Happy for Talal Derki and his “Of Fathers and Sons”, the only non-American of the five nominations for an Oscar. Hope that the promotion made for short-listed films like “The Distant Barking of Dogs” and “Communion” will make it easier to reach audiences in the USA. 

They are sitting outside the house of the former president of Uruguay José Pepe Mujica. Pepe and Kusturica. The film director lights his cohiba cigar, Pepe is preparing his mate, spitting out the first tasting, too strong it always is. No words are said, they look at each other, they take their time, smiles are on their faces – an excellent start of a film, where the film director expresses his admiration for the modest man, who after being one of the leaders of the Tuparamos guerilla group that robbed Banks, performed kidnapping and later also went into violence, including killings, was caught and kept 13 years in prison. After his release – after the fall of the military dictatorship – he went into politics and became president of the country 2010-2015. A very popular one as demonstrates the film. Kusturica followed the President on his last day on duty with huge crowds celebrating him – and after the change, in his active retirement where he initiates housing projects and gives money from his own salary to help poverty decrease.

The years in prison were good for me, it made me think, he says in the film,

that is built around Kusturica and Pepe in conversation, with archive material of his travelling the world as the president and clips from Costa-Gavras film “State of Siege”, the fiction serves as documentary archive material in this context.

Pepe is a charismatic old man with a warm heart. He talks about changing the culture, fighting capitalism, he is in love with nature, he cultivates flowers, he cooks and talks about his dog Manuela, and he rides his blue old VW Beatle. He loves life and connects this love to his “deep solitude” in jail that made him reflect on the values of life.

Not to forget the most important, his life with Lucía Topolansky, also an ex-tupamaro. The film end with a collage of photos of the two, sitting in a café listening and singing quietly along one of the many beautiful pieces of tango music that goes with the main character(s). Topolansky is now vice-president in the new government.

Kusturica is not interested in giving the audience a solid background in terms of what happened in Uruguay during the dictatorship, it comes in bits and pieces and through interviews with two of Pepe’s companeros,

Mauricio Rosencof and Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, the latter also analysing current international politics with no good words to Putin and his involvement in Ukraine.

Contrary to the film he made on Maradona, Kusturica lets Pepe come to the viewer without too mush focus on himself, just sitting there with a cigar trying to look like Che Guevara. It’s all right and he deserves credit for this sketchy homage to a man you can only love.

The film had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival 2018.

Uruguay, Serbia, 2018, 74 mins.

This review is written by Georg Zeller, film director & cameraman, Bolzano Italy.

I start my review with a spoiler, the last scene of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s newest documentary: A group of policemen opens a container full of rolls of wire fence. One of them steps in, everything ok. The officer smiles and says: „This is the famous border fence, we have to inspect it but we hope it will continue to lie here forever.“

In the end, the fence hasn’t been built.  And even policemen appreciate. Maybe because the numbers of people wanting to cross this border on their way to Germany or Sweden were much lower than expected. Maybe because even the politicians planning it, understood that a fence in this very point of Europe would be a strange, if not dangerous sign.

The film examines the atmosphere and reactions when in 2016/17 the idea of building a new fence along

the border of the Brenner came up, a mountain pass and important road and train connection between Austria and Italy, nowadays mainly a site of a huge outlet center attracting shoppers from both sides. This border is dividing also two parts of the region of Tyrol. The southern part of it was gained by Italy in the first World War. After that, a troubled history in the middle of two fascist states signed the first decades of this division until the idea of a united Europe losened it again since the 1990’s.

I had just finished film school in those years when I was sent as a cameraman for ORF to film the poles of the Brenner’s barriers been sawn off.  Heads of government of both countries and of both Tyrols applauded and spoke enthusiastically about their common future. As an inhabitant of this place – but with roots elsewhere – what I had regularly lived before that date, had finally become official: being a citizen of Europe.

These historical backgrounds may be the main reason why the people Geyrhalter talks to are very sceptical about a new „constructional measure“ (as the original title „Die bauliche Massnahme“ calls the fence in officialese), even those who are fearing those people walking with just a plastic bag along the freeway.

But the interviews (mostly in slow wide images and cuts on black as we are used from this author, but this time not hiding his leading of the talks) are also full of surprises. A lady who characterizes herself as being proud of her tiny mountain valley and its traditions, and after having expressed her fear that foreigners may completely undermine the religious identity of the place, is cooking lunch for the construction workers who are digging holes for a tunnel just outside her house. They are all of Senegalese origin… „We talk with hands and feet and respect each other“.

This is probably the main and important message of the film: When you personally meet the people („Let’s stop to call them migrants“ as one interviewee puts it), your fear may vanish. „Why should we fear someone who had to flee from war?“ says the organic farmer and tells the story of how he helped out a lost Ukrainian truck driver who was first treated badly by local police, but when he had the chance to tell his life story became a person treated with at least some respect.

In the film, only who has no direct contact to people passing through their valley, remains in the fear until the end, sometimes expressing absurd opinions („the people I see here are rich and healthy, they could have also survived in war.“). Thankfully, politicians are heard only through televisions hanging in the bars of the place – the filmmaker repeatedly cuts them away in the middle of their repetitive speeches – whereas we never see any migrants in the film, not even in the mountain meadow where the border is simply signed by a road sign.

The „crisis“ proposed as such by politicians remains thus in fact a phantasma and luckily does so also their „solution“ of a new fence. Let’s hope that also elsewhere in the world border fences will stay in their containers forever.

Austria, 2018, 112 mins.

I was there when Andres Iniesta stopped at FC Barcelona, last year – and I was there when Leo Messi made his goal number 400 for Barca. Yesterday. At Camp Nou. The first one, his first goal, was made at 17 years of age May 1st 2005 – you can see it on Youtube, as I did this morning, and you will also be able to enjoy the one and only Ronaldinho, the mentor of Messi, what a player he was and what a player Messi is.

As always I was there invited by Joan Gonzalez, on the Sunday before four days of selection work for the 2019 DocsBarcelona. A bit into the second half, I said to Joan “is Messi playing tonight”, he had been quite passive walking around on the middle of the pitch… it was as if the now bearded football star heard the ironic comment; moments later in a typical Barca tiqui-taca sequence he scored, and we 65.000 (Joan’s estimate) spectators got up from the chairs exploding in the cry of joy MESSI!

The photo is taken just after the match by Joan Gonzalez with my i-phone.