Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade present ”Rules of the Game” that will be screened February 5th as the closing film of the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

There’s a rumour that the employment market is looking for bold individualists. Within limits, of course. The reality is: if it doesn’t fit, it’s made to fit – or rejected.

The unique pains of finding a job are almost universally relatable. In order to succeed, you must present a certain marketable version of yourself, place yourself in unnatural situations and, above all, play by the rules. It’s even harder when you have neither experience nor qualifications to your name. Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s observational documentary takes on this very subject, focusing on a small group of disenfranchised young adults as they attend an employment consultancy firm in northern France. Through a series of vignettes we are effectively positioned to empathise with their frustrations, failures and successes over a number of months as they are coached through various stages of the employment process. Through their apprenticeship, the film reveals the absurdity of these new rules of the game.

This exquisite film done by true masters had a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and won one the most prestigious documentary prices in Europe – The Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig. The critic of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Bories and Chagnard have produced a piece that is urgent in its mission, nonjudgmental in its depiction of its subjects and entirely theatrical in its mise-en-scene and dialogue – a remarkable feat.”

Director’s Word:
Claudine Bories: One could say that “Rules of the Game” represent a follow-up to “The Arrivals”. The principle is the same: to film closely, with no preconceptions, what happens to people who are confronted on daily basis with major social issues of general concern. Chapter one: asylum seekers. Chapter two: jobseekers.

Patrice Chagnard: Our wish is to tackle realities everybody talks about, everybody believes they are familiar with, while hands-on, concrete approaches are rarely offered. “How does it feel to live through this?” That’s the question we ask ourselves, whether our film is about welcoming immigrants or about coaching unemployed youth. Major social issues are always a minefield littered with stereotypes and partisan rhetoric. The job of cinema is to demine the field by showing things as they are.

France, 2014, 106 mins.

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Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade present ”Garden Lovers” that will be screened February 4th at the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

One of the most important Finnish and European documentary authors, Virpi Suutari, is passionate about two things – documentaries and gardens. In this film she leads us into the beautiful and funny world “North of Eden”.

This is a documentary love story about couples who take care of their gardens together. The film looks behind the middle-class facades with a comic twist and listens to the couples’ stories about the conflicts and joys of long relationships. The setting is their own garden, a hobby that in many cases has gotten out of hand years ago. The film’s angle on the toiling and the passionate gardening is kind and humoristic: fellow human beings build and defend their territories, but also enjoy beauty in the paradise they have built for themselves and their spouses.

In the visually handsome film an invisible bond develops between the key couples. With their own stories they listen, comment and comfort each other – while also providing viewers with a chance to engage. The garden represents a door to the everyday struggles of human life, with joy, without moralizing and underlining. The film’s gardening stories celebrate fertility, play – and love.

This is a comic documentary about the necessity of gardening.

Director’s Word: The process of making “Garden Lovers” was open, cheerful and liberated – a midsummer night’s play in a sense. As a director, I was happier than ever when making this film. At the same time I was bidding farewell to my father, who taught me everything about gardening. Thus, the film also became a personal journey toward accepting the idea of letting go and meeting death. With “Garden Lovers” I want to celebrate things that are temporary but necessary to the meaning of human existence. The main characters work like crazy – as I do – for their imaginary paradises, although the fruits of their labor may vanish in a moment. We cannot cheat death, but as long as our hands are buried in soil, we at least feel alive.

Finland, 2014, 73 mins.

made.fi/gardenloversmovie

Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade present ”Suddenly My Thoughts Halt” that will be screened February 3rd at the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

Outstanding photography takes us into the space of masked passion and suffering in which we soon discover provocative framework of the cult film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, while the director delicately developes enchanting atmosphere that evokes famous Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain”.

The documentary is about a facility for mentally ill in Lisbon. The viewer accompanies the patients in their daily lives and in their preparations for a play. The director of the play lives for this purpose for some time with the patients to build up trust and to simply understand them better. But the core of the film is the people. Pelicano creates with its sensitive camera the necessary space in front of the camera so that the characters unfold naturally. The patients themselves prove that they are amazingly aware about their own situation and not desperate. Instead, they use the opportunity to speak in detail about their crazy truths. These intimate confessions are what fascinates and allows the audience to identify with the events. This is the special power of the film, that the mentally ill are not perceived as a threat but as people who can enrich us and make us laugh even about ourselves.

Guided by magnificent poetry of Ângelo de Lima this film is also a precious insight into the space where lucidity and madness live together.

Director’s Word: Here I return to my desire to film the unknown and try to demystify some myths. As a child I often heard “be good or you go to the Hospital for crazy.” The truth is that no one really knows what one will find inside. And I wanted to demystify some things, to update what is madness. We went there with some fears because, for me, it was all fog. I did not know what was inside that hospital. As time passed the fog disappeared and there were hard things, stronger, that could be represented by a storm. So there is a lot of rain during the film. But there are also moments of sun shining. As we advanced in our work, we gained the trust of our characters and the characters were gaining our trust to the extent that we became close and ended up being friends. This gained confidence was extremely important because that’s what allowed us to look a little bit more into the mind of those people.

Portugal, 2014, 98 mins.

paramederepenteopensamento.com

Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade present ”Democrats” that will be screened February 2nd at the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

One of the best Danish documentaries in past several years inspired by some legendary documentary masters like Richard Leacock, who started new era in documentary filmmaking entering with his camera in strictly closed official spaces. And Camilla Nielsson does the same, but in a foreign country, without the knowledge of the native language and under the constant threat of possible violence.

Over the course of more than three years director Camilla Nielsson has been up close in the inner circles of politics in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. With the process of creating Zimbabwe’s new constitution as the film’s narrative backbone, “Democrats” tells the story of a political elite fighting a battle over the founding principles defining the country’s possible future. Two political opponents are appointed to write the new constitution, and Camilla Nielsson has gained unique access to the thrilling political game being played between the two parties.

The film unfolds in ways that neither the director nor her main subjects could have foreseen. From unbelievably close range Camilla Nielsson develops her discrete and precise observing, transforming the political story into exciting and emotional anthropological study of main characters. Surprisingly she was immediately becoming invisible part of all events and cautiously revealing hidden conflicts that merge into thrilling drama, but finally into a fantastic film twist with catharsis. A brilliant example of how documentary can make complex processes comprehensible in a way that a thousand expert’s reports can not.

Director’s Word: The biggest challenge in making this film was filming a politically sensitive story in a country with a long history of both censorship and banning of foreign media. Also, being a country with no tradition for observational documentary filmmaking, roaming around in Zimbabwe as a white documentary-film crew, we caused quiet a circus at times, and our safety was often at risk. I think in my own case it has often been an advantage to be a woman, especially in some of the difficult places I have made my films. I think a male director would have had much more resistance in terms of access.

Denmark, 2014, 109 mins.

dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/film/da/79654.aspx?id=79654