The 23rd International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) opened with Iranian director Asgar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows. This year, the festival was built around the theme 'The Human Spirit: Films on Hope and Rebuilding’.
Award-winning cinema from across the world were screened at the festival, with 26 films making their Indian premiere. Kim Ki-duk’s Human, Space, Time and Human, Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, Lars Von Trier’s The House that Jack Built, Gasper Noe’s Climax, Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces, and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War were among the many highly anticipated movies that were screened to full house. There were also tributes to Czech master filmmaker Milos Forman and a special package ‘Celebrating Ingmar Bergman’.
Shoplifters/Manbiki Kazoku
“You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family,” says a character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird. Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winning humane tale examines the emotional bonds between damaged people who form an unconventional family.
On the way back home from one of their shoplifting routines, Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) and his son Shota (Jyo Kairi) see a little girl Yuri (Sasaki Miyu) out in the cold on a balcony. They decide to take her home, to Osamu's wife Nobuyo(Ando Sakura), mother Hatsue (Kiki Kirin), and daughter Aki (Matsuoka Mayu). When they realise that she is a victim of abuse, Shibata and Nobuyo decide to rename her Rin and keep her for themselves. These heartbreakingly real characters make a claustrophobic boxy house into a warm home where they grow up to care about each other. Kore-eda also tackles Japan’s sociopolitical class divide, and the struggle of everyday people with menial wages.
Shoplifters is no beacon of pure unselfish love, as a bludgeoning twist makes you re-examine the entire premise of the movie. It takes a dark turn and it comes to light that the characters have much to hide. Shibata and Nobuyo are neither saints nor devil incarnates. In one of the scenes, when an investigator accuses Nobuyo of “taking” little Yuri from her home, her response, “I found her. It was someone else who threw her away”, makes you ache. Kore-eda leaves the judgment for you to make.
Capernaum/Capharnaum
Capernaum starts with 12-year-old Zain ( extremely loveable Zain Al Rafeea) suing his parents for bringing him into this world. The gimmicky plot quickly moves from a courtroom drama into the hellish life struggles of Zain, and what led to him serving a five-year sentence in Lebanon’s Roumieh prison.
Actor-turned-director Nadine Labaki sets up Zain’s life in the streets of Lebanon with abusive parents and countless siblings. He is forced to adopt an adult lifestyle in order to support his family. When his parents sell his beloved sister Sahar (Cedra Izam) to the neighbourhood grocery store owner, a distraught Zain runs away from home. What he endures in his journey and his heartbreak when he returns home form the rest of the film’s fractured narrative.
The film boasts of some stellar performances; Yordanos Shifera, as an undocumented worker who looks after Zain, is one such. Cinematographer Christopher Aoun also does an excellent job, placing you bang in the middle of the cacophony of Lebanese street life.
Pity
Babis Makridis’ dark drama unravels in an excruciatingly sluggish manner, quietly drawing you into the unnamed protagonist’s (Yanis Drakopoulos) dull and depressing world.
When his hospitalised wife slips into a coma after an accident, the protagonist resorts to wallowing in self-pity. From his concerned neighbour’s daily offerings of breakfast cake, to his secretary's comforting hugs, to his dry cleaner's attention, the protagonist craves for this routine therapeutic pity to help him remain miserable.
His world comes crashing down when his wife wakes up from her coma. No longer the center of other's pity, he sets out on a mission to reclaim his lost days of glorious misfortune. At times extremely painful to watch, this Greek tragedy has a weird self-reflective quality which makes you wonder if being unhappy has ever made you happy.
Birds of Passage/ Pajaros de Verano
Colombia’s submission to the foreign language film award of the 91st Academy awards, Birds of Passage is a true story about the origin of narco-trafficking in Colombia. With similarly themed shows sprouting all over Netflix and Amazon Prime, it is refreshing to see something other than a generic mafia story.
Told in chapters, Birds of Passage traverses the life and traditions of Wayuu people, an indigenous tribe, from the deserts of the Guajira peninsula. Even though the movie starts from the perspective of an enthusiastic hustler Rapayet (Jose Acosta), the movie truly belongs to its women. Carmine Matinez, who portrays the clan’s matriarch Ursula Pushaina, drives the movie from the second chapter and evolves into a powerful godmother. Directors Gallego and Guerra have delicately crafted this epic on how money and greed leads people astray from spirituality and traditions.
Woman at War/Kona fer i strid
In this political satire, Halldora Gerharosdottir plays Halla, an eco-activist, who sets out to sabotage an aluminium factory to protest big energy corporations coming to Iceland. The scene of her using bow and arrow to short the power lines is spectacular start to this comedic-thriller/drama. Halla quietly resumes her life at Reykjavik amongst unsuspecting people, while a nationwide hunt begins for the perpetrator. An unexpected news comes her way. An old adoption application goes through and she is now expecting the arrival of a child from Ukraine.
The director also uses a three-piece band as an eccentric backdrop to Halla (they follow her around, oblivious to her), even joined by some traditional Ukrainian singers at times. This, along with brilliant camera work that captures the beauty of Iceland, and strong intelligent writing (especially the climax) propels Woman at War to a powerful feel-good fare.
