FESTIVALS

In the sign of the Danes and art film

(Motovun film festival, July 25-29, 2005)

A review of this year’s Motovun film festival, seventh in a row. The author of the text focuses the attention on the most successful segment of the selection, Danish film production (Anders Ronnow-Klarlund, Simon Staho) and the second part of Lars von Trier’s trilogy about America, the film Manderlay. Regional film was represented by a notable number of titles (Bal-can-can, Illusion, Ruins), although they were quite disappointing — just like the low-budget Croatian films Pušća Bistra by Filip Šovagović and All You Know About Me by theatre artists Nataša Rajković and Bobo Jelčić — with a notable exception of the excellent Romanian film Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu that won the festival’s Grand Prix. Several other films stood out of the rest of the selection: Pretty as a Picture by Agnes Jaoui, Frozen Land by Aku Louhimies, 4 by Ilja Hržanovski, My Stepbrother Frankenstein by Valeri Todorovski, and Battle in the Sky by Carlos Reygadas. The program also featured a number of well-known long feature documentaries, but it seemed that these, quite unoriginally, simply followed famous Michael Moore’s formula (The Yes Men), or they turned out to be rather difficult and truly pointless works, such as the winner of Sundance Festival (The Curse of Jonathan Caouette). Unfortunately, this was due mainly to selectors’ uncritical sticking to what was trendy, instead of looking for true quality documentary films.

Elvis Lenić