We reported <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/2020/10/06/the-platform-preview-to-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2020/">earlier this month</a> that the London Film Festival would be a more intimate affair than usual, much of it at home, with no gala performances and a smaller selection of films.
Of course, the festival did still have its headline acts. Ammonite, its closing finale, was a touching tale of love set in 1840s Lyme Regis (which we will review at greater length soon), with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as its leads. It was an effective if conventional choice, like the festival opener, Steve McQueen’s historical recreation Mangrove. Personally, I found McQueen’s other entry to the festival, Lovers Rock, more interesting, although a minor film and a kind of ‘B-side’ to Mangrove. McQueen’s genius is more for establishing a certain setting than in plot and it is put to especially good use in this almost non-narrative film of a Ladbroke Grove house party thrown at some point in the 1980s.
In the absence of an official competition the online audience picked the festival winner, awarding the prize to Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, about a group of schoolteachers who realise that their job is more fun if they drink every day. While there’s no arguing with taste I found this somewhat moralistic film a rather white, male and middle-aged choice compared to the diversity that the festival had put effort into displaying elsewhere.
The clear winner for me of the more crowd-pleasing films was the gorgeous, touching, One Night in Miami. Based on a stage play by first-time director Regina King, it imagines a meeting in a Miami hotel room between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, as they each contemplate a life changing decision: Clay to join the Muslim Brotherhood and Malcolm to leave it, Cooke to address social change in his music and Brown to depart the NFL to try a career in Hollywood. The decisions are as personal as they are political, and its central question – what does black success mean in a white society – is made to resound with a contemporary relevance despite the retro setting.
However, the festival is a chance to see films which won’t ever get the red carpet treatment. So here’s my list of six of the best to look out for beyond the big releases:

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one night in miami

<h5>UNDINE 
Dir. Christian Petzold (Germany/France)</h5>
Undine turns the conventional romance of a random city encounter into an absorbing and ultimately disquieting tale of love and pain. It will be familiar territory for viewers already acquainted with director Christian Petzold and lead actress Paula Beer, but it develops his concern with Europe’s historical scars in a more allegorical direction. Its lead character, Undine, is a guide to the architectural history of Berlin and is named after a water nymph of ancient legend. She becomes a figure who skirts the enigmatic realms of fantasy and disappointment, memory and myth.
<h5>NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN 
Dir. Małgorzata Szumowska, Michael Englert (Poland/Germany)</h5>
Another film that holds a delicate balance between social commentary and fantasy is this film about a Ukranian masseur who accrues a cult following in a wealthy Polish suburb. Born in Pripyat in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, masseur Zhenia seems at first like he might have arrived as part of a moral lesson about migrant labour for the privileged members of the gated community, who simultaneously depend upon and look down on him. But as they fetishise the healing power of his tender strength, the near-wordless presence of this mysterious outsider comes to take on an altogether different, almost magical-realist quality, as the possibly sacred emissary of some cosmic power.
<h5>THE INTRUDER 
Dir. Natalia Meta (Argentina/Mexico)</h5>
This Argentine film takes its enigmas in a creepier direction. Starting out in comic vein as a woman realises that she doesn’t actually like the man she has gone on holiday with, his death soon after their arrival paradoxically makes him someone she can never truly be rid of. Meanwhile, she becomes the subject of the rather insistent attentions of an admirer she meets in the church where she sings, and, in a further inconvenience, her mother randomly decides to move in indefinitely. As a voiceover artist for horror films, this film is also part of a sub-genre of thrillers about a sound recordist, along with Blow Out, The Conversation and Berberian Sound Studio, that explore the eerily disembodied nature of the voice. The intruder of the title could thus be any one of a number of uncomfortably close beings, including her relationship to her own physical self.
<h5>A COMMON CRIME 
Dir. Francisco Márquez (Argentina)</h5>
This second Argentine thriller is another imaginative recreation of the slow falling apart of the boundaries, and the sanity, of its central female protagonist, but the dissolution here reveals a series of uncomfortable truths about social class. Cecilia is a university lecturer, happily able to quote Althusser and Gramsci on bourgeois ideology. But when her maid’s son knocks on her door, her refusal to help him has fateful consequences. While showing up her conformity to the ultimately brutal logic that it is her day job to critique, this is also the first film I have ever seen that manages to find dramatic material in a dissertation supervision session, and a superb combination of psychological and political insight.
<h5>AFTER LOVE 
Dir. Aleem Khan (UK)</h5>
The success of this deeply moving British drama owes in large part to the central performance of Joana Scanlan, who plays Mary Husain, a resident of Dover whose ferry-captain husband Husain dies unexpectedly in the opening sequence, only for her to find out that he had a secret life just over the border in Calais. The film follows her as she works her way into the household of his secret mistress and son. While such a plot would in less capable hands be barely credible, the quiet brilliance of Scanlan’s performance means that the themes of betrayal, race, death and mourning are played with intelligent subtlety and heart-breaking conviction.
<h5>LIMBO 
Dir. Ben Sharrock (UK)</h5>
It was a good year for British features, as shown by this comedy-drama about refugees seeking asylum in Scotland. What begins as a deadpan, rather absurdist culture-clash comedy turns to an intense portrait of the tragedies of dislocation. The humour’s absurdism is a nice way to show up both the awkwardness of cultural awareness and the bureaucratic cruelty of the exile situation. But it reaches real emotional depth in its second half as it probes the travails of Omar, a gifted young musician and Syrian refugee who must contend with the family he has left behind, the war he has fled and the music he may never play again.

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Limbo Film 2020

<pre>Featured: LIMBO by Ben Sharrock</pre>

After Love Film 2020 cropped

A Chernobyl-born cult leader, a hypocritical university lecturer, and a Syrian musician turned refugee are some of the memorable characters in our selection from this year’s London Film Festival.

Six of the Best from the BFI London Film Festival, 2020

* Contains mild spoilers
During a period of bleak uncertainty, where life as we know it is transforming into a kind of dystopian horror, Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia does not seek to offer a comforting hand – but instead holds up a mirror to our society of greed. I am referring to his recent thriller The Platform, added to Netflix at the beginning of March this year, where Gaztelu-Urrutia delivers a sickening commentary on class structure and mankind’s insatiable appetite in this horror feast.
When our lead character, Goreng (Ivan Massagué) wakes up to find himself in a vertical prison of incalculable levels, he is horrified to discover the only form of nourishment is an extravagant banquet, travelling down the tower of two-person cells on a platform. The horror derives from the concept of equal distribution, seemingly non-existent within these concrete walls, as the prisoners on the upper levels indulge leaving the victims of the lower levels to starve. Goreng hopes to change the injustice that permeates the prison, but soon discovers that our selfish instincts are a lot harder to tame than he expected.
Gaztelu-Urrutia’s concept is a disturbing illustration of class structure for the senses and certainly entices audiences to question the morality of such practices. Its premise is, of course, bizarre and barbaric but also incredibly accurate. A fundamental flaw of the universal class system is its entitlement, mirrored perfectly by Gaztelu-Urrutia’s storytelling, as this prison’s occupants do not earn their place at the highest level but are merely placed there. Those at the top behave with hostility and have little respect for those below them, their gluttony draining the food from the platform and their contempt showering the remaining scraps with their own bodily fluids. This metaphor carries a horrifying depiction of a reality steeped in classism and unjust privilege.
Writers David Desola and Pedro Rivero make certain we understand the important messages which echo our current civilisation with their ‘matter of fact’ scriptwriting. The moral of the film is encapsulated entirely in one particular piece of dialogue when Goreng’s fellow inmate Imoguiri (Antonia San Juan) states, “if everybody ate only what they needed, the food would get to the lowest level.” This allegory is about as subtle as a brick through a window, and in fact arrives like a perfect accident, as the film was in development long before the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-food-bank-stockpile-panic-buying-donations-uk-cases-outbreak-a9393201.html">stockpiling</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-behind-behavior/202003/why-are-we-panic-buying-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic">panic buying</a> that hit the UK in March during the escalation of the coronavirus pandemic, illustrating that the world needs to listen to these lessons now more than ever.
The fact the themes of the film are in plain sight points to cinema’s freedom to address issues that many choose to turn a blind eye to. Although the script could have benefitted from more subtlety in order to encourage moral contemplation, The Platform’s lack of restraint holds our attention and lends itself perfectly to Netflix. Gaztelu-Urrutia uses this film as a soapbox at a time when society is fixed in its traditional class structure. Gaztelu-Urrutia excels in providing a clear and frank visualisation of our own selfishness. The nauseating visuals and stomach-turning sound design are enough to make audiences think twice about stockpiling food, as they will lose their appetite within the first five minutes of the film. This caricature of the survival instinct uncomfortably displays the type of class entitlement we see every day on the news.
The film’s messages aren’t the only thing lacking subtlety in this fever dream thriller. Gaztelu-Urrutia and his crew effectively convey anxiety and dread through a claustrophobic set design and invasive cinematography. One of the most striking attributes is the film’s dramatic lighting changes, where at times we are engulfed in a sea of red, reminiscent of the Italian Giallo horror which seeks to conjure feelings of unease and paranoia through its colour palette. The theme of decay is also made prevalent through other aesthetic choices, the many close-ups of food that feature throughout alluding to abandoned war zones and decomposing landscapes, illustrating the repercussions of our own self-interest. Even shots of life are muted with a dull hue, as a close-up of Goreng’s eye at the very beginning of the film hints at a loss of spirit in its lack of colour and depth. The Platform’s attention to detail achieves multiple atmospheres and spaces while being restricted to the same four walls. The cast, particularly Massagué and Zorion Eguileor, seem anything but trapped, as their performances are powerful and their chemistry palpable.
Without giving too much away, The Platform’s conclusion probably asks more questions than it answers. Although it gives audiences the freedom of interpretation it also seems a lacklustre ending to an intense narrative. No one could accuse the ending of being predictable, but it is not fully satisfying and left me feeling hungry for more. It seems Gaztelu-Urrutia sends a message that is not quite as bleak, hinting at a chance of redemption for humanity and providing a portal to a less hostile and selfish world, if only its citizens can find the key to unlock it.
The Platform perfectly utilises sensory horror and explicit gore to communicate its all too relevant messages. It projects an ugly side of humanity, leaving it to rot on screen, until it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. This is until the film’s conclusion where audiences are given the freedom to write their own ending. At such a desperate point in history, we need to see this film as a turning point for our attitudes towards class, privilege and entitlement, and remedy the problems they cause through mutual kindness and respect for one another, regardless of the level we find ourselves on.
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<pre>Photo Credit: The Platform film / Netflix</pre>

The Platform Film

Netflix horror 'The Platform' directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia shows us the ugly face of class and capitalism.

The Platform Film: A Feast of Greed and Privilege

Expectations were high for the 70th edition of the Berlinale. This year’s anniversary edition coincided with the much-awaited debut of the new festival director duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian. The Berlinale was never a glamorous red carpet-oriented film festival. Yet, this year’s edition felt even more sombre than usual. There were no big Netflix productions. Though, contrary to what happened at Cannes in the last couple of years, this did not seem like a political decision. There were also hardly any big Hollywood stars or directors. Some losses come with gains, however: the level of the main competition line-up was consistently higher than in the last few years and included the kinds of gems one would expect from the curatorial talent of Chatran, who has gained the respect of the film festival community during his much-acclaimed seven-year stint as the artistic director of the <a href="https://www.the-platform.org.uk/tag/locarno/">Locarno Film Festival</a>.
One of the most remarkable films shown at this year’s Berlinale was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11697690/">The Woman Who Ran</a>, a beautifully unassuming film by Korean director Hong Sang-Soo. Over the course of three days, a young woman called Gambhee visits three old female acquaintances. The women have not seen each other for a while. Gambhee compliments them on the furniture of the houses they have bought; they talk about the weather and their everyday routines. There is something deeper behind these deceptively simple, almost banal exchanges. “How can he be sincere, if he only repeats himself,” asks Gambhee about her friend’s novelist husband, who always says the same things in his frequent TV appearances.
The Woman Who Ran celebrates the value of unhurried, subdued exchanges between people who try to do their best to be kind to each other. These people are women and this seems to matter. All the encounters are interrupted by men who turn out to be quite unpleasant. One of them knocks on the door of the first house that Gambhee visits to complain about the stray cats that the women feed, explaining that his wife is scared of cats and that they should stop. The exchange is extremely courteous and yet the women stand their ground, asserting that cats are not less important than human beings and that they need food too, to the disbelief of the man who thinks humans should come first. The Woman Who Ran contains one of the best cat scenes in the history of cinema, but I will not say more so as not to spoil the fun! “I never start from any kind of generalisation about topics,” said Hong Sang-Soon during the post-screening press conference. It is a comment that might explain why this film seems so interested in the truths that lie in the small, unspectacular moments of our lives. This is not really a cinema of endurance, but a kind of cinema which is inviting us not to look for fireworks, because the fun – and the substance – may be just there, in the everyday scenarios that most of us already live.
A big favourite for the Golden Bear, Kelly Reichardt’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9231040/">First Cow</a> was unfairly snubbed at the awards ceremony. It is a real shame because this was the kind of film that, for its gentleness and modesty, would have been a very fitting winner of this year’s edition of the Berlinale. First Cow could be jokingly summarised as a film about two men in the Old West living together under the same roof, making scones. Cookie is a shy young man from Maryland, while King Lu is a savvy business-minded labourer from China who has travelled the world before reaching the Oregon Trail to seek his fortune. The two men team up to share a shack in a remote settlement. The outpost is sparsely populated by brutish rogues and a pretentious English man who acts as the colony’s chief. Cookie and King Lu are the kinds of men that the cinema of the old American frontier has rarely shown us. They are gentle and reserved men, a far cry from the kind of aggressive pioneer masculinity that we have come to know through cinema history. One of the most exquisite pleasures of this film comes from the candle-lit night scenes inside the shack, Cookie and King Lu quietly busy with their domestic chores and occasionally exchanging a few words like a couple of married pensioners. They could be lovers but there is no evidence of any romantic feelings between them, only kindness and mutually supportive comradeship. It feels as though, with this film, Reichardt wants to rewrite a foundational American story, inviting us to imagine an alternative genealogy of US masculinity, one based on cooperation and resourcefulness, rather than aggressive individualism and competitiveness
For me, the third and final highlight of this year’s Berlinale was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8478554/">Hidden Away</a>, Giorgio Diritti’s magnificent biopic on Italian artist Antonio Ligabue. The narrative arc of the film is fairly conventional. It follows Ligabue’s life from his childhood in native Switzerland, where he was put into confinement due to his mental illness, to his mature years in northern Italy. An untrained sculptor and painter, Ligabue became one of the most influential Italian artists of the 20th century. Boasting an extraordinary performance by Elio Giordano in the role of Ligabue, Hidden Away does more than simply celebrate the genius of a great artist. The film makes viewers embrace the perspective of someone who was mistreated all his life for being different, even in the face of the great admiration that his work inspired. Firmly aligned with Ligabue’s subjective experience of the world, Hidden Away attempts to articulate his unframed perspective. Signalled by frequent subjective shots conveying a blurred peripheral vision, this perspective seems to express optically the special connectedness to the world that this artist developed through his art. It is a type of connectedness which at times strikes one as primitive and unhinged, and other times appears surprisingly full of wisdom and tenderness. Giordano’s highly physical performance combines feral abruptness and child-like vulnerability. Giordano is truly magnificent at embodying the loneliness and anguish experienced by Ligabue throughout this life. Yet, this is far from a tragic story. Hidden Away is a film about an irrepressible man who has fought all his life to assert his humanity and different way of being in the world against the bigotry surrounding him.
The Golden Bear for Best Film went to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11697844/">There is No Evil</a> (Mohammad Rasoulof). The full list of awards can be viewed <a href="https://www.berlinale.de/en/festival/awards-and-juries/international-juy.html">here</a>.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs via A24 Films (First Cow)</pre>

FIRST COW

With new festival curators, this year’s Berlinale showcased new and underrated film talent. Enjoy three selections below.

Berlin Film Festival 2020: Redefining Masculinity and Masterminds

The Korean Film Festival of 2019 marks 100 years since the first Korean film was made, with special guests including a number of eminent Korean filmmakers. To observe this milestone, the festival will specifically focus on classic cinema from across the century. Other strands include Cinema Now, Women&#8217;s Voices and Documentary. We asked a group of Korean cinema scholars from Southampton University to give us their highlights, old and new.
The Korean Film Festival 2019 will take place in various London cinemas from <a href="http://koreanfilm.co.uk/">1 to 14 November</a>, and will then tour cinemas throughout the UK from 18 to 24 November.
<h5>The Seashore Village 
Dir: Kim Soo-Yong (1965)</h5>
Review by Hee-Young Chung
Hae-Soon prays for her husband’s safe return from fishing but, despite this, he drowns. After the funeral, her neighbour Sang-Soo makes advances on her. The young widow rejects him at first but soon accepts his proposal of remarriage. However, Hae-Soon is widowed once more as her new partner falls to his death in the mountains. She returns to the seaside village where her previous neighbours welcome her back.
Reversals of fortune are pivotal to the narrative of The Seashore Village (1965) directed by Soo-Yong Kim, a classic of South Korean cinema and an example of its tendency towards literary adaptation. An even more significant element in this film is its emphasis on depicting the space of the seaside village. Hae-Soon’s interest in and longing for seaside life has nothing to do with the loss of her partners. Her name Hae-Soon can be seen to imply her return to the seaside since one of the meanings of ‘Hae’ in Korean is ‘sea’. The village embraces her again as the sea remains an eternal presence. The seaside village constitutes not only the background of the narrative but also foregrounds the thematic spatiality of ordinary people’s lives.
Part of the festival’s Special Focus: a century of Korean cinema.

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Korean Film Festival - Seashore

<h5>Youngju 
Dir: Cha Sung-duk (2018)</h5>
Review by Jia Kang
Female director Cha Sung-duk’s debut feature Youngju (2018) is about a 19-year-old girl, Youngju, who takes care of her troublesome younger brother after their parents die in a traffic accident. Yongju is played by Kim Hyang-gi, previously a child actress and star of the Korean fantasy blockbusters, Along with the Golds (2017, 2018).
Revenge is common in Korean films, but Cha directs this film unconventionally. Five years after the accident, Youngju’s younger brother Youngin (Tang Jun-sang) takes part in a robbery and is arrested. She gets the money for his fine from the couple who were responsible for her parents’ death. Youngju decides to stop her vendetta against them, but the film takes an unexpected and tragic turn when a shocking revelation about her real relationship to them occurs.
The film uses the journey of Youngju to save her younger brother to highlight the many difficulties for the younger generation of women living in South Korean society. These include poverty, unemployment, social problems and family breakdown. The depressing narrative presents a continuing dilemma that might leave little space for viewers to breathe, but it is the way in which Cha designs this into a fantasy told from a female perspective that represents the film’s main achievement.
Part of the Women’s Voices strand.

<h5>Grass 
Dir: Hong Sangsoo (2017)</h5>
Review by Thomas Humpal
Areum, a sensitive yet distanced writer (Berlin 2017’s Best Actress winner, Kim Minhee), eavesdrops on a series of intertwining conversations and characters revolving around an alleyway coffee house in Seoul. Those familiar with Hong’s naturalistic style and gift for understated plot will not be disappointed in this black-and-white short about the fine line between observation and participation in the sorrow, inspiration and comfort of human connection.
Imposing her observational commentary into each dialogue, the beauty and clarity of her writing, as well as the gradually closing distance to her subjects, this series of repetitions and coincidences illustrate the connections that give us comfort despite the hardships of life.
Among the vignettes: a younger couple (Gong Minjeung and Ahn Jaehong) reconnect after the death of a friend, an older pair (Ki Joobong and Seo Younghwa) discuss winding down, and two writers (Jung Jinyoung and Kim Saebyuk) talk about collaborating. Pretence, pain, and soju (a Korean alcohol) are shared in equal measure. In usual Hong fashion, the lives of creatives are dramatised and punctuated with observational subtlety and thoughtful, personal flair. Comparisons to Hong’s other films are inevitable. However, the barebones cinematography and classical soundtrack ring with rare charm.
Part of the Cinema Now strand.

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Korean Film Festival - Night Before the Strike

<h5>The Night Before the Strike 
Dir: Lee Eun, Lee Jae-gu, Chang Younhyun and Chang Dong-hong (1990)</h5>
Review by Thomas Humpal
As a forgotten classic of labour cinema, and a film that was forcefully banned by military riot police on university campuses showing it, The Night Before the Strike is an artefact from a time when cinema was a mobilising force for the people, and it inspired change at a time of dubious democracy in South Korea. Two hundred downtrodden steel workers at Dongsung Metal meet their newest co-worker Joo Wan-ik (for Lim Young-gu) and, during his welcoming dinner, a future is forged by the hands of those who dare organise. Each man has his reason for joining and seeking an existence where workers are more than just “machines that keep breaking down”. In a country built on cheap labour, at a time of democracy movements and student protests, the depictions of greed and insidious behaviour by the company directors and managers galvanised the 300,000 Koreans who watched the film under threat of incarceration.
Pulsating with a gritty and unforgiving rhythm, the film not only depicts the organisation of a steel union and their confrontations with the merciless management structure, but does so with an earnestness that cautions equally both fatalism and expectation. This is, in equal part, independent and industrial cinema.
Part of the Documentary strand.

<h5>Peppermint Candy 
Dir: Lee Chang-dong (1999)</h5>
Review by Jia Kang
Peppermint Candy (1999) is South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s second drama. It opened the 1999 Busan International Film Festival and was a commercial and critical success. Starting with the protagonist’s suicide on a railway bridge, the film unfolds in flashbacks to the protagonist Yong-ho’s (played by Sol Kyung-gu) personal life, up to the eve of the Kwangju Massacre. This social movement was a watershed in South Korea’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, and the film shows the national traumas behind socio-political change.
Yong-ho is a middle-aged homeless man who is abandoned by his family. In reverse order over 20 years, we see him as a suave businessman, an agitated policeman, and a young innocent man. Yong-ho is confronted with the question of whether life is beautiful. This also serves as the musings of director Lee regarding that troubled time.
However, life is cruel and painful. Yong-ho’s life is full of betrayal, corruption, financial crisis and social crime – but he is remembered by his first, terminally ill, girlfriend. Like the peppermint candy she gave Yong-ho before, his memory of her is the sweetest and purest thing in his life.
Part of the festival’s Special Focus: a century of Korean cinema.
For the full programme, booking, venues and further information, please see: <a href="http://koreanfilm.co.uk/">http://koreanfilm.co.uk/</a>.

korean-film-festival-peppermint-candy

Korean Film Festival - Peppermint Candy

Hee-Young Chung is a PGR student at the University of Southampton. He’s interested in the representation of breath in South Korean cinema.
Jia Kang is a PhD student at University of Southampton. She is doing research on South Korean art cinema and interested in exploring South Korean art films’ narrative techniques and industrial strategies.
Thomas Humpal is a PhD candidate at the University of Southampton and an assistant professor at Dongseo University’s Im Kwon Taek College of Film and Media Arts in Busan, South Korea.
<pre>Photo Credits: London Korean Film Festival website</pre>

Korean Film Festival &#8211; Youngju

Three scholars preview the London Korean Film Festival for The Platform, which, this year, marks the centenary of the first Korean film made.

Korean Cinema Scholars Preview the London Korean Film Festival of 2019

The 63rd edition of the BFI London Film Festival starts this Wednesday evening with the opening night gala The Personal History of David Copperfield. Starring Dev Patel in the title role, with performances from Ben Wishaw, Hugh Laurie, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Peter Capaldi and Tilda Swinton, this is an exciting choice for a festival that aims to show off British talent. More interesting still is its pairing of Charles Dickens’s Victorian social commentary with Armando Iannucci as director, a man known for the biting political satires The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin.
Meanwhile, the closing night gala on Sunday 13 October is Martin Scorsese’s epic tale of union boss and mobster Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman. Bringing together Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel, we wait to see whether this will be a legendary showstopper of veteran talent or the world’s most extravagant old dudes’ reunion, but let’s be positive and put our money on the former. The third of the big-budget showcases Knives Out, which brings together yet another cast to die for (geddit?) in a whodunnit that assembles Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Don Johnson.
As you might be able to tell, the festival veers towards more star-driven entertainment than many other festivals. Other galas we’ll be looking forward to include Greed, which is Michael Winterbottom’s critique of corporate chutzpah starring Steve Coogan, Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s account of a break-up featuring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, and Le Mans ’66, a retro account of a motor racing duo played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Meanwhile Taika Waititi follows Thor: Ragnarok with a raucous anti-fascist comedy Jojo Rabbit, set in the final days of the second world war about a boy whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. Among the slightly less crowd-pleasing highlights is Ema from the Chilean director Pablo Larraín, whose career continues to move into ever more poetic abstraction with a reverie on time, memory and dance. Céline Sciamma takes instead an abrupt move away from the setting of her 2014 social drama Girlhood with her new film Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Exploring the intensity of female relationships instead in 1760, she shows desires igniting between a young noblewoman and the lady hired to paint her portrait.

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BFI Preview - The Last Black Man in San Francisco

We at The Platform would also recommend you to take this opportunity to see some of the films that may create less of a buzz, but that you should definitely try to catch on the big screen. First up is The Last Black Man in San Francisco, an account of gentrification in the city and a highly creative vision of attachment and loss within a changing city. I also enjoyed Lara for reasons I find it harder to put my finger on, but this tale of one lonely woman on her 60th birthday and her difficult relationship with her concert pianist son had me thinking deeply about both undeveloped talent and the passions we all carry within us. Waiting for the Barbarians sees Ciro Guerra encapsulating once more the self-defeating violence of colonialism as he depicts an organised descent into brutality in an unnamed outpost of Britain’s Asian empire. François Ozon likes to probe the mysteries behind the stories we recount; he takes this theme into much darker territory in By the Grace of God, which follows the personal testimonies of campaigners against abuse committed by the Catholic Church in Lyon. Back in America, Clemency takes a close-up view of what is, at times, excruciating detail of the last weeks of a prisoner on death row.
We couldn’t finish this round-up without a few recommendations that pay tribute to the fantastical ability of cinema to conjure up new worlds. So why not go see Nicholas Cage flip out in Color Out of Space, a hallucinatory vision a rural family whose garden is struck by a meteor that brings with it a legion of trippy horrors. Or for more earthbound psychopathy, try Deerskin, in which Jean Dujardin falls so in love with his new deerskin cowboy jacket that he will literally kill for it. The Whistlers sees the Romanian New Wave’s trailblazer Corneliu Porumboiu take on the crime genre in a more action-packed way than his previous Police, Adjective, featuring a corrupt cop who learns to communicate with and work out the plots of an international criminal gang who whistle to each other. And the first English-language movie by Jessica Hausner, Little Joe, imagines an environment in which a new breed of flower is genetically modified to induce happiness in its owner. What begins as a subtle sci-fi meditation on nature and motherhood turns with a consummate lightness of touch into a serious philosophical question about the sincerity of all emotional expressivity.
These are our recommendations for now. We’ll be back with some further reflections once the festival is underway!
The BFI London Film Festival takes place <a href="https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp">2 to 13 October 2019</a>.
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<pre>Featured: The Irishman, Netflix
Body: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, BFI LFF </pre>

BFI Preview &#8211; The Irishman _newsite

Changing cities and fantastical worlds lie beyond the star-studded galas and British talent on display at this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

The Platform Preview to the BFI London Film Festival, 2019

New films Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and The Black Tree (El Árbol Negro) by Máximo Ciambella and Damián Coluccio are astonishing works of art, neither feeling at any point like a documentary.
Both films were screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the UK’s best opportunity to delve into the minds of filmmakers around the world. Unlike most documentaries on offer, neither film includes interviews or exposition, or a linear ‘beginning, middle and end’ structure. Rather, by weaving together art, abstract narrative and anger, both films capture stories that feel real, human and haunting.
They are, however, very different films. Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You uses grotesque imagery and jarring audio to condemn a nation, and The Black Tree combines mythology and lush cinematography to chart an indigenous community as they struggle for their rights.
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<h5>Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You.</h5>
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This film is not just a final goodbye to Mosese’s mother, the woman who gave birth to him. It is a declaration of emancipation from his motherland. Mosese currently resides in Berlin, exiled from the Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. A visual goodbye to a home nation, his first feature-length film seethes with resentment, anger and deep sorrow.
Memory ripples through the film, which comprises chaotic shots of discarded shoes, abandoned buildings and rubbish dumps interspersed with abstract narrative threads – a silent, resolute and sweating woman dragging a heavy cross through dusty Lesotho streets full of astounded, jeering crowds. A lamb that loses its way from its flock, which we later see skinned, on a butcher’s back, before a crowd of men tear its carcass apart. A mother in a cage-like hut, knitting a thick mask completely over a small boy’s face under a burning sun. Despite there being no common thread linking these moments, there is an overwhelming feeling of being lost, anxious and suppressed.
The scenes are punctuated by a series of goodbye letters, voiced by a female narrator. The letters unspool a narrative that begins with a farewell to a mother, gradually increasing in scope to include a furious defection from a mother nation.
The changes in his perspective begin with his personal relationship to his mother. The narrator recalls adoring her, “You were wearing your blue dress. You were beautiful.” His mother embraced a new religion, leaving behind the adored mother of his memory. Her dresses grew longer, her hair became “too sacred to show”. She once loved Michael Jackson, but all the tapes and books in the house were replaced with sermons and scripture. The change parallels Mosese’s relationship with another cherished mother – his nation – which, when outside of it, he sees differently.
“I saw you through the white man’s eyes. I was ashamed,” the narrator confesses. It is an unexpected, perhaps taboo, message, and one we never truly understand in full. We never uncover what it is about his mother and homeland that forced him away, but his pain and anger are tangible through the blunt, venomous statements.
Mosese has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBLdhC-rxM4&amp;t=">spoken frankly</a> about feeling torn between wanting to criticise his home nation, while not wanting to feed colonial perspectives, describing himself as “a prisoner of political correctness, in a way”.
Suffocating on his own silence, this film is Mosese’s liberation, freeing a voice he felt was silenced from all angles. By bidding his mother and the land, goodbye, he is giving up the need to defend either.
It is a difficult film to watch – a dozen or so people left the theatre at various points throughout the screening. It occupies an unusual, sometimes unfathomable, space between documentary, performance piece and epistle, tackling sentiments that take a while to fully absorb and appreciate. Abstract and palpably painful, it demonstrates the trauma that erupts not only in loss, but in realising there is little space in which to express the breadth of that loss. 
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<h5>The Black Tree</h5>
“There was a time when the sky was below, and the earth was above. They say a Great Tree connected them both. Its roots reached the region of the dead, its canopy was mistaken with the sky.”
The Black Tree is a beautiful hybrid of mythology and documentary. Following the struggles of Argentina’s indigenous Qom community, parallels are drawn between the approaching erasure of their community and the reversal of sky and earth in their ancient mythology. This conflation of the supernatural, ancient world to the real and shifting one is a storytelling technique we also see in <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2019/06/02/the-platform-preview-to-the-sheffield-documentary-film-festival-2019/">La Vida En Común</a>, another film about an indigenous community in Argentina screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest this year.
According to the legend of the Great Tree, a great fire disrupted the world, reversing the sky and earth and burning the Tree black. It is said that hardly anyone can remember the Great Tree anymore, but he who finds his way to it will be able to talk to birds, break curses and cure diseases. Farmer Martín Barrios is presented as the man in search of this Great Tree. Facing a fight with the authorities for his community’s rights, and attempting fruitlessly to understand why his goats are dying, finding the Great Tree mirrors his quest to put the balance of the world back in place.
Martín seems to live in an isolated paradise within forests near Formosa, a province in northern Argentina. The cinematography is gorgeous, capturing the lushness of the forests at their most wild, untainted and beautiful. This wilderness is in danger, as corporate agriculture becomes increasingly prominent. Scenes of forests being decimated contrast with the Eden-like panoramas of untouched landscapes, and with the ethereal scenes of Martín’s mystical quest to find the Great Tree.
Yet the slow destruction begins to encroach on the land of the Qom people, presenting further challenges for Martín’s community, who are already marginalised. In the wake of the <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2011/05/01/argentina-indigenous-protests-in-downtown-buenos-aires">roadblock of Route 86</a>, a large-scale protest led by the Qom fighting for their lands against agri-business, their political meetings are heavily guarded. We see Martín attend a meeting led by Valentín Suarez, passing a squadron of armoured police watching over the small group of middle-aged Qom people. The community voice an increasing frustration at the erosion of their rights and way of life. Their settlements are often ignored by the government, leading to a lack of adequate schools, electricity supply and even drinking water.
The Black Tree is a masterpiece in storytelling and cinematography. It doesn’t push the boundaries of factual storytelling to the extremes we see in Mother, I Am Suffocating, the abstractness of which may isolate many audiences. Both are beautiful, thoughtful and unique works that tell stories about the struggle to navigate a rapidly changing world, and you should seek both of them out and watch them with an open mind.
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<pre>Featured: The Black Tree 
Body: Mother, I Am Suffocating 
Via Sheffield Doc/Fest
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This year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest brought us experimental new masterpieces in storytelling and cinematography, with narratives highlighting the struggle to navigate a rapidly changing world.

Land, Loss and Love at the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019

<h5>Sumercé 
Dir. Victoria Solano 
(Colombia, UK)</h5>
Review by Sharaiz Chaudhry
“My homeland is not for sale!” These words by César Pachón, a community organiser in rural Colombia and an aspiring politician, summarise the David vs Goliath battle at the centre of Sumercé.
The film follows protagonists Pachón, Eduardo Moreno and Rosa Rodriguez in their travels around the páramos of Colombia, as they talk to campesinos, or farmers, and try to organise their resistance to the distant (both physically and figuratively) government in Bogotá and the big corporations that back them. False government promises, electoral corruption, authoritarian landowners, big business interests, the environment and tourism are some of the key themes touched upon, which illustrates the scale of problems they face.
The film shows these people’s determination to continue their resistance and tackle these problems head on. In my favourite scene, Rodriguez sits down with her children and explains her family’s history of activism, finishing by asking: “When your mother is gone, who will lead the people’s struggle?”
Sumercé is a stark reminder that free trade policies implemented by a faceless government, which is completely out of touch with rural life, affects the livelihoods of countless individuals. It is not only a tale of resistance against predatory capitalism and government policies, but a reaffirmation that these campesinos and their livelihoods matter.
9 and 11 June
<h5>Tiny Souls 
Dir. Dina Naser 
(Jordan)</h5>
Review by Tijen Horoz 
Tiny Souls explores the Syrian refugee crisis through the lens of one family staying in a camp in Jordan. Although the personal stories delivered from these white tent cities are nothing new, the way director Dina Naser becomes part of the family – sharing in their joy and pain over a period of four years – creates an intimacy between subject and viewer that feels unique.
Naser is welcomed into the most private spaces of their makeshift home, becoming particularly close with sisters, Marwa and Ayah. As their story unfolds, even the most mundane aspects of family life become compelling against the backdrop of conflict and exile and delivered from the pair’s warm, bubbly and often hilarious perspectives.
Recalling a conversation with her own father, a Palestinian child refugee in 1948, Naser says: “I asked my father once, ‘Is there war in a camp?’ He said, ‘there’s no war…no peace either. Every day there is anticipation and fear.’” War and displacement weigh heavily on the girls, who memorise every minute detail of the conflict, yet anticipate their return to Syria with excitement.
By following their routines and adventures, the viewer may be lulled into a false sense of security, but when the family’s deepest fears are realised, we are reminded just how fragile and unpredictable the life of a refugee is. 
8 and 9 June 
<h5>Hi, AI 
Dir. Isa Willinger 
(Germany)</h5>
Review by Umar Ali
Hi, AI explores the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics, examining how this exciting new technology could be integrated into society and what these developments could mean for humanity.
While the robots are the obvious stars of the show, ranging from simple household helpers to horrifying rubbery ghouls, what really makes them stand out isn’t what they say or do, but how humans react to them.
Humanity has created a life of sorts in its own image, and the interactions with artificial intelligence throughout the documentary reveal as much about the human condition as it does about the non-human. It’s difficult not to form an attachment to the robots, even as they rattle off facts from Wikipedia.
Hi, AI is under no illusions about the nature of robots, sending its audience careening into the uncanny valley from the first shot, but these efforts at transparency, stressing that robots are not truly alive, don’t detract from the emotional core of the piece. In fact, the documentary’s deconstruction of itself ends up enhancing its narrative, proving its points by tearing them down.
10 and 11 June

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<h5>Being White 
Dir: Albany Video 
(UK)</h5>
Review by Shireen Hilmi
An eye-opening yet sadly unsurprising delve into race, Being White explores what whiteness meant to Brits in 1980s London. When asked what being white meant, the response that it felt “normal” is telling, that lack of a need to define an identity, where any other identity is “not normal”. An attitude that, even today, is not uncommon.
The views of non-English white communities still told of discrimination that is reminiscent of the treatment of Eastern European immigrants today, that pure Englishness is superior to everything, except the white, middle class status quo. Most striking, however, is the lack of progression that the English psyche has made since these dark, Thatcherite times. Rhetoric still defined by the front pages of The Sun, generalising comments based on the actions of ethnic individuals, bananas and monkey chants being thrown at Premier League football players are all still happening today, only now they mostly take the form of comments sections online.
Being White is a haunting reminder that 2019 hasn’t seen the evolution of a more civilised society where equality reigns true, it’s merely the same society, simply with new tools, such as wifi and smart phones. 
10 June 
<h5>Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl 
Dir. Amy Goldstein 
(USA)</h5>
Review by Louis Bayman
This documentary follows Harrow-born singer-songwriter Kate Nash in a reflective mood as she recounts her journey from a Nando’s employee who took up the electric guitar when signed off work with a broken foot, to the runaway success of her 2007 single ‘Foundations’ and the subsequent tribulations of the limelight. 
The title, ‘Underestimate the Girl’, is in tune with her story of a success not quite against the odds, but certainly against the occasional meanness of the press and the industry, and especially her ex-manager who she is now taking to court. This theme is in keeping with her persona as a vocalist, which combines a certain fragility with an emotional openness that suggests resilience. 
The documentary is made up almost entirely of interviews with Nash as well as of her friends and family, so one shouldn’t expect any sense of exposé nor indeed any criticism at all. It is very much her own official story, and would be a bit boring for anyone not already committed to Nash&#8217;s personality or to her music.
10 and 11 June 
<h5>La Vida En Común 
Dir. Ezequiel Yanco 
(Argentina, France)</h5>
Review by Zainab Rahim
Spanning a landscape of desolate fields, lakes and sandy grounds, this documentary is a gentle view into the lives on an indigenous community in the north of Argentina. It’s carried along by the mellow but endearing voiceover of the young unnamed protagonist. He imagines the movements and ruthless nature of a puma, while building up an urgency to hunt the beast with his friends.
La Vida En Común focuses on these young adolescents, their facial expressions often appearing more mature than their age. Whether taking their dogs on a hunting trip, recounting a story of a parental break-up, or helping each other shave, there is a sustained thread of quiet innocence in their interactions.
The film doesn’t try to exoticise the indigenous experience, nor does it seek to separate it from the modern world; rather, it offers a glimpse into how a rural lifestyle can be integrated with a national school system and new social trends. We do see, however, what seems to be a twinge of sadness as the kids watch videos of their history and heritage. The film eventually reaches its crux by magnifying our connection to the natural elements. 
If you like slow-paced documentaries, you’ll enjoy this pensive but strangely calming film. 
7 and 10 June

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Louis Bayman is film editor at The Platform and an academic based at the University of Southampton.
Tijen Horoz is World editor at The Platform. She completed a BA in English at KCL University, followed by an MA in Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS University.
Sharaiz Chaudhry is spirituality editor at The Platform who studied Middle East Politics at university before pursuing traditional Islamic studies.
Shireen Hilmi is the Health Editor at The Platform. She is currently working as a doctor in London.
Umar Ali is an editorial assistant on The Platform who studied Comparative Literature before pursuing a masters in newspaper journalism.
Zainab Rahim is the editor-in-chief of The Platform.
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<pre>Photo Credits Sheffield Doc/Fest

Featured: Sumercé</pre>

Sumerce &#8211; Sheffield Documentary Festival

Our editorial team takes a look at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, ‘Ways of Seeing’, with a review of six festival picks – from new explorations of the refugee crisis to intimate views of rural communities. The festival takes place 6 to 11 June.

The Platform Preview to the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, 2019

Following the Weinstein affair and the rise of the <a href="https://platformonline.uk/articles/films-for-the-metoo-era-the-bfi-london-film-festival-2018-round-up">#metoo</a> movement, a raft of gender equality campaigns have sprung up across various segments of the film industry. Last May, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/5/13/17347738/cannes-womens-protest-march-film-festival-cate-blanchett-agnes-varda-timesup-red-carpet">82 female filmmakers</a> marched in protest on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival demanding concrete measures to achieve greater female representation in the industry. The response of some of the major film festivals to these demands has been disappointing. Of the 21 films competing at the 2018 Venice film festival only one was directed by a woman, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/nightingale-italian-film-critic-sexist-jennifer-kent-venice-1202001092/">Jennifer Kent</a>. Even Cannes, whose line-up last year included the highest number of female filmmakers since 2011, selected only three films directed by women in the main competition.
The <a href="https://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html">2019 Berlin film festival</a> (Berlinale) showed that, finally, something is changing. Almost half of the 400 films screened at the festival were made by women, with seven (out of a total of 16) of them included in the main competition. Having opened with a pledge signed by the festival’s director Dieter Kosslick to promote the work of women in the industry, the festival featured a number of events addressing questions of inclusion and diversity in film and television. Over the years, the Berlinale has established itself as a unique platform for politically engaged cinema. Attracting massive crowds in different venues sprawled all over the city, the 2019 edition did not disappoint festival goers in search of challenging discoveries.
Some of the films shown in the main competition line-up openly foregrounded their socio-political concerns: Francois Ozon’s By the Grace of God, which went to win the Silver Bear, tackles the complicity of the Catholic Church in a recent child sexual abuse scandal in Lyon, while Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas, based on Roberto Saviano’s novel, exposes the plague of teen gangs in Naples by charting the descent into organised crime of a group of young boys. Giving the Silver Bear for Best Director to Angela Schanelec for her I was at Home, But, the Jury presided by Juliette Binoche recognised the extraordinary achievement of a filmmaker who has shown that one of the most poignant political commentaries a film may make these days is one that addresses the changing structure of the family under late-capitalism and the experience of women within this.
One of the most captivating films in the main competition was God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, by Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska, whose politics were intelligently filtered through the lens of tragic-comedy. Played by Zorica Nusheva, the film’s titular protagonist is an unemployed 32-year-old still living with her parents. After a humiliating job interview during which her potential employer tells her that he finds her so unattractive that he would never offer her a job nor make sexual advances to her, Petrunya finds herself in the middle of an Orthodox ceremony. A noisy crowd of men are about to dive into the river to retrieve a crucifix thrown by the priest. Catching us totally unprepared, Petrunya impulsively throws herself into the water and gets it. The men are furious. Petrunya escapes but is eventually found at her parents’ home and taken to the local police station.
In some of the film’s most poignant moments, we see Petrunya sitting calmly in the interrogation room, as she faces several officers and the local priest who try to bully her into returning the crucifix. Seemingly unaffected by some of the officers’ insults, Petrunya cleverly unravels their manipulative interrogation tactics. Other times, she just remains silent, looking unimpressed by their dull, sexist remarks. A biting satire on men’s self-entitlement, the film cleverly weaves comic scenes marked by a quiet, steely humour with terrifying mob scenes involving the village’s men outside the police station. Also thanks to Nusheva’s brilliantly atonal performance, God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya turns out to be a moving tribute to the quiet resilience and the obstinate determination of women who will not give up what they have deservedly earned.
The Golden Bear for best film went to Synonyms. Directed by Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, it follows Yoav, a young man arriving in Paris, determined to leave his Israeli identity behind. The film’s narrative often feels like an erratic flow of perplexing scenarios with unclear character motivation and patchy plot logic. Refusing to speak Hebrew in this new city, Yoav buys a French dictionary. Through synonyms, Yoav expresses to his friend Emile how he feels about his homeland: abominable, loathsome etc.
In one of the most captivating moments of the film, Yaron, an Israeli intelligence agent that Yoav has befriended, convinced that Europe is profoundly anti-Semitic, angrily confronts the Paris metro travellers with his Jewishness. While this poignant moment may be read as a critique of contemporary Israel’s persecution complex, the muted, embarrassed response of the travellers who look away, also raises for us the suspicion that Yaron may, at the same time, not be so far off an inconvenient truth.
In trying to replace his Israeli identity with a new one, Yoav discovers that national identities are synonyms – the bloodthirsty words of La Marseilles that he sings during his cultural integration class being not so different from the hawkish Zionist tone of the Israeli anthem that he starts singing immediately after. A film on the difficult, perhaps impossible, attempt to escape one’s heritage, Synonyms is also a brilliant satire of Europe’s sense of self-importance and of its feelings of cultural superiority, which Yoav shines a light on through his Parisian encounters.
Öndög, directed by Chinese filmmaker Wang Quan’an, was this writer’s festival favourite. Set in the Mongolian steppe, it starts with a police car stumbling on the body of a naked woman unmistakably dead. One may get the feeling that this is the beginning of a Ceylan-esque rural murder mystery. A young police officer is left behind in the windy steppe to keep an eye on the body. The camera stays away from him, and we come to realise that this lonely figure in the majestic landscape is setting up the prevailing tone of the film.
While the murder mystery is eventually solved off-screen, viewers are confronted with a series of stunning long takes in which the place of humans appears secondary to the overwhelming power of nature. Far from being a mere backdrop for the lives of the herds people who inhabit this enchanting landscape – with its gorgeous twilights and the hypnotic sound of its winds – Öndög invites us to reconsider our efficiency-driven approach to the experience of time and space. A solitary herdswoman, nicknamed ‘the dinosaur’, accompanies us to the everyday routines of this remote world: the slaughtering of a lamb, the birth of a calf, or the silent smoking of a cigarette. The inner world of this herdswoman may seem impenetrable. We are never quite sure how she feels about the young man she ends up having sex with or about her unexpected pregnancy. Like a dinosaur, she is struggling for survival, but it is a struggle that seems to be constantly reliant on the wisdom of nature.
This has been the last year of the Berlinale under Dieter Kosslick’s direction. Kosslick leaves a distinctive legacy that has turned Berlin into a much celebrated audience-oriented festival. The two new directors, Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek, face the challenge to revamp a festival that many people hope will be even more ambitious and open to experimentation. One can only hope they will also remain committed to the festival’s pledge to fight the devaluation of women’s labour within the film industry by following up on the impressive legacy felt by this year’s edition.
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<pre>Photo Credit: Synonyms / Berlinale</pre>

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Dieter Kosslick leaves a distinctive legacy that has turned Berlinale into a celebrated and diverse film festival

Berlin Film Festival 2019: Women’s Labour, Hypnotic Landscapes and Plenty of Synonyms

<h5>ESTA TODO BIEN (IT&#8217;S ALL GOOD) 
Dir: Tuki Jencquel</h5>
Review by Sharaiz Chaudhry
Está Todo Bien (ironically named It’s All Good) is a powerful story that puts a human face to the crisis in Venezuela. It reminds us that, while the political posturing by both sides has divided people domestically and internationally, there are very real consequences for the people of Venezuela, who suffer daily as a result.
The documentary follows the stories of several people impacted by the health crisis in the country. By shadowing a doctor, NGO worker, pharmacist and several patients, it provides a multidimensional narrative that seeks to illustrate how different people are affected in different ways by the same issue.
Whether it is through seeing all your colleagues seeking asylum abroad, or having to resort to social media to acquire life saving medicines, the film shows that the ongoing crisis in the country should not be seen as just an ideological battle between the right and the left in Venezuela, but as a very real and tangible everyday struggle.
While portraying a bleak outlook for the country, Está Todo Bien provides a glimmer of hope in the everyday kindness of the Venezuelan people. As a radio host says, &#8220;There&#8217;s a great sense of solidarity in the country because we are all suffering.&#8221; After watching this film, one cannot help but feel that the end of the suffering could not come soon enough.
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/esta-todo-bien-its-all-good?city=London">20 March, 8.45 PM, Barbican</a> 
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/esta-todo-bien-its-all-good?city=London">21 March, 7.30pm, Regent Street Cinema</a>
<h5>THE CLEANERS 
Dir: Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck</h5>
Review by Louis Bayman
Who decides what you see online, and how? This documentary exposes the world of the content moderators, the people who “do what algorithms can’t”. It is a lonely job, outsourced to firms in the Philippines and operating in the shadows of clients like Facebook and Google. This is a noir-ish realm of workers in isolated office booths lit only by a cold blue screen, who describe themselves as online detectives “cleaning up” the sewers of the worldwide web, where child pornography and terrorist propaganda proliferate.
Social media channels help define contemporary reality, aided by political strongmen from the Philippines’ Hitler-praising Duterte to Twitter’s most famous user Donald Trump. These companies are more likely to follow such figures than any legal, democratic or trading standards, determining for instance what we see from the Syrian war, or removing anything requested by the <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2018/09/13/the-crackdown-on-journalism-in-erdogans-turkey/">Turkish authorities</a>, the world’s most avid internet censors. While Facebook and Google avoid doing this undemocratic dirty work, they still gain favoured access to authoritarian regimes’ populaces.
The film also brings up an age-old question for censors. What effect might constant exposure to brutality have on those for whom it is a full-time occupation? “I’ve seen hundreds of beheadings in my life as a content moderator,” says one interviewee, before describing the quality of the wound and amount of blood produced by different decapitation tools. Another worker hanged himself in front of his laptop.
For these corporate saviours of the public good, concern for individual wellbeing is not company policy.
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/cleaners?city=London">13 March, 6.15pm, Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA)</a>
<h5>THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED 
Dir: Assia Boundaoui</h5>
Review by Fatima Jichi
One community, two decades of FBI counter-terror surveillance, zero convictions for terrorism. The Feeling of Being Watched is a documentary which follows journalist Assia Boundaoui’s investigation into the surveillance of her community in Bridgeview, Illinois, which began in 1990.
Boundaoui takes the FBI to court for access to secret records, which reveal that her community was part of a decades-long investigation, code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal”, into money laundering in the US to support terrorist activity in the Middle East. The investigation, she says, extended to all major Muslim organisations in America. During the two decades, the FBI collected data on 600 American Muslim mosques, schools, businesses, charities and individuals across the US, and generated 33,120 pages of records.
The Feeling of Being Watched explores the impact of this surveillance on the community. Boundaoui tells us the story of a friend, later diagnosed with schizophrenia, who complained of being constantly followed, but the community were too paranoid to notice she was in fact sick. She describes a community stuck in the “grey area between paranoia and truth”. Boundaoui shows us how the surveillance contributed to a breakdown of trust between the community and law enforcement.
The documentary centres Boundaoui in the middle of the story she is investigating. Her unique access to community members makes for compelling viewing. The received wisdom is that Muslim communities became “suspects” following 9/11 and the War on Terror. But what is clear from Boundaoui’s documentary is that the Muslim community in the US was under surveillance long before then. As one community member says, “I don’t remember how it felt to just know that I am free in my home.”
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/feeling-being-watched?city=London">19 March, 8.45pm, Regent Street Cinema</a> 
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/feeling-being-watched?city=London">20 March, 6.15pm, Barbican</a>

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<h5>EVERYTHING MUST FALL 
Dir. Rehad Desai</h5>
Review by Umar Ali
Everything Must Fall tells the story of South Africa’s #FeesMustFall movement, charting its development from a protest against tuition fees at the University of the Witwatersrand (or “Wits”) to a nation-wide social revolution.
The story is primarily told through four student leaders and Vice Chancellor of Wits, Adam Habib, and this multi-faceted narrative paints an engaging and complex picture of the movement. It’s all focused around one event, but the diverse perspectives give a real sense of the revolution as a living, breathing entity rather than a simple route from A to B.
It’s an uncompromising and unflinching account, dissecting the struggle across a number of axes over an hour and twenty minutes. Classism, racism, misogyny and homophobia all weave into each other, and these conflicting ideologies manifest in both the institutions that enforce them and the protesters that fight them. “Our history is a nightmare from which we are still trying to wake,” says student leader Shaeera Kalla, and Everything Must Fall wears its history – and its nightmare – on its sleeve.
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/everything-must-fall?city=London">22 March, 6.15pm, Barbican</a>
<h5>THE SWEET REQUIEM (KYOYANG NGARMO) 
Dir. Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam</h5>
Review by Zainab Rahim
The Sweet Requiem opens in the unforgiving slopes of the Himalayan terrain. A Tibetan family trudges uphill through the snow under the looming threat of the Chinese forces who pace the mountains to take out their next victim. Then, gunshots and darkness.
The viewer is transported to South Delhi, years later, the lens encasing the audience with the warmth of pollution and the pulsing noise of the city’s traffic. Dolkar is the quiet, observant protagonist, played so effortlessly by first-time actor Tenzin Dolker – herself a daughter of a refugee settlement in India.
Amid the humble lodgings, Dolkar’s routine includes a daily prayer, laughter, dance and shaping the eyebrows of India’s elite. But when an older Tibetan refugee enters her community, the story takes a turn, and we see Dolker plagued by the political realities of achieving self-determination. She cannot stop watching videos of self-immolations on her phone. The pain of separation from her mother hits her badly.
Filmmaking duo Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam introduce the plight of a people so gently and convincingly, it almost feels like an artful documentary. Cutting between Dolkar’s childhood journey across the Nangpa-La Pass and her turbulent adult search for belonging, this film was crowdfunded and made with due care. It subtly conveys what it means to accept fate – also laying bare the searing agony of a mother who seeks only a safe future for her child.
<a href="https://ff.hrw.org/film/sweet-requiem-kyoyang-ngarmo">17 March, 5.50pm, BFI Southbank</a>

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"The  Sweet Requiem" directed and produced by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam of White Crane Films, Photo credit: PABLO BARTHOLOMEWAll rights reserved. For permission and licensing rights: PLEASE CONTACT: pablo@bartholomew.tvOr by cellphone +91 98100 14131

Fatima Jichi is legal affairs editor at The Platform and is training to be a barrister. She is interested in human rights and criminal justice.
Sharaiz Chaudhry is spirituality editor at The Platform who studied Middle East Politics at university before pursuing traditional Islamic studies.
Louis Bayman is film editor at The Platform and an academic based at the University of Southampton.
Umar Ali is an editorial assistant on The Platform who studied Comparative Literature before pursuing a masters in newspaper journalism.
Zainab Rahim is the joint editor-in-chief of The Platform.
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<pre>Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Featured: The Cleaners</pre>

HRW_THE CLEANERS_New_Site

Under surveillance and in search for equality – our editorial team delve into the subject matter of this year’s Human Rights Watch (HRW) film festival with a review of five festival picks. The festival takes place 13 to 22 March in London.

The Platform Preview to the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, London, 2019

<h5>THE CHAMBERMAID (LA CAMARISTA) 
Dir. Lila Avilés (Mexico-USA)</h5>
Review by Ania Ostrowska
This accomplished debut feature by Lila Avilés offers a glimpse into the life of Eve, a maid in an upscale Mexico City hotel. Shot on location in Hotel Presidente InterContinental, the film rarely ventures outside its interiors, creating a sense of confinement reinforced by the repetitious tasks performed by the titular chambermaid. It’s only from her regular phone calls that we learn that Eve lives far from the hotel and has a four-year-old son, looked after by the woman on the other end of the line.
The film subtly comments on the class gap between the hotel staff and guests, some of whom are only inferred from the items they leave behind. As Eve delivers an endless stream of toiletries to a demanding guest, we learn that her own flat has no shower; while she can never make it home in time to tuck her son to sleep, she does favours for wealthy mothers.
Gabriela Cartol carries the film, making Eve a multi-dimensional and very human character. The workers here are not idealised: while they share moments of solidarity and tenderness, ultimately everyone is looking out for themselves, bartering goods and hoping for promotion, often at the expense of others.
In preparation for making this film, Avilés (a stage actor, theatre producer and opera director) befriended some hotel maids, watching them work for months. The film’s observational realism is masterfully framed by cinematographer Carlos Rossini, an award-winning Argentine/Mexican documentary filmmaker.
<h5>THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER 
Dir. Sara Colangelo (USA)</h5>
Review by SU Ahmad
In his most famous work, Deschooling Society, Croatian-Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich (1926-2002) argued children are today confronted with an education system that confuses process and substance, often at the expense of creative output. Critiquing modernisation and institutions, Illich argued we are schooled to confuse ‘teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, and fluency with the ability to say something new’.
Based on the 2015 Hebru language film of the same name, director Sara Colangelo’s Kindergarten Teacher explores similar themes.
Kind-spirited teacher Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) leads a demoralised existence, lamenting the education system’s crushing of creativity. She directs some of her frustrations towards her household, for though her children achieve good grades, they never quite appear to think. Her children, in turn, feel Lisa’s sentiments reflect her own lack of success.
One day our caring teacher comes across a five-year-old prodigy, Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) with a knack for poetry that verges on the magical. It is at this point things begin to change. She recognises Jimmy is not in an environment that values his talents, let alone nurtures them; for soon, our young poet’s imagination will be schooled to accept service in place of value. Swiftly, what begins as an innocent endeavour becomes a dangerous obsession to protect the child from an inevitable creative descent, culminating in a masterful final scene.
<h5>STAN &amp; OLLIE 
Dir. Jon S Baird (UK)</h5>
Review by Louis Bayman
There are some films that simply don’t try too hard to be flashy (no car chases, explosions or nudity), don’t have any political messages, and make no attempt to innovate or claim artistic greatness. Stan &amp; Ollie is one such film, and I would thoroughly recommend it.
After a brief prologue at the height of their fame, in a Hollywood backlot in 1937, the action cuts to 1953 under a rainy Tyne Bridge, as the world-famous Laurel and Hardy find themselves down on their luck, reduced to touring second-rate theatres in the British provinces in the hope of raising enough interest to get another film into production.
The background may be drab, but the relationship between the two leads sparkles, with John C. Reilly as the affable Oliver Hardy and Steve Coogan as his weary, workaholic counterpart Stanley Laurel. Coogan has clearly found his late-career niche in the double-act balance between banter and bad-temper previously explored alongside Rob Brydon in The Trip.
But the film really takes off when it turns into a double-act double-act after their wives arrive in tow, played wonderfully by Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda. Their relationship is funny, annoying and genuinely touching – this lovely film captures the emotional range of the lost world of the variety theatre, whose end it chronicles.
<h5>FREEDOM FIELDS 
Dir. Naziha Arebi (Libya)</h5>
Review by Zainab Rahim
Screening at its second ever festival, Freedom Fields is a documentary feature that deserves every second of the prolonged applause it received after the credits rolled.
Director Naziha Arebi met her Libyan family for the first time in 2012 after the revolution – and she decided to stay. What she discovered on her journey was a women’s football team like no other. Arebi’s camera is up close and personal – it’s a non-voyeuristic participant in this cross-section of Libyan society, which includes the middle class, the refugee, the unmarried, the trainee doctor and more besides.
What Arebi manages to do so spectacularly is to treat these differences as natural and incidental. You never question why one of the players has suddenly started to wear a head covering, how a younger player from Twergha sprints through her refugee camp every day, or how a woman can study in the cramped conditions of a tent. Halima is warm, loveable and melodramatic – banging out a remarkable rendition of Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ in one hilarious scene. Fadwa is calm and wise, yet fierce, never hesitating to speak truth to power.
Under constant sounds of bullets and bombs, and in the face of the authorities’ misogyny and incompetence, you cannot help but feel jubilant with these determined women. Watch it when it comes back to the big screen.
<h5>FIVE MEN AND A CARAVAGGIO 
Dir. Xiaolu Guo (UK-China)</h5>
Review by Rukiya Gadid
This is a documentary style film by London-based Chinese writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo, who was inspired to make a film after reading Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
At the Q&amp;A following the film, Guo revealed that she tried to capture the themes of the essay in film, without much success. It was at her friend’s 40th birthday party that she came upon the perfect subject matter. Her friend Vanni, whose birthday it was, was given a four-foot reproduction of Caravaggio’s painting, Saint John in the Wilderness. On the packaging, Guo recognised the town in China where it was made – a town famous for its generation of painters.
The documentary neatly captures the commercial demand and supply chain of reproduced art through this small transaction from East to West, putting faces to supplier and buyers. The documentary creates a deeper appreciation for the journeys of our daily transactions: there is a human behind every purchase.
The copy brings to life Benjamin’s concern in his essay that a reproduction, however beautiful, is devoid of ‘aura’ or soul, as the motivations of its creation are economical and emotionless. So when the painting arrives in London, Vanni and his friends are quick to point out its many flaws. But for Vanni, it is not beauty or even artistic appreciation he wants, but rather what the original symbolises to him.
This is a low budget film that shows the connection of our small isle to the wider global chains of commerce. It was shot in the months leading up to the Brexit referendum giving everything a sense of poignancy and isolation.

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<h5>AMRA AND THE SECOND MARRIAGE 
DIR. MAHMOUD SABBAGH (SAUDI ARABIA)</h5>
Review by SU Ahmad
Amra and the Second Marriage is the bizarre second effort of director Mahmoud Sabbagh of Barakah Meets Barakah fame.
The film tells the story of Amra, played by Alshaima’a Tayeb, a devout, had-working middle-aged Saudi woman challenged with the prospect of her husband taking a significantly younger and more glamorous second wife.
Saddened and in disbelief, initially she prays to Allah to guide her husband in the right direction. To hilarious effect Amra frequently visits a shifty looking imam to aid her efforts, though this theme is drawn out and becomes tiresome. While Tayeb does a stellar job, she is let down by the remaining cast; from a two-dimensional mother-in-law capable of precious little other than shouting, to an unconvincing best friend fixated on black magic. Amra’s unlikeable children too, are seemingly unable to display a remotely normal range of human emotion.
Though the plot starts well, it takes a downward trajectory, with unexpected jolts of absurdism materialising clunkily well into the film. Any criticism, however, should be administered with the understanding that the Saudi film industry is fledgling and all those involved have relatively little experience owing to a decades-long ban on cinema and harsh censor boards. Testament to this is the fact that the protagonist had no prior acting experience, and was in fact picked by the director from his friends’ circle.
At the premiere, Sabbagh highlighted some of the constraints he was working with by telling a comical story about his first film Barakah meets Barakah. Upon release, while cinemas remained banned, the Saudi national airline bought the film. He soon discovered that some nationals were taking short domestic flights in order to watch it.
<h5>THE WILD PEAR TREE (AHLAT AĞACı) 
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan</h5>
Review by Louis Bayman
Sometimes it’s hard to work out why exactly a film just doesn’t quite work – all the elements may be there, yet somehow it ends up less than the sum of its parts. The eagerly anticipated The Wild Pear Tree will go down as either a misstep by acclaimed Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, or the beginning of a serious artistic decline.
An aspiring novelist who won’t study hard enough to pass his teaching exams contends with the disappointments of small-town life, compounded by his charismatic father’s inability to escape his gambling habits. Ceylan plays here to his strengths, demonstrating the grandeur and icy stagnation of a landscape both social and natural in the Anatolian interior, evidenced so well in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep.
He retains his ear for the subtle poignancy and demeaning vanities that make our common existence such a solitary disappointment. Yet the spectacular moments of sweeping camera movement, or sudden jolts from dream-like reveries, feel like impositions, making up for a basic lack of emotional involvement. The women are either stupid, annoying or elusively fatale, lacking the sense of affection between the male duo, and the end result feels like Ceylan by numbers.
<h5>WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE? 
Dir. Roberto Minervini (Italy-USA-France)</h5>
Review by Zainab Rahim
After filming for over 150 hours in black and white, mostly in 2017, Roberto Minervini ends up creating a poignant yet discomforting slow-paced documentary that goes to the heart of a black Louisiana community.
What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire? retains the intimate, somewhat gritty lens, of Minervini’s film The Other Side which I saw in 2015 – this time focusing on black struggles. The camera poetically follows three main groups: two young brothers trying to enjoy their leisurely hours without being shot; the New Black Panther Party, a small grassroots group who feed the homeless and support families facing racial attacks; and the very powerful, kind Judy, whose own difficult life experiences are revealed as the film goes on.
It’s painful but deeply important viewing. We were lucky to have Judy speak to us after the film, to explain ongoing drug abuse, imprisonment and other social issues her family and community are facing. One particular point she made struck a chord with me: they were willing to let this [white] man film so intimately because the community already feels dead, or dying, inside.
<h5>MIRAI 
Dir. Mamoru Hosoda (Japan)</h5>
Review by Zainab Rahim
Mamoru Hosoda’s animation opens within the idyllic Grand Designs-style home of an architect and his wife. The peace is soon shattered unceremoniously in this modern space by none other than their four-year-old son, Kun.
Kun ceases to be a happy child when his newborn sister Mirai arrives. The feature film pretty much rests solely upon his tantrums. Each fit takes him into a fantasy world where he is taught a lesson by a mysterious relation from the past or future and, on a few odd occasions, this is done in a brilliantly nightmarish imaginative way (see the aquarium and Tokyo train station sequences).
Also titled Mirai of the Future and Mirai No Mirai, his relationship with his sister is a key theme, alongside traditional ideas of noble lineage. It lacks the charm or coherency that you’d find in an animation like Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbour Totoro. But there is something that caught my attention: the children around me in the audience were having strong belly laughs at all the silly moments, even though the film was in a different language to some of theirs. Maybe this film is simply for them.

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Amra and the Second Marriage Film

Ania Ostrowska is a Polish-British intersectional feminist and a contributor here at The Platform. 
Louis Bayman is film editor at The Platform and an academic based at the University of Southampton.
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2017/05/12/raw-realities-of-conflict-in-mogadishu/">Rukiya Gadid</a> is a writer on society and culture in the big city.
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2016/05/11/remembering-eqbal-ahmad-a-conversation-with-stuart-schaar/">S U Ahmad</a> is a London-based editor and contributor here at The Platform.
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2017/05/09/making-doodles-and-recording-history-hamja-ahsan-on-diy-cultures-2017/">Zainab Rahim</a> is the editor-in-chief of The Platform.
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<pre>Featured Photo: The Kindergarten Teacher</pre>

BFI LFF Perspectives_Zainab Rahim_281019_AM

Chronicling the collapse of creative industries and other troubled futures at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, as reviewed by five of our writers.