di  Anna BIELAK

- programma

- PREMI

> Honey di Semih Kaplanoglu

> If I want to whistle, ... di Florin Serban
> The kids are all right di L. Cholodenko

> THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (conferenza stampa)

> faith di Burban Qurbani

> howl di Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

> On the Path di Jasmila Žbanić

> When We Leave di Feo Aladag

> When We Leave (intervista alla regista)

Honey

di Semih Kaplanoglu

Turchia 2010, 104’

Orso d'Oro 2010 miglior film

30/30

Children on the screen often attract attention with their innocence. They bring back memories of naivety, replaced later by experience of the adulthood. There is no irony in their eyes neither pain, unless is a cause of bike accident or so. They do not use subtexts, even if they usually do not let themselves to stay in silence according to events they are surrounded by. Their questions are limited to the ones, which lead them to extend their living territory. We are convinced that not before they learn the meaning of the outside world, they will grow up to self-consciousness and paint their inner landscape.
From time to time, movies which changing that point of view appear on the stage. As we can see in Semiha Kaplanoglu feature Honey (Bal), screened in The 60th Berlinale Competition, seven-year-old Yusuf (Bora Altas) seems to know and feel more than he should as such a young boy. He spends a lot of time with his father – the beekeeper. Yusuf helps him with gathering black hive’s honey. The boy’s fascination and father’s affection lead to an extraordinary and intimate relation between them, strengthened by subtle gestures. Yusuf is dedicated to that relationship. To a large extent he resign from his peer’s plays. Forest and walks with his father appeared as sufficient to exploitation. They helps him with maturing, even if his delicate emotions became simply strange and unrecognized by his classmate’s.
On the other hand, cultivating sensivity cut the boy of from acting as a kid in children’s world. While his school “friends” are playing in the garden during break, Yusuf is always just standing alone in the class and looking at them with the distance of the second floor. Consciously, he distancing himself from the world he does not manage with. He has constant problems with reading and writing, he usually stammer the word out with fear standing in front of the class.
Semih Kaplanoglu mentioned that to a high degree Yusuf’s character has been build up with fragments of his own memories. The artist’s childhood was the main point of reference for his film. Telling the boy’s story, he was recalling his own school problems, old questions with no answers and nature, that was the landscape of his naïve dreams. So to say, he seems to decide that the high time to find the mould of the man had come and he discover it in the young boy’s nature. He was looking for the truth and rub himself against it with Yusuf’s seemingly immature eyes. With subtle observation, Kaplanoglu catches the boy’s ironic glance at the school teacher or his loving look at father. He unveiled fear and self-conscious, infantilism and wisdom. He find the slot where reality mixed with dreams, where the boy is hiding and which helped him deals with the world.
There is additionally significant to know that Honey, which tells a story about childhood, is movie that closed the Yusuf Trilogy as it’s last part. The director called it the wide retrospection. Previous Milk referred to the Yusuf’s university years. In the Egg he looks at him as an old man. Yet, at the end he come back to the boy’s early years to unveiled the base which he used to create a mature man. He has done it perfectly.

howl

di Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Stati Uniti 2009, 90’

Concorso

25/30

Seven years ago Gus Van Sant was the executive producer of Jonathan Caoutte's Tarnation, which was nominated five times in several categories and get eight awards at prestigious film festival’s all over the world. At this year’s Berlinale Competition we may see his next production about homo-sexuality and art - Howl directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

Howl - named by the significant Allen Ginsberg’s poem was filmed in 14 shoot days in New York City, based on original court transcripts and print interviews with one of the best know beat generation artist. The author of Howl is telling the story about his life and creative activity. During open suit in court concerned on his poem, which has been accused with incompatibility to social rules, the viewers familiarize themselves with Ginsberg language and cast a glance at his inner world thanks to few animations created in San Francisco and Thailand, based on illustrations from Ginsberg’s collaborator Eric Drooker. The legendary directors in the field of documentary film try to make a multilayered picture about the cult poem of America. So in the three interwoven stories - the unfolding of a landmark 1957 obscenity trial; the revelation of a renegade artist breaking down barriers to find love and an imaginative ride through a prophetic masterpiece that rocked a generation - Ginsberg shows up as a men with many faces. That’s way artist (played by James Franco) who is looking for the entrance into art life is appeared also as a kind of lost boy, who is afraid of his newborn homo-sexuality. Simply it occurred that his art and poetic language is first of all method to find his own identity among people who try to put on his soul into regularities of, so to say - normal behavior. Fortunately his sudden relation with Jack Kerouac made him not only self-confident artist, but firstly a men, who has his own qualities and beliefs strongly enough to set himself of the court and conservative society.

The birth of a men is supported with the birth of the counter-culture in American landscape. That’s way Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman characterizing Ginsberg could not forget about frantic nights in downtown jazz clubs with alcohol, easy sex and literary manifests, like the one in Six Gallery Reading in 1955, when Ginsberg debuted.

Still the images seem to be quite shallow more often than we wanted them to be. The feeling of revolt is displaced by irony and sense of humour which has nothing in common with generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…

Does this lightness of being is a kind of rebellion, which we now do not understand? The directors seem to show the inner history of an artist. Gus Van Sant seems to find successive story (remembering Jon Caoutte’s one) about a lost man, who is finding oneself via art. Surprisingly I do not believe either of them. From their point of view, Allen Ginsberg seems to be superficial and his story trivial. Was that intentional to show the schematic images of the beat generation, which did not bring anything new to our knowledge about that times? Is it possible that legendary poet’s life outgrow the possibilities of nowadays creators? Obviously their portrait of him was not sufficient. There is a lot of things, which are still left to say in time come after death.

on the path

di  Jasmila Žbanić

Bosnia and Herzegovina 2010, 100’

Concorso

20/30

In 2006 Grbavica directed by Jasmila Žbanić had been honored with prestigious Golden Bear at The International Film Festival in Berlin. The feature was telling a story about single mother, Esma (Mirjana Karanović), raising Sara (Luna Mijović) - her teenage daughter. When girl was about fifteenth, she started to posing questions concerning her father’s descent to find out who she were. Surely she has been surprised when Esma told her that Sara’s father had not been a military hero, but a rapist instead. Her pregnancy was nothing more than an ironic act of God.

With her latest movie, On the Path, the director to a certain degree is coming back to her previous subjects. She is talking about a woman, who became pregnant with the wrong guy at the wrong time. Žbanić manage to recall war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and multiculturalism issue in Sarajevo nowadays. She is putting her characters under the necessity of finding oneself identities. Afterward, she is observing how they manage with discovering paths leading to religion, finding their point of view and matching with other people.

Luna (Zrinka Cvitešić) is a stewardess, Amar (Leon Lučev) had been a supervisor at the airport till he was suspended because of overusing alcohol. The woman could not become pregnant, despite of almost two years of attempts. They are living in Sarajevo, the city constructed with contradictions, which finally break up their relationship. Director claims that “Sarajevo is superbly beautiful and superbly ugly city, highly sophisticated, and yet very primitive, all at the same time. All its layers of history live in parallel and they all have they purposes.” The history told by victims and slaughterers coexist in it as much as Muslim’s faith opposes the eastern freethought. Luna and Amar are standing at the crossroads; the place where only one step further is enough to take a certain direction with no chances for retreat. When the couple finally decide to artificial insemination, some kind of strangeness suddenly will creep up on their marriage.

A simple coincidence cause that Amar meets his war friend. Bahrij (Ermin Bravo) wants to help him (for the sake of old times) and proposes him a job as a teacher if Amar still needs one. Yet, man lands up in bizarre community with sect’s provenience, which members called themselves Wahnabi. The director is looking at them with Luna’s eyes, when the woman visits his husband in the commune. Her well-defined objection to rules that drive all it, do not delayed her husband’s transformation into one of the community member. Yet, when he became a radical fundamentalist, his wife run away in opposite direction. Their love will shatter by the wall made of misunderstanding; Luna will resign from artificial insemination just before the final procedure, since she do not want to have a child with a strange man. Of course, it appears then, that she has already became pregnant with him in completely natural way…

As a young directors used to do, Jasmila Žbanić do not closing the Luna and Amar’s story at the end. Even if we may believe that both he and she has already found the path they are going to walk away. Moreover, they will decide to go, even if it lead them in opposite directions. Amar will go to the extreme fundamentality, Luna straight ahead to the gynecological surgery room for the abortion.

The Grbavica director gave her characters seemingly freedom, that she had not gave to Esma. She let them to decide, if they prefer to fell down into chains of religion or western freethinking; reconcile themselves with the war or close into community, that do not abide the outside law. Unfortunately, On the Path do not has the strength, that Grbavica had. Against the other features which touch upon a similar question, it turned out as a weak point.

faith

di Burban Qurbani

Germania 2010, 90’

Concorso

27/30

Shahada by Burban Qurbani, film featured in the 60th Berlinale Competition, is standing in a great opposition against tradition. German - Turkish’s image redid patterns, which are usually shaping movies concerning Islamist’s attempts to adapt into western culture. Die Freumde (When We Leave) by Feo Aladag was mostly based on an immense contrast between a young woman and her parents’ set of laws. Qurbani feature rearranges points of references. The director resign to accuse society of mindless unanimity and do not reduces everything to generalization. Telling the parallel stories about several people, he rearranges roads, which are leading to spiritual faith, extreme type of fundamentalism or total resignation of family roots.
Renan (Nora Abdel-Maksoud) does not care that, as she is a Muslim, she should not drink alcohol at all. She does not remember, when Ramadan is. She is working in hospital, night spending at the discos and when her best friend became pregnant - Renan helps her with illegal abortion without any hesitation.
Burban Qurbani gives an impression of people standing on the edge. He is waiting with peace till the moment they will fall down on the ground. Despite the title faith, there is no hope that instead of collapse, one could fly up.
Maryam (Maryam Zaree) could not come round to her life after the abortion she have had. She bleed profusely and she became haunt by pangs of conscience. When she saw tears of blood dripping into jar instead of rainy drops from leaky roof, she has been at the edge of mental exhaustion already. With madness in her eyes, she throw away all her clothes and put on her head black chador. She denies the sin from her memory and begins to claim that Allah gave her knowledge. Maryam will stand in front of the mirror again as an extreme Muslim fundamentalist. Yet, the community in mosque will reject preached by girl God’s words. Her father, mosque’s imam, with sadness will say that he preferred the “previous Maryam”. At the same time he would teach Sammi (Jeremias Acheampong), that all kinds of love are good in Allah’s eyes. Unfortunately, young boy will push away his colleague’s homo-sexual affection for him. Ismail (Carlo Ljubek) – the policeman, will split up with his wife and leave little daughter, because of sudden care for the woman, he had wound. She lost her unborn child. Yet, Leyla (Marija Skaricic) will excuse the accident telling him that no one else but God put him on her way to kill the child she did not want to have.
The director demonstrates that shahada – faith, is a matter of individual approach. At the same time, he claims that his feature is not a story about religion. He had never wanted to be a moralist, he was never meant to be didactic. He did not want to take the viewer’s hand and tell him: “Islam works in this or that way”. Qurbani rather wants to tell stories about people, who are, of course, part of a certain community. Yet, their problems are not closed in it’s range. He focus on people, who get into trouble and facing crisis. He them to extreme moments and watch as one is wrestling with oneself. As he do not close one’s story, he simply do not judge. And if it is good? For sure, it is essential for artist who undertakes that kind of socially determined issue.

The Kids Are All Right
di Lisa Cholodenko
Stati Uniti 2009, 104’

Fuori concorso

27/30

About ten years ago Annette Bening as Carolyn Burnham in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (1999) helped to destroy the classical model of atomic family. Before a year Julianne Moore together with Mark Ruffalo in Blindness (2008) directed by Fernando Meirelles was trying to save family from the apocalyptic end. They finally meet with the latest Lisa Cholodenko’s work – The Kids Are All Right to redid the conception of it. In the movie, screened in Berlin Out of Competition, they was about to recall the family picture from early Hollywood’s dreams about perfect American way of living. The filmmakers had used to picture calm districts on the suburbs, trimmed detached houses, gardens full of children’s joy, wonderful fathers and smiling mothers waiting for them at the front doors.
“Mothers” are without doubt the key issue for Lisa Cholodenko. In her sophisticated comedy, American director is drawing a sketch of the family without father. Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are two lesbians in long-standing relationship. They are sharing cosy house in the suburbs with their teenage kids – Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Their easy life gave the impression they do not need anything but nice pet to complete the picture of perfect family, that father could be nothing more than an extras.
Seemingly, Lisa Cholodenko finally has reduced masculinity without hesitation. Till now, it had been quite marginal element in her works tough. Men were needed, to let the women betrayed them, when they discovered their erotic fascination with other women. It is sufficient to recall just High Art (1998) as an example of this behavior, the director’s debut, honored on Sundance Film Festival in Utah with Waldo Sreening Award. Parallel situations comes up in her following features - Laurel Canyon (2002) and Cavedveller (2004).
Till now, some kind of fear seems to accompany her. She has never said the last world about homosexual relationships. All lesbian affairs in her movies was about to end at the end of the film. They were marked with failure, understatement or fear. The Kids Are All Right’s script is something completely different if we look at the previous ones. Cholodenko begins her story with the picture of two women fully satisfied with their relationship and despite of many twists, she closes the movie with similar image. In the meantime, she plays with well known subjects, redid some situations and old dilemmas and putting them in front of new characters.
Jules and Nic’s idyll begin to shiver in it basics, when their son decide that he wanted to meet his biological father. The sperm donor, who impregnate both women (as we may think one gave birth to Joni, the other one to Laser), appears as a middle aged Paul – owner of a restaurant and farm with organic food. He beguiled his life with disobliging sex with dark-skinned, beautiful girlfriend. However, it became much more colourful, after Joni’s phone call. Paul decided to meet children, he never heard about before. Surprisingly, he matches with them really good. Jules and Nic appear as a super-tolerant women and invite him to their lives. Ideal picture starts to disappears, when Jules invite him also to her bed… In The Kids Are All Right, it is affair with men, what we may called socially unacceptable thing.
Despite this all, Cholodenko’s world seems to a bit unreal. It is more a vision than representation of reality. Yet, we need to agree that in comedic entourage she makes fun of nonsense and homo-phobia, that are shaping world nowadays.

Press Conference

The kids are all right Lisa Cholodenko’s new movie with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, was one of the most interesting films competing at the 60th Berlinale. The director together with Julianne Moore turned up at the press conference where they both answered many questions and tried to figure out all the doubts. Both Bening and Moore gave great performances and the film received positive reviews from most critics. During the press conference journalists from all over the world asked Cholodenko whether it was her personal experience that inspired her to make such a movie - she denied. Moreover, Moore was much complimented on her role.

The Kinematrix team appreciated her performance as well and asked her about her personal opinion on Jules and her choices:

- I loved her, I mean… Wow, poor Jules, she’s like she said in the movie- so fucked up - Moore explained to Kinematrix - And she is, she’s completely lost. It was interesting for me to play someone who was so lost within her own family, in her relationship with her partner, with the children and this guy, Paul. You know, she just got lost, as if she went down the rabbit hole. For me it was really compelling and interesting because I’ve seen it a lot in life. You don’t get to see this very often in a movie, generally people have a very clear idea of where they are going in the movies and they do get somewhere in the end. I don’t even know where Jules gets in the end, except that she kind of wakes up a little bit and goes like: oh, boy, I’ve made a big mess. However, she stays within this family - and that to me is most interesting about this movie. She messes up, but they do not reject her, they do punish her instead (laughing) and she deserves to be punished, but they all stay together.

To sum it up, the conference was very interesting and brought a lot to my personal analysis of the movie.

At the end there was huge applause for the director and her actress.

when we leave
di Feo Aladag
Germania 2009, 119’

Panorama special

24/30

In 2004 Sibel Kekilli attains an enormous success with Fatih Akin’s outstanding production Head-on (Gegen die Wand) Golden Bear awarded. At this year’s Panorama Special Section she came back to Berlin in a leading role in new remarkable film When we Leave (Die Fremde) directed by debutant Feo Aladag. Unusual story about an offbeat family astounds festival viewers.
There is no room for doubt why Feo Aladag chose exactly Sibel Kekilli as the Umay performer. So to say, she made the woman and the mother from the girl Fatih Akin discovered. Before years in Head-on, after thrilling experiences she left her sister’s flat without certainty what is she going to do or where is she supposed to go then. It seems that after five years she has met Adalag, who lead the girl, that she had been, into real adulthood. In her latest movie she is not lost in the sense she used to be. Her character is rather a self-confident women, who fights against conformist and patriarchy with strongly beliefs to has rights.
Umay lived with her about five-year-old son Cem and Turkish husband in Istanbul. Beaten and humiliated by him, after had an abortion, she decided to leave him and come back to family home in Germany. However the blood relation occurred less strong than community spirit, religion and tradition. Women attitude seem to be right only when it is totally subjected men point of view. For the Umay’s father her behavior was unacceptable. He claimed that she belongs to her husband Kamel from the wedding day and she must not change it. When Umay insisted on living her life herself, the family bonds changed her living into nightmare. Despite her attempts to redid her family’s beliefs, she became rejected by her father, beaten by her own brother and misunderstood by sister and mother. As a woman, in their tradition she was more similar to thing than a human. Comparable, Umay’s child was perceived as his father’s possession and mother’s efforts of raising the boy quickly became the main trouble spot and bring felling of honor’s lost, what lead into tragic coincidences.
Feo Adalag took a trouble to make a movie about women freedom and rights to independence. She gives the impression that the issue, undertaken from years, still have the intensity of significant, yet unsolved problem in the culture. Sibel from Head-on and Adalag’s Umay needs to face nearly the same dilemmas. It appears that even if the young girl overcome the self-imposed restrictions determined by tradition, mature woman could easily tumble into the same ones.
The Austrian director tries to put on view, how tough release could be. Family bonds appear to be stronger than boundaries. She seemingly constantly ask what will happen when we leave? Nevertheless, somewhere between the words, she is rather whisper that we cannot leave. The opportunities changing, doors could be open, roads may be seen, but – as Umay repeat herself few times – when we leave it is important to left something behind. Unfortunately, she instantly became convinces, that when one put an effort to find left things anew, one may rather find disappointment than new possibilities based on grown knowledge of the subject. However, Umay crossed the thin red line without hesitation. Even if she has all rights to do this, Feo Adalag just as her has rights to say that life is not fair and do this with an outstanding talent.

TO GET TO THE BOTTOM

An interview with Feo Aladag concerning her debut film Die Freumde (When We Leave) featured in Panorama Section at 60th Berlinale and honored by the Audience Award

First of all, I would like to ask you, why did you focused on subject like this? Die Freumde is not a movie about woman only, mainly it is about a culture. I wonder if you were ever part of it anyhow?

I think I am a part of that culture, because I am a human being. I think there are a lot of common grounds to inherit to all of us, no matter where we come from, which is our culture or religious background; if we are male or female. I think there are certain issues abut global feelings which are inherited to all of us. I focused on the subject, when seven years ago I did some social spots for Amnesty International and they also ask me to write a reports about the campaign called “Violence Against Women”. It has been a kind of global issue, has broad aspects and I found lot of stories to tell. I had to do lot of research, I was reading, talking with people. After this, some certain emotions stayed with me. I was moved by many problems I discovered, very sad and also very angry with some issues. In the same time, I saw reports in media in Europe and specially also in Germany and Turkey about so called honor-killings, which was very strange word to me. In my opinion there was no such thing as a honor-killing, there was only murder, not honor-murder. Yet, I tried to understand it, I was reading journalists’ reports about the mean fathers, mean brothers. And I was wondering, what could be stronger than family bonds, which appear to me as the strongest ones. If you love your children, love your sister, love your brother, what could be strong enough to make you break the bonds? It just did not work out with my concept of humanism to believe that a father may start the conflict without any bad feelings about that. So I wanted to figure out, what is going on, in psychological aspects, in such families. There was the main purpose I have had.

You said that you did lot of research. So may I think that the Umay’s story is based on a true story? Or perhaps it is constructed with fragments of many different stories?

I took all those cases that got to be known in Germany and Europe and I read about them, I wanted to find out how they came into court, what was the history of those cases and I tried to figure out what is parallel in all of them. No matter if you write a book or shooting a movie you need to take responsibility of what you are saying. I needed to get to the bottom of the dynamics which lie under each case. And I found lot of similarities in different stories, which make me feel that there is much more absurd than one can believe in. So the film is base on this mechanisms that is very parallel for all that cases I have been through.

Still, I wonder if there is any chance that Fatih Akin and his Head-on (2004) was an inspiration for you? I can see many similarities in both movies, not to mention Sibel Kekilli…

Actually no, because I think that there are completely different movies. I know Fatih Akin and his feature, but one of the main differences, which is also in our scripts, is that the character in Head-on wanted to go away from the family. She just wanted to fuck everybody, because she want to fuck, right? Well, that is one of the most famous line in the Akin’s film, I guess. Umay in Die Freumde wants to leave her life, wants to be free in her choice as much as she wants to be part of her family, she needs love and acceptance. The whole emotional image of the character is very different. I think that what she is aiming for is what we all aim for.

Well, I agree, just have the feeling that you made a woman and a mother from the girl, which Fatih Akin had discovered. Sibel in Head-on was looking for her identity, Umay from Die Freumde  has already knew who she is and fights for her believes.

Yes! Well, sometimes when I am talking with people I am a bit afraid of comparisons between mine and Akin’s film, even if the emotional setting of them is different as I said. The direction of where the characters heading are diverse. Once Sibel wanted to run away from the family, now Umay wants to be a part of it. Still, I totally agree in a way you could say that where HEAD-ON ends, DIE FREUMDE starts.

So did you choose Sibel Kekilli to the leading role, because you feel that she has already have experience in common roles and it will be easier for you both to make the movie?

Absolutely not. To be honest, I did not want Sibel to bring the part at all for one very important reason: I did not want to have famous actors in the movie. I did not want to portrait the character Umay with the face that is very familiar. I wanted Umay to be Umay. It was a great risk for me as a director to cast somebody like well known Sibel to the leading role. I do not want do demolish the star system, I think is the great thing we have. But generally I wanted to be clean from any associations. I did not want any famous face to be more important than the character. So for almost two years I was doing castings in Germany, Austria, Switzerland also in France and of course in Turkey. I was looking for young actresses that could bring the Turskish background, being able to speak Turskish in authentic way, and also speak German. I decide to try in Istanbul, because a lot of good German schools are there. I also did a street casting, and Umay’s brothers I found that way, her sister also, and a child of course. I made six workshops with that actors to generate the family, to create the past of the characters. They all get to know each other very well before shooting. Apart from Sibel, which came very late. Which was good in the way she is not so much part of the family and wants to be. It brought really interesting dynamics. I knew that she wanted to read the script very much, she called me, asking to let her do this. Finally, I decided to meet her to know how she feels, know if I like her and check how we related to each other. I gave her my script to read it. And after that she called me with tears and said that she really wanted to take part in my project. So I said yes, let’s do it. She became Umay quite opposite way that many people could think of.

And about crying… I have seen many people crying during the Die Freumde screening in Zoo Palas on Berlinale. I want to ask you, if you believe or want to believe that what you have said in the movie will influence something apart viewer’s emotions for a while?

Well, I think that the only way to solve the problem is to reach it out to other people, even if you need to take one little step after another. And if you succeed just one centimeter it is important. It is significant to underline that people coming from different background should treat each other as fellows and believe that they are one big society, because they are running similar emotions. Then a dialogue will start. If only one person will leave the screening with some new questions on their mind, we will achieve a lot.

Thank you very much

If I want to whistle, I whistle

di Florin Serban
Romania 2009, 94’

Orso d'Argento/Gran Premio della Giuria

28/30

Hell is cobbled with good acts. Florin Serban’s excellent debut If I want to whistle, I whistle, screened in 60th Berlinale Competition Section, proves that the behavior of a man is determined by reversed reflection of one’s inner life. Especially if it is full of unwanted emotions, painful memories and gnawing bitterness, that produce an unpredictable backlashes and lead one in road to hell.
Eighteen-year-old Silviu was just about to open the door to freedom after few years in juvenile detention centre, when his life started to collapse. The release from the penitentiary should be for him also the entrance into adulthood. He was preparing to take a job and dreaming about marriage with beautiful social worker, Ana. No matter how his plans was just a juvenile illusions and his aims was hardly connected with reality, the feel of freedom, wind and the open road into future makes us to believe that anything can happen now. Florin Serbian used that intuition and showed that it may face both ways. The road can divine in two, lead up or down to the place from one will never escape.
Silviu life was marked with his pathological relation with mother. When he was a boy, she had left Romania and went to Italy. Ever since, Silviu was abandoned from time to time when she was occupied with new romances. For years he has wandering around with no idea what to do with his own life. It seems that the juvenile detention centre was his first permanent residence. Perhaps that’s way the idea of living outside started to slowly going away. With all the successive coincidences it became something dreamlike. That is the reason why the outside world simply do not exist in he Romanian director’s film. The landscape is nothing more than never-ending fields at the other side of the fence. There were no place to go. That’s way one could only enter into his own psychic. So the living space little by little, but brilliantly(!) was narrowing down parallel with to uncovering Silviu emotions.
When the boy’s mother come back from Italy with purpose to take there his younger brother, Silviu recollect his own childhood. With conviction that he’s mother destroyed his identity and because of her he became young lawbreaker, he decide to convince her not to take his brother with her as she did before with him. Seeing that his worlds don not impressed her as they should, behind close door in the center, simply helpless with outside events, he crossed the limits of control. Let his feelings burst out and imprisoned himself with social worker and unconscious guard into the class to lift his mother’s hand. As he could not leave the center despite his entreaties, he decide to bring his mother into his world and using own rules make her promise what he want.
Silviu seems to realize the plan while inventing it, he is spontaneous and frightened, self-confident and insecure, wondering if Ana would act in opposition. Even if the tense and hidden emotions lead to that situation, in every scene there is still enormous feeling of reality catches red-handed. The world is reliable enough to believe in each of gesture, look and word. There is something impressive with George Pistereanu face, something electrifying in Serban film. There is no room to doubt that there is also something familiar in the director’s style – especially if we recall Ken Loach movies or the latest Andrea Arnold production Fish Tank (2009). There is also some freshness, which make one believes in the Florin Serban words, when he claims that working with boys has been a chance for great discovery. It was one of those experiences that mark one forever.

SITO UFFICIALE