ALI F. MOSTAFA INTERVIEW – THE WORTHY | DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2016
Posted in United Arab Emirates, tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Ali F. Mostafa, Arabic, City of Life, Dubai International Film Festival, female characters, From A to B, Hitchcock, Hollywood, Horror, Image Nation, Mohammed Saeed Harib, Peter Safran, Rami Yasin, Steven Schneider, survivalist, The Conjuring, The Exorcist, The Worthy, Thriller, UAE, United Arab Emirates on February 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »
During the 13th edition of the Dubai Film Festival – in the majestic Jumeirah Mina A'Salam hotel, overlooking the sea and the Burj Al Arab – I sat down with pioneering Emirati director Ali F. Mostafa (director of City of Life, the first Emirati feature to be distributed throughout the MENA region and screen around the world) and producer Rami Yasin (Rattle the Cage, Sea Shadow), to learn about genre filmmaking in the Arabic language and making the United Arab Emirates' first survivalist horror film The Worthy (released this week in UAE cinemas).
Your three films have all occupied different genres, multi-narrative drama (City of Life), road movie (From A to B) and now horror with The Worthy. Was this a conscious choice?
Absolutely. It was a complete conscious choice. The choice was to try and tap into as many genres as possible and make the Arab versions of them. And also selfishly, as well, is to try and better myself as a filmmaker. The more genres you tap into, the more versatile you can try and make yourself, I think the more you can grow as a filmmaker.
And what was it about this moment in time that horror seemed like the right choice, rather than a western for example?
Right, well it was one of those things. I was in the middle of editing and I got given the script by Image Nation, so it was something that was handed to me. I was very much interested in doing a horror, although this I could consider more action / thriller, with horror elements, but I was interested very much in doing a horror, mainly because I wasn't necessarily a horror fan. I appreciated and respected horror films, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch one.
Was there any particular horrors you did like and had as references?
Oh well, obviously we have all seen The Exorcist, but there is also stuff that even – not necessarily horrors – but the way Hitchcock makes his films definitely has that element. But also when I knew I was getting into this film and having Peter Safran & Steven Schneider attached to it, I would have felt silly had I not seen The Conjuring for example, so I went out of my way to watch The Conjuring – it took me actually two and a half days to watch that film – it was really frightening and because of how well made it was. These guys are at the top of their game so we really have to be at the top of our game when making this film.
In terms of bringing this kind of film to the audience here, were there any responsibilities you felt you had, or any things you wanted to achieve?
It's the first of its kind I guess, in terms of post-apocalyptic kind of film, but in terms of responsibility is to try and do the best film I can make with the means. Knowing that the audience here are very much fans of Hollywood films – I mean those are the films that really do well in the cinemas here – you have to try and make the film with that sensibility. You have to give them that style, in terms of how the film is produced.
So you're trying to tap into the appetite?
Yes! 100% Without a doubt. But in Arabic. [laughs]
That leads us onto the development of the script. In terms of creating a film of this nature in Arabic, how did you work through that process?
Rami can help with that, Rami is a producer on the film. The script was handed to us… it was an American script initially, so we were playing around with the script a lot and Rami had a huge input.
Rami Yasin – The first question we asked ourselves was: "if this was in our world and our region, what kind of world would we be living in and where would our world be in 10 years time?" We banked on the stuff we know now of what's going on around the world and our region; as a region that suffers from water shortage, so that was a great thing to have in there to start with and from there we worked backwards with the characters. Who would these characters be? We actually changed a lot of the characters and their backgrounds, built them up from scratch, changed a lot of the relationships between them. For example, one is the father and his son and daughter: what kind of tension would be between the daughter and her father and the son and his father? The other thing that we wanted to do, both of us, is that we wanted to present very strong female characters in this world, because we said in the future our world is not the same, women are on par with men and they are very strong. In fact we heard a lot of comments yesterday [at the world premiere at Dubai Film Festival] from audiences who said: "we loved the fact that the women were so equal to men in this film…" so that's an achievement that we felt was great.
After this project what's your next step?
Ali F. Mostafa – Well Rami and I are currently producing Mohammed Saeed Harib's first feature film, first live-action film. That's what's happening currently. And then next, i'm not too sure. I would like to try and do something – even though our films aren't considered very 'high budget' – I would like to try and do something as more of an experiment to me, with a much lower budget, to see if we could still make a good film.
GUEST POST | 6 EUROPEAN FILMS YOU SHOULD WATCH – BY GLOBAL LANGUAGE SERVICES LTD.
Posted in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, tagged Armour, Bal, Danish, David Hughes, Emmanuelle Riva, European Cinema, european film, Geir Hartly Andreassen, Geoffrey Mcnab, Global Language Services Ltd, Honey, Jagten, Jean Becker, Jean-Pierre Améris, Kon-Tiki, La Tête en friche, Les Émotifs anonymes, Love, Michael Haneke, movie scene, My Afternoons with Marguerite, Peter Bradshaw, Petter Skavlan, Robbie Collin, Roger Ebert, Romantics anonymous, Semih Kaplanoğlu, Stephen Holden, subtitles, The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg, Thriller, UK on February 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The European movie scene is unique and marvellous. Look beyond the top 10's and you will find movies that bombard your senses and leave you deep in thought.
Movies with subtitles is something that surprisingly few in the UK seem to enjoy. We're not quite sure why? To shake things up a bit, here's a list of European movies that will make you laugh, weep, shiver and think.
Armour (Love) – dir. Michael Haneke / Austria | France | Germany
After Anne (the late Emmanuelle Riva) suffers a stroke, Georges' and Anne's life together hit a point of no return. The two retired pianists suddenly face the perhaps toughest challenge of the lifelong love: old age and the deterioration of mind and body.
Brutally honest, Armour portrays aging love and the helplessness that follows when a loved one slowly succumbs to the ravages of old age.
We follow Georges' struggle to accept the inevitable, as Anne suffers from early dementia and a series of strokes, reducing her to little more than a helpless child.
"In the course of two hours, Haneke suggests that the ultimate test of a lifelong passion may come not in its first flourish, but in the compassion of its very last days, and that while love cannot conquer death, it can give life's bleakest moments a run for their money" David Hughes
Jagten (The Hunt) – dir. Thomas Vinterberg / Denmark | Sweden
In this critically acclaimed Danish thriller, Thomas Vinterberg shows how a close- knit small community can crumble in no time when rumours are on the run.
Lucas, a small town nursery teacher, is falsely accused of sexually abusing his best friends daughter.
As we follow the slightly awkward but charming divorcé being torn apart and shunned by the local community, we are reminded of how relentlessly a smaller group can turn on you when you need it most.
"Vinterberg sets our suspicions twitching from the off, which makes us wonder later, with no small measure of guilt, which side of the mob we would have been on." Robbie Collin
La Tête en friche (My Afternoons with Marguerite) – dir. Jean Becker / France
La Tête en friche is a heartwarming atypical love story. Germain is a very self- conscious, bloated man-baby in dungarees. Marguerite an articulate, fraile, and intelligent 95-year-old.
In a public square in a small French village, Marguerite and Germain form a close friendship over literature. Marguerite's subtle love for words and Germain's quirky wonder over them brings them closer day by day.
"Germain suffers through flashbacks to his unhappy childhood, but seems on the whole serene. He loves Annette but he declares himself "in love" with Margueritte.
So are we, a little. She is bright-eyed and high-spirited, and never overplays the heart-tugging" Roger Ebert
Les Émotifs anonymes (Romantics anonymous) – dir. Jean-Pierre Améris / France | Belgium
With both main characters suffering from awkward bashfulness, emotif, this french comedy is a quirky but adorable story of how two very shy chocolatiers, Angélique and Jean-René, fall in love.
As the chocolate enterprise takes its worst toll, Angélique, originally hired for sales, anonymously develops a new line of special chocolates. Through their passion for chocolate, the two chocolatiers finally find a way to communicate.
"The tale of two pathologically shy chocolate makers who are meant for each other but are too afraid to connect is a mug of warm cocoa with marshmallow topping that produces a comfy feel-good glow" Stephen Holden
Bal (Honey) – dir. Semih Kaplanoğlu / Turkey | Germany | France
This award winning film is set in the densely forested region of north-eastern Turkey. Yakup and his family lives in an isolated mountain area, and he makes a living by climbing trees to harvest wild honey.
Yusef, Yakup's son, struggles in school. He is lonely, has a stammer and is desperate for attention.
One day Yakup doesn't come home.
In an astonishing scenery, we watch Yusef slip into silence as his mother Zehra's heart breaks.
"It is a film whose unhurried pace must be allowed to grow on you, but once it has, there is something engrossing about the tragedy unfurling slowly and indirectly before our eyes" Peter Bradshaw
Kon-Tiki – dir. Petter Skavlan / UK | Norway | Denmark | Germany | Sweden
This spectacle of a film is based on the true story of the Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl, who set out to prove that people from South America could have settled in Polynesia in pre- Columbian times.
We follow Thor (a pompous Norwegian man who cannot swim) in his adventure to raise money, build a balsa- wood raft, and draft from South America to Polynesia (4,300 miles). With a crew of several Norwegian men trapped on an ocean raft, arguments unfold and their craft of a raft, 'Kon-Tiki' is put to the test.
"What the film doesn't skimp on is spectacle. Brilliantly shot in a rugged National Geographic-like way by the cinematographer Geir Hartly Andreassen, it captures the sailors' feelings of both awe and terror about their self-inflicted predicament" Geoffrey Mcnab
At Global Language Services Ltd we're passionate about languages and language nuances. We're a language service agency based in Scotland, supplying interpretation and translation services locally, nationally and internationally.
The technology of the 21st century is remarkable, but however good the translation technology is, it cannot yet pick up the subtleties of a language, the culture that underpins it, or even the humour that oils many of our conversations.
When Alexa and Siri say nae we say yae!
VENEZIA 2016 | NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (DIR. TOM FORD, USA, 2016) – REVIEW
Posted in USA, tagged A Single Man, Amy Adams, Armie Hammer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Los Angeles, Nocturnal Animals, satire, Thriller, Tom Ford, Venezia 73, Venice 73, Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
If there were any questions left on Tom Ford's directorial skills, Nocturnal Animals has answered them all. After his 2009 debut, A Single Man, the 55-year old fashion designer-turned-director comes back to Venice with Nocturnal Animals, a poignant and gripping tale that feels like something in between a thriller and a brutal satire of modern-day Los-Angeles' socialites, shot with a confidence one would hardly expect from a director's second feature.
But Ford is known for his ability to take everyone by surprise, and after his memorable entry into the world of film-making, he writes, directs and produces yet another visually mesmerising film that conveys a mixture of angst and nostalgia that stays with the viewer until the very last shot.
Susan (Amy Adams) is a Texas-born thirty-something year-old who works in an art gallery in LA. She is married to a successful business man (Armie Hammer) and lives in a dream-house overlooking Los Angeles' skyline. Yet we know from the start hers is not a happy life. She hobnobs with LA artists who appear to be more concerned with their latest plastic surgeries than the art they make, a world which, in the memorable words of a colleague of hers, may be empty, but surely feels a lot less painful than the real one. Things change the day she receives a gruesome thriller freshly written by her former husband Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal), and the novel makes her realise just how much she gave up to live the comfortable existence she now enjoys.
To some extent, Nocturnal Animals is neither revolutionary nor experimental. There are countless of films that deploy the catalyst which Ford uses to set the drama in motion: someone writes a book, that book becomes part of the film, and eventually the characters on the big screen end up relating with what was written, so that the book and the film become two intertwined worlds. But we do not know, and will only found out as the movie goes on, whether the book tells a story that Susan and Tony lived through during their years together. We do not know just what it is that attracts Susan so spasmodically about the novel and whether the book will reveal an abominable truth about her own life.
Ford is deliberately elusive about the subject, and this helps to keep the audience stuck to their seat until the film's heart breaking ending. The camera shifts from the book to the movie effortlessly, and the transitions make for some visually stunning shots. All throughout Nocturnal Animals, Ford skilfully plays with the geometry of each scene, so much so that there are some that feel like movable paintings, in which the characters' bodies look like perfectly crafted statues in a museum.
But this does not turn Nocturnal Animals into a collection of beautifully designed images, or – worse still – a celebration of the artificial world Susan inhabits. Far from it, LA's arts scene and its inhabitants are constantly mocked, as Ford's screenplay shifts back and forth from thriller to satire, ridiculing the junk-culture which Susan and her colleagues feed upon. It is this eclecticism that helps turning Nocturnal Animals into a remarkable film. Ford has written, produced and directed a film that is a joy to watch, and leaves you longing for more. It took him seven years to come back to Venice with his second feature. Hopefully the third will arrive much quicker.
BLUE BORSALINO (DIR. MARK LOBATTO) – TRAILER LAUNCH
Posted in Britain, tagged Amanda Drew, Bart Edwards, Black Death, Christopher Smith, Creep, Danger, Daniel Vincent, Dave Silver, David M Saunders, David Warner, Eben Bolter, Emmy, Laura Dale, Margot Leicester, Mark Lobatto, Neo Noir, Noir, Olivier, Private Investigator, Short Film, The Omen, Thriller, Titanic on September 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »
We're very pleased to launch the official trailer for the short film Blue Borsalino, directed by Mark Lobatto and executive produced by Christopher Smith (Creep, Black Death). The film stars Emmy winning David Warner (Titanic, The Omen), Olivier nominee Margot Leicester as well as Bart Edwards, Laura Dale & Amanda Drew.
Blue Borsalino is a neo-noir drama that tells the story of a retired private investigator, whose first and only client wakes from a coma, revealing a secret that has cast a shadow over his life. Check it out below:
The trailer showcases the strong visual sense of director Mark Lobatto, reminiscent of the paintings of Edward Hopper, as well as the rich cinematographic talents of DOP Eben Bolter and production designer Daniel Vincent. The film was also edited by Dave Silver and the musical score was composed by David M. Saunders.
Lobatto says of the film: "Blue Borsalino would not have been possible without the support of over 300 individual backers from around the world, who believed in the project enough to make it a reality through crowd-funding. We were grateful to be a Kickstarter 'Staff Pick' within a couple of hours of our campaign launch, followed by being featured as the 'Project of the Day' just days into the campaign. We look forward to representing the film at film festivals as we hope to find it as wide an audience as possible!"
MARSHLAND (DIR. ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ, SPAIN, 2014) – HOME ENTERTAINMENT REVIEW
Posted in Spain, tagged 1980s, Alberto Rodriguez, Alex Catalán, Beautiful, Crime, Darius Khondji, European Cinema, girls, Javier Gutiérrez, La Isla Mínima, Marshland, Oscar, Raúl Arévalo, Relatos salvajes, Seven, Spain, Spanish, The Secret In Their Eyes, Thriller, Wild Tales on September 12, 2015|
Wild Tales aside, it's been a terribly long time since a Spanish-language thriller has revelled in worldwide regard. Six years have passed since Argentinean film The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) by director Juan José Campanella scored a wide audience along with critical acclaim (including an Oscar nomination), and Marshland (La Isla Mínima) has qualities akin to its success.
It is the universal aspect of the crime yarn that compels us; a story that could happen anywhere – when framed around a specific culture – can take on a new meaning. The Spanish backdrop, and 80s setting, give Marshland a paradoxically fresh feel, along with that gritty tone that mystery/thriller audiences crave.
The plot is something you have may have seen before, yet hearing that different language, and seeing an unfamiliar environment – different to that of say London or New York – gives it a special essence. Of course, this perspective can primarly be experienced by those less aware of European cinema, but however familiar you are or aren't, Marshland should not be missed.
It is 1980, in the South of Spain, and deep within the harshest environment, two bodies have been found – those of two missing girls. A pair of homicide detectives are sent to solve the case, ahead of the harvesting season, and before more trouble erupts in the town.
Every review or word you hear about Marshland will speak highly of its cinematography. The spectacular imagery of the titular landscape opens the film – and continues as transitional edits throughout. Cinematographer Alex Catalán's eye for darkness and splendour helps the film address its symbolism – it is, after all, about the murders of innocent, beautiful girls. For audiences comfortable with the more prime time crime dramas, this may be too morbid in tone. However, the film's biggest draw is its murkiness.
Director Alberto Rodriguez does a sterling job at generating tension through his lengthy fixation on gloom. Visually the film combines a murky yellow, foggy grey and a steel blue palette, something like Darius Khondji's Seven photography. In many respects, Marshland will live longer in memory thanks to Catalán's sense of what makes a crime film look great.
Additional praise must go towards Javier Gutiérrez and Raúl Arévalo for their performances. Relatively secretive and silent, the two actors lend more expression to denoting emotion. It aligns with the film's sensibilities – that of soft disquiet. They develop well, giving the audience opportunities to understand their motivation and skills. By the end you are rooting for them 100%, giving the film's volatile finale added dread.
An excellent addition to the wide catalogue of crime films, Marshland compels all the way through. Its short box-office life in the UK can be ignored in light of its deserved success on home entertainment and 10 Goya awards in Spain. To settle down in the dark with Rodriguez's drama is a rewarding, and cinematic, experience. He uses the medium well, scoring and editing the film masterfully to keep your eyes locked on the screen.