Tips of the Artistic Consultant of the IFF
Eva Zaoralová
Like in previous years, I have to choose from the varied mixture of films of different genres shot in all possible parts of the world just a few ones to which I have an almost personal relationship. In the very beginning I am going to mention a retrospective of Elia Petri and not only because the films by this director ranked as ones of the most important we could see in our distribution in the best years of my generation. In my opinion, a complete collection of works by Elia Petri (1929-1982) deserves the attention of especially the younger generation: they might be surprised how thrilling and psychologically credible his films like The Assassin (Assasino), Investigation of a Ci tizen above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto), We Still Kill the Old Way (A ciascuno il suo) or The 10th Victim (La decima vittima) and others up to Todo modo, the top work of the Italian film maker, are. They were all shot in the 1960s and 1970s and reflected a sincere fascination of intellectuals with the questions of disturbing social relationships by power interests which were often hidden under the veil of something else, e.g. religion. The characters in these films are so convincing thanks to the director’s ability to work with literary models by excellent writers and with such outstanding actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Salvo Randone and, first of all, Gian Maria Volonté. The state of society keeps exciting Italian film ma kers even today but, in their hands, this topic can change into a bitter comedy, like in the film The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (La mafia uccide solo d’estate), which can be found in the Another View section. Its beginning director known under the pseudonym Pif is a very famous moderator with a distinctive sense of humour in Italy where he appears in TV discussions. He put a lot of his personal experience from living with
the omnipresent Mafia in his native Palermo in his film. Another Italian film, The Train to Moscow: A Journey to Utopia (It treno va a Mosca), which was included in the competition of documentaries, is interesting as well. It consists of prevailingly amateur shots taken by the participants in the trip to the World Youth Congress in 1957: young Italian communists from a provincial town left for Moscow with ideals and belief they were going to a country of miracles, however, they returned rather frustrated. And there is one more Italian film I have to mention: The Wonders (Le Meraviglie), which has recently been awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes, the second most important prize after the Golden Palm. A simple but beautiful story of a family that is trying to live in harmony with nature was shot by young Alice Rohwacher who is going to come to present her film to the Karlovy Vary audience. And we managed to bring further awarded films from Cannes: Leviathan by Andrej Zvjagincev about power methods surviving in Russian society was awarded the Prize for the Best Screenplay. The twenty-five-year-old Canadian Xavier Dolan, who is considered a new prodigy of world film and who was also awarded a prize, tells about a controversial relationship of a son growing to manhood and his mother in his almost ostentatiously sincere film Mommy. But I have my favourites in the main competition too: one of them is an original adaptation of Dostoyevsky´s White Nights which was shot by the Kazakhstanian director Nariman Turebayev under the name Adventure (Priklyuchenie) in co-production with France. And finally I would like to invite the readers of the Promenáda magazine to one of competition films: its Mexican name La Tirisia means a special state of depression which three women living in the middle of beautiful but forbidding desert countryside suffer from as fate was unkind to them all. Its director Jorge Pérez Solano is going to come from far Mexico to discuss the film with cinema visitors. Who knows if it holds the interest of not only the audience but also of the jury that is headed by the famous Spanish producer and director Luis Miňarro this year.
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