The 41st New Directors/New Films (March 21 – April 1) organized by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art will screen 29 feature films (24 narrative, 5 documentary) and 12 short films representing 28 countries.
The opening night feature is Nadine Labaki’s WHERE DO WE GO NOW?. Screening on Wednesday, March 21 at MoMA, Labaki’s follow up to the critically acclaimed CARAMEL follows the events that transpire after women of different religions in a remote Lebanese village band together and invent schemes to prevent their men from killing each other in the intractable religious conflict that surrounds their community. This entertaining and unlikely near-musical tears down stereotypes of women in the Middle East and uses humor to explore serious subjects, with one eye toward Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the other toward Bollywood. Winning audience awards at the Toronto and San Sebastian Film Festivals after a successful premiere in Cannes, WHERE DO WE GO NOW? is refreshing and unflinching. The film is a Sony Pictures Classics Release.
The 41st edition of New Directors/New Films will be marked by a series of first time events for the festival: The screening and celebration of Stanley Kubrick’s first feature, FEAR AND DESIRE (1953) breaks precedent by presenting a film nearly 20 years older than the festival itself. THE RABBI’S CAT, directed by Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar will be the first 3-D feature screened at ND/NF, as well as the first feature shown as a family film. Two programs of short films have also been added to this year’s schedule and Gareth Huw Evans’ Indonesian martial-arts thriller THE RAID will be the first late-night screening of a ND/NF selection.
This year a special surprise screening will be featured as the Closing Night selection. The film will not be revealed to the audience until it screens at the Film Society on Sunday, April 1.
Among the feature debuts are films by actors-turned-directors Karl Markovics and Roschdy Zem. Markovics’ BREATHING follows an inmate at a juvenile detention center whose last hope of parole rests on his ability to hold down a job as a morgue assistant, while Zem’s thriller OMAR KILLED ME is about a Moroccan gardener wrongly accused of murder. Visual artist and musician Terence Nance’s AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY is a personal meditation on love in the new millennium. The film was an audience favorite at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Additional first-time feature outings include Adam Leon’s GIMME THE LOOT, a New York-fueled adventure about two ambitious graffiti artists with a plan to make their revenge-inspired mark on the city. Song Chuan’s HUAN HUAN weaves an emotionally charged story about a woman whose indiscretions have a domino effect within her rural village. Similarly, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS looks at the unexpected consequences that occur when a private security firm is hired to police a prosperous middle class neighborhood sitting next to a low-income area. Finally, Lee Kwang-Kuk puts the lessons learned from being assistant director to Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo on display with his film ROMANCE JOE which thrusts the viewer into a series of intertwined stories triggered by a bar maid telling of the time she met a suicidal guy called ‘Romance Joe.’
Returning to New Directors/New Films are Mads Brügger (THE RED CHAPEL, 2010) with his film THE AMBASSADOR, in which he takes center stage as the title character in an effort to expose African political misdeeds; and Joachim Trier (REPRISE, 2007) with his (previously announced) OSLO, AUGUST 31ST which follows a young man on what will be the most significant day of his life.
Daring and experimental approaches to documentary filmmaking are highlighted by Anca Damian’s (previously announced) CRULIC: THE PATH TO BEYOND which utilizes hand-drawn, cutout and collage animation techniques and Victor Ginzburg’s GENERATION P, a metaphysical Mad Men from the go-go 1990s. Other documentaries include Emad Burnat’s and Guy Davidi’s Sundance award-winner for Best Documentary Direction, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, which chronicles the jarring events that have taken place in Palestine over the past five years and David France’s HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, which provides an immersive moving-image document chronicling the rise of AIDS activism.
The 41st New Directors/New Films features selections include:
THE AMBASSADOR (Ambassadøren) (2011) 94min
Directed by Mads Brügger
Country: Denmark
The consummate agent-provocateur–his method fittingly described as “Graham Greene meets Borat”–Brügger (THE RED CHAPEL, NDNF 2010) shocks and mightily entertains by performing an artistic intervention in reality using role-playing and hidden cameras to expose an awful truth about life in central Africa.
BREATHING (Atmen) (2011) 90min
Director: Karl Markovics
Country: Austria
The remarkably assured directorial debut from veteran Austrian actor Karl Markovics (THE COUNTERFEITERS) creates a slipstream between the perilousness of youth and the inevitability of death as it tells the story of an inmate at a juvenile detention center whose last hope of parole rests on his ability to hold down a job…as a morgue assistant. A Kino Lorber release.
CRULIC: THE PATH TO BEYOND (2011) 73min
Director: Anca Damian
Country: Romania
Anca Damian’s documentary utilizes hand drawn, cutout and collage animation techniques, combined with some very dark humor to create a striking documentary about a young Romanian’s hunger strike in a Polish jail.
DONOMA (2011) 133min
Directed by Djinn Carrénard
Country: France
Rumored to have been shot for about $200, DONOMA announces the arrival of an intriguing new talent on the French scene, Haitian-born, Paris based Djinn Carrénard. Devised, shot (often guerrilla-style) and edited over a period of years, the film is a choral piece that chronicles the romantic destinies of three women, offering a fresh, funny portrait of an emerging French generation.
FEAR AND DESIRE (1953) 72min
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Country: USA
Directed, photographed, and edited by the talented and ambitious 24-year-old Kubrick, FEAR AND DESIRE was written by his high school classmate, Howard Sackler, who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in playwriting. Some Kubrick scholars see this wartime drama of five soldiers behind enemy lines and their encounter with a native woman as a dry run for PATHS OF GLORY; others see it as the original to the second half of FULL METAL JACKET. A Kino Lorber release.
5 BROKEN CAMERAS (2011) 90min
Directors: Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Countries: Palestine/Israel/France
Emad Burnat’s and Guy Davidi’s documentary began five years ago in the Palestinian town of Bil’in when Burnat bought a camera to record the birth of his son Gibreel. Gibreel’s arrival, however, coincided with a period of great unrest in the area, which is witnessed by five video cameras, each subsequently damaged by bullets or rocks. A Kino Lorber release.
FOUND MEMORIES (Historias Que Só Existem Quando Lembradas) (2011) 98min
Director: Julia Murat
Country: Brazil
The original title, which translates as “stories that only exist when remembered,” beautifully expresses the theme and core sentiment of Julia Murat’s poetic rendering of the fictive town of Jotuomba. A magical confluence of generations and cultures is occasioned by the visit of Rita, a young photographer, to this place where time has seemingly stood still and life is rooted in the fixed roles of tradition soon to be rendered obsolete. A Film Movement release.
GENERATION P (2011) 116min
Director: Victor Ginzburg
Country: Russia
Ginzburg’s GENERATION P could be described as a metaphysical Mad Men from the go-go 1990s – a wonderland of images and ideas that emerged from the rebirth of a nation as a marketer’s paradise. The film offers a “view” of post-Communist Russia as the arrival of democracy and Pepsi-Cola brought the advance of capitalism with all of its mechanisms and fuzzy messages.
GIMME THE LOOT (2012) 81min
Director: Adam Leon
Country: USA
In his feature film debut, Adam Leon has created a raucous, car-less road trip that is an homage to street-smart kids and New York City. Malcolm and Sofia, two determined teens from the Bronx, are the ultimate graffiti writers. When their latest masterpiece is wiped out by a rival gang, they must hustle, steal and scheme to get spectacular revenge and become the biggest graffiti writers in the city.
GOODBYE (Bé omid é didar) (2011) 104min
Director: Mohammad Rasoulof.
Country: Iran
In his latest film, celebrated Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof creates a dramatic and tense tale set in Tehran, where a young woman is desperately attempting to acquire a visa to leave the country. The beautifully shot film uses the confinement of space to cinematically express claustrophobia, its precise framing catching every subtle expression on the face of the astonishing Leyla Zareh, who plays the disbarred human rights lawyer, Noora, looking for a way out.
HEMEL (2012) 80min
Director: Sacha Polak
Country: The Netherlands/Spain
Sacha Polak’s HEMEL features Hannah Hoekstra as a strong-willed, complicated, and vulnerable heroine who longs (perhaps too much) to connect with her elusive father and ultimately find herself. The film is a powerful investigation of a sexually-empowered woman and her search for physical and intellectual intimacy.
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (2012) 109min
Director: David France
Country: USA
David France’s immersive moving-image document chronicling the rise of AIDS activism shows a movement though the lenses of those who captured it firsthand. Desperate people leveraged the skills they had—some wrote, some lobbied, many marched, and all mobilized—to flight a plague that vast swaths of society saw as just punishment for immoral actions. A Sundance Selects release.
HUAN HUAN (2011) 90min
Director: Song Chuan
Country: China
Song Chuan’s first feature captures the dreams and desires, disappointments and regrets, of a life not fully lived via the title character. In a rural Chinese village, a young woman who is the local doctor’s mistress struggles against her family, government bureaucracy and social mores to move away and create a life for herself.
IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE (Z daleka widok jest piekny) (2011) 77min
Directors: Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal
Country: Poland
Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s film is set in a Polish village effectively cut off from civilization, where rough and impassive Pawel makes a living scavenging for scrap metal. There’s bad blood between him and the “community” (a more spiteful collection of individuals would be hard to imagine), and when he goes AWOL his neighbors loot and vandalize his home. What if he returns? A brooding, almost wordless drama vision of a world in an advanced state of entropy.
LAS ACACIAS (2011) 85min
Director: Pablo Giorgelli
Country: Argentina
One of the discoveries of the 2011 Cannes Critics Week, Pablo Giogelli’s road movie with a difference takes a 900-mile trip from Asunción in Paraguay to Buenos Aires in the company of Rubén, a gruff, taciturn truck driver and the two illegal immigrants—a young woman, and her new-born daughter—he is reluctantly transporting.
THE MINISTER (L’exercice de l’État) (2011) 115min
Director: Pierre Schöller
Country: France
Pierre Schöller’s political thriller focuses on a cabinet minister (Olivier Gourmet) in charge of national transportation who believes himself to be a man of the people. He wants both to be and do good, but in order to get anything done he must, given the exigencies of compromise, cajole, bend and even betray.
NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (O som ao redor) (2012) 124min
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Country: Brazil
A thrilling debut from a breakout talent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS delves into the lives of a group of prosperous middle-class families residing on a quiet street, close to a low-income neighborhood. A private security firm hired to police the street becomes the catalyst for an exploration of the neighbors’ discontents and anxieties, which are exacerbated by a palpable sense of unease over their society’s troubled past and present inequities.
NOW, FORAGER (2012) 93min
Directors: Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin
Countries: USA/Poland
A quiet tale about the search for integrity and the perfect mushroom, Jason Cortlund’s and Julia Halperin’s NOW, FORAGER follows Lucien and Regina, an urban couple living off the land foraging for fungi in upstate New York with a dream of following the seasonal emergence of exotic varieties across the country. That is, until Regina’s decision to take a job in the kitchen of a hip restaurant offers a more solid opportunity, even as it betrays Lucien’s off-the-grid ethos.
OMAR KILLED ME (Omar m’a tuer) (2011) 85min
Director: Roschdy Zem
Country: France
Actor-turned-director Roschdy Zem’s OMAR KILLED ME tells a story of racism, politics, and injustice with the clarity of a documentary and the pacing of a thriller. When a rich widow was murdered in the south of France 20 years ago, her Moroccan gardener was convicted and jailed with no evidence; it took a committed journalist to try to unravel the rush to judgment that laid bare the racism that was hidden in the French justice system.
OSLO, AUGUST 31ST (2011) 96min
Director: Joachim Trier
Country: Norway
Daylight lingers at the end of August in Oslo, but sunlight is not a friend to Anders, a semi-recovered addict, facing a new life, which may not be appealing without former habits. Adapted from the same novel as Louis Malle’s THE FIRE WITHIN (1963), Joachim Trier’s OSLO, AUGUST 31ST follows Anders as he tries to adjust – making love, wandering through Oslo, having a job interview, seeing old friends, and trying to get comfortable with his situation. A Strand Releasing Film.
AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (2011) 95min
Directed by Terence Nance
Country: USA
Frank, funny, and bracingly contemporary, visual artist Terence Nance gleefully bends the cinematic rules for his personal meditation on love in the new millennium with his film, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF BEAUTY. Passages of live action sequences and direct-to-camera interviews are accented with a wide variety of animation styles as Nance analyzes his amorous history as well as his current circumstances.
PORFIRIO (2011) 101min
Director: Alejandro Landes
Country: Colombia
Paralyzed from the waist down by a stray police bullet, the title character in Alejandro Landes’ remarkable film spends his days selling minutes on his cell phone when not flirting with his comely neighbor, and secretly plotting his revenge. Landes worked on the film for five years, creating a tale that joined the most intimate details of Porfirio’s day-to-day life with an astonishing re-creation of his attempt to hijack an airplane.
THE RABBI’S CAT (Le chat du rabbin) (2011) 89min
Director: Antoine Delesvaux
Countries: France/Austria
Adapted from the graphic novels by Joanne Sfar, THE RABBI’S CAT is a vivid, lively, and imaginative animated film co-directed by Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux . Set in 1920’s Algiers, a widower rabbi lives with his voluptuous and dutiful daughter and their pesky cat who swallows a parakeet and begins to speak, driving everyone crazy and moving the plot ahead by insisting on having a bar-mitzvah.
THE RAID (2011) 100min
Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Countries: Indonesia/USA
In Gareth Huw Evans’ sensational thriller, THE RAID, a police SWAT team storms a housing project ruled by gangsters and inhabited by machete-wielding lowlifes—but the mission has been leaked, the tables are turned, and a dwindling band of elite fighters find themselves massively outnumbered in a lethal game of cat and mouse. What ensues is a relentless and savage succession of close-quarters shoot-outs and punishing martial-arts combat sequences, each jaw-dropping smackdown unbelievably topping the previous one. This film is wild! A Sony Pictures Classics release.
ROMANCE JOE (Ro-maen-seu Jo ) (2011) 115min
Director: Lee Kwang-Kuk
Country: South Korea
In his playful first feature, Lee Kwang-Kuk expertly weaves several narrative strands into an elegant web and a meditation on storytelling. A teasing and pleasing portrait of a filmmaker in search of a story to tell, ROMANCE JOE begins as a young, self-possessed barmaid in a remote inn recalls the time she met the title character.
TEDDY BEAR (2012) 92min
Director: Mads Matthiesen
Country: Denmark
Mads Matthiesen’s character-based and understated comedy, TEDDY BEAR tells the story of a gentle giant of a body builder who self sculpts his muscles by day and lives quietly at home with his mom at night. But at 38, he really wants a proper girlfriend, and despite his mother’s resistance (she is a master of emotional manipulation) and his own profound awkwardness, he draws up the courage to find one–even if he has to leave Denmark to do so.
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (2011) 105min
Director: Angelina Nikonova
Country: Russia
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT is a powerhouse collaboration co-written and co-produced by Angelina Nikonova, who directed, and Olga Dihovichnaya, who stars in this very dark, provocative and constantly surprising debut feature film. In a modern Russian city where corruption, apathy and class warfare are the norm, a woman is raped, rather casually, by the police. What follows explodes the conventions of sexual politics—and will certainly have filmgoers talking.
WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2010) 100min
Director: Nadine Labaki
Countries: France/Lebanon/Italy/Egypt
Labaki’s film focuses on a group of women of different religions in a remote Lebanese village that band together and invent schemes to prevent their men from killing each other in the intractable religious conflict that surrounds their community. This entertaining and unlikely near-musical tears down stereotypes of women in the Middle East and uses humor to explore serious subjects, with one eye toward Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the other toward Bollywood. A Sony Pictures Classics Release.
The 41st New Directors/New Films shorts selections include: {jathumbnail off}
