A carte blanche from the French Institut and the Goethe Institut at Theater Elvire Popesco, Bucharest (Romania)
LE CARROSSE D’OR
Jean Renoir
France, Italy / 1952 / Colour / 102'
(Carte Blanche to Radu Jude)
In the presence of Radu Jude.
In the 18th century, a small Italian theatre company disembarks in a Spanish colony in Latin America. On the same ship arrives a ceremonial carriage covered in gold, destined for the Viceroy. Camilla, who plays Colombine, has given in to the advances of Felipe, who has travelled with her. Once the performances had begun, it was not long before she was courted by Ramon, a bullfighter famous throughout the colony, and then by the Viceroy, Ferdinand, who invited the troupe to give a performance at court. Overcome with love, he offers Camilla the golden carriage, triggering jealousy among the other suitors and a crisis with the nobility...
Date : 21.01.2025 at 7:30 pm
Location : Theater Elvire Popesco, Bucnarest
In the presence of Radu Jude.
VOYAGE ALONG THE WAR
Antonin Peretjatko
France / 2024 / Colour / 62'
French competition 2024
(Carte Blanche to FIDMarseille)
In the presence of Antonin Peretjatko.
On the morning of May 15, 2022, Antonin Peretjatko, his sound technician and AndreÏ, a Ukrainian refugee, drive away from a Parisian suburb. Lviv is where they are headed - i.e. the edge of the war, not its heart. It is on this threshold that they establish themselves in order to meet those who have taken refuge there, fleeing destruction and death. There are no long conversations: only brief encounters where snippets of experiences are shared, just enough to communicate the terror of lives transformed, traumatized by the Russian aggression. “I’m taking a 16mn camera, in the hope of thwarting the formalism and way of thinking that are imposed by digital cameras.” Before he left, the filmmaker had made this materialistic profession of faith: form and thought are informed by the type of tool used, by the material conditions of the filmmaking process. Herein lies the necessity and beauty of Voyage, which is about devising a new approach, a new narrative, from another standpoint on this war - on war itself. Not so much against, or contrary to the prevailing media and documentary forms and discourse, but in complete disdain and ignorance of them. Sovereignty and innocence: for it is indeed possible to make a travel diary in war-torn Ukraine today using the forms of yesterday’s cinema – that of the 1960s and 1970s, to put it briefly. From this contemporary crisis one can also resuscitate past filmmaking forms. Lateral or forward tracking shots capture on film, from the car, the scars of warfare: torn apart buildings, roadblocks, etc. After the arrival at Lviv, the first-person voice-over takes control of the narrative and adds complexity to the traveler’s chronicle, thanks to an intimate thought process. A second voyage, this time in winter, takes us deeper into Kyiv. This time around we are there, where it all happened: Bucha, Irpin, martyr, almost ghost towns. When the film ends, we realize that from the edge, the journey has reached the heart.
Cyril Neyrat
Date : 22.01.2025 at 6:30 pm
Location : Theater Elvire Popesco, Bucnarest
In the presence of Antonin Peretjatko.
DIE ÄNGSTLICHE VERKEHRSTEILNEHMERIN / LOSING FAITH
Martha Mechow
Austria, Germany / 2023 / 100'
International Competition, First Film Competition 2024
(Carte Blanche to FIDMarseille)
In the presence of Martha Mechow
An ordinary interior, a young child and a baby. A mother is making the most of a few minutes’ peace and quiet when her daughter starts calling out insistently for her. So she disappears, literally swallowed up by the couch she was lying on. The opening scene sets the tone with the irreverent humour that oozes from Martha Mechow’s highly charged directing. Is maternity a punishment – this servitude to which women are subjected and the nub of the eternal "heterosexual knot", as this playful, rebellious film calls it? Losing Faith unfolds like a bildungsroman, animated with the whimsical imagination of a folk tale. Flippa is its main character. Her mother has disappeared. We see her along the roads that lead her to her sister Furia and the witch-mothers of Barranconi in Sardinia. “Do you think this is why mama left? Because she couldn’t bear to pass on the rules of a world that steals our freedom?” With its caustic analysis of Jane Austen's Persuasion, a chainsaw slashing Christian symbols and the materialistic views on the exploitation of women, Losing Faith is a breath of fresh air that’s not afraid of the excesses or insolent vitality of its actors. Driven by a spirit of community, its performative and theatrical ventures free the story from all theoretical and narrative rigidity and blur the outlines of fiction. “There is no plan, just possibilities to test. It’s by eliminating them that history is written” recalls one of the witches. And this is the way the movie goes, without a safety net, adventurous and profoundly free.
Claire Lasolle
Date : 22.01.2025 at 8:30 pm
Location : Theater Elvire Popesco, Bucnarest