The novelties of the autonomous sections and a detour to the beach with LE FESTIVAL DE CANNES SOUS LES ÉTOILES!

(da Cannes Luigi Noera – Photos are courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival)

Jonas Carpignano returns to Cannes with the third volume of the trilogy (Mediterranea and A Chambra) on the land of Calabria

After the opening night on Thursday evening on the beach where you can see the films with free access, it was the turn of a CINÉ-CONCERT – AVANT-PREMIÈRE WORLD of TOM MEDINA The new film by the great Tony Gatlif, awarded for best screenplay at Cannes 2004 which is a “Camargue western”. Before the screening, a surprise: the “Tom Medina concert”, aka rock music, flamenco, gypsy of thirteen musicians including Karoline Rose Sun, Nicolas Reyes, Manero, Norig, Cécile Évrot and the flamenco ballerina Karine Gonzales. Evening presented and hosted by Tony Gatlif Thanks to Princes Production and Les Films du Losange.

The incipit is delightful: Bullring, a black cat crosses and makes the bullfighter perform! But a brave young man performs in his place with imaginable consequences. To redeem himself Tom Medina confines himself to a farm in the south of France run by an emigrant Ulysses, a cultured and kind man. His daughter lives with him, helping her father raise horses and cattle. And from their meeting the musical part takes place with rock music. There is a recurring dream Tom Medina has of a White bull. But also a character who is the eye of the spectator: a white owl that follows his movements.

A fairy tale of our times where imagination has no place anymore, with a bittersweet flavor in the countryside of southern France where the Hispanic influence is palpable in the Mediterranean atmosphere.

Let's move on to the three independent sections and the new features present, starting from Critics Week:

OLGA by ELIE GRAPPE – Kiev Olympic centre 2013. Olga and Natasha are two artistic gymnastics athletes. The instructor cheers her up to dispel her fears, also due to the pressure on the political commitment of the mother who is a journalist committed to denouncing illegality. In fact, the two women are subjected to intimidation and are rammed by a car, so Olga is injured in the accident caused. But Olga is selected at an Olympic center in Switzerland. In fact, thanks to his missing father of Swiss origin whom he never knew, he can enjoy civil rights in his father's country. The dilemma for Olga is heartbreaking, given that the revolt against the puppet government has broken out in Ukraine. Although she has a bright future in Switzerland, Olga does not hesitate to return to her mother's homeland where she will coach the young promising Ukrainians. It is a heartbreaking but delicate film that takes us to the borders of Europe where freedoms are not at the level of European standards.

SOFTIE or Petite Nature by SAMUEL THEIS Jean is a teenager who together with her family(or rather pseudo family) he suffered an eviction. The divorced mother thinks mostly of herself. And so Jean has to take care of his little sister Melissa. In the new school Jean is strongly attracted to the male figure of the professor in whom he recognizes the missing paternal affection. And so during the visit to the museum in Metz together with his idol and his other schoolmates, suddenly a whole new world of culture opens up to him. From the state of material necessity he discovers the state of happiness of art.

A YOUNG GIRL WHO IS WELL (A radiant Girl) by SANDRINE KIBERLAIN – A delightful and tragic film during the Second World War about the existence of a young Parisian Jew. Despite the restrictions, the racial laws and the atrocities against the Jewish people, the youth has the upper hand. There is no shortage of loving pulsations of young age in a suspended time where reality is confused with the desire for life of plundered youth. A fresco on the generations of war that does not defeat the desire for life.

Instead the Fortnight of directors we meet again with JONAS CARPIGNANO con A CHIARA – It's Giulia's 18th birthday, eldest daughter of a family from Gioia Tauro. His sister Chiara is years old 15 and it is in the phase of life where he begins to ask himself many questions. However, when her father Claudio escapes the police, the questions Chiara asks her family become uncomfortable: he's not old enough to understand, he doesn't know that there are things that are better not to know and things that are better not to be said. But Chiara can't keep quiet and won't stop looking for answers, especially from that father to whom she is deeply attached and who has just revealed a side of himself completely unknown to her.

Finally, some pills from the interesting Acid section:

I COMETE in PASCAL TGNATI –

Summer village in the hinterland of Corsica. There are vacationers, the young ones, the elderly ones, the rich ones, the losers. Everyone has something to say, to do in the summer laziness. But the place chosen by all this varied multitude of human beings seems like a non-place because the spectator is given the different expressions of the community, each with its own pulsations, fears, joys, want. A calendar where each of us can find ourselves or not by remembering our own life. In the carefree holiday mood, a manifesto of the humanity that surrounds us. Ideological film where everyone stays in their positions and the other listens. Two hours of noble cinema apart from a few hilarious situations. It is the landscape of the Corsican hinterland that makes such holidays desolate. The homage to the Italian song of the 60s is pleasant. In short, an authorial attempt with some ideas from the Corsican dialect which is an idiom more similar to Sardinian than French! .

LITTLE PALESTINE, DIARY OF A SIEGE in ABDALLAH AL-KHATIB – In a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria that has become a ghetto under siege (tough). The days of a helpless doctor because the local hospital lacks medicines and health supplies and people also die from starvation. In Yamark people die like this too. Bashar's men fire on the defenseless crowd that tries to break the siege. In their faces the suffering of a community that is slowly dying due to lack of food and drink. In 2013 ISIS conquered the camp which will be eighty percent destroyed, while in 2018 with the arrival of the Russians the camp was definitively closed and its inhabitants scattered across various parts of the world. The director together with his mother now lives in Germany although many of them would like to return to the Palestinian camp of Yamourk which is a Palestinian microcosm.

VENUS ON THE SHORE at WANG LIN

Filmed in 4/3 in color we are in 1992 in a hospital room where a family is around the bedside of an elderly woman. In a continuous flashback, the story of a Chinese family takes place around a predictably mournful event. The old woman was the director of a company that will be closed but which remains tied to the duties of the communist party despite the looming modernity. A historical journey into the epochal changes of China at the end of the century through brushstrokes that are very reminiscent of the Italian cinema of the economic boom adapted to the reality of the oriental world: love stories, of love betrayals and not only in a dark picture but with clear outlines. One character stands out above all: the sound of what is off-screen.