Festival Picks in 10 Slides
Awakened in the Dark: The 7 Best Films of IFFI 2022
World Cinema Section
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IFFI 2022
Picking seven best films among the ones seen under the World Cinema Section at the Goa film festival wasn’t hard. There weren’t so many good films to choose from. Films of acclaimed directors such as Claire Denis (Both Sides of the Blade) and Alexander Sokurov (Fairytale) didn’t compare with their best works. On the positive side, the highlight of the festival was that it had more than 50 films by women directors.
AFTERSUN / CHARLOTTE WELLS
Aftersun won the French Touch Prize of the Jury at Cannes. Sophie, a young woman reminisces her holiday with her father (Paul Mescal) at a resort in Turkey as a young girl (Frankie Corio). Wells structures the film as a mosaic of amateurish camcorder recordings, Sophie’s recollections and her imagination of the unknown aspect of her father. This debut feature film by Wells was the rare find of the festival with fine performances by Mescal and Corio.
WHEN THE WAVES ARE GONE / LAV DIAZ
It was funny to hear the critically acclaimed Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, known for making several of the longest films, to introduce his latest offering running for about 3 hours as a short film! In this loose adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, the atrocities committed by the investigator Hermes, as part of the infamous War on Drugs, corrode him, causing a severe skin disease. The film won the Special Jury Award at Goa.
CLOSE / LUKAS DHONT
This second film by Lukas Dhont which won the Grand Prix at Cannes is about the disruption of the close bond between two thirteen-year-old boys Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav de Waele) once their intimacy is questioned by their schoolmates. It is a disturbing film by Dhont that strikes a new ground in portraying the loss of innocence, and pressure to appear masculine and display homophobia that torn asunder the boyhood friendship. Dambrine shines as Léo in Close.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS / RUBEN ÖSTLUND
Ruben Östlund who won the Palme d’Or for The Square (2017) has done it again with yet another film with a geometrical name Triangle of Sadness. It has three acts out of which the first act is sparkling as it probes into established notions of money and gender roles. The rest of the film pits the uber rich against the crew of their luxury yacht not unlike Parasite (2020) but without its strengths in structure and complexity.
I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS / VALENTINA MAUREL
This is the first feature film of the Costa Rican writer-director Valentina Maurel that went on to bag the Golden Peacock at the Goa film festival. Daniela Marín Navarro won the Silver Peacock for best female actor for her performance as the 16-year-old Eva in this film. Eva wants to move with her estranged father, a bohemian artist from whose poem the title is drawn. Her coming-of-age story somewhat mirrors her dad’s own second adolescence.
THE NOVELIST’S FILM / HONG SANG-SOO
This film by the prolific south Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo — much awarded in international film festivals — won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. It has the Hong regular Lee Hye-young as novelist Jun-hee who bumps into yet another Hong regular and his partner Kim Min-hee as Gil-soo the actress. The film is about how a chance encounter can give rise to artistic renewal for Jun-hee who has been struggling creatively and Gil-soo, who has stopped acting.
THE WHALE / DARREN ARONOFSKY
Perhaps one film that had a standout performance was Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale in which Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a reclusive English teacher who is excessively obese. Based on a screenplay by Samuel D. Hunter adapting Hunter’s 2012 play of the same name, the film is about Charlie’s attempt to reconnect with his estranged daughter. Although this stage play like melodrama may not be award worthy, Brendan Fraser could get nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
In the second line there were the following films: Park Chan-wook’s Cannes Best Director Award Winner Decision to Leave, Carla Simón’s Golden Bear Award Winner Alcarràs, Jafar Panahi’s Venice Jury Prize Winner No Bears, Dariush Mehrjui’s La Minor, André Szardenings’ Bulldog and the anthology film Kainga. In a festival known for featuring films by scores of women filmmakers, it was fitting that the Golden Peacock went to Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams!
