Sex, desire, love, fidelity and death… from the point of view of four women. Female
views will have an impact at #15FestivalSevilla. The surprising winner of the Golden
Bear at Berlin, “Touch Me Not”, by Adina Pintilie, will participate in the Official
Section. The Romanian filmmaker, cofounder of the Bucharest Experimental Film
Festival, offers an unusual, unreserved exploration of intimacy and sexuality, working
at the limits of reality and fiction, telling the story of a woman fighting against her
traumas. Bodies that are not the norm, minds trapped in their desires and fears, and
Pintilie looking at her intimacy in front of the camera, in a journey that is both
uncomfortable and fascinating.
Sex also drives the directing debut of the popular star of Finnish music, Anna Eriksson:
in “M”, which Seville will premiere in its Permanent Revolutions section, the
filmmaker traces the convergence between desire and death, Eros and Thanatos, in an
unconventional sensorial journey. As well as directing the film, Eriksson is the
protagonist, writer and editor, and she also participated in the work on the film’s
wardrobe, set design and sound.
Romantic love, sexual identity and fidelity form the axis of “<3”, a film that will be
shown in the Permanent Revolutions section, and is the return to the festival of María
Antón, four years after she participated as part of the collective of artists and
filmmakers lacasinegra with “Pas à Genève” (2014). Now working alone, Antón
presents a documentary which, like “Comizi d’amore” by Pier Paolo Pasolini, gives
voice to the new generations. The director approaches adolescents, chats to them, listens
to them and offers tools for reflection, while she captures their sentimental and sexual
concerns.
Not at all conventional, but equally powerful, that is the Swiss filmmaker Anja
Kofmel’s look at the war in the Balkans. Her cousin, Christian Würtenberg died there in
strange circumstances, when he was covering that conflict as a reporter. Obsessed with
those unresolved events, Kofmel follows in his footsteps trying to clarify what
happened to him. The highlight of the New Waves-Non Fiction section, “Chris the
Swiss” is an exercise in intimate memory, yes, but also a resounding exercise in style,
which combines powerful animation in black and white with archive images and with
interviews of witnesses to those events: journalists, a Spanish mercenary and even the
terrorist Carlos, the Jackal. The result, categorical and symbolic, is a warning against
forgetting and a fierce shout against the atrocities of war.
