The best new films from New Hori­zons Film Fes­ti­val 2018

The New Hori­zons Film Fes­ti­val in Wrocław, Poland drew to a close this week­end, hav­ing once again served up an impos­si­bly stuffed pro­gramme of the best in inter­na­tion­al cin­e­ma. While the Pedro Cos­ta and João César Mon­teiro ret­ro­spec­tives proved tempt­ing, and the heavy-hit­ters from Cannes, Sun­dance and Berlin saw the usu­al scram­ble for tick­ets, this year we thought we’d take in the festival’s Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion in its entire­ty. Twelve films, all first or sec­ond fea­tures, bat­tled it out for two prizes: the Grand Prix and the Audi­ence Award, picked out by mem­bers of the pub­lic. Here’s a run­down of our com­pe­ti­tion favourites in ascend­ing order…

“Just pre­tend I’m not here,” an Amer­i­can direc­tor tells Alic­ja (Ane­ta Piotrows­ka). She’s mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the immi­grant expe­ri­ence, fol­low­ing a 32-year-old Pol­ish woman who’s set­tled in Lon­don. Katie’s film is the film we’re watch­ing, one which start­ed as ​“a film about Brex­it and how peo­ple are used and dis­posed of… but didn’t turn out that way.”

Of course, what we’re real­ly watch­ing is the fic­tion debut of writer/​directors Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek, a lo-fi traipse through psy­cho­log­i­cal and faux-doc­u­men­tary cliché. Lon­don as an iso­lat­ing city, the per­for­ma­tive fal­lac­i­es of social media, the eth­i­cal quan­daries of co-depen­den­cy in doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing: all raise their head, only to prove as touris­tic in their depth as the film’s whis­tle-stop tour through its subject’s adopt­ed city.

The open­ing scene sets the pace: a 10 minute, fixed-cam­era shot of a late mid­dle-aged cou­ple try­ing – and fail­ing – to have sex. Jorge and Mabel are split­ting up, and Argen­tine direc­tor Mon­i­ca Lairana’s film charts their last day in the mar­i­tal home, divid­ing and pack­ing up their things. There’s lit­tle by way of dia­logue, these two appear to have lit­tle left to say, the stage seem­ing­ly set for a behav­iour­al study on the final throes of a mar­riage. But action is not behav­iour, and whether the fail­ing lies with Lairana or her actors, it’s hard to escape the sense of a series of motions worked through, with lit­tle by way of sub­tle­ty and nuance that might have imbued them with a deep­er mean­ing and understanding.

Far more suc­cess­ful than My Friend the Pol­ish Girl in chart­ing the immi­grant expe­ri­ence, The Return sim­i­lar­ly blurs the lines between fic­tion and doc­u­men­tary. In fact, it was only Sis­sel Dals­gaard Thomsen’s screen­writer cred­it at the end that tipped us off to the film’s true nature. Based on direc­tor Malene Choi’s own expe­ri­ence as a Kore­an woman giv­en up for adop­tion at birth, the film fol­lows Dan­ish immi­grant, Karoline’s (Karo­line Sofie Lee) return to Seoul in a bid to find her birth mother.

A sub­tle, glitchy approach to form – well served by Philip Nico­lai Flindt’s elec­tron­ic score – simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­ments on the per­ceived real­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing while offer­ing a shared sense of dis­lo­ca­tion with its char­ac­ters. The key scene, a reunion between fel­low adoptee Thomas (Thomas Hwan) and his birth moth­er, proves heart­break­ing, not least due to a stag­ger­ing per­for­mance from Seong In-ja as the moth­er whose rest­less, down­ward gaze belies a life­time of hope and shame.

“I want you to know that it’s okay if you want to leave the cin­e­ma,” said direc­tor Isabel­la Eklöf in her intro­duc­tion to Hol­i­day, ​“It’s a per­fect­ly valid reac­tion, not all art is for every­one.” It took about 45 min­utes to find out what she might have been talk­ing about, her cam­era fixed with detached insou­ciance on a bru­tal­ly explic­it, humil­i­at­ing attack. The film cer­tain­ly isn’t for every­one, but not a sin­gle chair slammed upwards. We won’t spoil the cool, cal­cu­lat­ing, jaw-drop­ping end­ing – suf­fice to say Holiday’s moral res­o­lu­tion lands one hell of a gut punch.

The result of a year spent with the Krahô peo­ple in the Brazil­ian vil­lage of Pedra Bran­ca, The Dead and the Oth­ers saw João Salviza (along with co-direc­tor Renée Nad­er Mes­so­ra) add this year’s Un Cer­tain Regard Jury Prize to his Palme d’Or and Gold­en Bear for respec­tive shorts Are­na and Rafa. It’s a patient, under­stat­ed debut fea­ture, fol­low­ing the tribu­la­tions of fif­teen year old Ihjãc as he strug­gles with the encroach­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty fol­low­ing the death of his father.

Pur­sued by his mecarõ – a spir­it ani­mal with ques­tion­able inten­tions – Ihjãc aban­dons his wife and infant son, seek­ing refuge in the near­est town. Stun­ning­ly lensed by Mes­so­ra, it’s tes­ta­ment to the film­mak­ers’ time spent with­in the com­mu­ni­ty that the film nev­er falls into ethno­graph­ic voyeurism, the ten­sions between tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty mask­ing (malev­o­lent macaw aside) what are oth­er­wise uni­ver­sal­ly res­o­nant themes of teenage anx­i­ety and grow­ing pains.

Ogn­jen Glavonic’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, the 2016 doc­u­men­tary Depth Two, cen­tres on the dis­cov­ery of mass graves out­side Bel­grade fol­low­ing the NATO bomb­ing cam­paign in 1999. Return­ing to the same top­ic for his fic­tion debut, Glavon­ic fol­lows a long-haul lor­ry dri­ver, Vla­da (Leon Lucev) as he dri­ves cross-coun­try with an unknown car­go locked up in the back. Ques­tions of col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty and selec­tive silence soon sur­face, as the nature of the tit­u­lar load becomes clear, with Glavon­ic prov­ing as unflinch­ing in his inter­ro­ga­tion of Ser­bian his­to­ry as he had with his pre­vi­ous film’s first­hand testimonies.

When he picks up a young hitch­hik­er en route, Vla­da begins a cau­tious, round­about dia­logue, Glavon­ic illus­trat­ing the gen­er­a­tional dichoto­my between weary sur­vival and insu­lat­ed, naïve hope. The hand­held cam­era keeps us at Vlada’s side across the bleak, desat­u­rat­ed ter­rain, until Glavon­ic steps back for a long, fixed-per­spec­tive shot of the truck, its inhab­i­tants and the land­scape – all the bet­ter to sur­vey the impli­ca­tions that lie within.

A revenge tale – or rather an anti-revenge tale – forms the back­bone of Domini­can film­mak­er Nel­son Car­lo de Los San­tos Arias’ fea­ture debut. It’s a rest­less, for­mal­ist mar­vel, switch­ing between film stocks, aspect ratios and colour schemes on an almost shot-to-shot basis. It makes for an intense, often over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, all the bet­ter the chart the psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of its pro­tag­o­nist, Alber­to (Vicente San­tos), a Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list drawn into the rit­u­als of a home­town com­mu­ni­ty con­vinced he ought to avenge the death of his mur­dered father.

It’s a brave film­mak­er who wil­ful­ly elides access for the view­er on psy­cho­log­i­cal terms, rely­ing instead on a for­mal strat­e­gy that intox­i­cates even as it dis­ori­en­tates. Its suc­cess depends on a will­ing­ness to give one­self over to the dizzy­ing, abra­sive rhythms of this sin­gu­lar styl­is­tic marvel.

An adren­a­line shot of pure cin­e­mat­ic, lit­er­ary and erot­ic max­i­mal­ism, Bernard Mandico’s The Wild Boys is quite unlike any­thing else you’re like­ly to see this year. Grad­u­ate the­ses could be filled to burst with its antecedent allu­sions alone, and that’s before one gets to the heady bat­tle­ground of its gen­der pol­i­tics. The work of Guy Maddin is per­haps the best descrip­tor of the film’s aes­thet­ic – a gar­ish, drunk­en­ly arti­fi­cial world cap­tured in black and white and vibrant, fan­tas­ti­cal colour.

Mandi­co tips his hat to William Bur­roughs in the clos­ing cred­its – as good a place to start in approach­ing the erot­ic fan­tasias of its star­tling­ly cor­po­re­al imagery. A plot sum­ma­ry serves lit­tle pur­pose here, suf­fice to say it begins with the rape of a teacher by her male pupils, who are exiled to a mag­i­cal island. But the boys are all played by girls, and the island is a place that sees them grow breasts as their cocks fall off. That’s just the start of it. Sure to become a queer cult favourite.

Talk of Jere­mi­ah Zagar’s fic­tion debut as this year’s answer to Moon­light began imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its pre­mière at Sun­dance in Jan­u­ary. While small­er in nar­ra­tive scope to Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ film, it’s a com­par­i­son the film bears well, with its focus on emer­gent sex­u­al­i­ty in its eco­nom­i­cal­ly mar­gin­alised protagonist.

Exquis­ite­ly lensed by Zak Mul­li­gan, large­ly on Super 16, an even clos­er touch­stone might be the child­hood sec­tions of Ter­rence Malick’s The Tree of Life, shar­ing its visu­al poet­ry and mag­ic-real­ist flour­ish­es as the cast of three young broth­ers nego­ti­ate their par­ents’ tur­bu­lent mar­riage. There’s an unaf­fect­ed nat­u­ral­ism to all the per­for­mances here, under­pinned by Zagar’s sym­pa­thet­ic, under­stat­ed approach to the eco­nom­ic fragili­ty at the heart of this mixed-race family’s con­flicts. Def­i­nite­ly a name to watch.

Smoczynska’s first fea­ture, The Lure quick­ly became some­thing of a cult sen­sa­tion, earn­ing itself the rare priv­i­lege of a Cri­te­ri­on release in the US and the UK. An about-turn from the camp histri­on­ics of that film’s singing vam­pire mer­maids, her sec­ond fea­ture rep­re­sents a seri­ous step up in film­mak­ing prowess. Alic­ja is suf­fer­ing from a ​‘dis­as­so­cia­tive fugue,’ extreme mem­o­ry loss the ori­gins of which are unclear. She van­ished two years ago, leav­ing her hus­band and son behind, only to be recog­nised by her father dur­ing a forced TV appearance.

Alic­ja has no rec­ol­lec­tion of her pre­vi­ous life as Kinga, and no inter­est in return­ing to the fam­i­ly home. A mes­meris­ing, dif­fi­cult per­for­mance from Gabriela Muskala anchors the film, but it’s Smoczynska’s out­stand­ing direc­tion – not least in her sound design – that ele­vates the amne­si­ac tem­plate. Dia­logue scenes are rig­or­ous­ly con­trolled, ampli­fied by the likes of a stove’s tick­ing igni­tion, while a sea­side freak­out is mined for full-blown horror.

A teenage cou­ple liv­ing on the bread­line; preg­nan­cy; tragedy; resilience. If a glance at the skele­tal plot of Valérie Massadian’s sec­ond fea­ture con­jures thoughts of count­less Dar­d­ennes knock-offs, rest assured. A stun­ning mar­riage of social real­ism and rig­or­ous­ly cal­i­brat­ed for­mal design, Mil­la was clear­ly one the best films play­ing in the New Hori­zons pro­gramme. It’s a film of aching ellipses, devoid of expo­si­tion­al clar­i­fi­ca­tion but rich in keen­ly observed, haunt­ing­ly ten­der detail. We fol­low Mil­la across a num­ber of years, from free­wheel­ing youth­ful romance to self­less responsibility.

It’s tes­ta­ment to Massadian’s aes­thet­ic approach that the film’s for­mal ele­ments feel so empa­thet­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nised with Milla’s psy­cho­log­i­cal jour­ney; the deep reds of her safe spaces giv­ing way to cool blues of emer­gent adult­hood, Massadian’s care­ful fram­ing sub­tly priv­i­leg­ing us with access to Milla’s inner life, none more so than dur­ing a bit­ter­sweet musi­cal inter­lude. The film’s final third is just mag­nif­i­cent, Milla’s new life with her young son send­ing us out on the most del­i­cate­ly earned note of frag­ile optimism.

The first and final fea­ture from Chi­nese direc­tor Hu Bo, who took his own life in Octo­ber 2017 at just 29, a few months before the film’s world pre­mière at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val. It’s impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the trag­ic cir­cum­stances of An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still​’s jour­ney to the fes­ti­val cir­cuit from the con­tent of the film itself, a pun­ish­ing­ly bleak study of social and eco­nom­ic dis­en­fran­chise­ment in north­ern China.

Across four hours, Hu’s Dan­tean nose­dive into the depths of despair offers lit­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal or aes­thet­ic respite for both his pro­tag­o­nists and audi­ence. It’s a for­mi­da­ble achieve­ment of stark nar­ra­tive and for­mal con­trol, its mul­ti­ple char­ac­ter arcs drawn inex­orably to shared dra­mat­ic and exis­ten­tial con­clu­sions. Gru­elling­ly pes­simistic it may be, but Hu’s insis­tent sub­jec­tiv­i­ty emphat­i­cal­ly high­lights a des­per­ate human­i­ty in the mire. One of the year’s very best films, and a major new tal­ent gone way too soon.

For more on this year’s fes­ti­val vis­it nowe​ho​ry​zon​ty​.pl