2023-04-22 11:24:32
The competition program of the 45th Moscow International Film Festival showed films from Serbia and Romania, filled with the horrors of the past. The ghost of communism still haunts Europe, and the spirits of their ancestors do not let go of the Romanian peasants who have looked into the abyss of death.
The Serbian painting “Trace of the Beast” by debutant Nenad Pavlovich participates in the main competition. He is an adult who has long received a director’s education, for many years he made clips and documentaries on television. For his feature-length acting debut, Pavlovich chose the work of his father, the famous Yugoslav writer Zivoin Pavlovich. The events take place in communist Yugoslavia in the late 70s. The country, which was considered by the Soviet people the personification of capitalism, despite belonging to the socialist camp, and where everyone aspired to get into a real foreign country, on the screen it looks like a Soviet one: nondescript typical houses, squalid life, the activities of special services, the same as the KGB.
A well-known Belgrade journalist writes a report about a murder that took place in a small town, which is connected in an unexpected way to another murder and the activities of the State Security Committee. He enters the chain of events of the recent past. He is a brave man, participated in the student riots of 1968, but got hooked by the special services. The role of an influential member of the State Security Committee was played by the magnificent Serbian actor Predrag Manojlovic, familiar to the audience from the films of Emir Kusturits. Not so long ago, he came to the MIFF. His son-in-law is killed. And daughter Sonya – a local beauty – does not really grieve because of the death of her husband. She continues to spin novels, sunbathe on the beach, so they say after her: having fun, although her husband’s body has not cooled down. She is allowed a lot, what is forbidden to others. It seems that everyone here either serves in the state security system or is recruited by it. A very real story rests on something mystical, a rite is recalled, which is like euthanasia in a primitive form, when children and grandchildren send an elderly and debilitated relative to the next world. They hit him on the head and drop his body. It is like a symbol of the frailty of all things. There is talk that Yugoslavia is not eternal, and those who stand guard over its foundations are actually digging its grave.
Another film of the main competition – “Dead Man’s Bride” – was shot by the Romanian director Cornel Georgic (sometimes called Gergit), who has been living in France since 1990. He came to Moscow from Toulouse, where his home and work are. The director himself says that he left Romania after the fall of the Ceausescu regime. Years of living in a foreign country did not change his mind: mentally he remained in Romania. For the first time I managed to meet Cornell in 2011 at the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan, where he presented the film Europolis. In part, her images and atmosphere were further developed in Dead Man’s Bride.
In Europolis, a young peasant from an Eastern Romanian village receives a telegram from France about the death of his uncle, who has not made himself known for many years and left a will, according to which he should be buried in his homeland. Together with his mother, the guy goes to France, and then returns with the body of his uncle. The uncle “materializes” into a ghost, hovering over the funeral procession. His body is carried in a sarcophagus with a donkey’s head, and the funeral wagon turns into a jester’s wagon. The director brought a coffin to the premiere in Bucharest, and at the beginning of that unforgettable event, its organizer died of a heart attack. Since the role of the mother was played by a popular Romanian actress, fans brought her many bouquets. “After the premiere, we had a coffin, a dead man, a sea of flowers, and candles appeared,” Kornel said in Yerevan. Interestingly, the famous French director Bruno Dumont, who shot a film about Satan in the same 2011, took part as an artist in the French block of filming.
Kornel Georgits explained what his films are made of: “As a child, I spent my holidays in the village with my grandparents in the Carpathian Mountains. My maternal grandfather is a priest. The church stood on a hill in the middle of a cemetery. As children we played hide and seek in the church and among the graves.” In his films, he talks about the frailty of all living things, a kind of parabola of death, considers himself a follower of Chagall and Parajanov.
In Trail of the Beast, three Frenchmen come to a village in the Carpathians to film a documentary about folk traditions and beliefs. The film crew filmed the christening and wedding without any problems, but did not get to the funeral ceremony. The widow of the deceased did not let them into the house. How long to wait for the next funeral is unknown. The group undertakes to stage them, involving local residents in the staged ritual, ready to do anything for a small fee. They are not very pious. It is then that the local priest will force them to undergo a ritual of cleansing from filth. The eternally drunk peasant agrees to lie in the coffin, but at the last moment refuses – the fear is stronger. Deaf-mute Irina and her brother live in the village – orphans raised by foster parents. They agree to act in film: the brother in the role of the deceased, and the sister in the form of an inconsolable widow. Cinematographer Martin (played by Duncan Talue) falls in love with Irina, ready to pull her out of the Romanian hole and take her to France. She reciprocates, but having transgressed the boundaries of the earthly world in a jester’s form, they will suffer God’s punishment.
Documentary narration turns into mysticism. “Based on real events,” says Kornel Georgits. – A program about christenings, weddings and funerals was filmed on Romanian television. They found for this alcoholic, two orphans who played some scenes. But since they didn’t have time to film everything, winter plans were needed, and a cameraman was sent to the village again. And they threw stones at him. The episode with the woman who “drank” the heart of a child was filmed by me for a film about rituals, on which I worked for several years. The official premiere of “Dead Man’s Bride” in Paris has not yet taken place, only private screenings have taken place. Those who saw my film there said that it was a very Romanian movie. In Bucharest, on the contrary, the film was called French. It’s like I’m on board a plane flying from France to Romania. Real priests agreed to star in the film. The christening scene you saw at the beginning and end is real. My approach is to choose unknown actors. Irina was played by my student Manu Flute. She is not an actress, but a director, and she did not make a mistake in a single take, she did everything right.
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