Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Day Twelve - LAST PART Monday, September 1

So ends the festival - not the greatest roundup this year, but some gems. The last feature film below was perhaps one of the best for me, along with Turneja and Back Soon.

O Zi Buna de Plaja (A Good Day for a Swim)

Bogdan Mustata - Romania - 10 min.
Romanian, eng. sub.
So violent and nasty that I wanted to leave the theatre. Three teenage males (supposedly escaped juvenile delinquents from the description, but never identified as such in the subtitles), kidnap a van driver and a hooker, and spend a nice day at the beach torturing and killing them. The sarcasm of the title isn’t lost on the audience, with the nihilism of a Clockwork Orange mixed with the randomness of disaffected Romanian youth in the 2000’s.

Svetat E Golyam I Spasenie Debne Otvsyakade (The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner)
Stephan Komandarev - Bulgaria-Germany-Slovenia-Hungary - 105 min.
Bulgarian, eng. sub.
Cinemoo found that this film was too “discursive” and too long. I enjoyed it immensely. A young Bulgarian guy living in Germany is the sole survivor of a car accident that claims the lives of his parents. His grandfather arrives to help him, only to find out his grandson has retrograde amnesia. A bicycle trip on a tandem bike through Germany and Italy on the way back to Bulgaria, and backgammon lessons taught once again, are the grandfather’s way of helping bring back memories, which slowly come back to him. Ah, backgammon, the in game of the late 70’s and 80’s…I used play a lot...I've seen a bunch of very eclectic, well made films from Bulgaria at the festival in the last five years.

Jonathan's list of the festival winners

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