Tales of Europe returns to Chatham for the second year with a lively and provocative series of five feature-length and seven short award-winning films made by European filmmakers who journey to Greenland, Morocco and Myanmar to tell their tales. Each of these noteworthy films debuted over the last year in top international festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Sundance and Toronto. The Crandell Theatre has exclusive rights to show the films for the first time in the tri-state area (NY, MA, CT).
The films were curated by Laurence (Larry) Kardish, co-artistic director of the Crandell’s annual film festival FilmColumbia and former senior curator for film at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. An Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, he regularly attends the major international film festivals and has served as a juror at many worldwide. He will be speaking at the members-only event on Sunday, July 14 at noon (see below).
Listen to the WAMC interview by Joe Donahue with Larry Kardish.
The Tales of Europe program is supported by Europa International and Unifrance Film USA.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Thursday, July 18 at 7:00pm
A Polar Year
PREVIOUS EVENTS
Friday, July 12 at 7:00pm
Blue Dog
2019. France. Written and directed by Fanny Liatard and Miriam Baradji. 17 min.
In a French suburb a depressed father is enlivened by his son’s enthusiasm for a young neighbor and her love of Tamil dance.
Sofia
2019. Belgium/France/Morocco. Written and directed by Meryem Benm’Barek-Aloïsi. With Maha Alemi, Sarah Perles, Hamza Khafif. In Arabic and French, English subtitles. 80 min.
French/Moroccan filmmaker Meryem Benm’Barak-Aloïsi’s first feature film, Sofia made a significant splash at Cannes where it won a Best Screenplay award. A tense and gripping tale set in present-day Casablanca, Sofia is about a young woman who, within twenty-four hours of giving birth, must find the father of her child before the hospital reports her to the police for immorality. Watch the trailer.
Saturday, July 13 at 2:00pm
A Polar Year
2019. Denmark/France. Directed by Samuel Collardey. Written by Samuel Collardey and Catherine Paillé. With Anders Hvidegaard and Asser Boassen. In Danish and Inukitut, English subtitles. 80 min.
A hit at Sundance and a wonderful film for families with older children who don’t mind subtitles, A Polar Year is set in the glorious icy barrens of Greenland. A young Danish man, Anders, goes to teach in Tiniteqilaaq, a remote fishing village of about eighty where the students, including eight-year-old Asser, would rather go hunting with their sled dogs than learn Danish. Watch the trailer.
Saturday, July 13 at 4:30pm
The Venerable W.
2019. France/Myanmar. Written and directed by Barbet Schroeder. With Ashin Wirathu. In English, French, Spanish, Burmese, English subtitles. 100 min.
Swiss-French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder is best known here for his American films, including Reversal of Fortune, Koko: A Talking Gorilla, and Barfly. He is also celebrated for his documentaries about powerful, evil men such as General Idi Amin Dada and “The Venerable W,” a Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, who preaches hate against Myanmar’s Muslim minority, the Rohingya. Schroeder’s interview with the fanatical W and his adoring disciples has been featured at major film festivals the world over, including Cannes and New York. Watch the trailer.
Saturday, July 13 at 7:00pm
Mug
2019. Poland. Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska. Written by Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert. With Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, and Malgorzata Gorol. In Polish, English subtitles. 91 min.
Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska is one of Europe’s leading directors. She has won major prizes for In the Name of the Father, Body, and now Mug, a “comic tragedy” that earned a Silver Bear in Berlin. While building the world’s tallest statue of Christ (108 feet) in the village of Swiebozin (true) a happy-go-lucky and well-liked worker has an accident that requires a face transplant. Hence the title and the filmmaker’s acid wit. Watch the trailer.
Sunday, July 14 at Noon. For Members Only.
Happy Bastille Day! Board member and former senior curator for film at the MoMA. Larry (Lawrence) Kardish will introduce six wonderful new short films from France. See more about this event.
The Villa
2019. A film by Emmanuel Poulain-Arnaud. A rental by the sea comes with an unexpected problem. 18 min.
The Fall
2019. An animated film by Boris Labbé. Celestial beings descend to earth. 14 min.
Kapitalists
2019. France/Belgium. A film by Pablo Munoz Gomez. Buying a gift for his five-year-old, a father learns a lesson in capitalism. 14 min.
La Persistente
2019. A film by Camille Lugan. High in the Pyrenees a man and his motorcycle will not be parted. 22 min.
The Amorous Indies
2019. A film by Clément Cogitore. Krumping, a dance style originating in black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, is brought to the stage of the Paris Opera. 5 min.
Pauline Enslaved
2019. A film by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet. Pauline, perhaps an otherwise independent woman, is obsessed, waiting for Bruce, her married lover, to call in this very loquacious comedy of manners. 24 min.
Total 101 min.
Sunday, July 14 at 3:00pm
Blue Dog
Sofia
Sunday, July 14 at 7:00pm
Murer – Anatomy of a Trial
2019. Luxemburg/Austria. Written and directed by Christian Frosch. With Karl Fischer, Alexander E. Fenon, and Melita Jurisic. In German, Hebrew, Yiddish, English subtitles. 137 min.
In 1963 Fritz Mauer, a respected family man and farmer, was put on trial in Graz, Austria, for the murder of Jews in Lithuania during World War II. Mauer, a prominent Nazi, had been put in charge of the “Jewish problem” in Vilnius, “the Jerusalem of the East,” from the start of the Occupation in 1941 until the liquidation of the Ghetto in 1943. Using actual documents from the trial and a superb cast, Austrian filmmaker Christian Frosch recreates this extraordinary trial that tested a nation’s soul.