Viennale 2024: Strong debuts and second feature films

In addition to the festival hits of the year, new Austrian films and film-historical tracks, the Viennale also presents every year numerous first and second feature films by promising talents. Examples from this year’s festival programme are Universal Language by Matthew Rankin, Kouté Vwa – Listen to the Voices by Maxime Jean-Baptiste, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl by Rungano Nyoni, Demba by Mamadou Dia and The Village Next to Paradise by Mo Harawe.

Festival president Eva Sangiorgi selected twelve first or second feature films from the programme, of which the FIPRESCI jury was to choose its winner. The selection was extremely diverse and of a high standard, ranging from the highly topical documentary The Other Land, which provides a stirring but also partisan insight into the expulsion of Palestinians by the Israeli army in the West Bank, to Janet Planet, where Janet Baker offers an insight into both the psyche of a child and the longings of a mother.

However, the FIPRESCI jury chose as winner Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, which is bursting with ingenuity. Littered with references to Iranian cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, but also to the films of Wes Anderson and Roy Andersson, the Canadian’s sophomore feature takes us to a wintry, cold Winnipeg, where the initially separate paths of an Iranian tourist guide and a Canadian returnee end up crossing in a way that is as wondrous as it is natural. Interspersed with enchanting scenes full of absurd humour, Rankin tells of the loss of home and identity on the one hand, but also of finding a new home and of empathy and care that transcends language barriers on the other.

The second feature film by Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni after I Am Not a Witch (2017) also left a strong impression. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl opens with an absurd scene when young Shula finds her dead uncle Fred on a country road at night, but the police ask her to hold out until the next morning, because there is no police car available.

Shula’s drunken cousin soon comes along too, but both show little sadness about their uncle’s death, as it soon becomes clear that he abused them and a third cousin as children. Unfortunately, there was no guinea fowl, about which Shula learned on children’s television that it always warns the other animals of the savannah of predators with its screeching.

Although the victims have reported the abuse to their mothers or aunts, they do not want to make an issue of it, but hold a solemn funeral for the dead uncle despite his actions; at the service, only his widow is reckoned with, accused of lack of care and deprived of her inheritance.

Nyoni densely explores family and social structures in this feature film, which takes place mainly during a blackout and where cinematographer Daniel Gallego’s dark night shots also reflect the concealment of the unlovable. Despite the depressing subject-matter, the director manages to spread optimism and hope for a change through humorous moments and powerful images as well as the rebellious final image.

A recurring theme that emerged was the confrontation with loss and dealing with grief. Maxime Jean-Baptiste, who grew up in French Guyana and lives in Paris and Brussels, processes autobiographical experiences in his feature film debut Kouté Vwa – Listen to the Voices. Based on archive material from a memorial service for his cousin, who was murdered in 2012, he explores the question of how this event continues to have an impact eleven years later. In addition to the mother of the deceased and his 13-year-old nephew, the focus is also on the best friend of the deceased.

Different ways of dealing with the loss become apparent when the friend talks about his thoughts of revenge, while the mother emphasizes the need to forgive and the nephew has to find his own way and develop a position on his uncle’s death when confronted with these two sets of behaviour.

The conversations and the film develop great density and authenticity thanks to the fact that the characters are played by real people, allowing documentary and fiction to merge seamlessly. Beyond the individual story, Jean-Baptiste, who wrote the screenplay together with his sister, also addresses the omnipresent street violence that characterizes French Guyana and asks how this cycle can be broken.

Demba by Senegalese director Mamadou Dia also revolves around the themes of loss and grief. At the film’s centre is the 55-year-old civil servant whose initially repressed grief over the death of his wife breaks through when he is dismissed by the mayor, as his services as a registrar are no longer needed in the age of digitalization.

Reality and dreams and memories of his deceased wife, predominantly bathed in yellow-brown, become increasingly blurred and Mamadou Dia, who filmed in his home village of Matam and to a large extent with non-professional actors, succeeds in conveying Demba’s psychological instability vividly through this blending of levels.

Demba’s depression, which is never named as such, is intensified by the devaluation of his work, which manifests itself in the burning of the documents he has spent years writing. Aggression mingles with forlornness when he smashes computer screens that he believes have taken away his job.

However, Dia also vividly visualizes the strain caused by social upheaval when old rituals are repeatedly confronted with modern technologies. Nevertheless, he allows his protagonist, who increasingly withdraws from his environment or clashes with it, not only to find healing at a ritual festival, but also to reconcile with his son by coming to terms with the death of his wife and mother.

The Village Next to Paradise by Mo Harawe, who was born in Somalia in 1992 and fled to Austria at the age of 18, also managed to impress. Although this feature debut was not in the selection of films for the FIPRESCI Prize, it was awarded the Vienna Film Prize. With news of a US drone attack and the killing of a senior Al-Qaeda member, Harawe transports the viewer to Somalia. However, the view immediately shifts from the Western perspective to the local level when Mamargade, who lives from occasional jobs, has to bury a local man who died as collateral damage in the attack.

The single father lives in a small village on the coast with his eight-year-old son and his sister, whose husband divorced her because the marriage remained childless. Through the everyday life of this patchwork family, Harawe offers a sensitive insight into the many problems of life in Somalia.

Not only is the financial situation difficult, but the son’s school will soon be closed due to a lack of teachers; the sister, without a husband, cannot get a loan to start a new life as a seamstress. In order to find the money to send his son to boarding school in the city, Mamargade takes on dubious jobs where he would rather not know what he is transporting on his pickup truck apart from goats.

Harawe’s narrative is almost tantalizingly linear and simple. He does not dramatize, but depicts in long takes, focuses on the people and dispenses with staged tricks. In its simplicity, this film is reminiscent of the Italian neo-realism of Vittorio de Sica, which does not gloss over the hardship, but does not lapse into pessimism either. On the one hand, the images bathed in vibrant colours exude joie de vivre and optimism, while on the other, the determination with which the sister fights for her tailoring business and the son’s school attendance give hope for a better future.

Walter Gasperi
Edited by Birgit Beumers
© FIPRESCI 2024