Two very different approaches to current affairs were seen in Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Theo and Irish director Gar O’Rourke’s feature-length debut, Sanatorium. Kovalenko’s film is a standout among the rising number of films made on the Ukrainian frontlines. Well-known for volunteering to serve in the war, Kovalenko frames the film as a letter to her young son, Theo, who is in Kyiv with his father. Video calls to her family alternate with scenes from the frontlines, where most of the time is spent waiting, punctured by occasional bursts of sudden combat activity that left many of her unit comrades dead.
Sanatorium, on the other hand, is a visually accomplished and light-footed account of the lives of staff and patients in a health retreat in Odesa. The war is in the background, and the 1970s brutalist building is the real hero of the film. The director often uses symmetry in the fixed-camera shots and music from the era in which it was built, creating a sort of time machine while focusing on a handful of lively protagonists.
Two documentaries shot on celluloid, Portuguese director Ico Costa’s Balane 3, and Agatha’s Almanac by Canadian filmmaker Amalie Atkins, are a feast for the senses, but with different results below the attractive surface. Agatha’s Almanac is a lovely, delicate portrait of a 90-year-old woman living alone on her ancestral farm without any modern technology. She grows her own food, preserving heirloom seeds, and the director’s old-fashioned, somewhat intentionally clumsy approach, fits the content perfectly, leaving the viewer with enjoyable nostalgia.
Balane 3, in the meantime, is a strange mix of poetic observation and chatty segments in which young inhabitants of the titular neighborhood in a Mozambican town mostly talk about sex. It is a charming community, but some scenes feel either overly staged or overly intrusive, especially when we have in mind that the director is a white European man.
A strong offering coming out of Kazakhstan, We Live Here by first-timer Zhanana Kurmasheva, follows three generations living in the desolate region of a former nuclear testing site. Many inhabitants here suffer from various radiation-related diseases, and as one of the heroes fights for compensation from the state, the director intersperses these investigative, dialogue-driven segments with views of barren land and snippets of short, fast-cut, nightmarish, symbolic images accompanied by disturbing sound design.
Conversely, experienced French filmmaker Thomas Balmès’ polished À demain sur la Lune (literally, “See you tomorrow on the moon”) delivers a creative and touching but also sober view of accepting death. In a palliative care unit in Calais, a therapy horse alleviates the suffering of four people with lethal diseases. The director doesn’t miss the opportunity provided by the oneiric view of a horse in white hospital corridors, but also uses the animal and its trainer in an imaginatively symbolic way. Among the patients, the 39-year-old key protagonist realizes she is actually happy as she has the time to herself and her children, while her husband refuses to accept her impending demise.
The recipient of special mention, Norwegian director Monica Strømdahl’s Flophouse America depicts a poor family as victims of the U.S. housing recession. The squalid setting with two alcoholic parents and a bored, angry son initially feels like another instance of misery porn. The film is saved to an extent by the love that exists within the family despite the odds, and some humor stemming from creative editing.
On the weakest end of the spectrum sit Danish director Christian Sønderby Jepsen’s transgressive Nordic family soap opera The Father, the Sons and the Holy Spirit, a wild and confusing ride that never reaches the finish line, and The Castle by Italy’s Danny Biancardi, Virginia Nardelli, and Stefano La Rosa, which follows three child protagonists who move into an abandoned kindergarten in Palermo. The kids are lovely, but the filmmakers’ attempt to create a magical world out of their imaginative play feels forced and tacked-on rather than organic.