PREVIEW: 2021 IRANIAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 2021 Iranian Film Festival (IFFA) commences its nationwide rollout this week, with ten films in competition as part of this year’s celebration of Iranian film culture. Despite a 12 month period that has proved particularly difficult for international filmmakers, the 10th edition of IFFA features a complex and layered selection of award-winning features from the Islamic Republic.

“We have had a very strong year for Iranian cinema, enabling us to present a fantastic and diverse range of films for our audiences in Australia,” said Festival Director, Armin Miladi. “In particular, we are delighted to present three films from female filmmakers.” 

Foremost among these is the Opening Night film Titi, written, produced and directed by Ida Panahandeh. Steeped in Iranian Gypsy lore, it is the story of a friendship between a hospitalized, critically ill physicist, working on a theory about black holes, and an eccentric hospital housekeeper named TiTi, possessed of supernatural powers that she must use to take her new friend on a mystical odyssey.

A highlight of the IFFA will be writer-director Massoud Bakhshi’s Yalda: A Night of Forgiveness, a searing based-on-fact drama about a young woman, sentenced to death for an act of self-defence, who seeks atonement on live television. The riveting and superbly acted film, which poses a critical moral conundrum born out of a theocratic system that disfavours women, won the Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema Dramatic) at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. 

Other highlights of the capital city screening schedules include The Wasteland (Dasht-E Khamoush; pictured, below right), an incisive look at life on the outskirts of Iranian society focussing on a brick factory supervisor who acts as go-between for the workers and the boss; Majid Majidi’s Sun Children, the story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends who survive doing small jobs and committing petty crimes to make fast cash; and Shahram Mokri’s Careless Crime (Jenayat-E Bi Deghat; pictured, top), in which a modern-day plot to burn down a movie theatre replicates a historical tragedy that occurred four decades ago, as Iranian society was teetering on revolution.

A sidebar presentation will focus on the culture and music of Southern Iran, the region adjacent to the Persian Gulf, as seen in two rousing documentaries - Raha Faridi’s Chicheka Lullaby, a study of the alternative artist and musician Ebrahim Monsefi, and Mohsen Nesavand’s Sebaloo, which highlights the African music culture of the region and one of its greatest proponents, Mahmoud Bardaknia. The centrepiece of the sidebar will be Manijeh Hekmat’s recent hit, Bandar Band (pictured, above right), a music-infused twist on a road movie that follows a band's day-long journey across a flooded Tehran landscape.

 IFFA 2021 will also honour late director Kambuzia Partovi with a screening of his final film, The Truck (Kamion), the story of a Yazidi woman and her two children escaping an ISIS massacre. Partovi was a writer and co-director, known for Closed Curtain (2013), winner of Best Screenplay at Berlinale 2013; Café Transit (2005), his nation’s submission for the Foreign Film Oscar race; and, his groundbreaking family film Golnar (1989), which used music and puppet animals to help the lives of villagers in rural Iran. The director died on November 24, 2020 in Tehran due to complications from Covid-19.

The 10th Iranian Film Festival unfolds in Perth at Luna Cinemas Leederville, 20 - 26 May; in Brisbane at the Elizabeth Picture Theatre, 27 May - 2 June; at Cinema Nova in Melbourne, 3 - 9 June; and in Sydney at Dendy Newtown, 10 - 16 June. An online version of the festival will be held from 20-30 June 2021 Australia-wide. Full session and ticketing information can be found at the festival’s Official Website.

JUDI DENCH ‘LITTERBOX SHUFFLE’ INCLUDED ON CATS 4K DISC RELEASE

Director Tom Hooper has confirmed that ‘Litterbox Shuffle’, a dance number shot at a reported cost of $1.5million but cut from the final edit of his 2019 adaptation CATS, will be reinstated in sequence for the 4K Blu-ray disc.

An original composition penned for the much-maligned bigscreen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage phenomenon, ‘Litterbox Shuffle’ features Dame Judi Dench in her role as ‘Old Deuteronemy’, scratching at an uncleaned litter tray in the hope of finding some fresh granules upon which to defecate. 

The scratching leads to a modern dance/tap number which also includes James Cordern (as ‘Bustopher Jones’) and Rebel Wilson (as ‘Jennyandots’), reportedly burying themselves in the waste tray and, at one point, laying prone as Hooper’s camera captures them making ‘litter angels’ with their arms and legs.

More to follow….

OUR DEFINITIVE DOZEN FROM SWIFF 2021

It has become Australia's most in-demand destination festival. In the coastal paradise of Coffs Harbour, Screenwave International Film Festival (SWIFF, as it has become affectionately known) is a showcase of the planet's greatest cinema, but also a cultural event that is part of what defines its hometown. In 2021, co-directors Dave Horsley and Kate Howat up the ante again - acting great Jack Thompson has been announced as festival patron; mentors, technicians and industry insiders will guide fresh minds through the inaugural SWIFF Create initiative; and, executive chefs Richie Dolan and Carla Jones prepare a degustation menu celebrating food and wine from the region. All this before you even get to the film program!

SCREEN-SPACE Managing Editor Simon Foster will be present again when the 2021 event kicks off April 14, broadcasting his podcast Screen Watching from the festival and co-hosting the Sci-Fi Trivia Night. He'll also be watching a lot of films; here's his list of 12 must-see SWIFF sessions. All ticketing and session details can be found at the festival's official website...

A BOY CALLED SAILBOAT: In Cameron Nugent’s magical-realism masterpiece, soulful innocence and communal humanity combine with soaring potency. A little boy with a ukulele and love for his grandma can transform the world, the implication being we all can if we just believe we can. The perfect post-2020 movie. Soundtrack to be performed live The Grigoryan Brothers. 

ALIENS: James Cameron’s perfect sequel (perhaps the best ever?) remains a riveting, raucous celebration of speculative cinema - a lean, mean exercise in myth-building and world-crafting, in which macho, militaristic posturing is countered by themes of maternal love and female empowerment. With acid-seeping aliens, to boot! (Pictured, right: Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn in Aliens)   

COLLECTIVE: The Romanian health care sector harbours corruption, greed and tragedy; organised crime and political heavies are profiteering, while patients die. Director Alexander Nanau’s insider account of the journalists fighting to expose and dismantle their country’s systemic avarice is thrilling, inspiring and terrifying; ranks alongside All the President’s Men and The Post as one of the great films about the power of the press.

THE PAINTED BIRD: A young Jewish boy’s odyssey of horror through Eastern Europe’s combat-ravaged landscape makes for a WWII story of merciless heartbreak. Recalling the hell-on-earth nihilism of Elem Klimov’s 1985 Russian masterpiece Come and See, Václav Marhoul’s shattering monochromatic nightmare is the festival’s bravest programming choice, the kind of film that reinforces SWIFF is a truly global film celebration.  

DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA: In 1984, David Byrne fronted arguably the greatest concert film ever made in Stop Making Sense. Thirty-seven years later, he delivers another one. Directed by Spike Lee, American Utopia - a filmed-version of Byrne’s hit Broadway concert series - is as purely joyful, soul-enriching, thought-provoking American performance art as has ever been created. 

JUMBO: It’s called objectophilia, the sexual attraction to and emotional connection with an inanimate object. Noémie Merlant, star of one of the great cinematic romances, 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this time focuses her passion towards ‘Jumbo’, the latest crowd-pleasing attraction at the local amusement park. I kid you not, this is the most unlikely and wonderful love story of the year.

LITTLE GIRL: Bring Tissues #1 - Sébastien Lifshitz captures a life both coming into focus and transitioning in Little Girl, the story of Sasha, an eight year-old assigned male at birth who wants to live as a girl. She possesses a soaring spirit, a strength of character that is called upon in the face of social intolerance and institutional bias. Documentary filmmaking at its finest

STRAY: Bring Tissues #2 - A study in displacement as seen from the perspective of three homeless dogs living on the streets and in the abandoned buildings of a Turkish metropolis. Elizabeth Lo’s flea-on-the-wall camera provides a glimpse into lives seeking companionship, acceptance and basic needs; the smallest moment of kindness carries with it immense change.

BREAKER MORANT: With apologies to Mad Max 2, Starstruck and Don’s Party (another Beresford joint), my favourite Australian film of all time is Breaker Morant. In telling the story of our nation’s most famous scapegoat, Bruce Beresford forges one of the great anti-war films, filled with iconic moments (“Rule 303!”), extraordinary craftsmanship and career-defining performances. (Pictured, right; l-r, Lewis Fitzgerald, Bryan Brown, Edward Woodward and Jack Thompson in Breaker Morant)     

THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN: As we hurtle towards a technological singularity - a world in which robotics and humankind share a consciousness - what responsibilities do we, the ‘creators’, have to the sentient ‘beings’ we have made in our own image? Director Sandra Wollner poses this question in her stark, often shocking, deeply complex near-future sci-fi drama. The best debut feature of 2020.      

MEANDER: Challenge your latent claustrophobia with Mathieu Turi’s white-knuckler, in which a young woman (Gaia Weiss, from TV’s Vikings) must navigate booby-trapped tunnels to discover why and how she ended up in this predicament. A little bit ‘Saw’, a little bit ‘Cube’, but so drenched in its own unique style and narrative flourishes it stands on its own merits.

WHITE RIOT: London, late 1970s. Ultra-right racist Martin Webster’s National Front party, spouting Nazi rhetoric and backed by some high-profile music industry types (um...f*** you, Eric Clapton), is polluting the minds of U.K. youth. To fight this scourge, a small group of anti-fascist activists create Rock Against Racism, and a counter-movement is born. Rubika Shah’s inspiring account of the rise of goodness amidst a nation’s ugliest era is enraging, enlightening and ultimately, exhilarating.

IFFR 50 GOES GLOBAL WITH 2021 AWARDS ROSTER

The 2021 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has spread the awards love far and wide for its expanded 50th anniversary edition, with trophies going to auteurs from India, Kosovo, Bosnia, Argentina, Thailand, Norway, The Ivory Coast and America, to name just a few.

Debutant director Vinothraj P.S’s southern India-set Pebbles (pictured, above) won the top honour, the 2021 Tiger Award. In a series of prepared statements, the Jury collective provided valuable insight into their decisions. Tiger jurists Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Orwa Nyrabia, Hala Elkoussy, Helena van der Meulen and Ilse Hughan said of Vinothraj’s work; “Creating a maximum impact with a minimum in means, the filmmaker reaches his goal with the same conviction and determination as his main characters,” adding the film is, “A lesson in pure cinema, captivating us with its beauty and humour, in spite of its grim subject.”

I Comete – A Corsican Summer (pictured, right) by French filmmaker Pascal Tagnati and Looking for Venera by Norika Sefa from Kosovo both won Special Jury Awards. The BankGiro Loterij Audience Award went to Quo Vadis, Aida? by Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić. The FIPRESCI Prize was given to The Edge of Daybreak by Thai filmmaker Taiki Sakpisit. Norwegian director Ane Hjort Guttu won the KNF prize for her short film Manifesto. La nuit des rois by Philippe Lacôte from Côte d’Ivoire won the Youth Jury Award. 

The VPRO Big Screen Award went to Argentinian Ana Katz’s El perro que no calla (The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet). VPRO Big Screen jury members Mauro Corstiaans, Oriana Baloriano, Frits Bienfait, Magda van Vloten and Mirjam van den Brink called the monochromatic film, “A hopeful and optimistic story, without toning down the challenges for especially younger people,” observing that Katz favoured, “radical choices regarding narrative, structure and cinematography.”

The prestigious Robby Müller Award, which honours an ‘image maker’ (director of photography, filmmaker or visual artist) who, in the spirit of the late Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, has created an authentic, credible and emotionally striking visual language throughout their oeuvre, was bestowed upon American filmmaker Kelly Reichhardt (pictured, below), whose latest feature First Cow screened at IFFR 2021.

“We see in Kelly Reichardt, not just a liberating independence and clarity of aesthetic vision, but also someone who, in a self-evident way, carries on Robby Müller’s legacy,” stated the Müller Award jury. “They share a talent for depicting the American landscape in all its variety as much more than a supporting character, and for portraying humans in the most subtle and sensitive way. Both are able to visualise what can’t be expressed in words by creating pristine, unforced images in which the narrative can unfold and evolve, and the viewer's gaze can wander.”

The full list of IFFR 2021 winners are:

TIGER COMPETITION
Tiger Award: “Pebbles,” by Vinothraj P.S.
Special Jury Award: “I Comete – A Corsican Summer,” by Pascal Tagnati
Special Jury Award: “Looking for Venera,” by Norika Sefa

BIG SCREEN COMPETITION
VPRO Big Screen Award: “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet,” by Ana Katz

AMMODO TIGER SHORT COMPETITION
Ammodo Tiger Short Award: “Sunsets, Everyday” by Basir Mahmood
Ammodo Tiger Short Award: “Terranova” by Alejandro Pérez Serrano and Alejandro Alonso Estrella
Ammodo Tiger Short Award: “Maat Means Land,” by Fox Maxy

OTHER AWARDS
Robby Müller Award: Kelly Reichardt
BankGiro Loterij Audience Award: “Quo vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Žbanić
FIPRESCI Award: “The Edge of Daybreak,” by Taiki Sakpisit
KNF Award: “Manifesto,” by Ane Hjort Guttu
Youth Jury Award: “La nuit des rois,” by Philippe Lacôte

SCREEN-SPACE'S BEST & WORST FILMS OF 2020

So I come to my annual Best of... duties in a bit of a daze. 2020 was the year when the movie business, in the words of George Costanza, “took a bit of a tumble”. Productions ground to a halt; distribution schedules were reshuffled, then abandoned; cinemas closed their doors, some of them permanently. With the global population housebound, streaming services boomed, to such an extent that Warner Bros., one of the iconic names associated with ‘Old Hollywood’, shared their entire post-Christmas slate with their digital platform HBO Max, changing the traditional theatrical window forever. It’s been a helluva year.

It wasn’t all dire times. A dedicated team helped me launch the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, a ‘roll of the dice’ venture which worked out pretty damn good. And seeking out the best small-screen programming redefined the big-screen bent of our yearly list, with nearly half coming via the Amazon/Shudder/Netflix/Disney+ combo.

I’ve always said, “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion”, but I’m open to yours (that's not entirely true), so let me know if I’ve missed anything. Please seek out some of these lesser-known films. Thanks for your continued support, and stay healthy...

2020 FILMS IN GENERAL RELEASE (THEATRICAL/STREAMING):

1. DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA (Dir: Spike Lee; USA; 105 mins) In adapting the Broadway show (remember those?) borne of the brilliant mind of the Talking Head’s frontman, Spike Lee found heartfelt joy and a purity of spirit that all but washes away the stink that has settled on America over the last few years. Byrne’s observations of humanity and society, in a version of song and dance that taps into childlike glee and aged melancholy in equal measure, make him a profoundly important contemporary commentator. Thirty-plus years ago, Byrne fronted arguably the greatest concert film of all time; in 2020, he did it again. 

2. THE VAST OF NIGHT (Dir: Andrew Patterson; USA; 91 mins)
3. THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (Dir: Sandra Wollner; Austria, Germany; 94 mins)
4. BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM (Dir: Jason Woliner; UK, USA; 95 mins)
5. THE ASSISTANT (Dir: Kitty Green; USA; 87 mins)
6. LET HIM GO (Dir: Thomas Bezucha; USA; 103 mins)
7. HIS HOUSE (Dir: Remi Weekes; UK; 93 mins)
8. MIGNONNES (Cuties | Dir: Maïmouna Doucouré; France; 96 mins)
9. NOMADLAND (Dir: Chloe Zhao; USA; 108 mins)
10.  ATHLETE A (Dirs: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk; USA; 103 mins)
The Next Best Ten: MISS JUNETEENTH; RELIC; DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD; HOST; ANOTHER ROUND; BECKY; MULAN; BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC; LAST AND FIRST MEN; UNDERWATER.

2020 FILMS VIEWED AT FESTIVALS (AWAITING RELEASE IN AUSTRALIA):

1. ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (Dir: Regina King; USA; 110 mins) Oscar-winning actress Regina King proves herself Hollywood’s most potent new multi-hyphenate as director of this stirring adaptation of Kemp Powers play. Capturing a fictional moment in time when American icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown meet in motel room in the ‘60s and consider their roles in the nation’s social upheaval, One Night in Miami is actor’s showpiece, a wordsmith’s masterwork, an editor’s triumph – all under the baton of a filmmaker fully invested in the heart and soul of the source material. Will be going wide in 2021 and certain to feature come Oscar time in April; got a peek thanks to TIFF.

2. THE FABRICATED (Dir: Ali Katmiri; Iran; 30 mins)
3. SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (Dir: Roseanne Liang; New Zealand, USA; 83 mins)
4. PIECES OF A WOMAN (Dir: Kornél Mundruczó; Canada, Hungary, USA; 126 mins)
5. BUIO (Darkness | Dir: Emanuela Rossi; Italy; 96 mins)
6. L’OISEAU DE PARADIS (Paradise | Dir: Paul Manaté; France, French Polynesia; 90 mins)
7. BREEDER (Dir: Jens Dahl; Denmark; 107 mins)
8. NADIA, BUTTERFLY (Dir: Pascal Plante; Canada; 107 mins)
9. LA REINA DE LOS LAGARTOS (The Queen of The Lizards | Dirs: Juan González, Nando Martínez; Spain; 63 mins)
10.  CINEMATOGRAPHER (Dir: Dan Asma; USA; 83 mins)
The Next Best Ten: VICIOUS FUN; SHIFTER; GAGARINE; WILLIE, JAMALEY & THE CACACOON; COME TRUE; FRIED BARRY; THE GO-GO’S.

THE WORST FILMS OF 2020:

Living the shut-in life meant I dodged the worst that global cinema had to offer, but I couldn’t always help myself. Just so I could wade into the echo chamber of abuse, I watched Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy (who did anybody think it would appeal to?); Australia’s favourite son Paul Hogan (circa 1978-1989) signed off on his film career with the miserable The Very Excellent Mr Dundee; and, Robert Downey Jr.’s accent alone was enough to skewer Dolittle, a hideous reimagining of the classic story (is it though?). But the year’s worst was a franchise-starter wannabe that Disney began adapting from Eoin Colfer’s blockbuster Y.A. books a decade ago, hoping it would fill the box office void left by Harry Potter’s maturing. Instead, director Kenneth Branagh’s ARTEMIS FOWL floundered in expensive post-production hell before being dumped to the Disney Plus channel, fuelling early concerns that streaming platforms would become clogged with studio deadweight. Judi Dench (pictured, above, dignity intact) should give her Oscar back; Branagh, Disney and everyone involved owe the legion of Artemis adorers an apology for running so afoul of their beloved boy hero.