European Film

Best European Films

From Alfred Hitchcock to Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman to Jean-Luc Godard, Europe has birthed many of film’s greatest innovators. And that’s just to name a few. The more you dig into the world of European film, the more and more gems you find. Scroll down to find the best European films currently reviewed on FilmRoot, or pick a country if you know what you’re after:

Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Portrait

Portrait Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Image result for portrait loznitsa Another long day at work? Take a 30 minute break and watch the calming, Zen like images of Loznitsa’s Portrait. It’s a collection of portraits of people living in the snow draped countryside of old Soviet Russia. The pictures are eerie, soothing remnants of a time gone. There are no signs of technology here so hide your smart phone screen and transport yourself to another place.

Why Watch Portrait?

You’ve seen Ansel Adams’ photos of depression era U.S. and want to see a collection of eerie moving images of Russia from the same time
To see how ordinary folk lived in Soviet Russia
For a bit of calm in your hectic routine
It’s only 28 minutes long, and you it’s currently here on YouTube

The Breakdown

Grey clouds move across a grey sky above a barren field. The first image is of a man holding a knapsack with a train and electricity pylons in the background. Snow covers the ground and the immobile train. The electricity pylons show no signs of life where this man lives. The second image is of a man in layers of winter gear. His coat wavers in the wind. The only things in the background are a few small sheds and a couple of snow laden trees.

In the Soviet countryside there are signs of progress but there is no evidence of it serving the people on camera. Instead the stationary trains and electricity pylons depict unfulfilled promises of advancement that ignored the rural people. Just like the affected people in Ansel Adams’ pictures of post-depression America, Loznitsa’s film documents the lack of progress for rural Soviet Russia.

Unlike Adams’ pictures, Loznitsa’s images move in the wind. The historic images are alive, but are also frozen in time. It is as if we have stepped out of a time travel machine to find all the people staring at us, like the birds in Hitchcock’s thriller. But there will be no jump in this documentary, just a collection of eerie images. The people have become part of the landscape and have become weathered along side it. Only the wind moves, carrying time with it.

Conclusion

Loznitsa’s Portrait is almost Zen-like film that documents a way of life frozen in time. Whilst signs of progress appear in the background, it has not touched the people of the Soviet countryside. They are statues of a life that will not be changed. They are statues captured in film. To transport yourself away from your routine, take 30 minutes out to watch Potrait.

This film can be found here on Youtube

Short Films from the 2020 Pan African Film Festival

Here’s some quick fire reviews from the short films featured in the Pan African Shorts Program of the 2020 Pan African Film Festival.

My Father Belize (Belize)

It’s great to see films being made in Belize, and My Father Belize definitely does the Belizean tourist board proud with shots of idyllic peninsulas where the jungle meets pristine beaches. The film focuses on Sean, a born and bred in Belizean that left the country in his teens for a life in the United States. He’s back in town for the first time in three years to scatter his fathers ashes; a father that was never there for him growing up. Sean has moved on from the death of his estranged father and is now engaged to someone from the U.S. However, during his visit he discovers he conceived a son last time he was in the country and must face his own future as a father and husband.

My Father Belize works because the gossipy reveals are backed up by just enough well timed humor to keep it tongue in cheek. Every time the film introduces a cheesy twist, Sean’s cousin is on hand to say exactly what is on the audience’s mind, thereby acknowledging the exaggerated turns of the script. This balancing act cleverly draws the audience into the script, opening up a space for My Father Belize to talk to us about the ordinary topic it really wants to: fatherhood.

A Handful of dates (Sudan)

It’s also great to see more films coming out of Sudan. A Handful of Dates is shot from the perspective of a young boy that is ashamed to learn the truth behind his grandfather’s date palm fortune. He has grown up idolizing his grandfather, but when he sees the poverty his grandfather has nonchalantly plunged his neighbor into to achieve his wealth, he’s repulsed.

A Handful of Dates is a risk-free adaptation of a short story by Tayeb Saleh that fits perfectly into 15 minutes. It efficiently builds the arcs of the two characters the young boy interacts with (his grandfather and the neighbor) with just enough visual cues to support the limited dialogue. No second is wasted in depicting the grandfather’s transformation from idol to demon and the neighbors transformation from social pariah into a humble exploited man we can sympathize with.

Dolly (U.K.)

In Dolly, a white babysitter works on her laptop whilst the young black girl in her care asks for help with her maths homework. The babysitter ignores her until she finds out she’s got the job she wanted. To celebrate, she lets the young black girl put make up on her face, not knowing that the young girl is going to paint her face black.

There are a lot of issues that Dolly touches on but doesn’t explore, such as white privilege, racial privilege, black girls in STEM, discrimination in education, blackness, lack of black representation, being black in a white world and more. However, instead of exploring any of these issues that the film half references, it chooses to ultimately go for a punch-line ending of a white girl being found with blackface on. As a result, Dolly is left without much substance to add to a pretty bland performance from the white babysitter.

Songs for my right side (U.S.A.)

Rodger Smith is in pain. Every night he writhes alone in his bed because of a searing pain that has taken over the right side of his body. It might be the after effects of a bad break up, or the fate of two young black people recently murdered in cold blood. The only thing that soothes the pain is music.

Songs For My Right Side deserves a lot of credit for trying to do something different. Whilst the three short films above stick to familiar storytelling styles, Songs for My Right Side blends music, mystery, and Rodger’s thoughts together to create an almost psychedelic viewing experience. It’s as if you’ve been plunged into another person’s mind and forced to follow their roving stream-of-consciousness. There’s no room to step away from it and get a complete picture of what is happening, but that is kind of the point. You’re stuck with an untrustworthy, apparently crazy narrator, and you have to try and decipher what is true or not. Whilst the film does meander a lot, rendering it pretty confusing to follow, the experience is worth the ride.

Head to our Pan African Film Festival Hub for more reviews from PAFF 2020.

Androids Dream – A Low Budget Spanish Bladerunner

The deserted landscape of off-season Benidorm

Androids Dream Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

How would Bladerunner have looked if it had a minutely small budget?

Like Androids Dream.

From: Spain, Europe
Watch: Trailer, Mubi
Next: Bladerunner, High Rise, Logan's Run

Feed Me With Your Words – A Multi-Layered Brooding Mystery

Feed Me With Your Words Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Why Watch Feed Me With Your Words?

If you like brooding family dramas
To follow the mystery of a missing son
For a film that plays into gender stereotypes

From: Slovenia, Europe
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch, Amazon Prime, Hoopla
Next: Stitches, The Last of Us, By A Sharp Knife

Tune Into The Future – Luxembourg City Film Festival 2020

Many decades before the internet gave us nerd culture, there was Hugo Gernsback, an eccentric Luxembourgish writer and inventory who went on to become the father of modern science fiction.
Festival Scope

Tune into the Future tracks Hugo Gernsback’s life and inventions from his roots in Luxembourg and Europe, to finding his path and career in New York. It’s a story told with plenty of animations, interviews, personal anecdotes from his grandson, with references stretching from Tesla and Superman (Superman’s creator was inspired by Hugo’s publications).

Tune into the Future starts with some small square black and white footage of Hugo back in the day before the narrator interrupts the footage to tell us we’re missing the true (colorful) story. At this point the small black and white square footage expands to take up the entire screen and starts parading through images of Hugo’s fantastic speculative inventions from the future. The director, Eric Schockmel knows the inventions are the most eye catching part of Hugo’s work so he uses them to get us hooked in order to tell Hugo’s life story.

The director’s experience working with Museum Exhibits definitely shines through this documentary. He successfully manages to keep the audience engaged and interested throughout by mixing dry one on one interviews and personal anecdotes with animations that bring the anecdotes and Hugo’s ideas to life. It reminded me a bit of the educational YouTube videos made by Kurzgesagt – informative, but always engaging.

The way the documentary is presented matches Hugo’s own attempts to popularize science. He, like the director, used a mix of media to promote visions of utopia and drive interest in science across the world. In Schockmel’s case, he makes the film to rejuvenate Hugo’s efforts to popularize science in a time when experts and utopian ideas are being forgotten around the world. It’s time for the world to start dreaming again.