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Feature Films for Grown-ups

Loving Vincent

Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman | United Kingdom, Poland | 2017 | 95 min | EN | CS titulky

This feature film about Vincent van Gogh, which combines the animation of the painter’s unique oil paintings with rotoscopy, has been eagerly anticipated by the entire animation world. When Loving Vincent entered the cinemas last year, it not only fulfilled, but often also exceeded expectations. It is not a biography, as it may seem at the first glance, but rather a criminal drama which uses some biographical features from the artist’s problematic and prematurely ended life. Van Gogh, a mysterious personality, who during his life suffered from poverty and mental breakdowns, has inspired the authors to make a visually distinct film for which 125 artists from all over the world made 66,960 original oil paintings inspired by 94 van Gogh paintings. Also the story took a lot of effort to create – the script is based on eight hundred letters written by van Gogh and addressed mostly to his brother. The key moment of the whole story is a day in July 1890 when the painter, falling deeper and deeper into depression, shot himself in the chest. Two days later he died from his injury, but the circumstances of his death were never clarified. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and won the prize for the best European Animated Feature Film at the European Film Awards in 2017.

Cinderella the Cat

Alessandro Rak, Dario Sansone, Marino Guarnieri, Ivan Cappiello | Italy | 2017 | 86 min | IT | CS titulky

Naples in the not-so-distant future – in the bay of the city that is famous for its cultural heritage as well as heaps of garbage and social problems, the ship Megaride owned by a visionary named Vittorio Basile is anchored. He would like to transform the city beneath Mt. Vesuvius into a thriving centre of science and progress. Blinded by his philanthropy, he is ignorant to plots which take away his fortune and eventually his life. His only daughter Mia remains at the mercy of her stepmother Angelica, her treacherous lover Salvatore, and six step-siblings. The glory of the opulent ship slowly fades, its halls are haunted by scary holograms and Naples is gradually covered in volcanic ash. Mia grows up and it seems that the only hope for a new life lies with policeman Primo Gemito, Basile’s former loyal collaborator, intent on not to leaving the city in the hands of the drug lord Salvatore. The original Cinderella story was published in Naples in the 17^th century and this dark adaptation imaginatively develops the famous characters with deliberate cynicism. Also the references to Italy’s contemporary political culture and its representatives are not very discreet. Thanks to a combination of 2D and 3D animation reminiscent of videogame aesthetics, musical numbers and sequences similar to music videos, Cinderella the Cat promises a captivating spectacle for a good night – for grown-ups.

Release from Heaven

Ali Noori Oskouei | Iran | 2017 | 76 min | X_FAR | CS titulky | 13+

This unusual allegorical film follows a mythical hero who protects children and the defenceless across time. His heroic deeds are passed on from generation to generation in the form of thrilling tales. The adults tell them to their children to calm them down and take their minds off living in a warzone. We watch the legendary saviour through the eyes of a teacher from a war-torn country. Because of bombings, she has to flee a boarding school with the children. They find shelter in a cave where she tells the children the stories and where they find the first evidence of the hero’s real existence. Together with the children, the teacher travels through the warzone and finds more and more evidence. The more interested she becomes in the whole thing, the more she believes that the hero is not just a figment of her imagination, but a real person. After emigrating, she decides to make a comic book about the hero who accompanied her through her entire life. But she finds out that she doesn’t know anything about him apart from that he’s kind and courageous.
The film combines 2D and 3D computer animation. It uses them to separate individual timelines that loosely flow through the story. The grey dismalness of today alternates with the pathos of the old heroic times as the film exposes its viewers to changing formal and content stimuli.

I'll Just Live in Bando

Yongsun Lee | South Korea | 2017 | 85 min | KO | CS titulky

JunKoo Oh is an unemployed middle-aged actor waiting for his big break. He’s got a wife, two children and is an external acting teacher at a university. The family expenses are high as well as his daughter’s tuition fees, and his wife wants to move to a better neighbourhood. When JunKoo Oh finds out that he is to become a full-time employee of the university, he sees it as great news. He also gets a lucrative acting offer, but he can’t accept both. From this moment on, we witness a string of absurd hiccups during which our hero struggles with his own indecisiveness and moral issues. He accidentally learns that an elderly professor, who is responsible for hiring JunKoo to the faculty, is abusing one of the students. If this were to come to light, the professor would be fired and JunKoo’s new job would be lost. Can he convince the abused student, who hates him? Will he finally get a new job or will things work out in an entirely different way? This low-budget Korean film relies on a script full of dry humour rather than on excellent animation and visual style. The film’s ridiculously absurd atmosphere is enhanced by exaggerated facial expressions of its characters.

Tehran Taboo

Ali Soozandeh | Germany, Austria | 2017 | 93 min | X_FAR | CS titulky

Ali Soozandeh’s feature film debut, a daring and provocative probe into contemporary Iranian society, was rather fittingly made outside of Iran. This rotoscoped, realistic and almost naturalistic film follows several characters who come into conflict with strict religious law. The director focuses on the lives of three women and one young musician who fight for their rights, dignity and survival in the schizophrenic Iranian society. Pari is forced into prostitution to be able to feed her son while her husband is in prison for dealing drugs. Her pregnant neighbour Sara is seeking work in spite of her husband’s beliefs. Donya meets Babak in a night club and it has consequences… The viewers find out that the seemingly bigoted Muslim society still provides space for prostitution, adultery, corruption and drugs; all you have to do is find some loopholes and do it without the knowledge of the Revolution Committee. For some Iranians, bypassing the religious code represents an everyday adventure; for the female heroines, it is a means of emancipation in a strictly male world. This topical film with a very pressing message was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Debut prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival.