24th Arras Film Festival, cinema despite everything
Despite the particular context, this festival in the municipality of Pas-de-Calais dedicated to European cinema was, despite everything, a great success.
The 24th edition of theArras Film Festival ended this Sunday. An event which, through its vitality and richness, carries high the colors of a plural and resilient European cinema. The organizers were thus able to remind us that in these “particularly troubled” times where obscurantism confuses minds, where climate disruption disrupts our daily lives, the sharing of culture is more than ever essential to our lives. It must allow us to understand the threats that lie in wait.
And in fact, the nine feature films in competition have outlined, sometimes with disturbing echoes, the face of a troubled era where people, cornered by exacerbated violence, had to come to terms with their own identity and values in order to survive.
Aunty Danielle Bulgarian
In this, the heroine of Blaga’s Lesson by Bulgarian Stephan Komandarev undoubtedly showed the most desperate and frightening face. Blaga, a retired septuagenarian teacher, recently widowed, turns into a cold and cynical monster after being the victim of a scam. In a depopulated Bulgaria where the individual lives withdrawn into himself, where the pragmatism of market society has replaced the chimeras of communism, our Auntie Danielle accepts without batting an eye the idea of devouring her fellow man.
In terms of awards, the Public Prize was awarded to Without Air by the Hungarian Katalin Moldovai around the ordeal of a literature teacher accused of disturbing the minds of her students for having suggested to them the vision of a film around the passion between Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. A feature film whose theme inevitably evoked the memory of Dominique Bernard, the Arras teacher brutally murdered on October 13.
The Young Jury preferred to celebrate love with Slow by the Lithuanian Marija Kavtaradze, where a young woman falls in love with a boy who feels no sexual desire.
Saint Holly
The Press Jury was unanimously impressed by the Romanian film Libertate by Tudor Giurgiu, an immersive and reflective dive into the chaos of the Romanian revolution of 1989. A film where the notion of hero and culprit, victim and executioner, blurs. It is in the basin of an empty swimming pool that a micro-society of outcasts is reconstituted under the accusatory gaze of the supposed winners. To note that Libertateunlike many of its “comrades” in the competition, still does not have a French distributor.
Finally the “grand” Jury chaired by Dominik Moll (The Night of the 12th…) awarded the Turkish director Selman Nacar an award for his Hesitation Wound, a portrait of a Turkish justice system that is failing, both literally and figuratively. Finally, the Grand Prix returned to Holly by the Belgian Fien Troch, the journey of a teenager whom those around her consider either a saint or a witch.
In addition to this competition, the festival offered numerous previews and honored, in their presence: the Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, the Italian Matteo Garrone whose next feature film Me, Captain will be released at the beginning of the year, as well as French actress Dominique Blanc.
Thank you to the entire festival team for their welcome. We will come back.
Info: https://www.arrasfilmfestival.com/
