Best Documentary in Odessa

… at the International Film Festival, in a city I dream to visit one day… was ”In California” by French Charles Redon, a film that was also screened at IDFA 2015. This is the description of the film taken from the IDFA website, quite fascinating synopsis:

”A tribute to a tormented love story by the young French filmmaker Charles Redon, who adores and constantly films his girlfriend, an ambitious professional ballerina named Mathilde Froustey. Mathilde eats, trains and sleeps while Redon acts as her assistant. He is fascinated by her physical form and her discipline until he finds out that she is abusing her body. This completely changes the way he sees her: in his eyes, she is transformed from an admirable dancer into a dance-obsessed person with no mercy for her own body. When she starts to avoid him and no longer wants to cooperate with the film, Redon becomes obsessed with the issue that has become a taboo subject in their relationship. Made up of private recordings, the film concentrates on the time surrounding the French couple’s move to San Francisco, where Mathilde is pursuing a career as prima ballerina. Redon uses many different camera techniques to document his life with Mathilde in diary style – from a spy cam to a camera mounted on a selfie stick and a drone. He also delivers poetic commentary with enchanting images of jellyfish, a heron and a crocodile.”

A special mention was given to ”My Friend Boris Nemtsov” by Zosya Rodkevich, the film that got the main award at the festival in Krakow earlier this summer.

The jury in Odessa consisted of three persons, who always do their best to keep alive the often used filmkommentaren-sentence ”East Beats West” – the most original and innovative documentaries come from the Eastern part of Europe..:

From left Gennady Koffmann, Marina Razbezhkina and Rada Sesic.