MEETING GORBACHEV
The inimitable Werner Herzog presents a disarmingly personal conversation with the man who drew back the Iron Curtain, Mikhail Gorbachev.
One of the most visionary politicians of our lifetime, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was the architect of the opening Russia to the world. Through three extensive conversations, Herzog and long-time collaborator André Singer discover an 87-year-old statesman and Nobel Prize winner, in waning health, reflective but resolute.
These intimate exchanges are backed by interviews with the major players of the glasnost and perestroika era (including George P Shultz, James A Baker III and Lech Walesa), and illuminating archival footage. Packed with emotion – triumph, hope, regret – Meeting Gorbachev is a unique take on the political documentary. With the life story at its centre, Herzog’s film shares how a headstrong farm boy thawed the Cold War and reshaped the lives of millions.
“Confessional and sincere, Meeting Gorbachev humanizes both its creator and its subject.” – Vulture
BEANPOLE
D: Kantemir Balagov / Country: Russia 2019
From Cannes where Balagov was awarded the best director and won the Fipresci award in the Un Certain Regard section, comes an intense story about two women building new lives in the war-collapsed Leningrad of 1945.
‘Inspired by Svetlana Alexievich’s book “The Unwomanly Face of War”, “Beanpole” tells a glacially paced but gorgeously plotted story about two best friends who grow so desperate for any kind of personal agency that they start using each other to answer the unsolvable arithmetic of life and death.’
Director: Shahrbanoo Sadat / Country: Germany Afghanistan Denmark 2019
Emerging Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat delights with an 80s-set mixture of realism and inspired Bollywood-style musical, set on the streets of Kabul.
Premiering at Cannes’ prestigious Director’s Fortnight, the second feature from rising Afghan writer/director Shahrbanoo Sadat is a follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 debut, Wolf and Sheep. Qodratollah Qadiri stars as orphan Qodrat, a daydreaming 15-year-old selling movie tickets on the streets of Kabul in the late 1980s. Taken to a Soviet orphanage by police, Qodrat and his fellow teenagers soon find themselves defending their home in the wake of the Islamist government takeover.
Mixing gorgeously lensed realism with folklore and unlikely, affectionate bursts of Bollywood musical, Sadat sensitively evokes both the interior world of her protagonist and the turbulent political climate of the era, successfully crafting a humanist experience with a dash of fantasy.
“Balances a clear-eyed re-creation of a teen’s time in an orphanage with a certain nostalgia for childhood innocence.” – Variety
SUNSET
Director: László Nemes / Country: FranceHungary (2018)
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, this allegorical mystery offers a decadent premonition of Europe in chaos.
In 1913, 20-year-old Irisz Leiter returns home to Budapest, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the milliner parents she lost tragically at age two. But a sleek businessman now runs Leiter Hats; and while the city feverishly prepares to receive the Habsburg royals, Irisz senses dark undercurrents beneath the glamour.
Just as a hat is steamed, blocked and trimmed to take on its final shape, Irisz methodically sets out to make sense of her family’s secrets. She uncovers a suspicious fire, a notorious hidden brother, a shadowy German count… and social climbers who hate inconvenient questions.
Director László Nemes follows his Oscar-winning Son of Saul with this disorienting, even hallucinatory quest. By applying his intensely subjective hand-held camera to a refined society on the brink of mayhem, Nemes reminds us how quickly certainties can unravel, and how easily tyranny can take root. He also slyly invites us to ponder Europe’s uncertain political future – every day has a sunset.
“The direction is immaculate … a stimulating vision, an eye-opening process.” – FIPRESCI
THE WHISTLERS
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu / Country: Germany France Romania (2019)
The Romanian New Wave ventures to the Canary Islands in Corneliu Porumboiu’s noir-ish crime caper, which takes more than a few cues from Hitchcock, gleefully name-checks John Ford and plays up the writer/director’s own offbeat sensibilities.
Ten years after the events of Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective, Bucharest detective Cristi is still on the job. As well as upholding the law, however, he’s also taking orders from European mobsters. To skirt the ever-listening ears of state surveillance, and to help his mafia cronies bust one of their money-laundering heavies out of jail, the wearied cop is given a new task: learning an ancestral whistling language.
Since his Camera d’Or-winning debut 12:08 East of Bucharest (MIFF 2008), Porumboiu has excelled at spinning over-sized exploits around unhappy everyman, a trend he continues in this blackly comic, thrillingly entertaining genre piece – a fast-paced blend of gangster, heist and espionage antics.
“Expands the horizons of New Romanian Cinema, offering up a sequel to social realism just as it began to get stale.” – The Playlist
Other titles worth seeing:
Take Me Somewhere Nice – Director: Ena Sendijarević/ Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina (2019)
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunia – Director: Teona Strugar Mitevska/ Country: North Macedonia, Slovenia (2019)
Once In Trubcevsk – Director: Larissa Sadilova/ Country: Russia (2019)
The Trial – Director: Sergei Loznitsa/ Country: Ukraine (2018)
And Then We Danced – Director: Levan Akin/ Country: Georgia (2019)