Thirteen candidates to the Golden Angels of Tofifest 2014

The selection for the On Air main competition at the Tofifest IFF has just been announced. Thirteen films from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Israel, Slovenia, Georgia, Greece, Great Britain, and Ethiopia will compete for the Golden Angel award. The starters in the race will include Corn Island from Georgia, which has already made the critics delighted, a Ukrainian epic about the master of cinema Sergei Paradjanov, and the Ethiopian Difert produced by Angelina Jolie.

The On Air competition is an original selection of the best debuts made in the last 12 months. This year, the starters in the race are dominated by films from Europe. Films from Ukraine, Georgia, and Poland are particularly strongly represented.

Ukraine is heralded by two films and two co-productions. Paradjanov by Olena Fetisova and Serge Avedikian (Polish premiere) is a biography of the great master of cinema Sergei Paradjanov. He is considered one of the most outstanding filmmakers of the 20th century, a versatile artist and dissident, whose views and artistic independence led him to prison in the USSR, where he spent a number of years. His Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates have become part of the history of international cinematography. This Ukrainian-French-Armenian-Georgian coproduction is suspended between the extremities of Paradjanov’s personality, presenting him as a visionary of film art, poetry, and visual arts. The film won the Jury Award at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The Tribe by Miroslav Slaboshpytskiy won three important awards, during this year’s edition of the Cannes IFF. It is a fascinating film in which not a single word is spoken. The reason for it is the story set in a special boarding school for deaf-mute, where we find the main protagonist, Sergei. He soon becomes a member of a school gang – the title Tribe – but falling in love with the Boss’ girlfriend puts his life in danger. This shocking film explores the embarrassing and thoroughly hidden truth about the post-Soviet plague of sexual abuse of young women. Film critics were enthralled by The Tribe: “Just as in the films made in the dawn of the silent era, the language of gestures and facial expressions, and even postures become almost completely comprehensible” (Variety).

Georgia is represented by two films in the ON AIR competition. Many film enthusiasts are already anticipating Corn Island by Giorgi Ovashvili (Polish premiere). The winner of this year’s Karlovy Vary IFF has been heralded as the great discovery and the Georgian candidate for Academy Awards – it is an artistically ascetic drama that includes only a few dialogue lines. Variety has called the film “masterclass of emotional minimalism, in which the old masters like Bresson, Tarkovsky, Kaneto Shindo, and Terrence Malick resound. And with a little touch of ‘The Tempest’ by Shakespeare.” The film tells a story about an old farmer from Georgia and his teenage granddaughter, who try to plant corn on a borderline river, in the middle of the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict, in 1992.

The other director from Georgia, Levan Koguashvili, will come to Torun with his Blind Date. It is a comedy-drama about strong women and sad men experiencing their “midlife crisis”. It is a charming story about two forty-year-olds looking for a woman of their life. This film story about searching for love will take the audience through the reality of everyday life in Georgia, offering a great deal of humour, sensitivity, and attention, as more and more comical situations come to life. The atmosphere of the film has been applauded by jurors and awarded it with three trophies at the prestigious Sofia IFF , GoEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden and at Lecce Festival of European Film.

Poland has two films selected for the debut film competition. The first oneis Hardkor Disko by Krzysztof Skonieczny, the winner of the Koszalin Screen Debuts Festival “Young and Cinema”. It is a full-length debut of one of the best video-clip directors in Poland. When talking about the film, Skonieczny said: “This story is a modern version of an ancient tragedy, in which Gods let a catharsis happen, but a happy end is no option. This is a story about a desperate search for identity, about guilt, revenge and punishment, and love that is impossible to fulfil.”.

The other of the Polish contestants is Kebab & Horoscope by Grzegorz Jaroszuk. This film was coined the “most Czech film of the festival”, during the film festival in Karlovy Vary, as it is a story of two fraudsters, who pretend to be marketing specialists to save a carpet shop from collapsing, wrapped in a genuinely Czech-like atmosphere. It is the dark horse in the festival’s race, as “it is rare to see a director, who offers such a coherent and consistent vision of the represented world, in their film debut,” as critics say. The film won two awards at the recently held Gdynia Film Festival.

As for the Ethiopian Difret by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, this film differs from all other contestants in many ways. It is a simple, if not an amateurish film, which won the Audience Award at the prestigious Sundance IFF and at this year’s Berlinale. How did it happen that a film made with semi-amateurish methods and featuring, among others, poor peasants from Ethiopian villages and great many untrained actors won so many important awards? Why was it received with such great emotions by the audiences at the biggest film festivals? Had it not been for Angelina Jolie, who paid for its entire production, this film would never see the light of day. Jolie has fought for the right of African women for many years and this is exactly what Difret is about. It discloses a virtually unknown to us and shocking tradition, common in Ethiopian villages, i.e. forceful kidnapping of young women with the intention to marry. It is one of the oldest traditions in this country. The film features two equal heroines – Meaze, a young lawyer and advocate of women’s rights, who lives in the capital city of Addis Ababa, and fourteen-year-old Hirut. The young girl is kidnapped by a man from her village and then raped, as an initiation before a wedding, following the tradition in Ethiopia. Much to the surprise of other villagers, Hirut kills the oppressor with his own rifle, in an attempt to escape. She is accused of murder and Meaza steps in to defend her in court.

It is after some time that films from Germany reappear in a competition at Tofifest. Stations of the Cross by Dietrich Brüggemann is a touching story about what the fanatical approach to Catholicism leads to. The film focuses on Maria, 14, a girl from a small town in the south of Germany, who lives with her parents and three siblings. Maria, who is preparing for confirmation, becomes more and more fascinated with martyr saints. The seed sown in her soul will lead to a tragedy. The film won the Silver Bear for the script and the Ecumenical Film Award at Berlinale 2014, as well as many awards at the Norwegian International Film Festival and Edinburgh IFF.

Zero Motivation by Talya Lavie (Polish premiere) is a keen black comedy that portraits the everyday life of young female soldiers, who work in an army administration office, which is a mirror of the situation of women in the Israeli army. The film is a story about three young female soldiers and their both real and surreal journey into the labyrinth of bureaucracy, and the turbulences related to adolescence, which is a tragicomic observation of life in the militarised society of Israel. The film won an award for best storyline and the Nora Ephron Prize at the Tribeca IFF in New York, as well as 12 nominations for Israeli film awards.

This year, Class Enemy by Rok Biček represents Slovenia. It is a story about the drama between pupils and one of the teachers, set in a modern school in Slovenia. A German language teacher becomes the most hated person in one of the classes. When one of the pupils commits suicide, the entire class considers him responsible for her death. When the pupils finally realise that not everything is so black and white, as they used to think, it is already too late… Class Enemy won awards at the IFF Bratislava and Vilnius IFF.

Tourist by Ruben Östlund represents Sweden (in coproduction with Denmark, France, and Norway) (Polish premiere). It is seemingly trivial story about a trip of a family with children to the French Alps to ski, which is in truth a film about the significance of relationships between men and women. But first they have to rethink that it means to be a husband, a wife, and a parent. The film has won the Jury Award in the Un Certain Regard section, during this year’s Cannes IFF.

In 2007, Hallam Foe from Great Britain won all the important awards of Tofifest. This year, Snow in Paradise by Andrew Hulme can repeat this success (Polish premiere). It is a powerful feature film based on an authentic story of Martin Askew, who grew up in the crime-ridden East End district in London, ruled by the culture of crime. The film analyses a very relevant topic of the growing role Islam plays among immigrant communities.

A Blast (coproduced with Holland and Germany) by Syllas Tzoumerkas will have its Polish premiere at Tofifest and represent Greece. This is a story about Maria, a mother and wife, who leads a peaceful and quiet life, only to see come down in one second. Syllas Tzoumerkas comments: “A Blast is set in the fervent years of the collapse of the Greek economy. It tells the story of a generation’s disillusionment and radicalization.”

The winner of the ON AIR competition will be announced on 24th October, during the Closing Ceremony of the Tofifest IFF, at the at the Festival Centre (Od Nowa Centre).

The films featured in the On Air

competition at Tofifest 2014

§  A Blast, Syllas Tzoumerkas, 2014, Greece, Holland, Germany (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

§  Blind dates, Levan Koguashvili, 2013, Georgia, Ukraine

§  Class Enemy, Rok Biček, 2013, Slovenia

§  Corn Island, George Ovashvili, 2014, Georgia, Germany, France, Czech Republic (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

§  Difret, Zeresenay Mehari, 2014, Ethiopia, USA

§  Hardkor Disko, Krzysztof Skonieczny, 2014, Poland

§  Kebab & Horoscope, Grzegorz Jaroszuk, 2014, Poland

§  Stations of the Cross, Dietrich Brüggemann, 2014, Germany

§  Paradjanov, Olena Fetisova and Serge Avedikian, 2013, Ukraine, France, Georgia, Armenia (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

§  Snow in Paradise, Andrew Hulme, 2014, Great Britain (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

§  The Tribe, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, 2014, Ukraine

§  Tourist, Ruben Östlund, 2014, Sweden, Denmark, France, Norway (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

§  Zero motivation, Talya Lavie, 2014, Israel, France (Polish premiere at Tofifest)

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