18/04/2023 - Three statuettes went to Elmo Nüganen’s first two films in the Melchior the Apothecary trilogy, whilst Aidi Vallik scooped the gong for Best Script with The Sleeping Beast
The head honcho of Ji.hlava talks to Cineuropa about continuing with the hybrid festival, line-up highlights, and ethics in documentary programming and filmmaking
25/10/2022 - The head honcho of Ji.hlava talks to Cineuropa about continuing with the hybrid festival, line-up highlights, and ethics in documentary programming and filmmaking
Your guide to brand new documentary films in progress from Central and Eastern Europe. Each year since 2005, festival advisors, distributors, buyers a.
March 20
“Kontora” avoids the moralizing and sentimentalizing endemic to the war film genre in Japan. Instead, it makes its points more by poetic metaphor, though it is also firmly grounded in the real, including the darker sides of its characters’ psyches. The expressionistic black-and-white cinematography by Max Golomidov enhances both aspects by placing the action in a borderland between disturbed dream and stark waking reality.
At 144 minutes, the film risks overstaying its welcome. After seeing it for the second time, though, I felt drawn deeper into its central question: Why is that homeless man walking backward?
Played with sprightly invention and total commitment by stage actor Hidemasa Mase, he appears early on, nameless, mute and dressed in ragged clothes, taking step after step backward through and around a town in the countryside, despite the stares of the locals.