22nd Fribourg International Film Festival

Opening with a master class on the road movie taught by Walter Salles, and following that with early-morning screenings for school groups, with teachers, filmmakers and critics participating in debates afterward, the Fribourg Film Festival positioned itself this year not only as a place to see new films, but as a starting point for developing a critical relationship with cinema.

The organization of the films into five different sections was the first step of this invitation to think with our ears and eyes: “Film and Revolution” offered 12 films, among them Fernando Solanas’ The Hour of the Furnaces (La Hora de los hornos) and Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de motocicleta); “Noir Total” lined up a dozen examples of Asian and Latin American film noir, among them Akira Kurosawa’s classic High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku); “L’amour Global” presented 13 films about love and sexuality, among them Deep Crimson (Profundo Carmesi) by Arturo Ripstein, and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s Conjugal Warfare (Guerra conjugal); a seven-film retrospective of Lee Chang-dong’s films, starting with Secret Sunshine (Milyang), and the Competition.

The 13 films in competition similarly challenged the viewer to continue considering his experiences after the screening ended. They were mostly cinematographic constructions using out-of-frame images, the better to encourage the audience to complete the film in their minds, thus — in a way — making them a part of the filmmaking process. (Léo Soesanto)