By Ali Moosavi.
A few surprises appeared in the Official Selection program, including TV miniseries, films about the undercover agents in ETA, the Basque separatist group, and the increasing presence and influence of Netflix….”
During my fifth visit to SSIFF, a few surprises appeared in the Official Selection program. One was that three out of the 26 films in this section were TV miniseries: quite unusual for a major film festival. The second was that two of the films were about undercover agents in ETA, the Basque separatist group. Movies about ETA seem to be a permanent fixture in SSIFF program. The last point was the increasing presence and influence of Netflix. San Sebastian has become a launch pad for new Netflix movies and TV series. The neon signs and logos of Netflix could be seen across this beautiful town.
I kicked off my viewing with Richard Linklater’s delightful, loving homage to the French New Wave, Nouvelle Vague. In terms of pure enjoyment, no other film at the festival came near it. The direction, B&W cinematography (David Chambille) dialogue (in French), the lovingly created events behind the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle and depiction of likes of Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini at the time, is like a fun filled lesson on the history of the French New Wave.
The Currents / Las Corrientes is a psychological drama written and directed by the Argentinian filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler. A woman, walking on a bridge, suddenly jumps into the water. Then we see that she seems to have a phobia against water and refrains from even washing her hand. A visit later to her mother, who also has strange habits and phobias, seems to indicate that she has passed it on to her daughter. Many of the scenes in the film reminded me of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Marnie. When I talked to Mumenthaler, she told me that she and her cinematographer studied Hitchcock’s film in preparation for the film. The Currents is an intriguing film which invites a second viewing.
Weightless / Vaegtloes from Danish director Emile Thalund takes place in a summer health camp for young people. Lea (Marie Helweg Augusten) is an overweight teenager hoping to shed a few pounds in the camp. Her stay in the camp, and life in general, takes a sharp turn when she develops a crush on the camp’s instructor Rune (Joachim Fjelstrup). At this point the movie appears to be about yet another teenage crush on a teacher, the likes of which we have seen many times. But then, when Rune takes sexual advantage of Lea’s innocent crush, the tone of the film changes. What it shows is not to judge people by initial appearances. Lea’s roommate who we initially see as a slutty girl, turns out to be wise beyond her years and warns Lea about her misconception that Rune is in love with her. Weightless may be uncomfortable viewing for those used to the usual coming of age movies but it does examine issues which are very current and important.
Though I loved The Worst Person in the World (2021), I think Sentimental Value is a step up for the Norwegian director Joachim Trier and the closest thing to a masterpiece that I watched at San Sebastian. Featuring career best performances by all the principal actors, it confirms Joachim Trier as a major filmmaker. Stellan Skarsgård is Gustav, a renowned director, now out of favour, who wants to make a comeback with a project very close to his heart. Both his daughters are actresses, but he has seldom seen them from the time he made a name for himself in the film world, and the daughters, specially the elder Nora (Renate Reinsve) despise him for that. Now, after all these years, Gustave is visiting them and wants Nora to play the lead role in his movie. We get to learn the roots of the story in the proposed film and why Gustav specifically wants Nora to be in it. Should Nora not accept, Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), looking for an “art film” is happy to dive in. The themes that Trier tackles in the film, though universal, but we can also see the personal side of it. The screenplay, direction and the performances are of the highest order. Sentimental Value is a film which will reward repeat viewings and will deserve all the accolades and prizes that come its way.
In Six Days in Spring, Sana (Eye Haidara), a single black mother, takes her two boys to the South of France, to use a villa owned by the parents of her ex-husband, without informing them. She is now romantically involved with the boys’ soccer coach, who accompanies them on this trip. Writer-director Joachim Lafosse examines the issues of race and class in today’s France. Though nothing is said or shown explicitly, we understand that the parents of Sana’s ex would not have been happy with their son marrying someone of a lower class. When the watchman of a neighboring villa threatens to call the police and report trespassing when Nora’s children swim in the villa’s pool, we can feel that Nora’s race, and possibly her class, are something to do with this. Lafosse, whom I had interviewed previously for his film A Silence (2023), told me that the story comes from his recollection of going on a similar trip with his mother. He received both the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards at San Sebastian.
I have followed Spanish director Alberto Rodriguez’s output ever since watching Marshland / La Isla Minima in 2014, a terrific thriller with political overtones. He has never disappointed me since and the same goes for his new film, Los Tigres. El Tigre (Antonio la Torre) is an experienced diver, His sister Estrella (Barbara Lennie), an aspiring diver, accompanies him on his daily work aboard a diving vessel. El Tigre’s meagre income from diving is not sufficient to support both him and his sister and his children who live with his estranged wife. His ex-wife has threatened to stop his visiting rights and when he’s told by a doctor to stop diving, El Tigre finds himself in a desperate situation. Discovering a large stash of cocaine packages on a sunk vessel puts him in touch with unsavory characters, endangering his and his sister’s lives. Rodriguez has created both a taut thriller and an examination of family values, patriarchy and conscience.
Kafka has lang been a favourite for filmmakers, both adaptations of his novels and his own life. The latest offering in this genre is Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s Franz, playing in the official competition section, focusing on Kafka’s life and in particular his relationship with his father and his sister. Kafka (Idan Weiss) is shown as a single-minded, principled man focused purely on his work, oblivious to the feelings of those around him, often hurting those who love him. His father Hermann (Peter Kurth) is a domineering figure in Franz’s life, wholly unappreciative of his son’s literary talents. Franz’s sister Ottla (Katharina Stark) is devoted to and protective of his brother. We hear her voice expressing her feelings towards her brother. I asked Holland what her sources for Ottla’s feelings towards her brother were. She replied that one source was some of her letters and the other one was Holland’s own experience with her brother whom she loved and protected in a similar vein to what we see Ottla do for Franz. I also asked Holland about adapting Kafka’s novels. She said that she did a TV series based on The Trial and added that in her version the main protagonist was based on Kafka’s father rather than Kafka himself.
San Sebastian was a family affair for Agnieszka Holland as her daughter Kasia Adamik was also in the competition section with Winter of the Crow, which she directed and co-wrote. The film is set in Warsaw in 1981, under martial law. Lesley Manville stars as an English professor, invited to Poland to give a seminar. However, she gets involved, unwittingly at first, with the Polish underground resistance movement. It is a tense, well-made thriller, very successful in creating the bleak, rather harrowing atmosphere of Warsaw during that period. Lesley Manville as usual gives a supremely accomplished performance. I have no doubt that Kasia Adamik’s mother would have been proud of her daughter’s achievement!
Albert Camus’ The Stranger / L’etranger is one of my favourite novels and falls under the categories of great novels that are impossible to successfully adapt to movies. The latest attempt by the prolific Francois Ozon is perhaps as good an adaptation as one could hope for and yet falls way short of the novel in terms of the impact it makes on its reader / viewer. Ozon has filmed his version in black and white and remained very faithful to the novel. The main problem is that in the movie the main character, Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), is so aloof and unlikable that it’s difficult to comprehend or empathize with his actions. The same could be said about the book version of Meursault but there lies the difference between reading and watching. We can create an idealized version of him while reading the novel but in the film version we are given a version of Meursault over which we have no control and at the mercy of what Ozon presents us. There are interesting cameos by Pierre Lottin and Denis Lavant.
Denis Lavant takes center stage in Redoubt / Vårn, the second feature from Swedish filmmaker John Skoog. Lavant’s character is obsessed with, what he perceives as a looming nuclear war. He collects a variety of objects; rail tracks and car parts from junk yards, basically anything that he can use to construct a redoubt to take shelter in the event of an attack. Lots of these junk pieces are quite heavy objects and when I talked to Lavant, he said that he developed pain all over his body from carrying these pieces but was determined, nevertheless, to endure the pain and suffering for the sake of authenticity! I also felt thar Lavant was perfect for the role as his face is so expressive that few other actors would have been as effective in that role. John Skoog agreed with me when I talked to him. Skoog has filmed Redoubt in black and white and somehow it reminded me of the movies of Bela Tarr. It is a very impressive film and for me was one of the finds of San Sebastian.
She Walks in Darkness / Un fantasma en la Batalla (see top image) and Undercover / La Infiltrada have almost identical storylines. In both films the protagonist is a female police agent who goes undercover to join the Basque separatist movement ETA, responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in Spain from early 70’s to its declaration of ending their armed activities in 2011 and its dissolution in 2018. The main difference is that the agent in She Walks in Darkness is from the Spanish civil guard while in Undercover the Spanish police are fed up with the civil guard having all the success against ETA and getting all the glory, so they send their own undercover agent. Undercover, directed by Arantxa Echevarria had already won Best Film and Best Actress (Carolina Yuste) at Goya Awards (Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars) and was shown in the Made in Spain section, whilst She Walks in Darkness, directed by Augustin Diaz Yanes was in the Official Competition section. Both films are accomplished thrillers but not ones which stay long in the memory.
Undoubtedly the most emotional moment of the festival was at the screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab. Kaouther Ben Hania’s film, winner of the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize at Venice and Tunisia’s entry for the International Film category at next year’s Oscars, is a re-enactment of an incident in Gaza. Red Crescent volunteers receive a call from Hind Rajab, a 6-year old Palestinian girl, trapped in a car which has come under the Israel Defence Force’s fire. What makes this film different from other true story re-enactments, and unbearably heart breaking, is that the actual tape of the call from Hind Rajab and her conversations with the Red Crescent volunteers is used in the movie and we hear Hind’s voice throughout the film. I had never been in a cinema where the crowd were sobbing en masse. The standing ovation at the end of the film seemed to go on forever.
Though James Vanderbilt is a prolific screenwriter, Nuremberg is only the second film he has directed, the other being Truth (2015). In his take on this trial, historically the most famous but in popular culture way behind OJ Simpson’s trial, Vanderbilt starts by presenting the background and behind the scenes goings-on and then focuses on the key person among the accused Nazis, Herman Göring (Russell Crowe). The key players on the US side are the prosecutor (Michael Shannon) and a psychiatrist (Rami Malek) called in to examine Göring, in case he pleads insanity. The main drama is in the mind battle between Crowe and Malek and the actors respond well to the challenge, particularly Crowe, getting his juiciest part in years. Vanderbilt has also hinted to parallels to some of the things that happened then to what’s taking place today.
With Jafar Panahi a question has been raised for each of his recent movies, most of which have won major awards: are they awarding the film’s quality or Panahi’s suffering? There is no doubt that he has suffered a great deal, imprisonment, banned from filmmaking, banned from travelling and so on. Panahi’s supporters maintain that even with such extreme conditions imposed on him, he has managed to make very high quality films, while his detractors argue that the festival juries shower him with awards out pf sympathy and empathy for a colleague. His latest, It Was Just an Accident, came to San Sebastian fresh from winning the Palm d’Or at Cannes. Even at Cannes there were many who felt that Sentimental Value should have received the Palm d’Or. What I can say is that It Was Just an Accident is a very accomplished piece of work. It can perhaps be described as an absurdist black comedy, a genre for which Luis Bunuel was the master. It has moments of high tension and drama, as well as many LOL moments. It concerns the case of an ex-prisoner sighting someone who he believes may have been his interrogator / torturer. He then tries to gather others who were interrogated by that person to determine whether he is who he thinks can be and, if yes, what to do with him. I would be very surprised if both this film and Sentimental Value were not in the final list of nominees for the Best International Film Oscar.
The President’s Cake / Mamlaket Al-Qasab, which is Iraq’s submission to the Best International Film Oscars, is reminiscent of Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon. The story is based on real events and takes place in an Iraq crippled by war. The president, Saddam Hussein has decreed that on his birthday every household in the country must make a cake to honor this auspicious occasion. Lamia, a little girl (the excellent Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) who lives with her poor grandma in a village has been given the duty by her teacher to make a cake for the class. We follow her endeavors to find the ingredients for the cake, with little or no money, in the nearby town. A little boy joins her in this search. The Iraqi men in this film mostly come off as lechers, liars, pedophiles and rapists. The only decent man is a mailman who singlehandedly must try to save Lamia from the evil men and obtain the cake ingredients. I felt that the movie, written and directed by Hasan Hadi, though well made, perhaps veered a bit too much into the dark side and some of the scenes made for very uncomfortable viewing.
In Ungrateful Beings, a father takes his teenage daughter and younger son for a beach holiday. The daughter suffers from an eating disorder and despite her father’s best efforts refrains from eating any food. When she gets romantically involved with a local boy, her condition radically improves, and begins eating food again. The drama occurs when the boy commits a crime and is wanted by the police. Will the father help the boy and thus maintain his daughter’s recovery, or will he notify the police and risk worsening his daughter’s condition? The family are from the Czech Republic, except the father who is British. I spoke to Barry Ward, best known for Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall (2014). He told me that originally a Czech actor was supposed to play the father, but he dropped out and Ward was serving on a festival jury with Olmo Omerzu, Ungrateful Being’s Slovenian director, who offered him the part! Ward also informed me that Dexter Franc, who is totally believable as the suffering daughter, is in fact a trans actor. Olmo Omerzu is another talented director to note for future.
Netflix, as I mentioned, was presented in a number of sections. After All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and Conclave (2024), which were widely praised and won five Oscars between them, Edward Berger’s next film was eagerly awaited. We were not disappointed. Ballad of a Small Player from Netflix is smaller in scope but just as rich in content. Colin Farrell is excellent as a compulsive gambler and a fraud, using the name Lord Doyle and living the high life in Macau. Once his luck on the gambling table runs out, Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a local female croupier comes to his rescue and puts him up in her hut by the river. On the scene comes Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a private investigator intent on getting back the money that Doyle has swindled from her client. Ballad of a Small Player is both a taut thriller and an allegory on sacrifice and salvation. It is gorgeously photographed by James Friend and has a suitably dramatic score by Volker Bertelmann.
Netflix also provided the customary Surprise Film of the festival, which turned out to be Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Del Toro appeared on a video message, having a chuckle at his film being the surprise movie, and added that he had wanted to make this film even before he owned a camera. The film’s story is told from two viewpoints: Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the creature (Jacob Elrodi). This is a big, elaborate Frankenstein. Del Toro has made the most of the large budget that Netflix has provided. The production design is sumptuous, visual effects and makeup suitably top notch and the movie boasts a great cast. In addition to Isaac and Elrodi, there is Mia Goth, in great demand after her breakout performance in Pearl (2022), the great scene stealer Christop Waltz, Charles Dance and a host of great actors. Whether this is the definitive Frankenstein, only time will tell, but this Frankenstein is thoroughly captivating.
Many have expressed surprise that France’s submission for the International Film Oscars is directed by an Iranian. Well, Spain’s submission Sirat (from Arabic meaning the way) is directed by a French man! The journey of Luis (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish man, to North Africa with his son to look for their lost daughter becomes a spiritual one, requiring deep faith and resilience in face of calamities. Sirat is full of twists and surprises and is exceptionally well directed by Oliver Laxe, particularly in a section which recalls Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece, The Wages of Fear (1953). The screening that I went to was also attended by Oliver Laxe, Sergi Lopez and other members of cast and crew plus a special guest, Pedro Almodovar, who offered his congratulations and wished the film success. Sirat will be one of the main contenders for the International Film Oscar.
Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent was another Cannes prize winner, in this case for Best Director and Best Actor. Moura (Wagner Moura) is a mysterious drifter, running away and hiding from something. He returns to his hometown and gets a job and leads an ordinary life until his past catches up with him. The Secret Agent is quite leisurely paced until the explosive end section in which Mendonca Filho displays his considerable skills at directing. Wagner Moura is excellent in the title role and this is yet another film chosen by a country as their submission the International Film Oscar, the country here being Brazil.
If there ever was a film tailormade for an actor, it is Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly for its star George Clooney. He plays a Hollywood star with Adam Sandler his devoted agent. In flashbacks we get to see the road taken by Jay Kelly to reach stardom, along which he has trampled over friends, ruining their careers. One such person is Kelly’s acting classmate (a scene-stealing performance by Billy Crudup). Another is a director (Jim Broadbent) who was instrumental in Kelly’s early career but when he needed Kelly’s star name to get funding for his cherished project, Jay wasn’t interested. The movie’s showpiece is a film festival (in Tuscany appropriately as Clooney has a villa in Italy and the film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival). There are plenty of small, but showy roles, such as Stacey Keach as Jay’s father. One could call Jay Kelly a younger, very Hollywood version of Ingmar’s Bergman’s Wild Strawberries! And yes, Jay Kelly is yet another Netflix movie.
The great French auteur Claire Denis had brought her new movie The Fence in the Official Competition section of the festival. It is an engaging and thought provoking film adapted from a play by Bernard-Marie Koltes and Denis hasn’t expanded it too much, restricting it to two or three locations within a heavily guarded oilfield construction site. The location is an un-named African country, marking Denis’s return to the continent of her greatest triumphs, Beau Travail (1999) and White Material (2009). Here Denis examines issues such as race, guilt and conscience. Alboury (Isaach De Bankole), a local man, dressed in a suit and tie, stands outside the fence demanding to collect the body of his brother who, the oil company has claimed was killed in an accident. The construction supervisor Horn (Matt Dillon) tries to dissuade Alboury to go home and wait for the company to deliver the body. Alboury is unmoved, even when Horn offers him money to go away. The conversation between these two forms the central core of the movie: one trying to find the truth about his brother’s death, the other trying to maintain calm and order in a site where the bulk of the staff are local and sympathize with Alboury. The other players in this game of mind chess are Horn’s fiancée (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and a young expat engineer (Tom Blyth).
French director Olivier Assayas is a prolific filmmaker, but his movies are so different from each other that it is difficult to term any of them a typical Assayas film. His latest is The Wizard of the Kremlin. In its 152 minutes running time we witness Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, as told by his close confidant Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) to an Rowland (Jeffrey Wright), an American writer who specializes in Russian studies. The movie’s central character is Baranov with Putin staying in the background. We see how Baranov got to move in the Russian high society. His girlfriend Ksenia (Alicia Vikander) attracting the attention of a Russian uber-rich playboy (Tom Sturridge), thus paving the way for Baranov to gather influence. The events are shown as flashbacks, intercut with Baranov talking to Rowland. Despite its length the story is fascinating and holds our attention. I did, however, felt that Jude Law was miscast as Putin and lacked the necessary charisma and gravitas.
Though the golden era of Italian filmmakers with names such as Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Pasolini, Rosi, Rossellini, De Sica is long gone, there are contemporary Italian filmmakers such as Paolo Sorrentino, Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher who are producing high quality work. In his latest movie, La Grazia Sorrentino teams up with his usual lead actor Toni Servillo playing a widowed Italian president, De Santis, on the last few months of his term. He has to decide whether to legalize euthanasia and issue pardons for a few prisoners. He deicides to seek advice from the Pope on euthanasia and visit the prisoners in question. He depends on the advice of his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti) on almost everything. But the issue most preoccupying his mind is whether his late wife was unfaithful to him, and if so, who was her partner. Toni Servillo, gives another totally captivating performance, capturing the agony of a man faced with tough choices and unsure of the answer to a mystery which is giving him sleepless nights. Deservedly he won the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival. As usual with Sorrentino movies, La Grazia is visually enthralling. The cinematographer is Daria D’Antonio who also shot Sorrentino’s Patthenope (2024) and The Hand of God (2021).
Couture from Alice Winocour covers the Fashion Week in Paris from the experience of three people there: An American filmmaker (Angelina Jolie), hired to shoot a promo video for the event while dealing with a personal health crisis, a freelance makeup artist (Ella Rumpf) whose livelihood depends on getting such assignments and an African beauty (Anyier Anei), debuting as a model and for whom, making it as a professional model would mean being able to provide for her family to live in relative comfort in Africa. Angelina Jolie’s part is the most interesting of the three both due to her giving one of her best performances of recent times and also the fact that the health issue her character faces in the film mirrors one which Jolie experienced in real life. Alice Wonocour, who I have interviewed before, shows that she is one of the most interesting of current French directors.
A brief rundown of a few other movies: I felt that Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia would have been a fairly pointless movie, had it not been for its explosive, yet predictable, finale. Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life / Vie Privée displays Jodie Foster’s mastery in acting in French language. Two Seasons / Two Strangers / Tabi to Hibi marks Shȏ Miyaki as a filmmaker to watch and Die My Love is another film in which Lynn Ramsay deals with what she told me previously, “the circumstances where humanity can be twisted and where a lot of violence brings another set of violence”. It’s also a showcase for the talented Jennifer Lawrence, who at the tender age of 35, received the festival’s Donostia award for lifetime achievement!
Ali Moosavi has worked in documentary television and has written for Film Magazine (Iran), Cine-Eye (London), and Film International.