The Manifestation of Novelty and Continuity. After many years of considerable lack of materials, complacency, partying, and fatigue, with the focus on the films themselves becoming increasingly less important, the much-loved Motovun Film Festival needed a new home, and found one. Josip Grozdanić highlights the many fresh positives very apparent in the new festival location and re-branding as the Cinehill Film Festival.
When the line is drawn under the first Cinehill Film Festival, which took place entirely at the ski resort of Petehovac above Delnice, the conclusion arises that the move of the former Motovun Film Festival from the picturesque Istrian town on a hill in the valley of the Mirna River to the new ‘film hill’ in Gorski Kotar is the best that could have happened to the event. Observed from the side, a certain ‘fatigue of materials’ has been noticeable at the festival in Motovun for several years. Or, if that is too strong an expression, one got the feeling that everything was mostly done on ‘automatic pilot’, i.e. on excessive reliance on the days of former glory and success. In its last years, the MFF hardly managed to positively surprise both the visitors and the wider cultural public: the former freshness and originality had largely disappeared, or were occasionally present only in traces, and the same can be said for the provocativeness, which was a significant characteristic of the manifestations in its first editions. Certainly, political and, with them, broader social circumstances have changed a lot during that period, to the detriment of the festival itself. When it was launched a quarter of a century ago, the Motovun Film Festival represented a kind of liberal, free-thinking, hedonistic and, to put it simply, ideologically ‘left’ counterpart to the then relatively rigid, of course completely serious and condemned with all kinds of protocols, also simplified ideologically ‘right centrist’ Pula Film Festival as the central national film manifestation that was still searching for the meaning and purpose of its own existence. During those 25 years, everything changed. Pula has experienced welcome changes, thanks to which it has once again become the main place for the general evaluation and analysis of domestic cinema, in addition to the last few editions being completely freed from any influence of politics and/or ideology, and also with a noticeable dose of fluidity and hedonism, which is why actresses and actors, just like film directors, now also members, i.e. members of the expert judging panel, began to claim that they are happy to visit the festival again.
On the other hand, the Motovun Film Festival seemed to have fallen into lethargy, reduced to a five-day hedonistic party with great music, truffles, oils, wines and, yes – movies. As a rule, these films were above average, successful, and even excellent, the selectors carefully chose notable premiere titles from the strongest European festivals, films that sometimes won awards and often (un)justifiably remained in the background. The festival lasted so long that, over time (at least from the outside viewpoint), the films presented there faded into the background. This was because, somehow, everything else was more important: dancing parties until the early hours of the morning, trips to nature, enjoying selected Istrian delicacies and beer, and events from the tent settlement that sprung up every summer at the foot of the ‘film hill’. And then, in the city of Motovun itself, they concluded that they simply no longer needed the festival that had largely branded them and placed them not only on the cultural map of Croatia. Instead of students and young people with shallow pockets who spent the night in tents, ate sandwiches and drank beer from the local store, they became desirable for guests with high paying power who would be accommodated in newly built luxury apartments and studios and who would spend lavishly on expensive mushrooms and even more expensive oils and wine. And so the Motovun Film Festival was forced to look for a new location in a short period of time. It was found at the Petehovac ski resort above the town of Delnice, mostly thanks to the director Nevio Marasović, who shot his film Goran (2016) in that area. The new festival location, which was partly chosen as an ad hoc solution in an emergency, already at last year’s ‘zero’ Cinehill Motovun Festival, proved to be very grateful for holding the film festival.
More than that: Driving on ‘automatic pilot’ and the old glory from Motovun, the old team was partly replaced by new people in the organization, with new energy, ideas, ambitions and plans. All the festival locations turned out to be great, from the Sanjkalište cinema to the White cinema and the Fellini Circus in Petehovac itself, to the Worker’s Home cinema in Delnice, as well as the associated locations for the accompanying programs: The Krešo Golik’s square, where a bonfire was lit every evening at dusk, Viewpoint from which there is a wonderful view of the place and where a hearty toast was made, or Cinechill, where visitors mingled with festival guests every afternoon and enjoyed the charms of Bogdan Diklić, Julien Temple and others. The terms that perhaps best summarize this year’s festival are originality and freshness, which is exactly what Motovun has been missing for a long time. With certain small improvements, for example more functional ventilation systems in the White Cinema and Fellini Circus, in fact large tents in which it was demanding to watch art films and music documentaries from 3:30pm in the afternoon heat, in future editions Cinehill should only grow and progress. Everything else, from the desires and ambitions of the organizers to their knowledge and enthusiasm, is already well established, so there is no reason for fear in that sense.
On the qualitative level, the three-member FIPRESCI Jury of International Criticism, of which the undersigned author was a member, and which also included the Dutch critic Mike Naafs and his Norwegian colleague Jan Storø, singled out three films. The one we awarded is also the winning title which, according to the decision of the main jury, which included the Finnish director Milja Mikkola, the Turkish director Yeşim Ustaoğlu, the Croatian-Spanish actor Luka Peroš and the director Danilo Šerbedija, was awarded this year’s Cinehilla Propeller. It is the melodrama When the Day Breaks by the Icelander Rúnar Rúnarsson, who is probably best known to local viewers as the director of the qualitatively related drama Sparrows from 2015. Rúnarsson’s recent film is also a minority Croatian production, so on behalf of the director, who addressed the audience at the Sanjkalište cinema on two occasions, the Cinehill Propeller and the FIPRESCI award were received by Igor Nola as local producer. The protagonist of the film is the young Una, who we find at the very beginning in a very harmonious relationship with her peer Diddi. They are both students of the art academy in Reykjavik, but he comes from a small town in the province, where he is still in a formal relationship with a girl, which is why he asks Una to hide their relationship from others. After she reluctantly agrees, Diddi is suddenly killed in an explosion in the tunnel, and the story from that moment on becomes an intense psychological melodrama. Una is constantly broken to the limit, because on the one hand she must not express indescribable sadness over the death of her beloved young man, while on the other hand she must have a lot of understanding for his friends who will arrive at the funeral, just like the girl he was about to break up with. An unusual and complex relationship will then begin to develop between her and Una, enhanced by an unexpected stroke of fate that completely changes the lives of all the characters. When the Day Breaks is a strong, emotional and touching film that has a subtly profiled character of the protagonist. The atmosphere of expanding sadness and longing is brilliantly created, the characters are rounded and lifelike, and they are excellently interpreted by the young actors, led by the gifted Elín Hall. Although the ending may be a little too tense and can be guessed quite early on, the audience is presented with a layered and excellently directed story about a group of young people who believe that they are protected by love and mutual friendship, only to be tragically confronted with the realization that there really is no protection at all.
The romantic horror-comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is the second feature film of the Canadian director Ariana Louise-Seize, after she made her debut in 2016 with the drama About Ink and Blood (D’encre et de Sang). Humanist Vampire… was crowned with four awards in Venice last year, among others in the Giornate degli autori program, and won awards at festivals in Palm Springs, Thessaloniki, Calgary and Vancouver. It is occasionally a very charming and witty production that captivates viewers not only with a safe and quite suggestive direction, but also with effectively moving characters and a bizarre story. The focus is on the young vampire Sasha, who looks like a teenager even though she is already 68 years old. She is constantly in conflict with her parents and wider family because she does not want to drink people’s blood, but uses different ways to quench her thirst, similar to the young cannibals played by Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All (2022). When Sasha meets the suicidal teenager Paul, one night while he is thinking about jumping off a building, their expectedly strained relationship will begin to develop. While she will soon have to accept some of her urges and thirst for blood, Paul will find some kind of meaning in life, even through his feelings for her. In addition to being commendably unpretentious, Humanist Vampire… is a humorous film filled with picturesque and moving characters, and during its viewing, various associations arise, from the aforementioned work of Guadagnino and the work of Aki Kaurismäki to Jim Jarmusch and some sequences from Tarantino’s films.
Among the films shown in the festival competition, the psychological existential drama Kalak by the Swedish director Isabelle Eklöf, one of the guests of Cinehill, stood out for its provocativeness. The work, which won the Special Jury Award and the Audience Award at the San Sebastián festival, is also the second feature film of the director who also works as a screenwriter, so among others she co-wrote the script for the acclaimed fantastic crime-drama Border (2018) by Iranian director Ali Abbasi. The story of Kalak is based on true events, which were previously described in the form of an autobiographical book by Kim Leine, one of the three screenwriters. Everything we see in the film is supposedly exactly how he experienced it, and this detail is important because of the two dimensions of the work. On the one hand, the film is constantly very disturbing and uneasy, starting with the opening sequence in which we see the sexual abuse of the young protagonist Jan by his father, to his attempts to deal with that trauma in the rest of the film, after escaping with his family to Greenland. On the other hand, perhaps precisely because of Leine’s cooperation in elaborating on Jan’s mental states, it goes too far, with some redundant episodes and overall is a bit too long. In addition, Jan’s character is practically (literally) present in every scene, the screen is dominated by his close-ups, and thanks to this, his insecurity and displacement are presented superficially. The characters are profiled very interestingly, just like their relationships, with an important objection to the general portrayal of Jan’s wife, who is reduced to the level of a caring wife and mother who, for the sake of the children and peace in the house, endures and tolerates just about everything, possibly with the comments “What else is left for me?” and “Where should I go?”. And what he endures is something, from Jan’s desperate desire to have sexual relations with literally every woman he meets (and thus find some comfort and confirmation of his masculinity and worth), to his somewhat hastily reaching for drugs and turning into a drug addict, which is easily interpreted as another futile attempt to escape. But it is clear that no escape is fundamentally possible, and Jan will eventually realize that. Despite the serious objections, Kalak is a very valuable and interesting film, which also brings some intriguing reflections on life.
Josip Grozdanić
Edited by Steven Yates
© FIPRESCI 2024