"I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR SILENCE": A PLEA FOR HELP FROM THE AFGHAN FILM COMMUNITY

Sahraa Karimi, one of Afghanistan's most acclaimed filmmakers, has delivered a desperate message to the global film and media community in the wake of the Taliban uprising in her homeland. Published via her social pages, Karimi has used her role as General Director of the Kabul-based Afghan Film Organisation (AFO) to plead for international aid on behalf of her people and the artistic community, providing moments of insight into the abject terror of life under Taliban rule. Her message* is reproduced below...

“To all the Film Communities in The World and [Those] Who Love Film and Cinema,

My name is Sahraa Karimi, a film director and the current General Director of Afghan Film, the only state-owned film company, established in 1968. I write to you with a broken heart and a deep hope that you can join me in protecting my beautiful people, especially filmmakers, from the Taliban. 

The Taliban have gained control of so many provinces. They have massacred our people, kidnapped many children, sold girls as child brides to their men. They have murdered women for their attire, gauged the eyes of a woman; they tortured and murdered one of our beloved comedians, murdered one of our historian poets, murdered the head of culture and media for the government. People affiliated with the government have been assassinated, some hanged publicly. 

Hundreds of thousands of families have been displaced, fleeing to camps in Kabul where they live in unsanitary conditions. There is looting in the camps, babies dying because they don’t have milk. It is a humanitarian crisis, and yet the world is silent.

We have grown accustomed to this silence, yet we know it is not fair. We know that this decision to abandon our people is wrong; that this hasty troop withdrawal is a betrayal of our people and all that we did when Afghans won the Cold War for the west. Our people were forgotten then, leading up to the Taliban’s dark rule, and now, after twenty years of immense gains for our country and especially our younger generations, all could be lost again in this abandonment.

We need your voice. The media, governments, and the world humanitarian organizations are conveniently silent as if this “Peace Deal” with the Taliban was ever legitimate. It was never legitimate. Recognizing them gave them the confidence to come back to power. The Taliban have been brutalizing our people throughout the entire process of the talks. 

Everything that I have worked so hard to build as a filmmaker in my country is at risk of falling. If the Taliban take over they will ban all art. Filmmakers, including myself, could be next on their hit list. They will strip women’s rights, we will be pushed into the shadows of our homes and our voices, our expression will be stifled into silence. 

When the Taliban were in power, zero girls were in school. Since then, there are over 9 million Afghan girls getting an education. This is incredible. Herat, the third-largest city, had nearly 50% women in its university; it is now under Taliban control. These are incredible gains that the world hardly knows about. In just a few weeks, the Taliban have destroyed many schools and 2 million girls are forced now out of school again.

I do not understand this world. I do not understand your silence. I will stay and fight for my country, but I cannot do it alone. I need allies like you. Please help us get this world to care about what is happening to us. Please help us by informing your countries’ most important media what is going on here in Afghanistan. Be our voices outside Afghanistan. If the Taliban take over Kabul, we may not have access to the internet or any communication tool at all. Please engage your filmmakers, artists to support us to be our voice.

This war is not a civil war, this is a proxy war; an imposed war that is the result of the US deal with the Taliban. Please share this fact and write about us on your social media. The world should not turn its back on us. We need your support and your voice on behalf of Afghan women, children, artists, and filmmakers. This support would be the greatest help we need right now.

Please help us get this world to not abandon Afghanistan. Please help us before the Taliban take over Kabul. We have such little time, maybe days. Thank you so much. 

I appreciate your pure, true heart, so dearly.

With regards, 

Sahraa Karimi.”

*Some minor edits for space.

R.I.P. BUDDHADEV DASGUPTA

Buddhadev Dasgupta, one of the most influential and acclaimed figures of Indian cinema, passed away in Kolkata on Thursday from an ongoing renal ailment; he was 77. The Bengali filmmaker was a master manipulator of time and place, his best work filled with stirring beauty, complex characterisations and often dreamlike realities.

Dasgupta’s cinema is steeped in lyricism, filled with visual landscapes that flirt with magical realism, even surrealism at times; he often cited the Spanish master Luis Buñuel as a key influence. His other great creative output was as a poet, and his films often employed  elements of fantasy and non-linear narratives synonymous with an expansive creative vision.   

Beginning his career in academia, teaching economics in Calcutta, Dasgupta turned to documentary making in the early 1970s (Dholer Raja Khirode Natta, 1973; Fishermen of Sundarban, 1974; Saratchandra, 1975). His first foray into fictional storytelling was Dooratwa (1978), followed by Neem Annapurna (1980), both in his native Bengali tongue. He earned early festival favour with his 1982 feature, Grihajuddha, which scored a Golden Lion nomination at the Venice Film Festival. 

Working with equal ease in his nation’s dual languages, Dasgupta took his distinctive cinematic voice to the world; among his most revered films were Bagh Bahadur (1989), Tahader Katha (1992; pictured, above), Uttara (2000), Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), Swapner Din (2004; pictured, below), Kalpurush (2005), Quartet 1 (2012) and Tope (2016). His final film, The Flight (Urojahaj),  starring Parno Mittra and Chandan Roy Sanyal, was released in 2020 to to some of the best reviews of his career.

His career was lauded with 12 Indian film sector awards, including four Golden Lotus trophies, and he was twice nominated for the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival (Phera, 1988; Charachar, 1994). In 2007, he was bestowed the Golden Athena Award at the Athens International Film Festival; a year later, the Spain International Film Festival announced he would receive their Lifetime Achievement honour. 

Dasgupta solidified the standing of Indian cinema on the international stage following the death of Satyajit Ray in 1992, though he never sought comparison to the great Indian auteur. Peers and contemporaries that he held in particular regard included the late Govindan Aravindan and fellow Bengali directors Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his grief at Dasgupta’s passing via Twitter, writing, “Anguished by the demise of Shri Buddhadeb Dasgupta. His diverse works struck a chord with all sections of society. He was also an eminent thinker and poet.” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spoke for many when she tweeted, “Through his works, he infused lyricism into the language of cinema. His death comes as a great loss for the film fraternity.” 

He is survived by his wife, filmmaker Sohini Dasgupta, and two daughters.

JUSTIN KURZEL’S PORT ARTHUR FILM IN CANNES COMPETITION

Australian director Justin Kurzel will vie against some of international cinema’s biggest names when his film Nitram screens in Competition at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Chronicling the events leading up to the Port Arthur shooting massacre in 1996, Nitram will be the first Australian film since Sleeping Beauty in 2011 to figure in the prestigious competitive strand in over a decade. Shot under quarantine conditions in late 2020 with American actor Caleb Landry-Jones in the lead role (who goes unnamed in the film), Kurzel’s latest fielded howls of protest when it was broken the story of Australia’s worst mass killer was being produced. 

Kurzel (Snowtown, 2011; True History of The Kelly gang, 2019) will be amongst such filmmakers as Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), Leox Carax (Annette, the Festival’s Opening Night choice), Paul Verhoeven (Benedetta; pictured, right), Sean Penn (Flag Day), Sean Baker (Red Rocket), Asghar Farhadi (A Hero), and Palme d’Or winners Jacques Audiard (Les Olympiades) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria) 

In announcing the 2021 line-up artistic director Thierry Fremaux noted the record 24 films in competition and an unprecedented number of female directors, among them Hungarian helmer Ildikó Enyedi (The Story of My Wife), French director Julia Ducournau (Titane) and festival favourite Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island).

While Closing Night honours remain a mystery and potential Hollywood blockbusters premiering on The Croisette unnamed, the full roster announced is:  

COMPETITION:
Annette, Leos Carax
Tre Piani, Nanni Moretti
Everything Went Fine, François Ozon
A Hero, Asghar Farhadi
Titane, Julia Ducournau
The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson
Red Rocket, Sean Baker
Petrov’s Flu, Kirill Serebrennikov
France, Bruno Dumont
Nitram, Justin Kurzel
Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Lingui, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Paris 13th District, Jacques Audiard
The Restless, Joachim Lafosse
La Fracture, Catherine Corsini
Casablanca Beats, Nabil Ayouch
The Worst Person In The World, Joachim Trier
Compartment No.6, Juho Kuosmanen
Ahed’s Knee, Nadav Lapid
Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve
Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven
The Story Of My Wife, Ildikó Enyedi
Flag Day, Sean Penn

OUT OF COMPETITION:
Aline, The Voice Of Love, Valérie Lemercier
Stillwater, Tom Mccarthy
The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes
Emergency Declaration, Han Jae-Rim
De Son Vivant, Emmanuelle Bercot
Bac Nord, Cédric Jimenez

MIDNIGHT SCREENING:
Bloody Oranges, Jean-Christophe Meurisse

CANNES PREMIERE:
Hold Me Tight, Mathieu Amalric
Cow, Andrea Arnold
Love Songs For Tough Guys, Samuel Benchetrit
Deception, Arnaud Desplechin
Jane Par Charlotte, Charlotte Gainsbourg
In Front Of Your Face, Hong Sang-Soo
Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson
Evolution, Kornél Mundruczo
Val, Ting Poo, Leo Scott
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass, Oliver Stone

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
H6, Yé Yé
Black Notebooks, Shlomi Elkabetz
Mariner Of The Mountains, Karim Aïnouz
Jane Par Charlotte, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Babi Yar, Context, Sergei Loznitsa
The Year Of The Everlasting Storm, Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

UN CERTAIN REGARD
The Innocents, Eskil Vogt
After Yang, Kogonada
Lamb, Valdimar Jóhannsson
Noche De Fuego, Tatiana Huezo
Bonne Mère, Hafsia Herzi
Blue Bayou, Justin Chon
Moneyboys, C.B Yi
Freda, Gessica Généus
Un Monde, Laura Wandel
Commitment Hasan, Hasan Semih Kaplanoglu
House Arrest, Alexey German Jr.
Let There Be Morning, Eran Kolirin
Unclenching The Fists, Kira Kovalenko
Women Do Cry, Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova
Rehana Maryam Noor, Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Great Freedom, Sebastian Meise
La Civil, Teodora Ana Mihai
Gaey Wa’r, Na Jiazuo

PREVIEW: 2021 SOUTH AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The South African Film Festival (SAFF) will present a unique and engaging collection of nine documentaries, five features and two short films when it returns in 2021. Unfolding from May 12-24, the festival will adopt a virtual program roster ahead of special event closing night screenings in Sydney and Melbourne.

“This year’s line-up presents an exciting mix of daring narratives, striking cinematography and deep explorations into South African culture and community,” said Festival Director Claire Jankelson. “South Africa produces some of the richest cinematic stories the world over. Much like the country itself, the films that come are at once challenging, bold, beautiful and heartwarming.” Thematically, the films selected for the 2021 SAFF reflect the nation’s diverse population, rich tradition of struggle for democracy and equality, and complex political and economic reality.

Films will premiere across Australia via the festival website, as well as extending its audience into New Zealand. The theatrical experience will not be lost entirely, with the festival presenting a special Closing Night session of the acclaimed feature, Barakat (pictured, right), a glimpse into the heart of the Muslim community of Cape Town, seen through the prism of one family’s complex modern life. Closing Night sessions of director Amy Jephta moving film will be held at Sydney’s Event Cinemas Bondi Junction and Castle Hill and the Classic Cinema in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick.

Leading the program highlights is Rene van Rooyen’s Toorbos, based on a novel by celebrated Afrikaans author Dalene Matthee. A moving romantic odyssey set against the stunning surrounds of the iconic Knysna forest region, South Africa’s official Oscar submission chronicles a woman blossoming against the destruction of her environment. 

Other feature films on offer include Sunu Gonera’s Riding with Sugar, an action-packed film about a young refugee's quest for BMX glory and the pursuit of identity, safety, happiness and love; Meg Rickard’s Tess is a raw, confronting and emotionally charged adaption of Tracey Farren’s novel ‘Whiplash,’ and follows a 20-year-old prostitute and addict in Cape Town whose life is turned upside-down by an unexpected pregnancy; and, Tebogo Malope’s For Love and Broken Bones, an unexpectedly tender gangster flick featuring a jazz musician debt collector who falls in love with his latest assignment, a wedding planner.

Reflecting a nation still reconciling with its apartheid past, four documentaries reflect upon South Africa’s modern history and the impact it will have on the future of the country. The factual film line-up includes Dugald MacDonald’s Blindside (pictured, above), an examination of how the 1974 boycott-breaking tour by the British rugby team became a powerful tool in helping to dismantle apartheid; District Six Rising from the Dust, director Weaam Williams’ personal account of her return to the ancestral community in Cape Town from which her family and thousands of others were forcibly removed during apartheid; and, Anthony Fabian’s upbeat Good Hope, a positive look at what the post–apartheid ‘Born Free’ generation are doing to create a brighter future.

Other documentaries in the festival include Jozi Gold, co-directors Fredrik Gertten and Sylvia Vollenhoven’s exposé of the dark heart of the nation’s mining sector; Diana Neille and Richard Poplak’s Influence, a revealing look at the immoral and weaponised influence wielded by disgraced British PR firm, Bell Pottinger; a 10th anniversary retrospective release of Mama Africa, Mika Kaurismäki’s moving account of the life of artist and activist Miriam Makeba, whose legendary singing became a passionate message of black liberation; and, Richard Wicksteed’s SanDance!, a stunning study in the culture of dance in southern Africa’s oldest tribe, the San.

Two powerful shorts feature in the 2021 line-up. Toby Wosskow’s Sides of a Horn uses a hybrid of dramatic and documentary styles to look at rhino poaching through two fictional antagonists, a ranger and a poacher, while Sibusiso Khuzwayo’s Letter Reader (pictured, right) follows a twelve-year-old boy’s ascent to the exalted position of his village’s letter reader.

All proceeds go to supporting Education Without Borders programs that assist young South Africans in some of the country’s most disadvantaged communities. The funds generated by this year’s Festival will support vulnerable groups in South Africa, of particular importance this year given the impact of COVID-19.

The 2021 South African Film Festival program and ticketing details are available at www.saff.org.au

PREVIEW: 2021 BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL

If there is one overriding film festival mantra in the wake of COVID-19, it sounds something like, “We’d rather have a live event, but we’ll do our damned best with what we’ve been dealt.” The latest case-in-point - the online program of the 2021 Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF), which blasts out to Belgian genre fans from April 6.

The 39th staging of the iconic event made the call to go 100% virtual as the pandemic peaked several months ago, a time when social gatherings were being cancelled all across the globe. In a statement via the BIFFF Board, Festival Director Guy Delmote said, “An online version of the festival fundamentally goes against its DNA. What makes the BIFFF so unique is its audience and the unique atmosphere that reigns supreme during thirteen festival days.”

However, the release of the 2021 roster of films indicates that BIFFF has not compromised its renowned curation skills in any way. A whopping 48 movies and 63 shorts will beam into the homes of Festival pass holders, delivering the next best thing to a live event. “It [may] seem strange that the BIFFF contents itself with an online edition without any physical component,” says Delmote, “but that would be ignoring the countless hours that the team put in preparing [the festival], a team that lives and breathes for the festival, a team that gives everything for the enjoyment of its audience. It would be a shame to cast that aside out of principle.”

The anxiety-inducing Italian/Belgian co-production The Shift carries the official stamp of ‘Opening Night Film’. Alessandro Tonda’s white-knuckle bomb-in-an-ambulance thriller, starring Clotilde Hesme (pictured, above) as the panic-stricken paramedic and a chilling Adam Amara as her explosive-encased passenger, will have its International Premiere via BIFFF Online. Closing out the festival will be the pitch black tragi-comedy Riders of Justice, the latest from man-of-the-moment Mads Mikkelsen, who reteams for the fifth time with director Anders Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (their last, 2015’s festival hit Men & Chicken).

The five films vying for the Golden Raven award in the International Competition sector are Cody Calahan’s hilariously bloody ‘serial killer therapy group’ lark, Vicious Fun; Ivan Kavanagh’s psychological horror pic Son (pictured, top), featuring a terrific Andi Matichak as a mother fleeing her cult past; the Russian ocean-trench monster movie Superdeep, from Arseny Sukhin; an unhinged Jasmin Savoy Brown as the triggered homicidal muso in Alex Noyer’s nightmarish Sound of Violence; and, South Korean horror auteur Kwang-bin Kim’s Poltergeist-like haunted house chiller, The Closet.

Other features that carry ‘must-watch’ status from the line-up include the World Premiere of Nick Kaldunski’s surrealist after-dark odyssey Hotel Poseidon, the first film from the groundbreaking and transgressive theatre company, Abattoir Fermé; Jeffrey De Vore’s autobiographical doco De Dick Maas Methode, a peek inside the larger-than-life world of the director of cult classics The Lift (1983), Flodder (1986; pictured, right) and Amsterdamned (1988); and, two films in the mix for the Silver Méliès Best European Fantastic Film award - Stefano Lodovichi’s The Guest Room and Péter Bergendy’s Hungarian horror opus, Post Mortem.

The global short-film community is typically well-represented at the BIFFF. An impressive 33 shorts will unfurl under the Eat My Shorts Parts I-IV, amongst them Joséphine Darcy Hopkins’ pandemic metaphor, Nuage; Marco Bentancor’s existential river-monster thriller, The Water Will Regret You; David Mikalson’s overprotective gymnast coach narrative, Stuck;  and two films from the distant land of Oz - Antony Webb’s desert planet survival story, Carmentis, and Andrew Jaksch’s 60s-set/Twilight Zone-like Today, a work certain to spark controversy given its forthright depiction of domestic violence within a genre setting.

Elsewhere in the program, home-viewing audiences can binge on such fantastical short visions as French director Alice Barsby’s tidal terror thriller, Aquaticans (pictured, right); the marriage-in-a-time-of-the-undead drama, The Last Marriage, from Swedish co-directors Gustav Egerstedt and Johan Tappert; and, homegrown talent Jessica Raes stop-motion animation fable Triskelion, a Celtic clan story steeped in female empowerment.

Also running online, from April 7-10, will be the 5th Brussels Genre Film Market (BIM), featuring a schedule of theatrical screenings, industry meetings and networking events. An initiative of event organisers Peymey Diffusion in conjunction with the support of the City of Brussels and the Brussels Capital Region, the BIM market aims are to stimulate encounters between producers and buyers, facilitate financing through presentations of national and international support mechanisms and promote Belgian professionals, studio’s and post-production firms.

The 40th BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL is a geo-blocked virtual event, available only to residents of Belgium. International press can apply for accreditation at kahina@biff.net. The 5th BRUSSELS GENRE FILM MARKET is open to all industry professionals; accreditation applications can be submitted here.