The new wave of American independent cinema will undoubtedly have an important place at the 69th Valladolid International Film Festival, as demonstrated by the selection of Eephus (Carson Lund), one of the most critically acclaimed films at Cannes, in Meeting Point; the winner of the Cannes Critics’ Week, Blue Sun Palace (Constance Tsang); and the Dino de Laurentis Award for Best First Film, as well as Best Director and Best Female Performance in the Orizzonti competition at the Venice Film Festival, Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland).
Also competing in this section is the new work by Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhangke with Caught By the Tides; the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award, A Universal Language, by Canadian director Mathew Rankin; the Youth Prize in the Un Certain Regard section, Holy Cow, by French director Louise Courvoisier; the Golden Leopard at Locarno, Toxic (Saulė Bliuvaitė), and the Grand Jury Prize, Moon (Kurdwin Ayub); Vietnam’s Viet and Nam, by Truong Minh Quy; and the German films Ivo (Eva Trobisch) and Scorched Earth (Thomas Arslan).
Brief History of a Family
Arriving from the Official Section of the Sundance Film Festival and Berlin Panorama is Jianjie Lin‘s debut feature, in which he shows how the fragile bonds of a seemingly perfect family in contemporary China break down when a new member arrives unexpectedly, taking advantage of Wei’s family’s guilt over their class status. Comparisons to Saltburn, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Talented Mr. Ripley will certainly abound, but what Lin has conceived is much more profound. Karma Films is distributing the film in Spain.
Caught by the Tides
Qiao Qiao and Guao Bin share a passionate but fragile love from the time they meet in 2000 until the present day. When Guao Bin disappears to try his luck in another province, Qiao Qiao decides to go looking for him. The new film by Jia Zhang-Ke (Still Life, Golden Lion at Venice; A Touch of Sin, Best Screenplay at Cannes), spanning 21 years of a country undergoing a profound transformation, offers a new perspective on contemporary China, as well as personal experiences under turbulent emotional and social changes. Atalante Films will distribute the film in Spain.
Edge of Night
Türker Süer releases his debut feature, Edge of Night, in which two brothers embark on a journey as one of them, a lieutenant in the Turkish army, is ordered to hand over the other to a military tribunal, a journey marked by a context of political instability that ends with a coup d’état. Premiered in the Orizzonti Extra section at Venice and at the Toronto Film Festival, the film explores the roots of hatred, mistrust and polarisation in a country where the state seems to demand unconditional and uncritical loyalty from its citizens.
Familiar Touch
One of the winners of the recently celebrated Venice Film Festival, picking up no less than three awards: Best Actress for Kathleen Chalfant, Best Director for Sarah Friedland in the Orizzonti section and the Dino de Laurentiis Award for Best New Director. This is a film that, with tenderness and realism, tackles a highly topical subject: caring for the elderly. An octogenarian, educated woman, with an almost full life, moves into an assisted living facility, as she confronts her conflictive relationship with herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age-related identity and desires.
La red fantasma / Ghost Trail
Jonathan Millet is the author of Ghost Trial, one of the thrillers of the year, set against the backdrop of the Syrian refugee crisis. Hamid, a member of a secret organisation that hunts down war criminals, travels alone through Germany and France when he encounters the man he believes to be his torturer in the Saydnaya prison-slaughterhouse. French director Jonathan Millet directs this tense espionage tale for his first feature film, which opened Cannes Critics’ Week, starring Adam Bessa (the Tyler Rake saga). Lazona is distributing the film in Spain.
Holy Cow
The debut of Louise Courvoisier, winner of the Youth Prize in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, takes us to the mountain region of the Juca, in the western French Alps. After the death of his father, young Totone will have to give up nightlife and drunkenness to face the responsibility of caring for his younger sister. This warm coming of age film embraces with compassion and delicacy the vulnerability of its protagonist and everyday life among motorbikes, cows and cheese, along with entrepreneurship and respect for traditions, for example, how Comté cheese is made. The film is distributed by La Aventura Audiovisual.
In His Own Image / A su imagen
Thierry De Peretti portrays in his latest film the nationalist struggles in 1980s and 1990s Corsica from the point of view of a photographer who is not directly part of these movements but who is very close to many of the characters, including her partner. Like many films centred on young militants, it is a story that moves from fervour and passion to frustration and tragedy. Thierry De Peretti employs a range of techniques such as flashback, voice-over and original documentary footage from the period in this adaptation of the novel ‘In His Own Image’ by Goncourt Prize winner Jérôme Ferrari.
Ivo
Eva Trobisch‘s Ivo is a palliative care nurse who goes from house to house and from patient to patient, observing the different attitudes that human beings assume when the end of their days is imminent. The film, which won an award in the Encounters section at the Berlinale and Best Actress – Minna Wündrich – at the Hong Kong Film Festival, portrays how her work intertwines with her personal life in many ways, especially as she strikes up a friendship with her patient Solveigh and her husband Franz, who is also Ivo’s lover.
Moon
Kurwin Ayub‘s second feature film, one of Europe’s finest and most promising directors, winner of three awards at the Locarno Film Festival: the Special Jury Prize, the Europa Cinemas Label Prize – awarded by European auteur cinemas – and the Ecumenical Jury Prize. Sarah, a former martial arts fighter, leaves Austria to train three sisters from a wealthy Jordanian family. What at first seems like a dream job soon turns into something disturbing: the girls are isolated from the outside world and under constant surveillance.
Scorched Earth
Winner of the Audience Award in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, the great Thomas Arslan presents an elegant, sober and restrained thriller, as is his entire repertoire. Here the city of Berlin also takes the centre stage. After twelve years away from his hometown, Trojan returns to the city to manage the commissioned theft of a valuable painting with the help of a group of experienced burglars. The film immerses us in a cold thriller starring classic gangsters, where loyalty and honour will be the currency of exchange.
The Fable
Second film by director Raam Reddy (Thithi, Golden Leopard and Best Debut Film at the Locarno Film Festival), a magical realism story set in 1989 on a farm in the breathtaking landscapes of the Indian Himalayas, where Dev and his family live. Dev discovers mysteriously burnt trees on his sprawling fruit orchard estate, fires that keep recurring despite efforts to uncover those responsible. The film, which premiered in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, will lead Dev to discover who he and his family really are.
Toxic
The big winner at the Locarno International Film Festival: Golden Leopard and Best First Feature Award. Toxic deals with the conflictive relationship of the young protagonists with their bodies: fundamental elements of self-discovery and, at the same time, battlefields from which they cannot escape. Maria and Kristina are two teenagers living in an industrial city who, by enrolling in a suspicious modelling school, subject their bodies to unthinkable extremes. Saulè Biluvaité explores the depths of teenage angst in a society founded on the cult of the body and unattainable canons of beauty.
Universal Language
Matthew Rankin’s surreal and charming comedy, awarded the Audience Award at the Cannes Filmmakers’ Fortnight. Starring the director himself alongside a cast of Farsi-speaking locals, the film is set in a mysterious and surreal halfway zone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, where the lives of multiple characters intersect with each other in surprising and puzzling ways. Matthew leaves his menial job in a Quebec government office and embarks on an enigmatic journey to visit his mother, in this comedy with numerous references to Iranian filmmakers: cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko mimics the grainy, static look of Kiarostami’s early films; the opening of the film, set in a classroom where a teacher scolds his students in a mixture of Farsi and French seems straight out of Friend’s House; one of those students finds a 500 rial note frozen in the ice and recruits a school friend to help her get it out, which is precisely the plot of Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon. Filmin is distributing the film in Spain.
Việt and Nam
Directed by Truong Minh Quy, Viet and Nam may have been critics’ favourite at the Cannes Film Festival. Vietnam North, Vietnam South, the memory of war, corpses to be unearthed and love between young miners, Viet and Nam come together in a film in which the exotic beauties of the Vietnamese landscape are marked by wounds. This poetic film speaks of the weight of memory in the inner Vietnam, where the film has been banned because of its ‘negative view’ of the country and its people. Flamingo Films is distributing the film in Spain.
Títulos de Punto de Encuentro ya anunciados
- A nuestros amigos (Adrián Orr, España/Portugal)
- A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, EE UU)
- Blue Sun Palace (Constance Tsang, EE UU)
- Eephus (Carson Lund, EE UU)
