Danny Boyle, GOMORRAH, WALTZ WITH BASHIR: AFI FEST 2008
Below are a few choices tonight, November 6, at AFI FEST 2008, held at ArcLight Hollywood. (Note: The A Quiet Little Wedding screening will take place at the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.)
Schedule and synopses from the AFI FEST 2008 website.
7:00 p.m.
45 minutes
Danny Boyle’s career has been marked by the remarkable variety of themes, locations and genres he has tackled and his extraordinary eye for discovering talent. After several provocative made-for-BBC films, his first theatrical feature, the riveting dark-comedy thriller SHALLOW GRAVE, introduced Ewan McGregor and won the BAFTA award for best British film. TRAINSPOTTING, an inventive adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s gritty, scabrous novel about heroin addicts on the street of Glasgow, established Boyle as a major talent worldwide. In addition to making McGregor a movie star, the film introduced audiences to future stars Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner and Kelly McDonald. Boyle’s low-budget zombie update 28 DAYS LATER featured two extraordinary actors, Cillian Murphy and Naomi Harris, and some of most innovative use of digital video yet. His space opera SUNSHINE, island thriller THE BEACH and offbeat family film MILLIONS further demonstrated his range. Boyle latest, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, is his most ravishing film to date, an astonishingly vivid comic-drama about the rags-to-riches story, set mainly in the slums of Mumbai, of a boy who conquers India’s biggest game show. Told with sensual speed and grace, it leaves audiences in a state of bliss.
7:00 p.m.
Waltz with Bashir
Written and directed by: Ari Folman
Cast: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, Roni Dayg, Shmuel Frenkel
Beginning with unnerving images of a pack of dogs racing through the streets of Tel Aviv—an emblem of tormented conscience—writer-director and former Israeli soldier Ari Folman offers the most powerful statement yet about the agony of years of Middle East violence. Using at times otherworldly, atmospheric animation, Folman reconstructs a notorious atrocity that occurred in Palestinian refugee camps during the 1984 invasion of Lebanon, one that he witnessed but, for reasons he can’t understand, cannot remember. Folman proves adept both as an investigative journalist and as a visual poet, delivering his story through the expressive, painterly animated frames. Dreams and black comedy gracefully enrich the facts he rigorously gathers, including eyewitness testimony from both his friends and comrades in arms and from military and political leaders. This documentary-style narration serves as a powerful counterpoint to the surreal, magical, insistently subjective drawn images: a man floating through the ocean nestled between the breasts of a naked woman, soldiers playing heavy-metal air guitar with their weapons as bullets fly past. WALTZ WITH BASHIR’s hybrid form becomes more than a skilled reconstruction of a tragedy. It is, like the masterpieces of Alan Resnais and Chris Marker, a universal meditation on the interaction of historical and personal memory. –Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival
7: 15 p.m.
Acne
Written and directed by: Federico Veiroj
Cast: Alejandro Tocar, Julia Catala, Gustavo Melnik, Belen Pouchan
Few films capture the pitfalls of growing up as simply and effectively as Federico Veiroj’s heartfelt, beautifully crafted debut. A teenage rite-of-passage drama infused with comedy and raging hormones, ACNE vividly captures the tangled confusion of adolescence and ripeness of puberty. At 13, Rafa Bregman (Alejandro Tocar) is going through hard times: His bad skin, divorcing parents and the difficulties he has talking to girls are making growing up feel like an impossible task. He and his well-off family are part of the close-knit and at times suffocating Jewish community in Montevideo, Uruguay. Unlike most protagonists in teen comedies, Rafael has no trouble finding sex; in fact, he and his young friends already frequent the local brothel. But what Rafael desires most in the world money cannot buy—he wants romance and to finally kiss a girl. What makes ACNE special is its carefully crafted and utterly credible realization of place and character. Veiroj’s skillfully woven narrative communicates with tremendous honesty the process of growing up, articulating with finesse the comical banter, shifting allegiances and cloying interdependence of its young characters. And he allows his young performers to simmer and marinate on screen, creating a bittersweet and at times excruciatingly real evocation of adolescence. Shaz Bennett
9:30 p.m.
3 Women
Directed by: Manijeh Hekmat. Written by: Naghmeh Samini,Manijeh Hekmat
Cast: Niki Karimi, Pegah Ahangarani, Babak Hamidian, Maryam Bubani, Reza Kianian, Atila Pesiani, Saber Abar, Shahrokh Forutanian, Nazanin Ahmadi
Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Manijeh Hekmat unfurls a beautifully paced, visually rich and emotionally insightful story about a family of three women. On a day that should be ordinary, Minoo, a museum rug conservator, sets out with her aging, senile mother to visit the doctor. Already distracted and fretting over her daughter Pegah, who’s simply dropped out of college and stopped taking calls, Minoo’s day completely deteriorates when she becomes embroiled in a professional battle over an antique rug. In the chaos, she loses both her mother and the rug. Minoo frantically searches Tehran for her family and the carpet, not knowing that Pegah has embarked on her own journey, camera in hand, through the Iranian countryside. Meanwhile, Minoo’s mother, clinging tightly to the precious rug, chases down her own past. Anchored by Niki Karimi’s stunning performance as Minoo, a lonely single mother struggling to balance familial responsibility, career and her own search for meaning, Hekmat’s film is part road movie, part fable and part family drama. Touched with sublime beauty, humor and heartbreaking tenderness, her vision of Iran as a place of fiercely independent women and unfathomable depths is stirring and inspiring. Maggie Mackay
9:30 p.m.
Gomorrah
Directed by: Matteo Garrone. Written by: Ugo Chiti,Matteo Garrone,Massimo Gaudioso,Maurizio Braucci,Gianni DiGregorio,Roberto Saviano
We’ve seen the story on screen before: first a breakdown in loyalties among crime gangs, then a wave of unthinkable violence. But writer-director Matteo Garrone injects this tale—winner of Cannes’ Grand Prize—with an epic Balzacian vision. Garrone adapted Roberto Saviano’s sensational best-selling investigative account of Naples’ organized crime organizations (a book that made author Saviano both an international figure and a target of an ongoing Mob hit), and he directs with considerable, at times gut-wrenching, verve and poise. GOMORRAH presents six stories, each of which presents us with rich characters in fresh situations. Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is an exhausted, frightened bagman whose job is buying Mob control over fear-paralyzed slum dwellers. The tailor Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) hopes to get his designs out of a Mob-owned factory. And the entrepreneurial Franco (Toni Servillo) trades in garbage and toxic waste; his smooth philosophical grin seems to be the very symbol of the terrifying, inescapable weight of corruption. Vivid, fast-paced and unsettling, GOMORRAH is the most ambitious vision of the consequences of the Mob yet put to film. –Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival
9:30 p.m. – at the Chinese Theatre
A Quiet Little Marriage
Directed by: Mo Perkins. Written by: Mo Perkins,Mary Elizabeth Ellis,Cy Carter
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Cy Carter, Jimmi Simpson, Charlie Day, Melanie Lynskey, Michael O’Neill, Lucy Devito, Rita Taggart
Things begin to fall apart for Dax and Olive, a loving young couple who gradually realize they have different thoughts about the fundamental nature of their relationship. This conflict begets a series of secrets and lies, which slowly begin to unravel the world around them. Very few films come with such emotional honesty as this portrait of a marriage, whose title speaks volumes about its central themes. First-time director Mo Perkins tells a story about the spiraling disasters that can happen to relationships that lack adequate communication, describing, in vivid, poignant detail, the pain that can be birthed across the chasm of silence. The silences in this film speak volumes about what is breaking this young couple apart and why they are facing such a crisis. A small story with big performances from Cy Carter, as Dax, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis, as Olive, and a gifted supporting cast, this film announces the arrival of several new young talents on the independent film scene. Lane Kneedler
THE WRESTLER, EVERLASTING MOMENTS, LA RABIA: AFI FEST 2008
Tilda Swinton, Juliette Binoche, Bill Plympton: AFI FEST 2008
THE DESERT WITHIN, TWO-LEGGED HORSE, Documentary Shorts: AFI FEST 2008
ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE, THE BROTHERS BLOOM: AFI FEST 2008
POUNDCAKE, WITCHHUNT, KASSIM THE DREAM, OF ALL THE THINGS: AFI FEST 2008
THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, JOHNNY MAD DOG: bfi London Film Festival 2008
Pittsburg Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008
Homo Horror: Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008
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