FIC Xixón 2023

While going through the Program of the 2024 FICXixon edition I've realised that I had forgotten to finish and publish my post about the previous edition, indeed, publishing this kind of post 1 year later has become as much a tradition as the fact of writing a post about the festival. OK, here it goes:

One more year and one more FICXixon edition, number 61, from November 17th to November 25th, 2023. Once again I feel that sort of pride when I see how my hometown manages to organize such an excellent event, a middle size city (and a small region) in one corner of our continent, that after striving to survive to different waves of massive economical crisis and population losses, now seems to be on the way to stabilization and even recovery (IT sector, wind turbines factories, small private shipyards, some home workers moving/returning here).

As always I'm a bit constrained by work and by not feeling like going to sessions in those cinemas far away from my flat, (Yelmo in La Calzada, Laboral) and in the end I only attended to 4 sessions (I could not watch Baltimore, by Moldy and Lawlor, as when I finally made up my mind to get a ticket for it it was already sold out). I pretty nailed it with these 4 films, as all of them were good or very good

• Shoshana. Saturday 18, Teatro Jovellanos. Based on a true story, excellent, absolutely excellent, so much that I should write a separate post for it, but I think that is not happening, so I better write some lines directly here. I've watched quite a bunch of films (normally very good) dealing with the complexities of life in Israel-Palestine, from different angles and perspectives, but I think this is the first one I've watched about the (recent) beginning of all that mess. Set in the 1930's/1940's, in the British colony of Palestine, where European jews have been settling recently, escaping the fascist threat in Europe and pursuing the dream of thriving in the land of their ancestors. Many of them are left-wing, not only the ones in the Kibbutz, also those in Tel-Aviv. They dream of having their own independent state, a homeland, and they buy lands and work hard. Most of them think it will be possible to get along with Arabs, but as the film ends it's sadly clear even for those that believed in "living together" not just in "live separate and not kill each other", that coexisting with Muslims in equality (not in dhimmitude) is for the most part impossible.
• Day of the Tiger (Tigru). Wednesday 22, OCine. An interesting Romanian film inspired by true events. A woman working in a zoo is going through a bad time and in an error she lets a tiger escape the zoo. A patrol sets off to track the animal and a fucking mother fucker whose main pride and fun in life consists of hunting animals becomes the leader. There was an encounter with the director at the end, where he explained that his love for animals encouraged him to do this film. I was intrigued about where do you find wild animals like these (the tiger role was played by 2 different animals) for a film, if there is a "tiger's casting agency" :-) Well, it's a bit like that. These tigers come from Northern France, where a guy has a huge farm where he takes care of a bunch of wild animals. When the animals are "hired" you also hire the guy, as of course some expert has to handle them during the recording.
• Disco Boy. Thursday 23, Teatro Jovellanos. Very powerful French drama. A tough story. One Belarusian young man enters illegally in France and decides to join the Foreign Legion, where if he manages to serve for 3 years he will be granted with French citizenship. The way he entered in France is so hard as the way he chose to try to stay. If you know how France works it's revolting. It's revolting that for a guy with a similar culture to ours and that sure would work hard and integrate into the French society without a problem, the Far-Left (anti)French system makes this as hard as possible, while anyone coming from an incompatible culture, with a hatred and distaste for our values, and with a firm desire of profiting from our welfare system, will find all sort of support from all kind of Far-Left associations. I say "ours" in this paragraph cause though I don't have French citizen, I consider it my second home/country/identity/belonging (and I've paid taxes there for years, not like all that scum that is destroying the country).
• Matronas (Sages-femmes). Saturday 25, OCine. I think I was not particularly expectant about this film, but it was the last day of Festival and I wanted to attend one more screening, and the thing is that it was excellent. I had never thought about how intense and demanding is the work of bringing new lives to this world. This film takes us through the lives of several French women that do just that, working as midwives (sage-femme in Francais). An unattended surprise. When leaving the screening I heard some women that seemed to be midwives themselves praising how they felt reflected on the film.