REVIEWS FORUM


Jap-Fr. 2011. 104mins Director Toshi Fujiwara Production company Aliocha Films, Denis Friedman Productions International sales Doc & Film International, d.elstner@docandfilm. com Producers Valerie-Anne Christen, Denis Friedman Cinematography Takanobu Kato Editor Isabelle Ingold Music Barre Phillips Narrator Arsinée Khanjian


ingly direct, given Japanese culture’s stress on politeness and proper protocol. Ageing interview- ees, with few opportunities left in life, speak of staying in order to care for the tombs of ancestors. What Hollywood might call a ‘concept’ is a chilling reality: the near-dead remain close to a dead zone to tend to the long-dead. The doc views vast tracts of devastation in slow


pans, a formal antidote to the media’s practice of parachuting from one disaster to the next. Frag- ments of families’ lives emerge as the camera sur- veys shreds of houses, cars and fields. The fields have a special poignancy. These were the liveli- hood of the people now housed in shelters, and they recall the stark landscapes emptied by atomic bombs in 1945. Fujiwara’s conversations with those on the edge


of the zone are anything but sound-bites. Local people with nothing but time talk of their history in places where they now cannot venture. Com- posed and sombre, they speak ruefully about their government’s unpreparedness and of lives that could have been saved. The doc is still discreet. Fujiwara avoids sifting


No Man’s Zone REVIEWED BY DAVID D’ARCY


This mournful documentary surveys the grim aftermath of the March 2011 tsunami and Fuku- shima nuclear accident, in the voices of those near the irradiated evacuation zone who feel aban- doned by the state after losing everything. No Man’s Zone is vivid testimony to a horrible


disaster — not always a strong selling point. The eco-doc should travel well to festivals, especially those focused on the environment. It will also join


the growing ranks of films warning about the huge unheeded risks of nuclear power. No Man’s Zone seems destined for television,


though its voiceover on the human need to inter- pret images of disaster (written by Toshi Fujiwara and read in English by Arsinée Khanjian) could prove too erudite for the small screen. The film’s title comes from the 20km zone


around the accident site, where no-one is permit- ted to travel. Fujiwara visits the edges and speaks to local people who survived the cataclysm and now find themselves as wrecks amid the wreck- age, often in houses that must be demolished. The survivors’ stories are poignant and strik-


Everybody In Our Family REVIEWEDBY DAN FAINARU


Radu Jude’s family drama Everybody In Our Fam- ily (Toata Lumea Din Familia Noastra) has all the advantages and drawbacks of a high-quality Polaroid picture: interesting point of view, authen- tic feeling, nicely defined character portraits, but no depth, just a fascinating single image. Running hot and cold, between short spells of humour and explosions of frustration, it lacks a real plot or structure but packs a load of suppressed anger and violence, using the kind of language to which no subtitles could do justice. Too long for its own good, Everybody In Our


Family starts with a premise that will be familiar to everyone, but once established most audiences would like it to go somewhere instead of moving in circles. Marital strife has apparently replaced the miseries of the Ceausescu regime as the theme of predilection for several Romanian film-makers. Marius (Pavlu) and Otilia (Sirbu) separated sev-


eral years ago in circumstances that do not exactly matter, since each character in this script has their own version of what happened. Having lost most of his property in the court settlement, Marius still has the right to visit his five-year-old daughter, Sofia (Nicolaescu), who stays with her mother Otilia, Coca (Buciuceanu-Botez) and Otilia’s new partner, Aurel (Spahiu), all of them living in Marius’ old flat. When he comes to take his daughter on a pre-


FORUM


Rom-Neth. 2012. 108mins Director Radu Jude Production companies HiFilm, Circe Films, Abis Studio Producer Ada Solomon International sales Films Boutique, www. filmsboutique.com Screenplay Radu Jude, Corina Sabau Cinematography Andrei Butica Editor Catalin F Cristutiu Production designer Elsje de Bruijn Main cast Serban Pavlu, Sofia Nicolaescu, Mihaela Sirbu, Gabriel Spahiu, Tamara Buciuceanu- Botez, Stela Popescu, Alexandru Arsinel


through debris with a handheld camera (TV search-style) to unearth hidden horrors, and no dead bodies are filmed. Between interviews and extended periods of silence, music by Barre Phil- lips carries you back to the slow pan with solo bass and an occasional soprano voice — literally, from a new wilderness. It is not the definitive film on the nuclear disas-


ter. Officials implicated in ineptitude bordering on negligence are not interviewed. Nor are journalists whom Fujiwara faults for not bringing this story to the public. Still, by giving voice to those who have not been seen or heard, the doc reaches a depth of reflection that other film-makers who take on the subject will not be able to ignore.


scheduled hike to the seaside, they all try to pre- vent it, pretending the girl is sick with high fever. He insists on having his own way and before long polite conversation degenerates into vociferous arguments, then into blows and the police are called. But the law delays its intervention for a sus- piciously long time, which allows Jude to put his characters through more changes of mood before the film reaches its inconclusive ending. Taking place in almost real time, the point of the


script seems to be that the ferocious primeval beast is still lying close to the surface in every one of us, and one spark — for instance a wish denied — is enough to unleash it. To Jude’s credit, he knows how to handle his


cast and manipulate a situation from relative calm through to the worst kind of storm. His characters ring true even when they go berserk and the cast, headed by an excellent Serban Pavlu, play their parts as if they had been born for them.


February 16, 2012 Screen International at the Berlinale 7 n


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20