(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Films from the Balkans are not often staged in Norwegian cinemas, even when compared to some other Eastern European countries. Through the traveling festival Balkan New Film Festival (BaNeFF) you still have the opportunity to see a selection of new films from these countries. The festival is based in Sweden and presents itself as the biggest festival for Balkan film outside the region itself.
This year, BaNeFF will visit the cinemas in Oslo and Bergen for the fourth time, with six and five feature films respectively which have not been shown in Norway before. We have looked at some of these titles, ranging from burlesque comedies to historical war dramas.
Comedy about train death. The dark comedy Train Driver's Diary was Serbia's Oscar candidate in 2016. The film is based on the fact that every train driver during his professional life will experience that between 20 and 30 people die in the encounter with the train he or she is driving, either in the form of suicide or accidents. Whether these figures are completely correct remains uncertain as director and screenwriter Milos Radovics film doesn't exactly swear to realism – neither in form nor narrative.
Instead they have Train Driver's Diary a playful and distinctly burlesque tone, which is effectively established when the train driver Ilija crashes into the film's impact with a car with a complete gypsy orchestra – all of which perish in the collision. The aging protagonist has found his ways to cope with the constant guilt of such events. Later in the film, he meets orphanage boys who want to be hit by his train – but instead Ilija takes him in as an foster child. When the boy grows old enough to choose his own career, he decides to follow the same path (!) As his foster father, to the latter's stubborn protests.
Clear contrasts. The film gives certain associations to Emir Kusturicas Under jorden from 1995, with its exuberant charm and its imaginative and sometimes grotesque elements. Photographer Dusan Joksimovic has also chosen a warm and colorful palette for the images. Together these provide elements Train Driver's Diary a cinematic expression that stands in stark contrast to the morbid content.
But also the story itself contains a great deal of warmth. This is especially true of the kind-hearted portrayal of a non-biological father-son relationship, which liberating probably never taps into the sentimental. Instead, this core story helps to make Train Driver's Diary into a captivating and entertaining movie experience, without getting in the way of its more serious reflections on themes such as death, guilt and sorrow.
Character based Crimea. A police investigator and his partner are set to solve a brutal and presumably mafia-related murder, parallel to the fact that the investigator has to contend with the private. With such a plot can the Montenegrin feature film Lowdown appear to be a traditional police thriller, but it soon becomes clear that the film is rather a dirty realistic thriller. Not least, the handheld camera, which often hangs over the protagonist's shoulder or rests closely on the faces of the various actors, gives clear hints that the long-film debuting director Pavle Simonovic is as interested in his characters as he is in the crime plot itself.
Any train driver during their professional life will find that between 20 and 30 people die in the encounter with the train he or she is driving.
The main character Salo is also not a distinctly sympathetic hero figure. We get to know his acting temper early in the film, in his meeting with reporters at the body of the body. The divorced, handsome man has a daughter who he follows to dance training, and we understand that his significant financial problems will not be lessened by her taking part in a competition in Bologna. On top of that, he receives regular messages from a mysterious credit company, which causes the troubled investigator to become increasingly personally involved in the events.
Refreshing twists. So far, so conventional. But the film also has a backdrop of international bureaucracy, in the form of new EU rules and related cooperation imposed on investigators. This is usually not the case in this type of film. More importantly, though, the film along the way assumes more and more the form of a psychological thriller, which not least emphasizes the social circumstances of the action. Lowdown is an invigorating and highly ambitious attempt to renew a most often conform and faithful genre.
War Movies. Among the films at BaNeFF are also two war films, The Liberation of Skopje og Battalion, which depicts events of World War I and World War II, respectively. Both of these must be said to be a good deal more conventional than the two previously mentioned feature films, but especially Battalion points out with its interesting and hitherto little known theme: It tells of the first female battalion, which was formed by order of the Provisional Russian Government in 1917 to raise the morale of the soldiers along the front line, and who must have fought both hard and hard.
The film is admittedly a Russian production, but will be featured in the festival's new section Trans Cinema Nation which includes films from the Balkan-Russia regions. According to the festival, Balkan women also participated as soldiers in World War I, allegedly motivated by a corresponding patriotism that Battalion portrays. It should also not be forgotten that the Balkans played a key role in the worldwide war – which, after all, started with some shots in this particular region.
Balkan New Film Festival
arrives at the Cinemateket in Oslo 21-23. April and to the Cinemateket in Bergen 3, 4 and 7 May.
