BIFF: Competitive Films Most Diverse Yet

The Bermuda International Film Festival has unveiled the slates for both  features and full-length documentaries competing for awards at the upcoming 2011 celebration of global cinema.

And the line-ups include everything from a gritty Russian police procedural to a subversive take on the frustrations of Iranian youth to an intimate portrait of mould-breaking American indie band Fishbone [pictured] which  fused punk, funk and ska.

A BIFF spokesman says the movies in competition this year are perhaps the most diverse yet— including entries from countries and genres never before represented in Bermuda and highlighting the full spectrum of today’s independent world cinema.

Screening times and the BIFF Box office can be found online at www.biff.bm. Tickets can also be purchased at the iStore at 46 Reid Street from 10a m-2 pm (closed Sundays).

The 14th annual BIFF festival — which runs from March 18-24 – will screen a total of more than 70 films both in and out of competition. Details of BIFF’s World Cinema showcase and special presentations have already been released.

Competition Features

“Shelter”
Director Dragomir Sholev/ Bulgaria / 2010 / 88 minutes / Colour Bulgarian with English subtitles While they have been changing TV channels, making pickles or discussing politics, the parents of 12-year-old Rado have missed their son’s growing up. Now they cannot understand why, after disappearing for two days, he isn’t sorry for the nightmare he has caused them and why is he ready to run away from home with the first junkies he has met on the street.

“Who Am I?”
d. Klim Shipenko / Russia / 2010 / 98 minutes / Black & White Russian with English subtitles
An intriguing mystery of identity lost and found and based on true events, the story begins at Sevastopol train station when police find a young man without documents, who has lost his memory. The psychiatrist diagnoses this as dissociative amnesia: when a person forgets the facts of his private life but remembers the details of external events. The personal belongings of the young man should be helpful but are startling instead. Meanwhile, a dead man is found and this crime is no less confusing: no documents have been found on this body either. As the police investigation unfolds, is there a connection between these two men?

“Trust”
d. David Schwimmer/ USA / 2010 / 104 minutes / Colour
A suburban family is torn apart when fourteen-year- old Annie meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) are shattered by their daughter’s actions and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her once innocent life. “Trust” is a potent drama that cuts to the core of contemporary family life. Although the subject of online child predators is something audiences have grown familiar with, “Trust” consistently rises above expectations.

“Dog Sweat”
d. Hassein Keshavarz/Iran / 2010 / 90 minutes / Colour Persian with English subtitles
Using the subversive urgency of cinema verité, the lives of six young people unfold in present day Iran. Misunderstood by their families and oppressed by conservative Islamic society, they act out their personal desires behind closed doors. A feminist finds herself in an affair with a married man; new lovers search for a place to be physically intimate; a gay man is faced with an arranged marriage; a female pop singer risks exposure; and a grief-stricken son lashes out at fundamentalists. Nominated for a 2011 Someone to Watch, Independent Spirit Award.

“Gabi on the Roof in July”
d. Lawrence Michael Levine/ USA / 2010 / 99 minutes / Colour
“Gabi on the Roof in July” is an ensemble comedy about ex- girlfriends, sibling rivalry and whipped cream in a city that’s constantly in flux. Gabi, a rambunctious Oberlin undergrad, heads to New York City to spend the summer with her older brother, Sam, seeking solidarity in the wake of her parents’ divorce. When she gets there, she finds Sam too busy juggling women and too irked by her provocative antics and almost constant nudity to give her the guidance she needs. In an effort to get Sam’s attention, Gabi seduces his free-loving, freeloading college buddy, only to find she’s in over her head.

“Submarine”
d. Richard Ayoade/ UK / 2010 / 94 minutes / Colour
Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge. Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate is a consummate anti-hero with two big ambitions: to save his parents’ marriage via a carefully plotted intervention and to lose his virginity before his next birthday. Worried that his mother (Sally Hawkins) is having an affair with the new age neighbour (Paddy Considine), Oliver monitors his parents’ sex life by charting the dimmer switch in their bedroom. He also forges suggestive love letters from Mom to Dad. Adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed wry novel and bolstered by aesthetic wit, fabulous performances, and a clever score by Andrew Hewitt (with songs by Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys), “Submarine” evokes the spontaneity and breezy cinematic cool of the French New Wave.

Competition Documentaries

“My Perestroika”
d. Robin Hessman Russia / 2010 / 87 minutes / Colour Russian with English subtitles
“My Perestroika” is a documentary that adopts the idea of the ‘everyman story’, suggesting that the unheralded lives of the last generation of Soviets to grow up behind the Iron Curtain hold the key to understanding the contradictions of modern Russia. Crafted during five years of researching and shooting, and based on almost a decade of living in Russia in the 1990s, Robin Hessman’s film poetically interweaves an extraordinary trove of home movies, Soviet propaganda films, and intimate access to five schoolmates whose linked, but very different, histories offer a moving portrait of newly middle-class Russians living lives they could never have imagined when they were growing up.

“Race”
d. Katherine Cecil. USA / 2010 / 59 minutes / Colour
“Race” is a cautionary tale about how not to go about rebuilding a city post-disaster and challenges the mythology of post-racialism in the age of President Obama. But then Katrina hit. Against the backdrop of a devastated city, a largely displaced citizenry, and an increasingly divided community, this documentary charts the unlikely 2006 re-election of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin by a completely different electorate than had first put him in office. Race tracks what happened and why during a pivotal political moment for a city in crisis.

“The Redemption of General Butt Naked”
d. Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion USA / 2010 / 84 minutes / Colour
Joshua Milton Blahyi is a brutal warlord who has reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist. Dubbed ‘General Butt Naked’ for fighting with nothing more than an AK-47 and a pair of leather shoes, Blahyi believed he possessed supernatural powers that made him impervious to bullets. The General and his army of child soldiers are said to have killed thousands during Liberia’s horrific 14-year civil war. Following a dramatic conversion to Christianity, the General abruptly laid down his weapons in 1996, leaving the war at the height of his power. Today, the General has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as evangelist Joshua Milton Blahyi. In a riveting portrait that unfolds over the course of five years, the film follows Joshua’s crusade to redeem his past.

“Stolen”
d. Violeta Ayala & Dan Fallshaw Australia / 2009 / 77 minutes / Colour English, Spanish, and Hassaniya with English subtitles
Filmmakers Ayala and Fallshaw follow Fetim Sellami, a Saharawi refugee, to Western Sahara for a reunion with her mother. Mother and child were separated when Sellami was a toddler. But the UN-sponsored reunion reveals a secret which spirals the film into a dark world the filmmakers could never have imagined. The black Saharawis start talking about a forbidden subject — their enslavement. The filmmakers recount moments of terror when their lives were in danger as well as the extreme hardships in getting the footage across borders. Stolen is a compelling, modern-day, real-life cloak-and-dagger thriller.

“Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone”
d. Chris Metzler and Lev Anderson USA / 2010 / 107 minutes / Colour
“Everyday Sunshine” is a documentary about the band Fishbone, musical pioneers who have been rocking on the margins of pop culture for the past 25 years. From the streets of South Central Los Angeles and the competitive Hollywood music scene of the 1980s, the band rose to prominence, only to fall apart when on the verge of ‘making it’. Laurence Fishburne narrates this entertaining journey into the personal lives of a unique black rock band in their quest to reclaim their musical legacy while debunking the myths of young urban black men.

“An African Election”
d. Jarreth Merz Ghana / 2010 / 89 minutes / Colour English and Akan with English subtitles
The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind the scenes at the complex political machinery of a third world democracy struggling to legitimise itself. Director Jarreth Merz follows the key players for almost three months to provide an unprecedented insider’s view of the political, economic and social forces at work in Ghana. He builds suspense by taking the viewer down the back roads of the nation to capture each unexpected twist and turn in a contest that is always exciting and never predictable.

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