First Lights

Quarantine with a politician – this is how one could describe the situation captured in the film A Grandfather. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the director continuously filmed his cohabitation with his own grandfather, the prominent conservative politician and former Lithuanian Prime Minister Vytautas Landsbergis. This observational film captures everyday life in their shared household, but mainly focuses on conversations between the two men, one of whom is recapping his career and the other is making a film, but is also a classical flute player. The result is a chronicle that blends everyday life, artistic expression, and statesmanlike declamation. In the quarantined isolation of both family members, the Lithuanian past is echoed in the recollections of Vytautas Sr. as he rummages through his old collection of notes, as is the COVID-19 present, which is announced on the television screen. The grandfather finally agrees to participate in a joint theatre performance combining music and political performance. “By trying to explain it you ruined it. Just like in music. There was some nonsense: ‘explain how to understand music.‘ You can explain it. And you’d be ruining it. The essence.“

Driven by the chaotic energy of Prague’s streets, the film consists of several spontaneous surveys. Together, they paint a picture of widespread apathy, and the values of today’s Czech youth. In addition to the author herself, the film features more or less sober young people who unabashedly share their views on the climate crisis, feminism, and the war in Ukraine, with the camera. But they also talk about the meaning of life, the secrets of good sex and love, the search for (and failure to find) which is one of the central themes of the film. “We have too little time in this world to be filled with hatred.”

 A building on the outskirts of Tunis, built by Italians in 1905, was transformed into a special refuge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight residents of various origins have taken shelter here, living in isolation from their loved ones and the rest of the city, from which they are also culturally distant. The filmmakers capture their nomadic existence not only in interviews, revealing the peculiarities of these unique personalities, but also in poetically stylized sequences that give the house an almost magical dimension of a transitional, mystical space. The result is an impressionistic mosaic themed around loneliness and life within physical and symbolic barriers that become a source of melancholy, frustration, and uncertainty. At the same time, however, isolation and the breakdown of concepts of time and social norms become an opportunity to build islands of freedom and self-discovery that could never happen under normal social circumstances.  “Let your mind concentrate on the body. Let your mind concentrate on emotions. Your mind goes to another place. Let it go. But try to be an observer. An observer in all situations.” 

Director Zhu Yudi filmed this devastating chronicle of the gradual decline of a family falling into debt, primarily in the company of his father. In recent years, his renovation company has been sinking deeper and deeper into debt due to investments in various projects in Chinese cities. Zhu accompanies his father on one of his regular business trips, during which he attempts to collect unpaid debts from clients. However, he also captures the escalating family disputes and his father's descent into ever-greater despair. Through one personal tragedy, the film shows the existential distress caused by the recent crisis in the Chinese real estate sector. The young filmmaker uses a professional camera to capture confrontational situations and composes them in a way that makes him not only an observer but also a direct participant, commenting on events from behind the camera while talking to his protagonists. His film is an immediate, authentic drama that remains in the intimate sphere but at the same time speaks to the state of Chinese society. “Dad rarely discusses his debts to me at home, not to mention the details of collecting debt. I had never been to Heibei, so I never thought it would be so difficult.”

Claustrophobic war training as a gruelling routine, yet constantly permeated with terrifying tension. This is what training on the Louise-Marie NATO combat ship looks like in the documentary Standby. The observational film follows the crew of new and experienced sailors, as well as several female sailors, as they go through a series of simulated enemy attacks, lectures, evenings in the gym, and casual conversations over dinner. Everything is just for show, but it is clear from the many comments made by the commanding officers that the same situation could very soon arise in real life. The film does not have a central character, but focuses on several personalities, which it does not examine very closely as individuals; it is more interested in how they fit into the overall dynamics of the team. Concentrated in the space-time of a single war machine, the film seems to suggest that, despite all the military drill, it is impossible to fully prepare for real war – and this awareness is constantly present in the gestures and behaviour of the unit. “I see a lot of people, a lot of faces that I know, but I see at least as many faces I don’t know, a lot of young people. A lot of experience and little experience, together, adds up to enough experience to do the very thing for which you’re here today.”

The fragility of identity and the difficulty of integrating it is shown in an empathetic portrait of a young woman who is searching for herself through artistic creation. Stephania lives in France but is originally from Romania, where as a child she suffered from a serious brain disease that dragged on for a long time, partly due to misdiagnosis. She is now painfully and laboriously returning to this period of her life, from which she had long been psychologically disconnected, through dance and creativity. The film connects us to her complicated position as a person disconnected from her own traumatic past by using a camera focused on detail and physicality, working with blurring, mirroring, and editing that alternates between Stephanie's monologues and her paintings, performances, and therapeutic dance. Adult Stephania ultimately has to summon little Nia through private rituals or play between her own body and the surrounding environment. Among other things, the film shows how strongly art can help us come to terms with who we are, even when we would rather not exist. “Even if we are dealing with a documentary, the way the film is shaped is more like a cinematic dreaming experience than a pure doc.” — Ada Solomon, producer Source: Business DocEurope

The turbulent pre-election atmosphere in Indonesia becomes absurd background noise to everyday scenes of a stagnant village life in the film Sunshower. Director Micko Boanerges visits his grandparents in the countryside and observes how little the struggle over the country's fate disrupts the peaceful flow of life there. The minimalist film lets the black-and-white camera rest on everyday scenes in which so little happens that the rush to bring in the laundry at the onset of a rain shower becomes one of the most dramatic scenes. The director's grandparents barely exchange a few words and spend most of their time just relaxing, paying little attention to the disputes between election candidates blaring from the television. Sunshower can thus be viewed as a contribution to the meditative cinematography of empty scenes, but also as an ironic film that draws on the aesthetics of boredom, showing the contrast between the turbulent situation in the public sphere and people who rarely come into contact with it. “You said that the leaders who have never been poor couldn’t lead their people. I think that this statement is mistaken and has to be straightened out. What if the leaders who have always been wealthy turned out to be capable of leading.”

Ammar and Bilal both have experience as refugees living in present-day Germany. They meet thanks to an interview conducted by an actress and actor, who are using it as inspiration for a play they are preparing. However, the documentary film Taste of Salt follows their conversations, their everyday lives, and ultimately the theatrical performance that emerges from these conversations. The film thus recounts the experience of exile through three different means. Ammar and Bilal talk about their difficult experiences with migration and with their lives in their new home. At the same time, the camera follows them in distanced shots that emphasize their uprootedness in the German urban environment and, ultimately, in the artistic theatrical performance. Thanks to this, the film can be viewed as a testimony to the current waves of migration, a record of their everyday existence, and an empathetic portrayal of their feelings about life. “We had two different feelings. First of all we were happy that we had left that bad place and the pain we faced there. And secondly, a fear of what we are going to face. For me it was the first time I had seen the sea.”

Documentary filmmaker Karel Malkoun comes from Lebanon, but has been living in Canada for the past few years. In 2022, when the economic crisis in her native country was at its peak, she decided to visit her family there. She turned her short trip into a collage-like diary in which she reflects on her relationship with her homeland, which is in a state of protracted decay. The film is composed of spontaneous snapshots capturing the author's stay, interspersed with inserted captions serving as personal, often poetically formulated comments and observations. As a result, the film does not hide its strongly subjective perspective, but at the same time builds on it to make an important statement that shows the transformation of Lebanese society in everyday details such as the appearance of the city itself or in the intimate sphere of the author's family life. Malkoun has created an immediate, raw, and deliberately unsorted impression capturing the absurdity and suddenness of situations that took her by surprise as a native returning from abroad. “They got married in the war, they had us in the war. We grew up in the war. Went to school in the war. Got married and had our kids, in the war. And also we will die, in the war. Regardless of whether it is an economical war or an actual war.”

 In 1967, extensive archaeological excavations took place near the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, during which over 16,000 objects belonging to deportees were uncovered. The excavations became the subject of a 14-minute documentary film, shot on location by director Andrzej Brzozowski. Ania Szczepańska followed in the footsteps of this film and the entire event with her film Unearthed, which she worked on for 14 years. Her documentary follows the author’s search for the circumstances surrounding the making of the film, and the significance of the excavations themselves. The history of Polish short documentary films, often screened in cinemas as supporting films, intertwines with the history of archiving related to the history of concentration camps in Poland. The director also films herself and her crew discussing more general topics related to the perception of recent history, and its impact on the present, which is currently shaken by many new military conflicts.  “I began my investigation not knowing that this 14-minute film would occupy me for 14 years, that it would change how I view Poland, that it would change me, period.”

Director Victoria Hely-Hutchinson offers us a glimpse into a hermetically sealed, highly privileged, yet deeply toxic microcosm in her family portrait Vacances. This time-lapse film, shot over a period of ten years, follows members of several generations of a wealthy aristocratic family with Austro-Hungarian roots. The entire film is set in a Provençal villa, whose social heart is the swimming pool, around which the women gather to exchange various observations and, surreptitiously, gossip. The centre of the family is the aging matriarch, who likes to talk about her extravagant, promiscuous life, but at the same time commands all the attention and authority of those around her. However, her influence gradually weakens with each passing generation. The director herself is a member of the family being filmed and captures the dynamics of their relationships with a directness that some of her relatives describe on camera as cruel. “You would like to get all the sort of the crunchy wickedness out of people. And then you’re like a little elf going, ‘Hahahaa! Look what I have. I’ve got the money to splurge.’ And I think to myself, ‘Yeah, but you’re pretty wicked.’”