Mexican triumph in TIBIDA

In the third edition of The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award, Mexican Enrique Rivero's debut feature Parque vía was named the winner. No less than three out of eight films in the selection were Mexican, a fact that further confirms this nation's rich development in cinema lately. On one hand, there are names like Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo Arriaga, directors and screenwriters who in a short time have had great success also in Hollywood; on the other hand a group of less commercial but innovative directors, probably with Carlos Reygadas as the most influential.

Apart from The Desert Within by Rodrigo Plá, who recently earned great success with La Zona, Mexican director Amat Escalante and his Los Bastardos also made it to the competition. Plás film is a violent showdown on the verge of strong religion and vicious fascism in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. In one way, the film starts where The Virgin Spring ends. To atone for his blunder, a regretful father – one of a few survivors after a brutal massacre – forces himself to build a church to honour God. But the project overturns repeatedly, and instead gives birth to new, undesired authorities in a film that combines Christian iconography with modern animations.

The more minimalist and lacking in action were the competition's two other Mexican films, both taking place in a contemporary milieu and with many resemblances in common. Los Bastardos deals with Mexican idlers searching for daily jobs in the US. Set out from Luis Buñuels Los Olvidados (1950), the film soon takes similar shape as Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997/2007), even though these criminal rituals seem less intentional and more rooted in a given social divergence. The effect is equally shocking as the one in Parque vía, where an older man only finds one (drastic) advice after 30 years as a lonely custodian in one of Mexico City's wealthier park alleys. Parallel to these feature's strongly introspective plots, where protagonists from a lower social rank acts against the rules; a wider perspective is also exposed as the camera tilts and pans over contemporary milieus – cinema as a window to the world.

The films, which on a thematic level appeared the most associated with Bergman's own works, were The Stranger In Me and Charlie Kaufman's debut feature Synecdoche, New York. The later linked to Bergman in a primarily biographical way. After big success with a partly conservative selection of plays, an anxiety-ridden and deeply neurotic theatre director, multi-facetted played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, plans a monumental staging of his own life. But as his existence and condition alters, the play also has to be re-written. Kaufman excels in witty dialogue, surrealistic sceneries and not the least meta-filmic aspects.

Emily Atef's The Stranger in Me (Das Fremde in mir) connects not the least to Persona, telling the story of Rebecka, a woman who finds herself a stranger to her newly born child as well as to her husband. Soon after the delivery of her child, she chooses silence and her way back to normal goes via a nurse as well as a psychologist. When Face to Face met Emily Atef during the festival, she explained that the silence in the film is connected to shame:

- Rebecka becomes a stranger just as much to herself as to her child. The condition makes her words disappear and I am trying to describe how she returns to life through her senses; hearing, sight and touch. I didn't want to make a film about illness, but about the inability to love. Simultaneously, the theme concerning the main character's post-natal depression has turned out to be more therapeutic than aesthetic.

© AB Svensk Filmindustri

- What I admire the most with Bergman's films are his psychological descriptions. He has a way of seeing the human condition that is so spot on. My first Bergman experience was The Seventh Seal, which was disturbing though attractive. The man with his odd make-up, being death playing chess – those images struck me. It calms me that such a great director tried different ways in making film, not being afraid to fail. The Bergman film that has moved me the most is otherwise Scenes from a Marriage – it is also the one closest to my own life.

© Atlantic Film

A film taking its point of entry in a familiar theme to The Stranger In Me is the French film I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). The multi-awarded debut of Philippe Claudel with a just as praised Kristin Scott Thomas in the main part, revolves around the middle-aged Juliette who refinds her joy of life in her baby sister's bourgeoisie existence, after having spent 15 years in jail sentenced for having killed her six-year-old son.

A number of strong women are also found in Bosnian film Snow, directed by Aida Begic. The film describes a group of young and older women who in the end of the 90's are living alone in a distant mountain village after most of their men having been killed in the war. Their calm existence is mirrored by the rhythm of the film. The economical camera registers on close range the ongoing everyday life in the shadow of the rebuilding of society as a sort of continuum.

Partly touching the similar subject, Najwa Najjars Pomegranates and Myrrh describes a Palestinian couple who immediately after having been married are the victims of the Israeli military's territorial claims and the transgressions because of them.

(The editors of Face to Face, Feb 1, 2009)