S Viswanath

Variety is the spice of life goes the famous English adage. In keeping with this truism, the 57th International Film Festival of India has slated a slew of films to engage in and experience under its various segments.

The three popular segments elucidated here under are the Films About Films, Best Debut Feature of a Director & Restored Classics, all combined for a compendium of 16 choicest films to cater to the interests of a diverse set of audiences.

From Films About Filmswith focus on iconic filmmakers and prominent persons who have left their imprint on the annals of cinema you have the Russian film Raul Geidarov’s award winning Sidney Lumet’s Birthdaywhich spotlights on Dato, a 17-year-old Georgian, dreams of moving to St Petersburg to become a film director, however, his more practical grandmabelieves he should become a driller. The only person who knows about Dato’s dream is his mother, with whom he has shared the secret during a phone call. Even as Dato and his grandmother are trying to find common ground in the ruins of a once-large family, and everything seems to be spanning out as per plan, Dato’s mother unexpectedly returns home after eight years in prison. The film chronicles the pains and pangs of growing up yet remain human in spite of everything.

The Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Leanby British filmmaker Barnaby Thompson as the eponymous title of the documentary bespeaks for itself explores both the brilliance and struggles of a gifted filmmaker and his lasting influence on modern cinema through the reminiscences, recollections and reflections of the man by a retinue of contemporary directors who have been inspired by him providing insights about the man.

Whilst David Lean was known for his strong vision and determination, often taking on difficult and ambitious projects and renowned for his epic films,and changed the way films were made and experienced, however, his personal life was unfortunately often troubled, painful and unsettled. At a time when filmmakers are encouraged to avoid risks, Lean remains an example of an artist who dared to push boundaries.Barnaby Thompson’s documentary lionises the auteur who was one of the inventors of modern movies but whose personal life was an abject mess.

Based on Herman J. Mankiewicz’s anti-Nazi screenplay, about a German-Jewish family facing the rise of Hitler and Nazism, which Hollywood studios never garnered the gumption to make the film because of political pressure and business interests, has been undertaken and been bold by Rubika Shah a British-Saudi filmmaker.

The documentary – The Mad Dog of Europe: How Nazism Infiltrated Hollywood – which spans the 1930s, sees woman director Rubika Shah shine light on Mankiewicz’s revolutionary screenplay, and the myriad reasons it was never produced by the famed Hollywood and its influential moneybagsthwarted by censorship and Nazi influences at work within the Hollywood system.

ThedocumentaryVittoria De Sica – La Vita In Scena by Italian filmmaker Francesco Zippel sheds lightonone of the greatest masters of world cinema. Through new access to his family, rare archives and testimonies of contemporary artists and filmmakers from the entire world, the intimate and insightful documentary retraces the iconic and influential director’s life, his work and everlasting legacy.

Tbilisi born woman director Ana Urushadze’s feature Supporting Role (Meorekhariskhovani Roli)winner of the Tiger Competition – Special Jury Award and FIPRESCI Award at Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR) – charts the life and times of a famous retired Georgian actor – Niaz Ninua – used to playing heroic leads, embarks on a cathartic odyssey after being offered a supporting role of an unpleasant elderly man.

His career has faded after he left films 15 years ago. However, realising the industry has moved on without him, he sets out to audition for a small part in a young woman’s first film. The experience hurting his ego sees him walk out annoyed, calling the role pretentious and insisting that the old, unattractive character has nothing to do with him. But later, as he thinks about the meeting, he starts to feel strangely drawn to the very role he rejected. What first seemed beneath him begins to show unexpected depth.

From the trials and tribulations of those that left, and sought to leave, an imprint on the entertainment industry, the Restored Classics Segment brings a string of quintet films by master craftsmen of the medium who have left and indelible imprint on the Seventh Art by their individualist styles and cinematic creativity.

The five films being showcased are Don Siegel’s 1978 Invasion OfBody Snatchersin its restored version.The American science-fiction psychological horror film whose plot involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who over the course of a few days discover that humans are being replaced by alien duplicates; each a perfect biological clone of the person replaced, but devoid of empathy and humanity and how the doctor and his associates race to uncover the truth and stop the invasion before it spreads further.

Then you have the restored version of the 1996 British filmmaker Danny Boyle’s hyper-kinetic heroin culture classicTrainspottingbased on the 1993 novel by Irvine Welsh about a group of heroin addicts in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh, led by a mentally ill and violent psychopathic narcissist who allows their life of crime, and their passage through life.

American auteur David Lynch’s 1990 American Southern Gothic black comedy romantic roadie crime film Wild At Heart an incendiary tale of love, violence and snakeskin jackets,adapted from the novel of the same name by Barry Gifford, about a pair of young lovers who set off on a road trip across the US, seeking freedom and a life together. Blending romance, crime, dark humour and surreal imagery, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart explores love, violence and rebellion against a disturbing, dreamlike landscape.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humansthe 1927 old silent classic with a synchronised musical score with sound effects, by German writer-director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau nee Plumpe, who pioneered silent cinema with Nosferatu in 1922, in his American debut film revolves around a married farmer who falls under the spell of a sophisticated woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

German filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 To Be Or Not To Be a American black comedy filmbased on the story by Melchior Lengyel set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, concerns a Polish theatre troupe led by the Tura couple who uses acting and disguises to trick the Gestapo and help the Polish resistance. The actors must deliver the performance of their lives to survive and save others. The film was released one month after Carole Lombard was killed in an airplane crash.

Last, but not the least, the Best Debut Feature of a Director Section presents five films by upcoming, aspiring filmmakers seeking to their imprint on the movie marquee with their work.

The segment presents Welf Reinhart’s A Fading Man, a touching story about love and friendship, forgetting and remembering, and finding acceptance, revolving around a couple artist Hanne and retired pastor Bernd have a happy marriage that, after many years, has become a little set in its ways, which is upendedwhen Hanne’s former husband Kurt suddenly shows up at their door out of nowhere.

Due to his dementia, Kurt can no longer remember that he and Hanne have been divorced for 20 years. When the couple takes him in temporarily, a lightness they thought was lost returns to their marriage. A tender, witty debut from Welf Reinhart, where new possibilities for love and for life emerge as a second spring for three adults.

The Golden Age (L’Âge d’or) the debut directorial feature by Bérenger Thouin is a sweeping saga that follows Jeanne Lavaur, born in a village butcher shop at the turn of the 20th century, as she charts her own course to become an aspiring countess. Her journey spans 1920s Paris, the turbulence of two world wars, and Brazil, while she is caught between two lovers: Count Guillaume de Barante and the Italian revolutionary Céleste.

Born at the turn of the century in a village’s butcher shop, Jeanne Lavaur dreams of becoming a countess. Inspired by the fearless Céleste and guided by her love for Guillaume de Barante, Jeanne’s journey carries her from the vibrant Paris of the Golden Twenties through the turmoil of two world wars. As her life intertwines with the great upheavals of the 20thC, she rises as a fiercely free woman, determined to never let anyone else define who she is meant to be.

The Black Sea is an Egyptian sci-fi drama film directed and written by Aladdin Mostafa. The film is set in a speculative world where a deadly virus makes the night air fatal wherein a secret platform allows people to hire strangers to fulfil their darkest desires.

Zhong Kaifeng’s Chinese film Atlantic Rhapsody is an artistic fantasy combining striking surrealist visuals, meditative explorations of the passage of time with the search for a human connection in the centre.

Atlantic Rhapsody begins with a painting-like scene – a plate of food on a green felt tablecloth – that is soon turned into a surrealist horror when the protagonist spits out a nail after chewing his food.An exciting work of art from a newcomer, the film is a moving contemporary tale of detachment, loneliness and alienation.

The film follows Ding Mao, a supermarket clerk, accidentally boils the store’s shark alive. That same night, he discovers a missing person notice for his father and hears an otherworldly voice. Soon, strange occurrences begin disrupting his life. Compelled by forces beyond his understanding, Ding returns to his hometown Shenyang after 20 years. There, he encounters a series of eccentric figures and gradually, all pieces converge-weaving into a symphonic echo of history, memory, fantasy, and reality.

Woman director Isabelle Tollenaere’s fiction film debutParis Paris is an allegory of searching, loss, displacement, and the discovery of new meanings and commonalities. Three men – Yi-En from China, Junior from Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine – share a spartan apartment in a seemingly abandoned building in Paris. Besides this joint living arrangement, the group is bound together by their shared experience of life in exile and the fleeting nature of their possessions, relationships, and sense of home.

The interesting and intriguing and immersive film is set in one of Europe’s great cities and in a replica of Paris built in China – a metaphor for the immigrants’ old dream of life in a new home and its gradual transformation into a new dream about their old home.