LOVE AS YOU WISH
Now on its fifth day, the #15FestivalSevilla offers three very different love stories in its Official Section. With 'Plaire Aimer et Courir Vite', the French director Christophe Honoré offers an emotional carpe diem, filled with film, musical and literary references. Set in Oaris in the early 90s, this sentimental journey follows the relationship between a twenty year old avid for experiences and a writer, older than him and ill with AIDS, who opt for drinking life and loving without limits, facing the shadow of death. The director of 'La belle personne' or 'Les chansons d'amour' chooses a light tone and transmits a great fondness for his characters and for a period he experienced, like the young man from the provinces recently arrived in the capital played by Vincent Lacoste. After presenting ‘Plaire, Aimer et Cuurir Vite’ at the Cannes Festival, Christophe Honoré comes to Seville and will participate in a talk with the audience in the Nervión cinemas.
Love and art make up the structure of the latest film by Florian Heckel von Donnersmark (winner of, among other awards, the Oscar for his acclaimed film, 'The Lives of Others'). In 'Never Look Away’ there is also room for the historical gaze (the film covers three decades) and the epic portrait, fascism and painting, through the story of an artist who longs for freedom and is in love, unwittingly, with the daughter of the Nazi who brought tragedy to his family.
Feelings are also protagonists in 'Amin', by Philippe Faucon. This time in the Official Section Out of Competition, the film tells a universal tale: that of the double life of a Senegalese migrant who, after leaving his family in his country, survives as a labourer in France, escaping from loneliness in the arms of a nurse. The French actress Emmanuelle Devos plays the female lead: in a few days, Devos will be at the festival to receive the City of Seville honorary award.
Breaking with the expected
One of the most amusing offers in the Official Section combines passion for art, fast paced action and animated drawings: with 'Ruben Brandt, Collector', the painter and sculptor Milorad Krstić has moved into feature films, two decades after winning at the Berlin Festival with his short film 'My Baby Left Me' (1995). Krstić tells the amazing odyssey of a psychotherapist who, along with a handful of patients, forms a band of art thieves who commit their crimes in the world’s most important art galleries.
Another debutant, the Swiss director Anja Kofmel, also plays with animation tools, showing that they can meld perfectly with documentary narrative: in the New Waves - Non Fiction section, 'Chris the Swiss' is a creative, forceful exercise in the director’s personal memory, marked by the mysterious death of her journalist cousin, the Chris of the title, in the war in the Balkans. Kofmel follows his trail, mixing archive images, interviews (with journalists, with a Spanish mercenary, and even with the terrorist Carlos, the Jackal), and black and white animation. A complex process that she will discuss in a talk with the audience.
Humour, the absurd and... football! feature in another of the most curious and interesting offers in the New Waves – Non Fiction section: with 'Infinite Football', the Romanian Corneliu Porumboiu ('El tesoro') plays with the resources of the documentary to portray a true visionary: Laurentiu Ginghina is a government employee who invented a variation on football, with new and much less restrictive rules, to compensate for the injury that kept him away from the football field. Football as a metaphor for perseverance and the capacity for improving oneself. Porumboiu will talk about all that with the audience.
The New Waves also offers another two titles with a subsequent talk with their director: 'The Tree', by André Gil Mata, which combines formal minimalist and thematic depth, and 'When the Trees Fall', by Marysia Nikitiuk, a dreamlike and very particular fairy tale. The same section has 'In My Room', by Ulrich Köhler, which gives a twist to the classic story of post-apocalyptic survival.
Close looks...
Andalusian Panorama is not the only section with films set locally. Isaki Lacuesta won the Gold Shell at the last San Sebastian Festival with 'Entre dos aguas', which returns to the the two brothers who featured in his 'La leyenda del tiempo' to show what has become of them and how they continue trying to survive in the more depressed environment of the Isla de San Fernando. A beautiful social portrait which the Catalan director will present in a Special Screening in the Lope de Vega Theatre.
In the Andalusian panorama, the festival has a double offer: 'Tierras solares', by Laura Hojman, follows the poet Rubén Darío in the days when his poor health brought him to Andalusia. And it also programmes the second session of short films, presented by their directors and made up by 'Bobinas ovinas 1-7' (by Bruno Delgado), 'Mirar' (by Bruno Ojeda), 'Victoria' (by Alejandra Perea), 'Domesticado' (by Juan Francisco Viruega), 'Hotel Royal Co' (by Paula Villegas and Rakesh Narwani) and 'Puesto 93' (by Mateo Cabeza). And in Found Rituals we will have the double programme made up by three brief films: 'Insular', 'Los montes' and 'El becerro pintado'.
Distant looks...
Other films shown by the #15FestivalSevilla this Tuesday are 'Endless Tail', by the Croatian director Zeljka Sukova, which is in Endless Revolutions, and starts from a childhood fantasy to pay tribute to, or be inspired by, the cinema of Vera Chytilova.
Students will enjoy a session specially for them, in the Lope de Vega, of 'Float Like a Butterfly', by Carmel Winters: an empowering portrait, set in the Ireland of the 60s, about an adolescent who tries to follow in the footsteps of her idol Muhammad Ali.
And from Iceland there is 'Under the Tree', by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson. Premiered at the Venice Festival and the winner of multiple awards at the Venice Festival, the film moves between black comedy and self-destructive family drama. It is part of the EFA Selection.
The retrospectives will continue on their happy way with the notable 'Simon the Magician', by Ildikó Enyedi; 'The Golden Thing', by Ula Stöckl, and 'You, the Living' and 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence', by Roy Andersson. And Serge Toubiana will present the second of the three classics he has programmed in the Tour/Detour section: 'Masculin Fémenin', by Jean-Luc Godard.
As every day, spectators will have the chance to catch up on the talks from the previous day at the second screenings of several films in the Nervión cinemas: Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega ('Idrissa, crónica de una muerte cualquiera'), Babis Makridis ('Pity'), María Antón ('<3'), Petra Szöcs ('Deva') and Sandro Aguilar ('Mariphasa') will again share their thoughts with the audience.
The power of a range of greys
One of the very special, and unusual, offers at the Seville Festival can be found in the Monochrome section: it is a beautiful and painstaking programme of animated short films in black and white, which take their inspiration from painting and design, and use the purity of chiaroscuro. Eleven pieces that come from Spain, Slovenia, Poland, France, Iceland, Germany, the United Kingdom and Slovakia.
Another notable appointment: the one that will take the German director Ula Stöckl, the subject of a homage from the #15FestivalSevilla, to the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Seville, to talk about film, art and feminism.
And like every night, there’s no cinema without a musical offering. From 00:30, in the Sala X, a double bill full of energy: The Hi-Risers + DJ Conde Duque.