Gritty Belfast flick opens EU Film Festival 2015
French teenagers’ angst, a British soldier’s ordeal in Belfast, a concentration camp survivor’s search for her husband in postwar Germany, an anarchist’s invasion of a happy home in the Netherlands — the stories of Europe are ready for Thai audiences at the European Union Film Festival 2015, which begins tonight and runs until July 19 at SF World, Central World.
Eighteen films from 14 European countries are on the menu. Many of them are outstanding titles that have generated much discussion regarding their historical, social and artistic perspective and contemporary relevance.
Tonight, the festival opens with ‘71, a gripping British drama from director Yann Demange. The film is set, as the title suggests, in the year 1971 during the height of the conflict in Northern Ireland. A young British soldier who’s been deployed there gets separated from his unit and wanders the hostile neighbourhoods of Belfast, encountering kind strangers and getting caught in the complex factional politics that blurs the line between good guys and bad ones. This is certainly one of the highlights of the festival.
From Germany there are two films by the country’s most respected directors. Phoenix, by Christian Petzold, stars his regular Nina Hoss as a survivor of a concentration camp who sets out to find her husband, whom she suspects to have handed her to the Nazis; and Beloved Sister by Domonik Graf, a period drama about two sisters and their scandalous affair with the same man.
We haven’t seen that many films from the Netherlands, so it’s a good chance to catch up with Borgman, an acclaimed black comedy by director Alex van Warmerdam. The film is set almost entirely in the house of a rich, urbane family that are being invaded by a mysterious band of anarchists who’re intent on dismantling their sense of complacency. This is bizarre, funny and eventually hard-hitting commentary on the bourgeois life of Europe.
France has a tradition of social-realist films that explore the life of troubled adolescents. Girlhood is Celine Sciamma’s new film that follows a suburban girl who’s recruited into a gang of troublemakers. Mean girls of Europe are meaner, and more realistic in their confrontation with growing pains, than what we see in most American films.
From Portugal comes Gebo The Shadow, the last film of Manoel de Oliveira, the world’s oldest filmmaker when he passed away earlier this year at 106. The film, like many of Oliveira’s, is adapted from a play and looks like one: set in a small apartment, it tells the story of an old patriarch and the sacrifices he’s made for his poor family.
There is also Trespassing Bergman, a documentary about the life of the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, set largely in his house on the isolated island of Faro and featuring a number of contemporary directors who talk about the late master. From Spain comes Beautiful Youth, a harsh look at the life of struggling young people facing the impact of economic crunch. And from Luxembourg comes Mr Hublot, an acclaimed animated film.
For schedule and reservation, go to www.sfcinemacity.com. Tickets cost 120 baht. The festival will travel to Chiang Mai between July 24 and Aug 2, and to Khon Kaen between Aug 7 and 9.