery is almost too beautiful, and seeing how a small town completely transforms into a cinephile’s heaven is magnificent. There are a couple of downsides sadly, since some of the screening venues aren’t permanent cinemas, and one realises that painfully after having to sit in those chairs for too long. And maybe there were almost too many films in the selection, making it hard to have an overview of it all and complicating the process of finding what you actually want to see. Also, from what I’ve heard, the process of getting on the piazza screenings was atrocious: people with reservations not getting let in and having to wait in line for too long. For a festival in its 78th edition, one would expect them to manage such situations better. Still, there is this atmosphere in the air that everybody just is dying to catch the next film, and this is something I can never get enough of. Even if I have to hurry through that insane heat, sometimes not being able to cool down because of the aforementioned “cinemas”. But given that we even got to see Jafar Panahi (and grab a photo with him), it was simply wonderful.

– Jérôme Bewersdorff –