The six best films from New Hori­zons Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val 2016

We’ve said it before but it bears repeat­ing: New Hori­zons real­ly is the coolest film fes­ti­val on the con­ti­nent. Sure, it may not boast the kind of high-pro­file world pre­mieres you’d asso­ciate with Cannes or Venice, but have you actu­al­ly tried get­ting into those? A cheap 90-minute return flight from Lon­don finds you at the Kino Nowe Hory­zon­ty, a nine-screen com­plex in cen­tral Wrocław ded­i­cat­ed to the best in world cin­e­ma. It’s here where, across 10 nights in July, you can choose between screen­ings of the crème of Cannes or a series of per­fect­ly pro­grammed ret­ro­spec­tives screened from immac­u­late 35mm prints.

Next year New Hori­zons is mov­ing to the begin­ning of August to avoid a clash with a major sport­ing event. We’re look­ing for­ward to it already. In the mean­time, here are a few of our favourite dis­cov­er­ies from this year’s fest.

A strong con­tender for film of the year, Cata­lan direc­tor Albert Ser­ra con­tin­ues to pop­u­late his Bor­ge­sian gallery of fig­ures drawn from lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry with this mag­nif­i­cent por­trait of the can­dy floss-bewigged French monarch. Ser­ra bare­ly ven­tures any fur­ther into the land of the liv­ing fol­low­ing his 2013 Locarno-win­ner, The Sto­ry of My Death – the new film’s slight nar­ra­tive tak­ing the form of a two hour death-rat­tle almost entire­ly con­tained with­in the dying king’s bed­cham­ber. Some­thing of a dig­i­tal mir­a­cle (the low-lev­el light­ing – and the film’s final line – invite com­par­isons with Bar­ry Lyn­don), it’s a tri­umph of cos­tume and design, the inte­ri­ors as lux­u­ri­ous­ly tex­tured as Serra’s direc­tion and breath­tak­ing visu­al style are rig­or­ous­ly controlled.

Audi­ences in Wrocław weren’t the first to point out the echo in the film’s most exquis­ite shot; as Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Louis throws down an extend­ed, fourth-wall-bust­ing stare, just as he had near­ly 60 years ago at the close of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. It’s an extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance that imbues the emblem­at­ic with the per­son­al to dev­as­tat­ing effect. While he’s sur­round­ed by a coterie of physi­cians ever more des­per­ate to pre­serve an idea of France as much as its cor­po­re­al embod­i­ment, Ser­ra fix­es on the dying gasps of a fig­ure­head (and by exten­sion, a nation); a metaphor that forges the his­tor­i­cal to the pre­scient­ly political.

One can prob­a­bly reach the Aleut­ian Islands in less time than it takes to sit through all twelve hours of Ulrike Ottinger’s ethno­graph­ic study of their land­scape, inhab­i­tants and sur­round­ings. Bro­ken into three parts, it’s a view­ing expe­ri­ence that swift­ly proves itself any­thing but a chore. Ottinger remains a sin­gu­lar fig­ure of the New Ger­man Cin­e­ma, her back­ground as an artist plac­ing her at a dis­tance from her bet­ter-known con­tem­po­raries. Of a piece with her 1992 por­trait of Mon­go­lian nomads, Taiga (a snip at eight hours), Chamisso’s Shad­ow is a doc­u­men­tary in the slow cin­e­ma mode, a film at dis­tinct odds with her 1979 alco­holic mas­ter­piece of auto-destruc­tion, Tick­et of No Return, and its bet­ter-known 1981 fol­low-up, Freak Orlando.

The film forms ​“an assem­blage of the ethno­graph­ic and the artis­tic,” cre­at­ing a dia­logue between the diaries of 18^th and 19^th cen­tu­ry explor­ers (Hum­boldt, Cook, Stellen and Chamis­so) that form much of the film’s nar­ra­tion, and Ottinger’s own jour­ney in their foot­steps to the sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed straits where Amer­i­ca almost meets Rus­sia. A keen, lyri­cal eye for detail sur­veys the land­scape; long takes at pains not to edi­to­ri­alise the dai­ly rhythms of its inhab­i­tants. A wry sense of humour occa­sion­al­ly sur­faces, while past and present are riv­et­ing­ly jux­ta­posed in voiceover and image. A tremen­dous achieve­ment by any stan­dards, its patient, rig­or­ous image-mak­ing there to lux­u­ri­ate in for (many) hours.

Cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a Paris ret­ro­spec­tive, Patrick Grand­per­ret remains lit­tle-known out­side of his native France. Claire Denis select­ed and intro­duced his 1989 film in trib­ute to her friend – a pro­duc­er and direc­tor who helped launch the careers of Luc Besson and pro­duced her own Beau Tra­vail – appar­ent­ly in seri­ous ill-health. A punk­ish lark in the Ciné­ma du Look mode, Mona and I fea­tures an ear­ly star­ring turn from an impos­si­bly young Denis Lavant as a band member/​manager des­per­ate­ly seek­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty. Set­ting up a tour for vis­it­ing punk icon and ​“urban shaman,” John­ny Valen­tine (erst­while New York Dolls gui­tarist, John­ny Thun­ders, who pro­vid­ed the ace sound­track and died short­ly after the film’s release), Lavant swift­ly pimps out and los­es his girl to the singer.

Grand­per­ret satiris­es as much as he indulges the punk atti­tude, a ter­rif­ic mid-film sequence sees Valentine’s ener­getic club per­for­mances picked apart by Lavant’s wannabe crew. One can only won­der whether the copi­ous on-screen drug use was mir­rored behind the scenes, giv­en the film’s coke-jagged rhythms and styl­is­tic jolts. There’s lit­tle atten­tion paid to con­ti­nu­ity – nar­ra­tive or oth­er­wise – the main thrust of the already frac­tured ​‘sto­ry’ veer­ing off for an extend­ed drug deal digres­sion. The spir­it­ed let’s‑just-film-some-shit approach just about wings it (espe­cial­ly in the Valen­tine hang-out and rehearsal scenes), but a suit­ably bonkers finale – mur­der, uni­cy­cles and an impromp­tu game of beach vol­ley­ball – at least feels of a piece with the anar­chic pos­ture to which its losers aspire.

If Mona and I feels cocaine-pow­ered, its drug use is noth­ing com­pared to the opi­ate fog that hangs over Arreba­to. A remark­able cult odd­i­ty that played in the festival’s Basque cin­e­ma strand, it’s a para­noid, vam­pir­ic ode to film­mak­ing that feels like a miss­ing link between Peep­ing Tom and Video­drome. Told through a com­plex and not always dis­tin­guish­able series of flash­backs and spec­tral vis­i­ta­tions, it tells the sto­ry of a Z‑grade, junkie film­mak­er who receives a mys­te­ri­ous pack­age from a deceased for­mer friend con­tain­ing reels of film, a key and an audio-recording.

Said audio pro­vides the film’s voice-over nar­ra­tion, a dis­turb­ing cat­a­logue of the friend’s attempts to cap­ture his own per­son­al cin­e­mat­ic ​‘rap­ture’ on film – using a cam­era that feeds on a person’s essence – as he spi­rals deep­er down a drug-addled rab­bit hole. With its sear­ing imagery, oblique ref­er­ences and numb­ing, grimy vibe, Arreba­to proves a lot to take in on a sin­gle view­ing, even as the end­ing remains impos­si­ble to shake. One can imag­ine direc­tors as dis­parate as Lynch and Almod­ó­var being fans (Pedro reg­u­lar Cecil­ia Roth co-stars). Well deserv­ing of a wider audi­ence, it’d make for a bril­liant addi­tion to the likes of Arrow or Eureka’s home video line-up.

The year’s great­est love sto­ry comes cour­tesy of Tai­wanese mas­ter, Tsai Ming-Liang. Tak­ing the form of a con­ver­sa­tion between the direc­tor and his long-term lead­ing actor Lee Kang-Sheng, Tsai sets up an exquis­ite sta­t­ic frame, kicks back and chats til his mem­o­ry cards run out. That’s every­thing, and it’s every­thing. A chron­i­cle of a twen­ty-five year work­ing rela­tion­ship, of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al anx­i­eties; it’s a heartrend­ing por­trait of an odd-cou­ple clear­ly (pla­ton­i­cal­ly) in love. Ques­tions of phys­i­cal and artis­tic mor­tal­i­ty spill from Tsai’s charm­ing­ly ner­vous motor­mouth, as Lee sto­ical­ly chain-smokes and resists his friend’s per­sis­tent psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­ing as best he can. Digres­sions with­in digres­sions take the rud­der­less con­ver­sa­tion seem­ing­ly acci­den­tal­ly into the realms of the melan­cholic, not least when focussed on the mak­ing of Stray Dogs. Yet it remains a film of pro­found warmth and inti­ma­cy, not to men­tion humour; a film so for­mal­ly rig­or­ous yet chaot­i­cal­ly, mess­i­ly human.

With none of the films avail­able on DVD, New Hori­zons’ pro­gram­ming of the entire­ty of Matthew Barney’s Cre­mas­ter Cycle on jaw-drop­ping 35mm prints over con­sec­u­tive nights proved an oppor­tu­ni­ty not to be missed. The swirl of images con­jured by the artist-filmmaker’s mas­ter­work lin­gered long after the screen­ings were over, on occa­sion serv­ing as an amus­ing intru­sion to a late-night film dur­ing an acci­den­tal nod-off. The festival’s grand finale saw Barney’s most recent work, Riv­er of Fun­da­ment screened at the recent­ly com­plet­ed – and acousti­cal­ly-stag­ger­ing – Nation­al Music Forum.

If the Cre­mas­ter films had pre­pared us for the imag­is­tic smörgås­bord to come, six hours of Barney’s sin­gu­lar vision clear­ly wasn’t to all tastes, giv­en the num­ber of emp­ty seats at the end com­pared to a packed-out start. Those who made it all the way through wit­nessed some­thing rare and spe­cial indeed. An adap­ta­tion of Nor­man Mailer’s brazen­ly indul­gent 1983 epic of secre­tions, excre­tions, sex and re-birth Ancient Evenings, trans­formed by Bar­ney into an oper­at­i­cal­ly-scaled ode to max­i­mal­ism and Mail­er him­self, the film test­ed one’s patience for image-dri­ven sto­ry­telling as much as it did one’s gag-reflex, giv­en the extra­or­di­nary lev­els of human waste on display.

Fol­low­ing Mailer’s text – or at least draw­ing from its imagery – more faith­ful­ly than expect­ed, it final­ly proved a mas­ter­class in adapt­ing the seem­ing­ly unfilmable, fus­ing the scope and swag­ger of its source mate­r­i­al to a meta, con­tem­po­rary fram­ing device; all fil­tered through a sin­gu­lar artis­tic vision, unique not just to a week’s fes­ti­val view­ing, but to cin­e­ma itself.

For more on New Hori­zons vis­it nowe​ho​ry​zon​ty​.pl