By Roger Costa
INTREGALDE
What’s the real meaning of good deeds? Do we help and aid others as a practice of genuine compassion and solidarity? Or we do it for self interests, ego or vanity? Do we help others to feel human or we do it in order to relief the anxiety and stress of modern consumerism? Three wannabe humanitarian aid activists go on a journey to deliver aid, food, clothing and medicine to those in need living in hard-to-reach rural areas in Romania. They are fully prepared and determined to accomplish their task, supported by the Mayor and authorities alike, meeting face to face the needy. The roads conditions are horrible, making it a hard task to drive around the mountainous area in those winter days, and along the road they meet a strange local who asks them for a ride to a sawmill. His guidance leads them to a lost road where their car gets stuck in a ditch in the woods. As night falls, and all attempts of help turns out disastrous, or never quite arrives, they are forced to deal with the brutal cold and sleep together inside the car, sharing ideas, arguments and perspectives with the aging mysterious local man.
Renowned Romanian filmmaker Radu Muntean’s sensitive yet savage dark comedy of manners brilliantly asks those initial questions and tries to answer them thru these three distinctive urbanities’ expectations on life. Somehow they are unable to control the chaotic situation they turned themselves in to, but most essential they manage to grab the viewer by the heart, forming an immediate connection. And that feeling of familiarity and comprehension extends to a higher level, when the mysterious local man reveals his true identity. He becomes the soul and most important element in this frenetic, verbally-wise, relevantly funny and entertaining sociopolitical dark satire for our turbulent, individualist times.
Each character represents an important aspect of society’s behavior and reaction, displaying their emotional discomfort and different ideas on the issues projected over their mid-life crisis, and so does their car stuck in the mud: would that reflect the conflicts over moral values, empathy and greed corrupting everything under the sun?
(Grasshopper Films. 3/18. Film Forum.)
FEAR
The world is full of anxiety and fear, and some people just can’t escape its web of desperation. In a crucial scene, our protagonist, tough and determined widow Svetta, reveals to an African refugee what feels like to live in constant fear. Since her husband died, she has been locked in her own world, lonely, isolated and paranoid. With the unexpected arrival of Bamba, an African migrant seeking a better life in Bulgaria, she will find opportunity to build a special bond and set herself free from her traumas and uneasiness. When we first meet Svetta, we are destined to hate her: she captures the Black man, in an aggressively racist manner, and keeps him hostage until the authorities decide what to do with him. But eventually, the viewer will become fond of her, when she realizes the color of his skin shouldn’t be in the way for her to exercise solidarity and empathy. They join forces against the small village’s furious prejudice and intolerance against the man and other refugees as well. Winner of the Best Film Award at both Tallinn Black Night Film Festival and Golden Rose Bulgarian Film Festival, writer-director Ivaylo Hristov conceives a hilarious black comedy about racial conflicts, xenophobia and the decadence of human respect. Through the reactions of its inhabitants, the slacker military joint, the ordinary people and a persistent and abusive seducer, the film (atmospherically shot in B&W) is a highly entertaining and engaging look at an unlikely strong friendship merging from the chaos of globalization.
(Film Movement. Now Playing in Virtual Cinemas and On Demand.)
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