BANAT (Il Viaggio)
Adriano Valerio
Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, 2015
85 minutes, Color
An old-fashioned arthouse film that will summon memories of Antonioni, Tarkovsky, and Leviathan, Banat is the feature debut of Milanese writer-director Adriano Valerio. In the Italian seaside city of Bari, young agronomist Ivo is packing his belongings in reluctant anticipation of his impending move to Romania; unable to find work in Italy, he’s agreed to manage a remote farm there. When new tenant Clara arrives early, the two discover an immediate rapport that carries over to the farm when she joins him after being fired from her job. Dwarfed in the frozen Eastern European landscape, the unlikely homesteaders must endure economic and emotional challenges. Banat is a provocative character sketch that unfolds with a firm internal rhythm, intractable logic, and a dreamlike inevitability reminiscent of the European old masters. An unlikely high point is Clara’s climactic lip-synching of Rosanna Fratello’s 1982 Italian pop hit “Se T’Amo T’Amo.”—Eddie Cockrell (In Italian and English with English subtitles)
FROM AFAR (Desde allá)
Lorenzo Vigas
Venezuela, Mexico, 2015
93 minutes, Color
Middle-aged and unprepossessing, Antonio (Alfredo Castro) makes dentures for a living. He has a bit of Eliot’s Prufrock in him, but in the teeming streets of Caracas he knows what he wants and can always spot it: rough trade, never to touch, only to look at. When he brings home a young thug named Elder (Luis Silva), the boy’s repressed desires and troubled past touch a familiar nerve in Antonio. Gradually, he draws Elder into his world: life force meets black hole. Lorenzo Vigas sets up Antonio as an enigma. As portrayed by veteran Chilean actor Castro, he remains as mercurial as thought, as ambiguous as sexuality itself. Vigas’s auspicious first feature won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and wide critical praise for the “grace, subtlety, and tension” (as Variety put it) of its elliptical narrative.—Judy Bloch (In Spanish with English subtitles)
FESTIVAL PREVIEW | CINE CUBANO | CIRCLE AWARD | JUSTICE MATTERS
THE LIGHTER SIDE | RHYTHMS ON AND OFF THE SCREEN | TRUST NO ONE
MAGALLANES
Salvador Del Solar
Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, 2015
109 minutes, Color
Some sins of the past are so traumatic they never quite go entirely away, as evidenced by this powerful political and moral thriller that marks the confident directorial debut of actor Salvador del Solar (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services). In present-day Lima, Peru, older taxi driver Magallanes (Damien Alcazar) scrabbles to make a living, supplementing his meager wages from fares by driving for the elderly Colonel (Federico Luppi), for whom he served during the 1980s civil unrest against a communist insurgency organization. One day, an indigenous woman (Magaly Solier) gets into his cab and, in short order, his head. Who is the mysterious Celina and what is her shared past with the Colonel and his driver? Soon Magallanes discovers that the road to redemption, no matter how well-intentioned, can be paved with an all-new set of sins. Magallanes is a pungent allegory and an absorbing thriller.—Eddie Cockrell (In Spanish with English subtitles)
NAHID
Ida Panahadeh
Iran, 2015
105 minutes, Color
The dismissive and degrading treatment of women in Iranian society is piercingly addressed by a filmmaker of that gender in Ida Panahandeh’s quietly furious melodrama Nahid. In a bleak northern Iranian coastal outpost, beleaguered divorcee and single mother Nahid (Sareh Bayat, from Asghar Farhadi’s thematically similar A Separation) yearns to make a life with her widower boyfriend (Pejman Bazeghi) but can’t: The settlement with her reprobate ex (Navid Mohammad Zadeh) expressly forbids remarriage. Enter “sighe,” the bizarre legal loophole that allows men and women to be together legally without changing their official status. This might seem to be the answer to Nahid’s problems, but in a country where legal and social structures are stacked firmly against women, the resolution is not easy. Leavened by Bayat’s magnetic performance, the film’s no-nonsense evocation of everyday life indicates Panahandeh’s documentary training and gives Nahid a moral urgency and dramatic immediacy.—Eddie Cockrell (In Farsi with English subtitles)
PRICE OF LOVE
Hermon Hailay
Ethiopia, 2015
99 minutes, Color
Price of Love is the first feature from director Hermon Hailay, an obviously resourceful woman who managed to produce her movie with a budget of only $10,000 and a largely untrained crew of seven. The actors are not professionals, and the eagerness of everyone involved with the film to tell their own stories is palpable in every frame. The story takes place in Addis Ababa, where Teddy, a recovering addict, tries to make ends meet by driving a taxi. One night Teddy meets Fere, a prostitute who is being abused by Marcos. While Teddy performs an act of good samaritanism and rescues Fere, his taxi is stolen. Fere and Teddy become closer and closer as they work together to recover the car and free Fere from her dangerous lifestyle. When Teddy must confront his past, we are reminded that life is never as simple as we would like it to be.—Dave Nuttycombe (In Amharic with English subtitles)
THE THIN YELLOW LINE (La delgada línea amarilla)
Celso Garcia
Mexico, 2015
95 minutes, Color
The Hollywood Reporter dubbed this film an “uncommonly effective road movie.” The task seems straightforward enough: Paint a yellow dividing line on a 200-kilometer stretch of highway between two towns in a remote desert (or perhaps desertified) area of northern Mexico, and do it in 15 days. The job is a godsend for the project’s foreman, Antonio (called Toño), after years of self-imposed exile in menial, off-the-grid work. Played by the commanding Damián Alcázar, magnetic even in this down-and-out state, Toño plays the moral core to his crew of “formers” (circus manager, truck driver, and thief) and a young runaway. The ensemble cast of mostly veteran Mexican actors hits the believable note every time with humor that comes naturally and hard-won trust. Celso García’s debut feature is beautifully shot in a lonely space—the periphery—but its eye is on the center, to which all the men aspire.—Judy Bloch (In Spanish with English subtitles)