Farhadi’s ‘Salesman’ triumphs at Munich Film Fest – ‘Julian’ modern tragedy

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LOS ANGELES, July 4, (RTRS): Asghar Farhadi, who nabbed the Berlin Golden Bear and an Oscar for 2011’s “A Separation,” has won the international film prize at the Munich Film Festival with his latest pic, Cannes competition title “The Salesman.”

The pic, starring Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini, centers on Emad and Rana, who move to a new apartment in the center of Tehran, where an incident linked to the previous tenant dramatically changes their lives.

The CineMasters Selection jury, comprised of actress Pegah Ferydoni, producer Stephane Tchalgadjieff and former Munich mayor Christian Ude, said the French-Iranian film was “contemporary and yet universal and, most importantly, an opening to the future. A story that was both thrilling and full of surprises.”

The jury congratulated the filmmaker on presenting “an alternative to the predominant masculine approach of attempting to solve problems with violence and revenge.” The jury added: “The beauty we found in the film is that it shows a path towards solutions through the feminine way of thinking and feeling, with an intelligence not only … of the mind, but also the heart.”

International

The Cinevision Award, which honors an international film made by a newcomer, was won by Houda Benyamina’s “Divines.” Benyamina also won the Golden Camera in Cannes for best newcomer.

The film “portrays a world in which the first imperative is to get rich regardless of the consequences,” the jury said. “The main character, Dunya — forcefully embodied by Oulaya Amamra — represents the hopeless situation of youth in the French banlieues. To escape, crime seems to be the only way out.”

The jury, which comprised Max Wagner, assistant director of Munich’s Gasteig cultural center, actress Sibylle Canonica and producer Amir Hamz, added: “Every scene reflects the two main themes of the film: the sober indifference of a bleak environment and the vigor of the people who wish to assert themselves in these surroundings.”

A special mention went to Pietro Marcello’s “Bella E Perduta.”

The Fipresci prize went to Mareille Klein’s “Dinky Sinky,” the audience award went to Kheiron’s “All Three of Us,” and the Kinderfilmfest audience award was won by Evi Goldbrunner and Joachim Dollhopf’s “At Eye Level.”

 Julia Furer’s graduate short “Julian,” which plays in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Future Frames section, is a modern tragedy. It portrays at a man who has lost his sense of direction and for whom work is the final security.

Managing this in a 20-minute film that rarely leaves its locale, a freight station sidings warehouse in Zurich, is already an achievement. Filming her subject, the Canadian harpsichord-maker Julian Holman with obvious sympathy but no schmaltz, is another.

Lensed in mostly medium-shot, “Julian” also captures the tenor of Holman’s tragedy. Articulate, histrionic, cultured, but alone, he is able, if only gradually, to admit to himself the enormity of his life’s calamity as he faces eviction and seeming definitive distancing from a little daughter he hasn’t seen for 12 years, after he holed up in is workshop. During that time, a once-dashing artist has aged decades.

Yet, he seems unable to do anything about his catastrophe apart from emote in sad-sack self-pity. Pulling out a record from a box of olds LPs, he signs along to Patti Smith’s lilting lullaby, “The Jackson Song,” tears streaming down his face.

Made over three years at the Lucerne’ School of Art and Design, “using tiny fragments,” Furer creates “a complex portrait of very unusual and fascinating personality,” Future Frames program coordinator Anna Purkrabkova explained.

“We always feel the filmmaker’s hand gently directing the angle of the camera and structuring the edit in a most poetic way,” added Catherine Ann Berger, head of the Swiss Films promotion board.

Furer may be drawn to life tragedy told by their protagonists with a hint of melodrama. She is now preparing”Bahija,” most probably her feature-debut. It turns on a woman from southern Morocco who wanted to work in a beauty salon but ends up destitute, living in a villa with neither electricity nor running water. Her life story is packed with “multiple intrigues and enemies,” Furer anticipated.

For the record, Holman returned from Zurich to Canada and ended up living under a bridge — a fate not so distant from the fractured outsider protagonists of “Above and Below,” from Nicolas Steiner, also the subject of a profile in Variety’s Switzerland: Up Next! They both form part of a promising emerging generation of on-the-rise Swiss documentary filmmakers: Think Jan Gassman (“Europe She Loves”), Anja Kofmel (“Chris the Swiss”) and Portuguese-Swiss directors Maya Kosa and Sergio da Costa (“Rio Corgo”).

 

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