To sample a heady mix of European cinema, head to the European Union Film Festival (EUFF) which begins on Monday in New Delhi and will travel to 11 other cities till August 31. With a selection of 24 European films from 23 EU member states, the festival is a veritable feast for world cinema enthusiasts.
Organised by the Delegation of the European Union and embassies of EU member states in partnership with the Directorate of Film Festivals, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the festival will also hold master-classes, conversations and discussions with visiting European filmmakers. While the award-winning Slovak film Little Harbour will open the festival, THE WEEK curates a list of must-watch others.
Tiger Theory (Czech Republic)
In this comedy, Jan Berger, a successful veterinary surgeon touching 60, feels trapped in a marriage with a controlling partner. His father-in-law had committed suicide after facing similar issues with his own wife and Berger suspects this destructive streak of marital partnership is something his wife has acquired as family inheritance. He fears he too is destined to die and so he devises ways to escape the fate that befell his father-in-law. The road that Berger eventually decides to take to slip out his wife's tyrannical rule is absurd and daring at the same time.
The Man Who Looks Like Me (Estonia)
This is a tragicomedy in which a father and son are pitted against each other to impress the same woman. A music critic son is depressed post his divorce. He begins to rebuild his life when his jazz musician father suddenly appears out of nowhere and demands to be taken care of in his twilight years. When an attractive psychotherapist enters the scene, hearts are set aflame and the scheming older man comes up with pranks aplenty to frustrate his son's romantic overtures. Who wins this generational conflict?
Kills on Wheels (Hungary)
This dramedy on disability doesn't take itself too seriously. Two wheelchair-bound roommates—Zoli and Barba—at a care facility collaborate on a graphic novel and create a protagonist in a paraplegic former firefighter who is called Rupaszov. The ex-fireman is also an ex-convict who offers his services as a hitman to a Serbian crime lord. Their adventures together on paper soon acquire intriguing dimensions as reality and fiction blur to produce a trippy whirligig of gangsters and gunfights, physical agility and emotional turmoil.
Land of Mine (Denmark)
Nominated for the best foreign language film at the 89th Academy Awards last year, Land of Mine is a historical drama war film about a controversial period in Danish history right after the Second World War. In the sanitised version of events, Denmark is credited as “the only occupied country that actively resisted the Nazi regime’s attempts to deport its Jewish citizens.” But in this film, the Scandinavian country is made to confront its difficult past which may have involved a war crime. The film takes place right after the end of World War II. The question of clearing some two million land mines, lobbed by five years of German occupation, arises. The task is undertaken by a group of German Prisoners of War. The film prods at the innocence of these young, emaciated soldiers who risked their lives for this de-mining operation. This is a difficult, essential watch.
9 Month Stretch (France)
A Europe trip is piteously incomplete without France. In this award-winning black comedy, an uptight and stubbornly single magistrate, Ariane Felder, gets pregnant under mysterious circumstances. The gag-laden film stumbles and bumbles along in its bid to nail the father of the child, which is eventually revealed to be a dim-witted criminal charged with assault and battery. With subtle barbs pointed at the French legal system, this is a neat little fare full of boisterous wit and charm.