February 17, 2016
Black History Month
Page 9
Strong Start for International Film Fest
o PinionAted
J udge
by J udge
d Arleen o rtegA
Normally by this point in my
Portland International Film Fes-
tival itinerary, I would have seen
something I didn’t like! But so
far this year’s slate has been very
strong. Of the ilms I’ve seen, here
are the ones that will play again, in
my order of preference:
“The Clan” tells the story of
a notorious Argentine crime fam-
ily whose patriarch, Arquimedes
Puccio, worked for the police
during the Videla regime in the
1970s, when kidnapping was used
as a matter of state control. When
the regime fell in 1981, Puccio
continued the family business,
switching targets to wealthy fam-
ilies who were often part of his
own family’s social set, holding
his captives for ransoming and
then killing them after receiving
payment. As depicted here, he did
so with a sense of entitlement -- he
was above the law, and assumed
democracy would never last. And
indeed, he carried out these activi-
ties for several years before he ap-
parently became expendable. With
good psychological insight, the
ilm depicts interlocking circles
of cynical control; Puccio’s con-
trol of his children and wife (who
could not have missed what was
going on in their own home--and
who were even enlisted to help)
operates under the guise of love
and close family ties, yet leaves no
room for question or negotiation.
The day-to-day decisions of his
wife and children (and especially
his sports-hero son Alejandro) to
alternately cooperate and partici-
pate and turn a blind eye are a cu-
rious combination of manipulated
and chosen -- and the ilm offers
little glimpses of the broader cir-
cles of manipulation and control
necessary to enable the police cor-
ruption and wealth inequities that
were Puccio’s stock in trade. It’s a
fascinating window into a notori-
ous part of Argentine history, with
insights that go beyond its speciic
time and place. The ilm plays on
Feb. 23 and Feb. 27.
Although “The Judgment”
feels manipulative in spots, its
two lead performances draw you
into to the father-son conlict at its
center. Mityo is about to lose his
house near the Greek-Bulgarian
border that he once patrolled as a
young soldier in the 1980s. Back
then the Soviet agenda was to
keep people in -- but now the bor-
der issues involve keeping people
out. His desperate economic cir-
cumstances (the cause of which
is revealed in bits and pieces over
the course of the ilm) have fed the
growing resentment of his teenage
son Vasko and drive Mityo to take
on work with the same cruel col-
onel he served back in the Soviet
era and who now cynically smug-
gles immigrants from Syria. The
immigrants themselves don’t ig-
ure much in the story; the focus,
rather, is on Mityo’s past, the idea
of borders and debts that inally
come due, and the fragility of life.
The harsh landscape and the re-
lationship between the father and
son make this story compelling
and, in moments, quite moving.
The ilm plays again on Feb. 23.
Director Patricio Guzman’s
approach to documentary ilm-
making is quite distinct--medi-
tative, grounded in place, poetic,
and willing to look deeply. His
latest, “The Pearl Button,” car-
ries through some of the themes
addressed in “Nostalgia for the
Light,” which was an examination
of the search for meaning in the
stars and the search for the dis-
appeared in Chile. Using a simi-
lar ruminative approach, guided
by his calm, deliberate narration,
Guzman muses on how Chileans
have become so disconnected
corridor for weeks awaiting a bed.
These all contrast with her affable
relationship with a family whose
dog eats better than she does and
whose matriarch eventually of-
fers her enough money to live on
for a year to guard the house and
make it look lived in while the
family lees abroad. The trajectory
of this story inds subtle ways to
underline how revolution doesn’t
necessarily unfreeze longstanding
social inequities. The ilm plays
again on Feb. 24.
“Heavenly Nomadic” offers a
simple and atmospheric look into
the life of a horse-herding family
in the mountains of Kyrgysztsan.
‘The Clan’ tells the story of Argentina’s notorious Puccio family, a
Three generations live under cov-
hard-hitting crime saga where kidnapping is used as a matter of
er of the same yurt -- grandpar-
state control. The movie splays again on Feb. 23 and Feb. 27 as
ents, mother, and a seven-year-old
part of the Portland International Film Festival.
daughter -- and all feel the ab-
life, with all the humanity of the together, her daily trips to ill jugs sence of the child’s father, son to
two men invested in their animal from a communal faucet for her the grandparents, who drowned a
charges. We are never told of the grandmother, and her regular trips few years before. The mother does
dispute that separates them, but to the hospital where Aly’s father,
C ontinued on p Age 20
gradually see differences between sick with cancer, camps out in a
the two; one is a hard drinker and
a more volatile personality, but the
animosity between them is clear-
ly shared. When an infection is
detected among sheep in the area
that requires slaughter of all the
local herds, the stubborn broth-
ers continue to ight the crisis and
each other until a shared objective
moves them together. Observant,
funny, and at times quite mov-
ing, it garnered a top prize at the
Egyptian actress Menna Shalabi stars in ‘Nawara,’ a feature ilm
that offers a subversive window into post-Mubarak Egypt.
from the water that surrounds
them (the country has 4,000 miles
of coastline), and uses water as
his vehicle for exploring the soul
depths of the forgotten victims
of Chile’s dark colonial past and
more recent brutal dictatorship.
This isn’t a search for answers as
much as a search for questions,
sitting with stories of the lost way
of life of Chile’s original inhabi-
tants, listening to the experienc-
es of native peoples in their lan-
guages, and also lingering on the
sounds and sights of the water that
connects past and present togeth-
er. It plays again on Feb. 20.
“Rams”
depicts
two
sheep-herding brothers in the
mountains of Iceland, each lov-
ingly tending the sheep in their
legacy breed but living adjacent
to each other without speaking for
40 years. It’s a stark and lonely
Cannes Film Festival. Plays again
on Feb. 17.
“Nawara” offers a subversive
window into post-Mubarak Egypt.
Writer-director Hala Khalil builds
her story around the title character,
a young woman from a poor Cai-
ro neighborhood who has worked
since childhood for a family who,
as part of Mubarak’s power ma-
chine, can take their wealth for
granted. I’m sure I missed the
import of many of the clues in the
ilm -- but even from this distance,
I appreciated how Khalil illustrat-
ed the contrasts in Egyptian soci-
ety through details like Nawara’s
long commute through Cairo to
reach the gated community where
the family lives, her ive-year-old
marriage to Aly, a Nubian man
(from a lower social caste), un-
consummated because they can-
not afford to set up a household