The 8th Reykjavík International Film Festival took place in Iceland’s capital from September 22 to October 2. This year the Golden Puffin Discovery Award, RIFF’s highest honour, went to Russian feature Twilight Portrait, directed by Angelina Nikonova.
The film centres on a social worker named Marina, played by actress Olga Dykhovichnaya, who co-wrote the film with Nikonova. The film paints a stereotypically bleak picture of modern Russia, where ethics and compassion are rare qualities among both upper and lower classes. Betrayed by her husband and best friend, robbed by young hoodlums and violated by the forces of order, Marina refuses to carry on as normal. Rather than returning to her tiny government office, she abandons her bourgeois life and takes a radically hands-on approach to confronting the social problems around her.
Nikonova’s win at RIFF is a huge achievement, given the controversial nature of her narrative and, above all, the film’s low production values: it is inspiring when the interest of a story, and the director’s determination to bring it to life, can overcome financial and technological limitations.
Described by the festival program as a revenge thriller, Twilight Portrait’s version of score-settling couldn’t be further removed from a film like I Spit on Your Grave. Marina clearly considers using violence to get even with her aggressor, but at the decisive moment she can’t go through with it. Although eminently unsatisfying to an audience outraged by police brutality and corruption, it is arguably realistic for Marina to remain true to her gentle nature. She ought to be admired for refusing to contribute to the cycle of violence.
It is true, also, that love and understanding are more constructive than hatred and revenge. Still, the insistence with which Marina turns the other cheek starts to look absurd as she is assaulted over and over again. It is naïve to suggest that she can easily transform a deeply damaged man through her dogged declarations of love. Furthermore, it seems masochistic of Marina, as the man’s victim, to take on the job of transforming him. If the director intended Marina as a female Christ figure, she has overlooked the complicating fact that for women, submitting to violence is not revolutionary: it’s far too common.
The festival’s next most successful film, winning the FIPRESCI Prize and the Church of Iceland Award was Rúnar Rúnarsson’s fiction feature Volcano. The title makes literal reference to a volcanic eruption in the Westman Islands which forced residents to evacuate. The film’s central family relocated to Reykjavík and never moved back. The parents, Hannes and Anna, are now elderly and their children grown up.
Depressed about his retirement, Hannes has become a grumpy old man, and here the film’s title becomes metaphorical. Initially, it is Hannes’ annoyance that rumbles like a volcano, and small explosions come in the form of family disagreements. When there is a real family emergency, though, Hannes’ caring, emotional side erupts all at once.
Like all of the competitors in RIFF’s ‘New Visions’ section, Rúnarsson is a newcomer to directing features. But he has already established a distinct visual style, using door frames and mirrors to divide and transform domestic space, providing a metaphor for the characters’ isolation and distorted views of each other. He makes equally masterful use of his native Iceland’s awesome landscape and the rugged terrain of his characters’ faces. Although its emphasis on illness, concealed emotion and the passage of time make Volcano a tearjerker, it is important to confront this subject matter, and Rúnarsson leads his audience with immense sensitivity.
Treating equally important subject matter, Andrea Segre’s Li and the Poet earned a special mention from RIFF’s main jury. The film’s title characters are a Chinese immigrant to Italy (played by Zhao Tao) and an old lay poet named Beppi (Rade Sherbedgia). Having emigrated from Yugoslavia some 30 years earlier, Beppi is the only villager who shows Shun Li any sympathy. The local population sees their friendship as a threat, however, as do Shun Li’s employers. The latter warn that her time as a bonded worker may be extended, and it could take longer for her to pay for her eight-year-old son to join her.
Some weaknesses in the script and direction of Li and the Poet (in the form of awkwardness, clunky symbolism or cliché) betray that this is Segre’s first fiction feature. However, the understanding and nuance with which he treats the subject of immigration bear witness to his experience as a documentary filmmaker.
Li and the Poet points to the fact that many Europeans have become immigrants themselves, and seeks to erase over-awareness of racial difference by emphasising similarities in cultural traditions. Discussing poetry, fishing and family, Shun Li and Beppi discover common ground which could unite Shun Li with all of the other villagers, if they could get over their xenophobia.
Karl Markovics’ film Breathing is another sensitive film, unfortunately ignored by the juries. It follows 19-year-old Roman Kogler, an orphan turned juvenile delinquent: if his upcoming hearing goes well, he may be released, and live life as a free adult for the first time. As it will help his case, he takes a day job on the outside, working for the Vienna City Morgue. He takes advantage of his limited freedom to find out about his birth mother, and discovers how close he himself once came to death.
The film’s quiet, observational style has two effects: first, it mirrors Roman’s own calm introversion which occasionally becomes frustrating: the audience can imagine how he must be feeling, but may want to know more. Secondly, it extends the character’s impression of gentleness and reserve, which contrasts with his past offence and the way he is currently treated: locked up every night in a cell like a dangerous prisoner, bullied by his macho colleague at work, and perpetually denied any tenderness by other adults in his life. The film’s symbolism is present and rich, but beautifully understated.
For more on this year’s RIFF visit riff.is
Reykjavík International Film Festival 2011 – Round Up (text) by Alison Frank is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
