Opus Bonum

On the 13th of December 1981, telephone connections were cut off throughout Poland. Tanks appeared in the streets of the cities. A night curfew came into force. In response to the growing influence of the Solidarity trade union movement, General Jaruzelski's government declared a state of emergency. Tomasz Wolski's edited documentary uses lesser-known archival footage to put this tense chapter of Polish history into a broader context. But it is not only the speeches of politicians and dramatic clashes between citizens and the repressive apparatus that are included in this collage, edited with a flair for the absurd – the myth of a nation that suffered under totalitarian rule is shattered by images of everyday life. Many Poles are convinced, in line with government propaganda, that the opposition could have started a civil war. Others are more concerned about empty shelves than about the lack of freedom. The ubiquitous police and soldiers become as much a part of socialist reality as the fact that a shoe shop sells chickens. Ironically, the foreign correspondent seems most concerned about the whole situation. This portrait of a divided country, whose tragicomic quality also lies in its timelessness, concludes Wolski's historical trilogy (see An Ordinary Country (2020) and 1970 (2021)).“This time, I wanted to treat archive material like free jazz. The soundtrack will reflect that as well.”Quote source: Variety

After 30 years of marriage, the film director was informed by his parents that they were divorcing. Completely unprepared and taken aback, he has to deal with a giant upheaval of basic certainties. Nevertheless, at such a critical moment, he picks up the camera and bases a very personal documentary account of the complexity of family and romantic relationships on this painful experience. While trying to understand what happened between them in separate dialogues with her mother and father, she falls in love and begins her own life as a partner and parent. One family falls apart and another is born. It is the moment of concurrence of the two border stages – the end and the beginning – that makes it possible to develop lines of thought in the direction of scepticism and learning and learn whether it is possible to build a full-fledged relationship and ensure that it never breaks. When parents and children move in other worlds and times and the “inherited sins” of our ancestors are passed on to us through genetics and upbringing, then love really isn't enough sometimes. Son, partner, father and director in one person observes such considerations with a camera in hand.“I’m not really intrigued when there’s no discovery while making a documentary, when the filmmaker knows exactly what the film is right from the beginning.” Quote source: Cineuropa

Static shots, mostly long and extreme long shots, and not much seems to happen in them. As if someone often turned the camera on only after the important thing had already been done – in moments when cleaning crews and almost always invisible women with dusters, mops and buckets arrive. When is it necessary to prepare everything for the next round of operation and use under conditions that we have come to perceive as healthy. The minimalist observational documentary lets us glimpse the different forms of how human culture gets rid of dirt and other deposits. Starting with hand washing in healthcare, through various manifestations of mental hygiene and sacred rituals, to cleaning in Holocaust memorials, it is always the same cyclical process. It is the necessity and self-evident nature of the actions accompanying purification that make them a social force of fundamental importance. Above the associative sequence of slow images of cleaned places and washed people, we can reflect on the symbolic and pragmatic meanings of everyday rituals, without which our civilization would collapse.“In my opinion, the current effort is mainly to achieve efficiency and productivity in the neoliberal sense of the word. After that, however, any colour and variety disappears.”Quote source: International Film Festival Bratislava

Vitaly, a nuclear physicist and record holder in extreme cold-exposure training, makes his living as a bricklayer and lives below the poverty line. While his parents, prominent scientists, reminisce about the glory of the regime they willingly built, the avowed patriot from Novosibirsk is gradually changing his mind about Putin's Russia. He rejects its capitalist nature and continues, as a radicalised blogger, to advocate the establishment of a juster regime. This intergenerational clash is typical of the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. While the older generation remembers the certainties and advantages of the past regime, the younger one is hopelessly mired in a crisis of authority, rejecting past and present political representation and resorting to extreme views. Like everything else in his life, Vitaly is experiencing his political awakening in an extreme way as the son of elites relegated to the social periphery after the collapse of the empire. This time-lapse character study, filmed between 2016 and 2024, depicts how long-term frustration and disillusionment lead entire generations and social classes to gravitate towards radical solutions and vote for authoritarian leaders like Putin, Trump or Le Pen. “I'm not afraid of a coup; I'm looking forward to it. Any change will be for the better, because it can't get any worse.” 

The closed ward of the psychiatric hospital in the city of Cadillac is intended for people who, due to mental illness, are a danger to themselves or those around them. Some wound up there voluntarily, some against their will. The film crew spent one month behind the walls of the institution. The idea was to adapt to its rhythm and disrupt the daily routine as little as possible. The protagonists of the film – Théo, Lucie, Louisette, Hervé or Benjamin – are therefore filmed in long, stationary shots, whether they conduct dialogues and monologues about their dreams and troubles or just smoke cigarettes in the garden. The more time we spend with them, the less we consider the environment they are in and begin to perceive them as dispassionately as the camera does. Not as patients with a diagnosis, but as people with a rich inner life and great imagination who yearn for closeness and understanding. The wall separating the normal from the abnormal thins and the film about institutional care becomes a reflection on the ability to co-exist despite differences.

Inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki's literary essay of the same name, the film is a visual ode to the shadow and its perceived marginality and necessity for living in the light. In traditional Japanese houses, there are spaces dedicated to the sun and places shrouded in the cover of darkness. The form of shadow is modelled by means of permeable materials, deliberate obstructions, or even candle flames, so different from Western mass-produced products. The transformation of shadows with the movement and intensity of light is analogized by the director to celluloid photography and film. Unlike modern digital technology, they are also subject to change as the passage of time affects their chemical stability. Without the shadows cast on the projection screen, we would not be able to watch this film either, reliving a feeling already familiar to prehistoric cavemen sitting around a campfire. “Fleeting shadows ebb and flow in a glistening half-light, an enchanted dreamlike state that reflects on our place in the world, the passage of time, and the very essence of life and its fragility.”Quote source: F3M

Enric Miralles, one of the most gifted Spanish architects of his generation, died prematurely in 2000 at the age of 45. He found his final resting place in Barcelona's Igualada Cemetery, which embodies everything that characterised Miralles' work. In the seemingly unfinished space of the forest burial ground, it is difficult to separate the inside from the outside, and nature permeates the architecture. The documentary portrait of an extraordinary personality unfolds as a dialogue between the author's lyrical subject and Miralles' presence in the buildings he designed. The architect himself saw his work almost musically, as a “variation of the same thing”, the same motif and melody. The documentary film, which introduces us to eleven of Miralles' exceptional buildings, is in tune with this wave. Whether it's the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh or the boarding school in Morell, there is always a clear imprint of the same authorial hand. An artist always defying conventions and, above all, all boundaries, real and imaginary.“Moving with freedom through different places and floating in the city of Barcelona, the narrator's voice, written by one of the most interesting Spanish authors of the moment Sara Mesa, talks to a ghost; it searches for him, evokes him in its spaces, asks questions about his architectures, crossing the threshold between death and life.”Quote source: FilmFreeway

The time-lapse picture of Zuzana Čaputová's five-year term in office is not a celebratory portrait, but a statement about the importance of the office of the head of state and the state of society. Slovakia's first female president takes over the country a year after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée at a time of mass protests against the links between high politics and organised crime. The end of her presidency, on the other hand, is marked by the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in 2024. She is faced with a task that goes far beyond her representative function. The president has the power to give hope to a society in crisis, to speak for and protect a part of the public who has not yet been heard, to change the way society is configured by setting a positive example and steering it towards values that are compatible with the liberal West. However, she does not want to run for another term, and Marek Šulík reveals why. He captures the head of state in less formal situations, in the role of a woman, a mother and a wife who faces gender-based attacks, death threats and fears for her family. The portrait of Čaputová as a public and private figure looks at a society whose leading cultural institutions are currently removing LGBTQ+ works from their repertoire and, like Hungary, Romania or Poland, are thus removing a section of the population from public life and encouraging a mindset that leads to acts like the shooting at a Bratislava gay club in 2022. “We politicians must have power over our emotions. We have to control our thoughts, because the way we think makes us the kind of people we are. And now, first and foremost, we need to become better people.” Source: Quote from the film

Khlong Toei is one of Bangkok's central districts, home to the largest slum in the exponentially growing Thai metropolis. The place, which accommodates 100,000 inhabitants, could at first glance be characterised by chaos, overcrowding and pollution. However, the pure, immersive observation of the masterful duo Bêka & Lemoine, capturing the rhythms of day and night life in this fascinating environment, proves that it is in fact a living organism in which order reigns and time passes slowly but surely. The means of private and public transport that arrive and depart without ceasing, the cycle of life being born and fading away in the midst of the huge market that is the beating heart of the neighbourhood and the origin of the most diverse interpersonal interactions, the cleaning crews responsible for its cleanliness and its systematised space, children playing and eating together in narrow alleys and cozy rooms shared by entire families – all of these are humanly subtle yet authentically raw images of everyday life that shatter the stereotypical notion of slum life.“Deconstructing the clichés associated with slums, such as violence, gangs and illicit trafficking, the film is a full immersion and close observation of the living conditions, daily rhythms, micro economies and neighborhood relationships binding this community together.”

Turkey's first “eco” hotel, Naturland Eco Park and Resort, opened in 1991 and operated until 2014. A hybrid of documentary, black satirical comedy and circus-style performance, the film builds on fictional voice-overs that depict the experiences of hotel guests and staff and the gradual decay of the once-pompous and now dilapidated abandoned complex, which was closed due to overwhelming debts and left virtually untouched. Strange Abandoned Deranged is a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ambivalent place that is full of faded colours, scratched walls and kitschy life-size animal sculptures. Like the site itself, which was once a premier tourist attraction and a haven for local politicians and royalty, the unfulfilled dream of a harmonious fusion of capitalism and ecology is increasingly unravelling, revealing an unpleasant reality that has been carefully hidden behind the walls of a man-made paradise. Both the absurdity and the controversy surrounding Naturland are symptomatic of Turkey's modern history.“Through its absurd voice, it crafts a circus-like panorama. Standing amidst abandoned state land with a history that echoes a mockumentary—filled with countless tragic incidents and boundless absurdities from Turkey's past—it becomes evident that to chase the controversial story of Naturland Eco Park is to journey through the last thirty years of a country.”

The final stops of buses, trams and trolleybuses in the suburbs of Riga. “Non-places” with no specific character, where nothing special happens and yet there is no stopping movement. Some people go from here to work or school, others return home. Or they work in their flower and vegetable stalls near the bus stops. Morning, evening, in snow and rain. Weekdays and holidays. Laila Pakalniņa captures their work, waiting and passing, calm and impatient, in tight moving shots. Gints Bērziņš's black and white camera stays at one point, describing a circle that begins and ends nowhere. Ordinary stopping points, which we use without thinking about their function, become important crossroads in a wordless urban symphony, to whose unchanging rhythm the entire metropolis must submit. Exploring the poetry in everyday routine and repetition, the film completes the director's ornamental trilogy on public transport, complemented by The Bus (2004) and Homes (2021).“The ever-moving camera creates the form of the film, peering through the window of a bus, trolleybus, or tram, observing the world.”Quote source: Riga International Film Festival

After the death of her grandfather, Antonio Bonino, Toia found six negatives proving that he was a member of the Fascist Party and an aide to Benito Mussolini. Influenced by this discovery, the director sets out to trace her male family lineage, whom the end of World War II brought to Argentina. Instead of a clarification, however, the past crumbles and disintegrates into a mosaic of archival material, family films, excerpts from personal diaries and fragments of the works of Roberto Rossellini or Luchino Visconti. But it is the meanings that emerge from the combination of disparate images that offer answers and fill the information vacuum that has shaped generations of the family. The dynamics of the Bonino family's male-female relationships have a much darker basis than the social context of the time. In the story of grandfather, father, cousins and sons, Toia also finds a story of identity and of the role of wives, mothers, grandmothers and daughters in a history shaped by men.“Nothing was expected of the women in my family. That´s made witnesses of us. This is my story.”

James Joyce created his monumental work on the basis of Homer's epic. The Belarusian director decided to “scrape” words from the writer's text and “write” his own modern odyssey through it. In his film-palimpsest, he not only refers to the famous modernist novel by the Irish writer, but uses the opening scene to bring into play the no-less-famous attempt at a film adaptation from 1967. Only Dublin was replaced by Minsk, and instead of a Jewish busybody, Ruslyk, the personal director of President Lukashenko wanders the labyrinth of the city all day long. On his convoluted postmodern pilgrimage, he meets doctors, politicians, propagandists, artists, drunkards and outcasts. He conducts blasphemous dialogues with them about the rotten nature of the ruling regime, vents creative and personal frustrations, or just tries to borrow a cell phone to call home to his wife. The cinematic colossus that unfolds over nine hours fascinates with the omnipresence of intense moments, ordered one after the other with a wild rhythmic cadence.“I thought it would be nice to show the real Minsk. That’s the diss track aspect of it.”Quote source: Mubi