One of the first posts in this blog, back in December 2009, was about that year's edition of the first posts in this blog, back in December 2009, was about that year's edition of the Xixon Film Festival (FIC Xixon). For the next 3 editions I continued to post my impressions on that year's edition, until 2013, when I was no longer in town during the festival. After a 5 years gap, this November I was in town again during part of the festival, so it was time for me to return. In these five years the festival has gone through some hard times I think. The funding has been reduced (which has forced to cutting its length 1 or 2 days), the director that started in 2012 was questioned for most of his time leading it (I won't add anything to that debate, just say that the only edition under his command that I could experience, 2012, seemed excellent to me) until being replaced for the 2017 edition, and the hardest hit for me (that indeed made me doubt about the survival of the festival) was the closing of the only private cinemas in downtown (that were where most of the films were screened).
Last year I read on the local newspaper an interview to the new director where he was rather positive about the outcome of that edition. The guy seemed pretty modest and sincere, and explained how in spite of all this difficoulties, they had managed to host a pretty decent festival increasing the attendance and the interest of young locals. Currently the festival is held in 3 locations in downtown: Teatro Jovellanos (the beautiful public theatre that has always been the festival's main site), a small, uncomfortable, screening room in "Antiguo Instituto" (this is not new), and a new screening room in the renovated "Escuela de Comercio" (I've never been there, so I can't say how it looks). There's another location in a cultural center quite far from downtown (CMI Pumarin Sur) , that is not new either, and another one in "Teatro de la Laboral", a nice theatre in an amazing, massive complex, but very far from the city center. Finally, 3 rooms in one cinema (Yelmo Cineplex the only commercial cinema in town) located in a mall quite far from the center. With this in mind and being pretty busy with work lately, I was only interested in films screened in "Teatro Jovellanos". I attended to 2 of them.
Saturday 17, The Load, Serbia, Ognjen Glavonic. I pretty enjoyed this fictional work based on a true, little known, dirty event of the Serbia-Kosovo war. A truck driver (before the war he had another job, but now it's the way he's found to put food on the table) has to drive a load from Kosovo to the outskirts of Belgrad. The trip is not particularly exciting but has some odd situations and is good at showing us how in the middle of war people try to go on with their lives, couples get married, teenagers behave as tennagers... As the film develops we (and the driver) will find out that he's carrying the corpses of Kosovar civilians killed during the war, that will get secretly buried in a mass grave in Serbia far from international view. The final part of the movie is poetics and fantastic. Our driver goes through a sort of catharsis talking to his son about how his grandfather had fought against fascism in WWII and decides to document somehow what is happening. The director was present in the cinema and there was a general discussion with him at the end of the film. I could also exchage some impressions with him at the exit. All in all, the guy was an antifascist that had gone through the very difficoult process of doing a work like this in such a nationalistic country like Serbia in order to fight fascism. Absolutely praiseworhty, even when I felt a bit like he was falling too much in the typical European self-demonization. For sure telling this story to make public a hidden and hideous event is important, but we should not forget that Kosovars did as bad, if not worst crap during and after the war, than Serbians. By the way, I absolutely loved the HxC Punk song that closes the film.
Monday 19, One Day, Hungary, Zsofia Szilagyi. Honestly, I did not plan to attend to this film, but one friend of mine wanted to go to 1 session and this one came fit. I have to say that it's been quite a surprise. The plot did not seem to appealing, a day in the life of a Hungarian worker, wife, mother of three and married to an unloyal husband, but it shows masterfully how stressful and painful normal life can be. The film is intense, and at some moments becomes oppresive, immersing us in the little hell in which life has turned for this ordinary woman. One could say that it is disgusting to try to make look the normal life of a European woman with good health as a calvary of pain and suffering, but (have no idea if this was the intent of the director) it works pretty well to remind us of how good we can be at drowning us in misery with our little problems, forgetting how others have to deal with real shit day after day.
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