It is one of those films that slowly develops. Something went wrong between Victor and his wife. He drank too much, he used drugs, he cheated on her, she did not want to go on, and he moved from her and their small child.

Which is where the film starts and where we get to know that Victor has cancer. Will he get an operation, will he survive, and at the same time, will he accept the wish for divorce from his wife, who still has a lot of warm feelings for him. Not to forget the relationship he has to his little daughter.

It is one of those films where the interest in and sympathy for the main character grows gradually. The film crew has followed him with respect and he has generously let them into his world of pain, anger and hope.

Latvia, 2009, 52 mins.

www.vfs.lv

This fine Russian director has, apart from the masterpiece ”Frescoes” from Georgia, made a couple of very strong documentaries shot in prisons, ”Three Days and Never Again” and ”Blatnoi Mir” (directed by Finnish Jouni Hiltunen, Gutman was production manager), and here comes another that I do not hesitate to call masterly done as well.

One day in the life of a prisoner, sentenced to lifetime for murders, a man in a small cell, watched through the small window in the dark cell door, walking from one end to the other, exercising, making a cup of tea, praying with his head towards an icon of the bleading Jesus hanging on the wall, getting some food… and a small walk to a strongly fenced and guarded courtyard, filmed from above to achieve the impression of a man in a cage, A close-up study that works because of the brilliant combination of pictures with the monologue of the prisoner. On Life, on the conditions in the isolated prison, on being alone and away from it all, on being close to guards who are there all the time and in a way sharing his destiny.

Sometimes with some shots from the courtyard outside. A horse stands there, an old man comes and makes it ready for transport, they leave the prison, and the camera stays – later on they come back with a coffin to pick up the corpse that we have seen in a previous scene. Or a window with a cat. Did I say that it was black and white. And slow. And extremely well edited. Not a moment too much. Sympathy for the murderer? No, not really, but respect for a human being, curiosity.

Russia, Poland, 2009, 62 mins.

http://www.eurekamedia.info/index.php?id=209

It is actually ”a dirty business” to be interpreted in different ways: the use of chemicals in the flower farms and the consequent pollution of the Kenyan Lake Naivasha, and the abuse of people living there who have no labour rights, very low salary, long hours of hard work, sometimes unprotected against the spraying of chemicals… and so on, so forth. But the film  pleasantly refrains from shouting to its audience, on the contrary the director treats the subject in a careful way, in a low voice bringing the mentioned terrifying information to the spectators through the characters, he has chosen, who are the ones with whom we get linked emotionally:

The mother with three children who gets up early in the morning to make breakfast and who goes to work and comes back late evening to cook again and be with her children. The fisherman who claims that the water is polluted because of the chemicals from the farms. The man who sells water (from the lake!) and transports it around on donkeys. The young filmmaker-to-be who has filmed inside the farms and wants his footage to be shown all over the world instead of the lying news reports from BBC and other Western tv stations. And others…

I learned something I did not know about, I met some people whose life situation is tragic and I was touched and informed in an intelligent non-sensational cinematographically beautiful manner. Thanks!

Have a look at the site of the film, a very well designed and informative piece of work – and did you know that 300.000 people work in the flower industry!

Holland, 52 mins., 2009 (next bigger festival: DOKLeipzig)

http://www.newtonfilm.nl/