So, before everything gets hectic, please prepare to write things down…
We have worked together for so many years and I know every year’s selection is the result of a whole year of searching films from your part. What would the must sees be, the films you wanted to include in the selection by all means?
I really wanted Stephen Frears Philomena and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood – as you can see they have privileged screenings: one is in the opening and the other, in the closing of the festival. Philomena, apart from its undisputable qualities (a ground-breaking story, seamless directing, a perfect chemistry between the two main characters and, last but not least, perfectly dosed emotions), it asks “hard” questions with an ease that makes it heart-warming, challenging the public to reconsider their preconceptions. The coming of age story in Boyhood is simply touched by grace – I could have never found a more appropriate conclusion to the ten days of the festival. A film worth discovering is Slovakian director Peter Solan’s Before the Night Is Over celebrated in the 3x3 section. I saw it only last year (it’s a 60s film) and it was a revelation – I think it is the very kind of film the cinema was invented for.
This year’s selection includes more films than last year’s and a cluster of new sections. Please describe in a few words the revenge movie section, Eye for an Eye. Usually a certain film inspires you to come up with a new section. What was the revenge film that inspired you and what to expect from Eye for an Eye?
Over the last three years I’ve been watching the American series Revenge, a modern adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, my favourite novel. I think revenge is one of the most exciting narrative devices, given the complexity of the moral dilemma it entails. The idea came to my mind last year when I saw, one after another, Blue Ruin (a film about revenge as an extreme means to have justice) and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners (rising the question of how legit can torture be and how far one can go when one’s child is kidnaped). Things started to fall into place and the result is quite a kaleidoscope – films about the past taking revenge on the present, about revenge through sex, and even about revenge through film (take Reunion for example).
What are we going to see in the Young German Cinema section?
As the title of the section points, they are films by very young German directors – some of them are even graduation films. They are incredibly diverse and courageous, from the unusual chemistry between the protagonists in Love Steaks to the sexual tribulations of the female character in Wetlands, and from the surrealist image of Germany, with comical, dark touches, in Finsterworld (an ambitious and very mature debut) to the triumphant madness of 28 ½. Nothing Bad Can Happen has a very misleading title – it is in fact a real punch in the stomach. As for Silvi, if you have seen and loved Sebastian Lelio’s Gloria, this is the German version of it.
You have prepared the dedicated fans of the festival a surprise-section, The Usual Suspects.
Those who have watched over the years the TIFF Competition (feature debuts and second films) can watch the new films of the past years’ participants in a new section. Of course I have kept an eye on them, because once I bet on their first films, I am interested to see if they will succeed or fail in their careers. Directors such as the Chilean Lelio or the Islander Dagur Kari, Transilvania Trophy winners for La Sagrada Familia and Noi albinoi respectively, and dedicated fans of the festival, are now respected names in the film industry and have directed their fourth film. TIFF, in spite of his growing size, remains an intimate festival – I like to promote the idea that they are already part of the “big Transilvanian family”. And there is a happy coincidence here – Daniel Sanchez Arevalo’s new comedy Family United (Arevalo got the audience award for Dark Blue Almost Black and Fat People) has the Spanish title La gran familia espagnola.
I know you leave nothing to chance, so what is the invisible thread that goes through the twelve films in the Competition and what is your favourite?
I leave nothing to chance, it’s true, but I don’t look for any invisible thread to string the twelve films, based on clear-cut criteria. The Competition is an organic whole and each film has its place in it. I am interested in discovering distinctive voices. I won’t tell you what my favourite film is, that wouldn’t be fair, I will only say that I’m sorry that a film such Viktoria wasn’t made in Romania.
In Supernova you included 34 films awarded in festivals around the world. It feels almost like an inventory of the best titles in an entire festival year. Please recommend ten films.
Very quickly: Of Horses and Men and The Empty Hours, my big favourites, and then, in any given order, Ida, Black Coal, Thin Ice, Siddharth, Love Is Strange, We Are the Best!, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Beloved Sisters and Papusza.
You always choose the most spectacular films to be screen in The Unirii Square Open Air.
Usually, the most spectacular, yes, the ones worth enjoying on the big screen in the Square, but also the quality entertainment movies that the multiplex operators usually deem as too smart to sell. The Sex Shop is a good example. It is a smart comedy about an improbable binomial, sex and poetry, and John Cusack is simply phenomenal in it. I think I might have been a history geek had I been taught history as Wajda does it in the enthralling Walesa. As for the show, Snowpiercer (in which Vlad Ivanov plays a very cool part) is a big-budged extravaganza, delivering three ideas per minute, not one idea in three hours of film.
What are the extreme experiences of the edition? What are the titles we should be warned about?
The Swedish film Something Must Break – the title already warns you. If I am short of arguments, the director will come to Cluj to defend the film and explain his extreme choices. The Korean director Kim Ki-duk goes beyond all limits in his fascinating Moebius – he story is remarkably well shaped in the absence of any dialogue. People will laugh, for sure – I did – rather for the need of a shield to protect them from the unusual things on the screen. The SM marathon R100 (by the Japanese director Matsumoto, already celebrated at TIFF in the 3x3 section) is so hilarious in his over-the-top approach that it would be a mistake to take it too seriously. And if you have the guts to watch New Tits, follow Sacha Polak in her extreme decision, not without comic moments, to explore, at her own expense, the effects of breast cancer.
What’s Up Doc comprises 15 films. What are the must sees?
My colleague Ana Maria Sandu, the programmer of the section, viewed about 100 films and managed to concentrate the more cinematographic 15 real-life stories, from drug addiction (in the terrifying Sickfuckpeople) and prostitution (Julia) to people with disabilities (The Special Need) and porn cinemas (Paradiso), and to include a lot of extraordinary life stories: Nick Cave (20.000 Days on Earth), Muhammad Ali (The Trials Muhammad Ali) and the unprejudiced look at the story of the two brides in Off Road.
What are three things that you would really like to do this year at TIFF?
To go at least once to the Belvedere pool, to eat mussels at the wonderful new Boema terrace and, if possible, to keep my mobile phone switched off for a few hours at least and to disappear for a little while.
Interview by Laura Popescu (AperiTIFF).
