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Not Your Saturday Morning Cartoon was a mix of 10 or so different cartoons, none of which were politically correct or suitable for minors. There was a huge local crowd cheering for the filmmakers, who seemed to be local celebrities.
Quite entertaining and a nice change from the standard fare you get on TV

Victoria Abril, the second try. This time it was a thriller with quite a few twists. Maybe even a few too many …
At times it was difficult to follow who betrayed whom right now, but overall the suspense was kept up until the very end.
Swindled is about a group of con artists, who plan the one big coup. Everybody has a history with each other and there’s a huge mistrust between all of them, but they need each other to pull that one off.
Whenever you think “wow - now they really screwed im/her", you find out shortly after that all of it was very well calculated and part of someone else’s plan - who’s screwed only a couple of scenes later …

Carmen Maura is one of the grande dames of Spanish cinema. She again showed her talent in The Promise, a dark film about an elderly woman, who is a religious fanatic and doesn’t find the love she desires or a child to take care of in her marriage.
A sign of god makes her change her fate, getting rid of her husband and starting over in a remote village, where she starts as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy but unhappy family. Soon after that the movie becomes twisted - reality and ficticious events are mixed and the audience is never certain what actually happened and what Celia just dreamt or wished.
I won’t tell the end, mainly because I didn’t see it completely, as I had to run for my next movie …

This one was interesting. I watched Games of Love and Chance with Aaron, and he was not impressed at all with it. This was mainly due to the constant use of yelling, foul language and aggression byt a group of teenagers in a Paris low income suburb.
Having lived in a French family for a while, I was kind of used to the way people interact there, so I could see beyond that and found a quaint movie, dealing with a young arab’s coming of age, his problems with his first love and his general incompetency to communicate his feelings properly. This was nicely contrasted by a school play the kids put together, which also dealt with the different styles of conversation that you can learn, but which never completely cover you real personality.
Towards the end the different threads meet in a dramatic encounter with the police, that unveils the hard truth about these kids’ lives, which again is completely different from the way in which they present themselves in the other two storylines.

What started out like an early Almodovar (including a good performance by Victoria Abril and an over-the-top setup of characters), lost its’ momentum halfway through the film and ended up confusing me more than it entertained. I’m not sure what the overarching story of School of Seduction actually was, even though I could follow the storyline without problem. But still it didn’t come together to something coherent, nor was it resolved in a satisfactory way.
And what was the whole concert music about?

Thank God, back to very good!
The Edukators is a cool German movie, describing an involuntary kidnapping, a love triangle, an old revolutionist turned businessman, and assuring us that it’s very hard if not impossible to base all our actions on the purpose of a better world.
It had very convincing performances by Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch and Stipe Erceg and it is a great example for the modern and realistic German movie style - no special effects, no exaggerated characters, just a bunch of normal people getting into a strange situation - and dealing with it to their best capacities.
My favorite quote:

If you’re under 30 and not a liberal, you don’t have a heart;
if you’re over 30 and still a liberal, you don’t have a brain!

That pretty much sums it up … and some pople never change!

My second movie of the evening was Ma mère, and hadn’t Isabelle Huppert given a convincing performance, this one would have been my first big disappointment (that way it was only a small to medium one).
I admit that I am not a huge fan of French cinema, but this one was overly complex, had too many characters moving in and out of the storyline and used unnecessary violence and offensive imagery to convey the ambivalent relationship between a mother and her son.
It was also an interesting viewing experience: a sold-out movie, yet quite a few people left throughout the screening, and at the and not a single sound of applause. I assume that a lot of them were equally disappointed and/or came into it with too high expectations.

Maybe I shouldn’t have bragged so much, but it was bound to happen. Tonights movies were an interesting mix. The first one was Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World, a Japanese surprise hit that was a pop culture phenomenon and inspired quite a few other true love movies over there.
Even though it had a caveat up front that it’s a very romantic tearjerker, it didn’t really grip me - I couldn’t relate that well to the characters throughout an otherwise well made movie. Dealing with true love and fate, the story is told in vivid images, moving back and forth between the present and the past.
Lengthy at times, it ended up happily (a first for me in this festival) - after quite some drama in between.

My first five film picks of this year all prove to be very good or excellent. I was starting to wonder - either I’m just too enthusiastic or there are actually no movies of lesser quality in the competition. However, when standing in line for yet another sell-out - Mysterious Skin - today, I overheard a conversation between two All-Access-Badge holders who seemed to have found some weak spots within the 20 or so movies they had watched already; so I figure I might just have made a good choice.
Mysterious Skin is an intense movie. Spanning time from 1981 all the way to 1997, it follows the lives of two teenagers that deal with childhood abuse in very different ways. You get to know the shy and introverted Brian, who is haunted by nightmares and a bleeding nose, and believes that the best explanation for his memory blackouts is that he was abducted by aliens. Neil on the other hand distances himself from the experience by building an impermeable wall around him that no emotion can get through. This protection also makes it bearable for him to earn his money as a hustler.
Both storylines meet at the end and the then 18 year olds also dicover the common origin of their suffering and find a little comfort in sharing it.
It’s the fifth film in a row for me that doesn’t have a happy ending in a Hollywood sense - I’m curious to see if a broader audience will appreciate that once the movies hit the box offices.

Layer Cake was quite a break in my movie thread. From black comedy to British crime thriller in less than an hour.
But still, it was another impressive movie. Set in the London underworld, the story is a classic: small ganster wants to quit his dirty business, is asked by a bigger gangster for a favor before he can actually quit, and runs into a situation that is beyond his control and belief. There are a lot of unexpected turns and twists - even up to the last scene - that keep you on the edge of your seat for the whole time.
While being mostly a thriller, the movie also manages to illustrate the delicate social layers in British society (yes, even the criminal one) - hence the title, taken from one of the gangster bosses’ quotes:

When you start out, you have to take a lot of shit. Then you go up a layer, and have to take even more shit. You continue going up and over time you almost forget what shit even looks like. It’s like a Layer Cake.

The first of two movies today was Everyone. I went into it with mixed expectations, as sometimes movies labeled as gay are very narrow in their storylines and characters.
Not so this one.
Director Bill Marchant managed to compose a story that depicts a vast array of completely dysfunctional to more-or-less functional social relationships (with only the central characters being gay) in the form of a very black comedy revolving around the gay couple’s wedding Celebration of Union. As the Film Festival site puts it very pointedly:

While the guests don’t bring any gifts, they do bring plenty of (emotional) baggage.

Marchant managed to shoot the movie in 19 days for $23.000, which is dead cheap and very fast. He wrote the script while sitting next to his mother’s bed at the time she was dying, which he said made the story come across a little darker than usual. Except for 3 actors all of them are friends of his and volunteered to shoot the film, some even gave him some of their own money to support it. Previously it had already won the Golden Zenith for the Best Canadian Film at last year’s Montreal Film Festival.
However, regardless of Merchant’s outlook on marriage being a very dark one, he told the audience in the Q&A afterwards that when his partner popped the question on his 40th birthday, he screamed like a little girl and said “Hell Yeah!". They’ll have their wedding in July.

Murderball is an awesome documentary. Mainly revolving around the fast and almost violent game of Quad Rugby, which was initially named Murderball (thus the title), the editors managed to build up a storyline that illustrates the sportive competition between the USA and Canada. This is done mainly through one of the main protagonists - Joe Soares - who used to be one of the top players on the US team, but deserted to coach the Canadians after he didn’t make it to the roster for the World Championships. At the same time it’s an eye-opening illustration of the quadriplegic rugby players’ self image, which is not even close to the mainstream perception (Christopher Reeves being a prominent example thereof). Because of their sport, a lot of them have gained a self-esteem and confidence, both on and off court, that defies every stereotype and shows in all facets of their lives.
There is never even a sense of pity or compassion (maybe except for when they lose the Paralympics match against Canada), and you could almost feel the strength of each and every individual on the team. At times the dense storyline, in conjunction with the dynamic and powerful soundtrack made this movie seem almost fictional.
It’s running one more time on Sunday, April 10th. If you like fast paced documentaries, this one’s a great choice (and yes - another sell out).

What a great start into this year’s Film Festival. Ferpect Crime is a spanish comedy revolving around Rafael, the playboy of the local department store’s women’s section. He gets into an unvoluntary affair with Lourdes, one of his coworkers, and has to endure her obsessive character, her wacko family and the guilt of the crime that forced him into this situation.
A Ferpect Crime seems to be his only way out of this situation and it’s preparation and execution is undoubtedly the movie’s climax - with the rendition of Lourdes’ completly dysfunctional family being a close second.
Álex de la Iglesia has put together a firework of comedy, with lots of absurd situations, twisted characters and a couple of thoughts to take home. As he phrased it nicely in the discussion following the movie:

She is so ugly, you would think “She must be a nice person". But then you find out that she is bad as the devil in hell. So you learn, ugly people can be bad, too!

The show was sold out, they even had to turn down people holding tickets. So if anyone is considering one of the festival movies, I’d strongly recommend buying tickets in advance, this year seems to be popular!