When twenty-something Sashko (played by a doe-eyed Carlo Ljubek) awakes in a hospital bed in Germany, he has no memory of the car crash that has killed his parents and left him with amnesia, or of the grandfather hovering over his bed. The grandfather (the almost impossibly charismatic Miki Manojlovic) decides that the only thing that can help Sashko regain his memory is a trip on a tandem bicycle back to their native Bulgaria. That, and some backgammon. As the pair bikes through the stunning countryside of Sashko’s childhood and plays backgammon on breaks, this delightful little film quietly raises questions about what identity without memory means and asserts that how we play the game is as every bit as important as the dice we roll, even when it seems like all is lost.
At the closing gala of the 2008 Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) on Tuesday, the jury gave Stefan Komandrev’s “The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner” the festival’s top prize, the Cinema Extraordinaire award.
Ballast--An unsentimental look at a broken Southern family's efforts to rebuild itself.
Chronic Town--A cab driver gets dumped by his girlfriend in a bleak town in Alaska and stumbles through a suicide attempt and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol as he tries to move on.
Citizen Havel--An intimate portrait of Vaclav Havel, the thoughtful and funny man who ruled the Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. Maybe my favorite documentary of the festival.
Downloading Nancy--Not as bad as I expected a film about masochists to be, but still not one of the best films I saw.
Encounters at the End of the World--Herzog's documentary introduces us to a wide variety of characters, who have ended up living in Antarctica. Herzog often seems to be poking fun at his subjects and doesn't seem to respect them enough to present them as much more than cariactures. Still, there are a handful of moments that make the movie worth watching, like the scene in which everyone lies down on the sea ice to listen to the otherworldly chirps of the seals below.
Fuel--The part of the movie that was made before the controversy over biofuels in 2007 flows smoothly. The part after has a tacked-on, aimless feel that has some good material, but could certainly benefit from much tighter editing. Overall, though, the film gives some great info on biodiesel, its potential to help the world fight climate change and wean ourselves from fossil fuels.
Gonzo--The filmmaking wasn't anything extraordinary, with its fairly standard format of interviews of friends and family mixed with clips and photos of Thompson and a "best of the 1970s" soundtrack, but Thompson's compelling personality overshadows the problems with the filmmaking.
Made in America--This documentary traces the birth of gangs in Los Angeles, from its roots in the squashing of organizations like the Black Panthers in the 1960s to the role the Crips and Bloods play in fulfilling gang members need for community and protection because they have been stripped of all defenses.
Planet B-Boy: This film about breakdancing culture and the world's premier breakdancing competition features some incredible physical feats and a couple of interesting characters, but for the most part, it's hard to connect with most of the dancers.
The Price of Sugar: A horrifying look at the Dominican sugar cane plantations that thrive on Haitian slave labor and the daily Herculean battles of a priest trying to improve the living conditions for the workers.
S&M: An interesting and often funny argument for bringing attention to the rampant, but usually unintentional height discrimination faced by short males all over the world. As easy as it is to think we don't discriminate, it's even easier to see ourselves in the people in the film who do.
Son of Rambow: The film falls into the trap of a sugary ending but fortunately the movie's other charms, like the flamboyant French teenager and the funny moments filmed by the two protagonists, are enough to keep Son of Rambow from being totally ruined by its predictable resolution.
Standard Operating Procedure: Errol Morris's documentary shows the torture at Guantanamo Bay through the eyes of the American soldiers, including Lynndie England, who worked there. Morris's style of documentary is the direct opposite of Michael Moore's. Where Moore uses loosely connected facts and contrived scenarios to make vehement arguments, Morris takes a seemingly detached perspective in which he simply observing the characters in SOP. Where Moore is in nearly every frame of his movies, we simply never see Morris and often don't even hear the questions he asks in his interviews, only the responses. As SOP progresses, though, we see that, by letting people speak for themselves, Morris has meticulously built up an unshakeable argument that the horrifying behavior at Gitmo was not just the work of a demented few, but was in fact pervasive and encouraged through the entire military operation at the prison and beyond.
The US vs. John Lennon--I was surprised by how impersonal this film about Lennon felt. Mostly put together from footage of meetings Lennon staged with the press, like his famous "bed-in" with Yoko Ono in Amsterdam, and interviews with friends, supporters, and Ono, we get a clear picture of Lennon's political ideas and battles, but little idea about much going on in his personal life. And for a film about his political battles with the US (or rather the bizarre political war the US quietly waged against Lennon), that's fine.
Yodok Stories-- a film about a musical about concentration camps in North Korea, and odd though it sounds, Yodok Stories was really good. Hopefully, it will be able to shed light on atrocities that are occurring right now in North Korea, but that very few people either know about or acknowledge. The film earned one of the prizes for best documentary.
