Watch where: how Russia, Gaza and the Balkans are represented at Sundance
The marathon of the Sundance International Film Festival began on January 23 and ended on the night of Monday, February 2, Moscow time. The main trend of the show is wrestling. For civil liberties in the United States, for the environment around the world, for the lives of ordinary people in military conflicts in hot spots. Izvestia has reviewed the program of the prestigious film festival and tells us what all this has to do with us and what names are worth remembering, given that Sundance is one of the main trendsetters of global cultural fashion. In addition, it is also, for the most part, a very good movie, which may or may not be liked, but certainly will leave few people indifferent.
What was shown at Sundance
The Oscar race begins with Sundance. A well-known sign is that which films are most discussed at the festival, they will definitely be among the Oscar nominees next year, and maybe they will win. And during their journey they will pass through the largest sights of the world and receive a million awards. That's why it's so prestigious to get to Sundance, and the festival is getting stronger every year, so over time it can compete with the Berlinale for a place in the top three most important shows of the year. Of course, there is also the Toronto International Film Festival in North America, but the format there is still too specific, although as an event this event is also serious.
But what Sundance is definitely ahead of the rest of the planet in is promoting the online format. Many screenings during the pandemic, and some before it, tried to partially transfer their screenings to the Internet. Sundance not only did the same thing then, but also did not abandon this option later. The festival demonstrates a significant part of its program in virtual cinemas, selling tickets (however, only for the USA, at the request of the film copyright holders), and gives the press around the world the opportunity to see the contests. However, there are few "places" and not everything can be seen. In addition, the "halls" open at the very end of the festival and remain available for several days after the distribution of prizes, so that the main information channels are still "live" screenings, but it is thanks to this that we can evaluate almost the entire Sundance competition from anywhere in the world, for which we bow low to Sundance.
At the same time, those who did get there did not regret it. The festival in Park City, Utah, was loud, scandalous, and active, as befits a place of strength for artists and intellectuals. Most of all, of course, there was talk about the internal problems of the United States. And especially about the tragedies related to the actions of the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE). ICE Out badges were worn not only by the audience, but also by superstars: Natalie Portman, Edward Norton, Olivia Wilde, Jenna Ortega.
From the stage and in interviews, they were indignant and called for an end to the arbitrariness in the country. Alex Pretty was killed during the festival, and the film community couldn't pass by. Writer Salman Rushdie, who presented a film about himself made by Alex Gibney, a classic of world documentary filmmaking, at the festival, also joined the general alarm. On top of that, at the festival itself, a white racist entered a private party and attacked an Afro-Cuban congressman, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, which provoked another storm of general indignation at what is happening in the United States.
As a result, one of the most discussed films of the program was the documentary "Seized" about the infamous police raid on the editorial office of the Marion County Record newspaper in the small town of Marion, Kansas. It was in 2023, the day after the raid, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer died of a heart attack. Director Sharon Liz, using materials from surveillance cameras and telephones, restored the events of this raid, which show what freedom of speech in the country is worth, and human life too. The jury did not give the film a prize, but it was given a large grant for distribution as a socially significant project, and this is sometimes more important than a diploma or a statuette.
The winner of the competition for the best American documentaries was Nuisance Bear, which can be very loosely translated as "The Bear of Tranquility." Or just "The Pest Bear," directed by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weissman. This is an "ecological" tragicomedy about bears who have a small Canadian town on their migration route. The main character of the film, a huge bear, does not intend to change the route, and in order to save both him and the inhabitants, he is euthanized and transported by helicopter to where he can continue his journey, following his instincts. And at the same time, together with a local Inuit sage, they reflect aloud that white people have always done the same to his people, considering them a harmful nuisance.
The Balkans win at Sundance
There are several vectors on the Sundance foreign policy agenda. The most unexpected one is the Balkan one. The jury of international feature and documentary film competitions awarded the main prizes to the film from Kosovo "Shame and Money" (Turpi dhe Paraja) directed by Visar Morina and the film from Montenegro "To Hold a Mountain", directed by Bilyana Tutorova and Petar Glomazic.
"Shame and Money" tells the story of how a once-wealthy farmer, unable to feed his family anymore, goes to Pristina to work and realizes that no one needs him with all his experience. Only black, poorly paid work, for everyone this man is just a "one—timer", and the monument to Bill Clinton in the frame hints to the American audience who the authors of the film consider responsible for the plight of Kosovo and the impoverishment of the population.
"Hold the Mountain" is a story about how they decided to make a NATO training ground out of a reserve on the Sinyaevina plateau, but only one local family seems to be resisting this. All this was shot very picturesquely, but it is clear that both films clearly resonated with the hearts of the American audience, because she sees herself in the place of these people, too. And because all this applies to the United States.
The war in Gaza and the "Russian trace" at Sundance
The Arab-Israeli conflict was very widely represented at Sundance. The key was the film "American Doctor" directed by Si Teng. In fact, there are three doctors there, and all of them work in hospitals in Gaza. There are a lot of shots here that are very difficult to forget later, but it is important that the narrative here is quite definite and corresponds to the "left" agenda. So, October 7 is hardly mentioned here. But the heroes claim that there are no militant tunnels in Gaza, and this is just a reason to bomb civilians. They say that warnings before strikes don't save anyone. And there is also an underlying idea that supporting Israel makes Americans complicit in the murder of children. The film shows how doctors present their reports in the United States, but achieve nothing in their offices. But they get it in cinemas, where the film was definitely accepted. Demonstrations in support of Palestine took place on the streets during the festival.
"The Doctor" is echoed by the investigative film "Who Killed Alex Odeh?", about a Palestinian-American activist who was blown up by someone in 1985, but this crime has not yet been solved. The narrative here is quite clear: anti—Semitism is called anti-Zionism, a lot of attention is paid to radical Jewish groups in the United States, Odeh is represented as a holy martyr, and the general idea of the film is that Palestinians are eternal victims of Jews.
The Israeli point of view was not represented at the festival, although Moshe Rosenthal's very good Israeli feature film "Tell Me Everything" was in the competition. But this is not at all a political response to pro-Palestinian activists, but a quiet retro drama about a teenager who inadvertently found out that his father was leading a second life. This caused the boy to become psychotic, then his sisters joined in, his father was forced to leave home, and as the child gets older, he will have to remember all these events more than once and think about whether it is necessary to hate his father and whether it was worth keeping the secret a secret for the sake of saving the family. From Israel, there are only residential areas of Tel Aviv, Hebrew and the bar Mitzvah scene, but there is no need to look for answers to the questions that interested the Sundance audience.
The bridge to Russia at Sundance was the film "All about Money" by the famous Irish documentary filmmaker Sinead O'Shea. This is a work with a dizzying plot and a hero who cannot be imagined. I would like to believe that in Russia this picture will be shown at least at festivals. The hero's name is Fergie Chambers, he is an American multimillionaire, heir to the Coke magnates, a life-saver with a very thick wallet and a depressive character.
When we get to know Chambers, and the film was shot for many years, he bought a huge piece of land in the United States and founded the revolutionary Babochki Collective commune there. Russian Russian books are all over his house, he says in an interview that he is Orthodox (and the Bible is in Russian, next to the pamphlets with portraits of Stalin and Lenin), that he traveled to Donbass, that he generally considers Russia the freest country and wants to move there one day. He has a huge KRASAVA tattoo on his neck.
Chambers initially trains militant revolutionaries for a long time in special gyms. Then, when they start to be imprisoned, he decides to escape from the United States, but for some reason not to Russia, but to Tunisia. There he converts to Islam, learns Arabic (although the Koran in his apartment is in Russian!), finances the local football team and quarrels with his wife, the daughter of the famous American director Julian Schnabel. And all this is just the beginning of the story! This is a film that you can't get away from, they'll talk about it for a long time, and the end credits were hotly discussed at Sundance, where it says that when Fergie Chambers saw the film, he offered the director to fully reimburse the film's budget and pay cash on top if she agreed not to show the picture to anyone and destroy it. But she refused.
The topic of Russia and Ukraine has often been in the spotlight at Sundance in recent years. This time they decided not to pedal too much, choosing only a couple of films not "about", but "about", but very worthy and bright. One of them is not even a movie, but a TV series called The Oligarch and the Art Dealer. This is a work by Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard about businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev and his Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier. In short, Bouvier helped Rybolovlev collect an invaluable collection of paintings and earned about a billion dollars on margins. In the center of the plot, which was shown to the public, is the purchase of Leonardo da Vinci's "Savior of the World" painting, which Bouvier bought for 80 million and resold to Rybolovlev for 127 million. Rybolovlev himself did not meet with the authors of the series, but the showrunners collected a lot of material — both about the deals and about the ships that followed.
Sundance was very intense. We could also write about "Josephine" with Channing Tatum, who won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. About the film "The Invite", starring Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. About the drama "The Moment" starring Charli XCX. But there will definitely be a reason for this.: these films will surely be shown in Russian cinemas, "The Moment" has definitely been bought. Then we'll talk. And there was also a wonderful series for cinephiles "The History of documentary films", a film about Nelson Mandela "The Source of Problems" and many others. We will definitely tell you more about them when they become available to a wide audience.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
