Film Difficulty 3

To help you ease your way into our world, we have devised a the film difficulty ranking system to rate the difficulty of each film reviewed on our site. The easiest to watch films (the Rom-Coms and Superhero flicks that you watch anyway) will have a rating of 1. Foreign language films automatically add one point, as do black and white films, and films with strange and hard to follow plots. Welcome to Film Difficulty 3.

Film Difficulty Ranking 3: More of a challenge for those familiar with foreign films. Level 3 is like a mix between an intriguing European mime artist and your most interesting and demanding school teacher.

If you’ve mastered these films, move onto Film Difficulty Ranking 4.

The Wounded Angel

The Wounded Angel Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Image result for the wounded angel baigazin You may have seen films from China and Europe, and even the Middle East, but have you seen a film from Kazakhstan? Here’s your chance to see something new. This is an excellent portrayal of Kazakhstan in the mid-90s. A country experiencing an economic and emotional depression after the split of the Soviet Union. Find out what life was like growing up in a remote town in Kazakhstan.

Why Watch The Wounded Angel?

To see a film from Kazakhstan!
Experience life in mid-90s Kazakhstan after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
You like coming-of-age stories
See Kazakh singing in traditional dress and a currency with 3 Tenge notes

The Breakdown

“After the collapse of the USSR, in an effort to preserve the economy, the government cut off electric power every evening”

The film starts with 13 year old Zharas, a young boy living in a remote town in Kazakhstan. He pokes a hole in the top of an egg shell and drinks its contents raw while standing topless in a bare room. He starts shadow boxing before sitting down to make a knuckleduster out of molten metal and a simple mould. Next, he hops onto a train and smokes a cigarette by the door as the train moves through barren landscape.

The Wounded Angel, looks at four 13 year old Kazakh boys living in the same Kazakh town in the middle of a barren landscape. There is an emotional depression. None of the adults ever smile, grimace, or frown. Their permanently expressionless faces have rubbed off on their children who have grown up without emotion. As a result, without emotion, their childhood cannot exist, and they ae forced to become adults.

The fixed camera shots do not hint any change either. The lack of camera movement conveys stillness, therefore mirroring the lack of progress on film (the electricity cuts out, there is no employment, and no emotion).

Look out for the ‘through-the-window-frame’ (or keyhole) shots that appear in each of the four stories. Each one (apart from Toads) shows the character standing within a derelict house by an empty window frame. Each window is a window showing their fate:

Zharas: his father walks away, but he runs after him after finishing his cigarette
Chick: shows his friends beating up the two kids he didn’t want to fight
Toad: he climbs through a hole in the wall and meets a group of kids
Aslan: shows a half dead tree

Conclusion

The Wounded Angel is a fantastic depiction of a country in an emotional depression. This is a realist coming-of-age story that contrasts heavily with the nostalgic coming-of-age films that you are used to. Watch this if you are interested in watching something from the great Eurasian Steppe.

The Trader (Georgia) – Get a Glimpse of Life in Rural Georgia

The Trader Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Ever thought about going to Georgia? If you haven’t, you probably should (especially if you like hiking). In the meantime check out The Trader on Netflix. It will give you a 25 minute glimpse of life in a rural Georgian town connected to modernity by a ‘back of the van’ trader from the city.

Image result for the trader netflix

Why Watch The Trader?

Everyone has time to watch it AND it’s available to watch on Netflix
To get a glimpse of rural Georgia
It won the top short-documentary prize at the Sundance Film Festival
To witness the power of potatoes – they’re food and currency!

The Breakdown

First we’re introduced to Gela as he browses the stocks of various shops in the city he’s from. He’s looking for items to fill his van (his moving shop) before he drives into the country to sell them. As a trader, his aim is to pick any items his customers are likely to need or want, which he can then trade for a portion of the year’s latest potato crop.

It might sound simple, but it’s not. The village he drives to appears half deserted. The grey corrugated iron roofs match the grey skies and compliments the brown dirt ground. It doesn’t look like a place where you’d expect to make any sales. However, sure enough, a few residents and their kids gather round Gela and his shop (the back of his van) and start haggling with him for a few of his wares. After 2 days at the village, he ends up with a few kilos of potatoes to take home. Not a great crop.

But it could be worse, he could be one of the residents living in the remote village. He could be like the old man who regrets never getting an education. Or he could be like the young boy who has absolutely no idea of what he wants to be when he grows up, even after his mum prompts him to say ‘a journalist’. The place is completely devoid of dreams and full of regret.

Is the Trader to Blame?

Hard to say. Gela, the trader, is the only connection for this community to modernity. He is the only one who appears to make the trip to this remote village and give the population a market to sell their excess potatoes.

However, the market is tilted in his favour. The village community have to accept all the goods he brings to sell even if it is a load of useless rubbish. If they keep their excess potatoes they’ll only go rotten as it doesn’t look like they’ll have another opportunity to sell. Therefore they have to accept whatever Gela offers. So they’ll continue to buy second rate goods and as a result, their village never progresses as far as the contents of Gela’s van.

Conclusion and What to Watch Next

If a picture tells a thousand words, The Trader packs enough into it’s 25 minutes to constitute a few essays. Not because it’s complex, but because the dialogue and images so concisely document life in rural Georgia and the importance of one man, the trader.

If the rural town in this film struck you, I recommend checking out Kazakhstan’s The Wounded Angel, also set in a remote, hopeless town. If you’re into more arty film, there’s also Lav Diaz’s From What is Before which charts the effects of a dictatorship on a remote rural town in the Philippines.

Or, if you’re after more great documentaries, I strongly recommend you check out Makala. It follows the complete process of a charcoal maker from cutting down a tree 3 days walk from the nearest city to selling the final product (after walking for 3 days) in said city. It won Cannes Critic Week because it’s one of the most beautifully captured films you’ll ever see.

Boxing Libreville – Boxing for Freedom in Gabon

Boxing Libreville Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

If you’re a boxing fan or simply a regular gym rat, you’ll be able to sympathise with Christ in Boxing Libreville. He’s a boxer who trains all day and works all night to try to become the best boxer in Gabon as the hope of a new political future builds in the background.

From:  Gabon, Africa
Watch: Trailer
Next: Makala, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, Fruitvale Station

Akira – Visit a Dystopian Animated Tokyo

Watch this if:

You like Sci-fi and/or anime films
You want to visualise a Tokyo in a dystopian future
You love Motor Bikes!
The Matrix, Bladerunner, or Tron really got you going
You want to learn more about Japanese anime!

Akira Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Set in a dystopian future where society is crumbling, Akira is the anime equivalent of The Matrix. Pay attention to the superbly animated setting of ‘Neo-Tokyo,’ a city which resembles a mix of Bladerunner’s Los Angeles and the Hunger Games’ Panem. See the original before a Hollywood studio remakes their live-action version (which has been in the works for years at various Hollywood studios).

From: Japan, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Buy on Amazon
Next: The Matrix, Bladerunner, Tron

Nevia – International Competition – SBIFF

With her mother dead and her father in prison, Nevia and her little sister live with her grandmother in a container park on the outskirts of Naples. It’s not the best place for her to grow up. Her grandmother rents out her rooms to prostitutes and runs odd chores for the local crime boss to try and repay the debts Nevia’s father owes. Nevia despises her grandmother for bringing men into their home.

Nevia’s other problem is that Salvatore, the 30 year old son of the crime boss, is infatuated with her. Even though she’s only 17 (and looks younger), he’s already asking her grandmother for her hand in marriage. The prostitution to many men or prostitution to Salvatore is what Nevia fears is her fate.

To escape, she finds work with the local circus. They provide her independence and a more complete family then the one she has at home. It allows her to wean herself away from her grandmother and Salvatore. But when she finds the circus leader has his own problems, she’s redirected to the fate she tried to escape.

Nevia looks a lot like the recent Neapolitan films of Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, Dogman). It contains the same grimy urban landscape of rubbish strewn across roads, battered apartment blocks, and lots of concrete and tarmac. It’s a hopeless forgotten Italy in which opportunity doesn’t exist. The only people who succeed are involved in crime, and those that don’t are inevitably linked to them whether they want to or not.

Like Dogman’s main character, Nevia is linked to the criminal underworld by means outside her control. She comes into contact with the criminal bosses because of her father and grandmother. She’s doomed to Salvatore just for living where she grew up. It’s not a problem with her but a condition of the hopeless environment she grows up in.

The welcome difference of Nevia is that it’s led by Nevia, a young female protagonist growing up with her female relatives. It therefore provides a female perspective of life in the hopeless outskirts of urban Italy. The environment for them is much more restrictive than the criminal freedom it afford the men.