Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves

Aki Kaurismäki: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (FI 2023) avec Jussi Vatanen (Holappa) et Alma Pöysti. © Sputnik

Aki Kaurismäki: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (FI 2023) avec Janne Hyytiäinen et les Maustetytöt. © Sputnik

Les Feuilles mortes / Höstlöv som faller
DIRECTOR: Aki Kaurismäki

COUNTRY: Finland

YEAR: 2023

DURATION: 81 min

LANGUAGES: Finnish / subtitled in English

CATEGORY: Finnish Films, Finnish Premiere, New Finnish Films, Puhuttu tai tekstitetty suomeksi, Subtitles in English

In the presence of Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, hosted by Satu Kyösola.
Viewed at Iso Teltta, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 18 June 2023

"Les Feuilles mortes" est une chanson française écrite par Jacques Prévert et composée par Joseph Kosma pour le film Les Portes de la nuit (FR 1946) de Marcel Carné, chanté par Yves Montand.
    It is also the theme song of Autumn Leaves (US 1956) by Robert Aldrich, starring Joan Crawford, sung by Nat "King" Cole to the English lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

"Syntynyt suruun, puettu pettymyksiin" ["Born in Sorrow, Clothed in Disappointment"] written and performed by Maustetytöt (Kaisa Karjalainen, Anna Karjalainen). From the album Eivät enkelitkään ilman siipiä lennä (2020).

Lauri Timonen (MSFF 2023): "Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) – a decent, quiet man, even if a bit boozy – meets Ansa (Alma Pöysti) in the gloomy bars of Kallio and dares to fall in love, even though life keeps throwing obstacles in the way. Other characters in the story also dream of happiness, such as the karaoke king (Janne Hyytiäinen) waiting to sign a record contract at any moment but facing part-time age discrimination, or the anonymous, abandoned stray dog. Echoes of the war resonate on the radio, bellies of the working class are rumbling while they navigate the pedantic jungle of rules, and their wallets are permanently empty. And yet, human solidarity and perseverance refuse to die."

"Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film is a timeless tale of love, which at the same time tackles contemporary problems with a passion. The leading humanist in European cinema once again proves his close kinship with Maestro Chaplin: The dialogue unfolds with the same playful lightness as in The Man Without a Past (2002), which delighted audiences in Cannes two decades earlier. In Fallen Leaves, every aspect of the filmmaking supports each other; from Timo Salminen’s glorious images, the soulful performances, the exquisitely rhythmic editing, the discreetly witty set design, to pertinent musical choices. Jean Renoir once tried to change the world with his art but had to admit that he was not able to end the war. Fallen Leaves – a heartfelt masterpiece by a mature auteur – belongs to that same genre of beautiful illusions. After watching it, we emerge from the darkness of the movie theatre into the northern sunlight a little happier than before." Lauri Timonen

FESTIVAL DE CANNES  

PRIX DU JURY 2023

  

Deux personnes solitaires (Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen) se rencontrent par hasard une nuit à Helsinki et chacun tente de trouver en l’autre son premier, unique et dernier amour. Leur chemin vers ce but louable est obscurci par l’alcoolisme de l’homme, la perte d’un numéro de téléphone, l’ignorance de leur nom et de leur adresse réciproques. La vie a tendance à mettre des obstacles sur la route de ceux qui cherchent le bonheur.

  

Cette tragi-comédie teintée d’indulgence est la quatrième partie que l’on croyait perdue de la trilogie de Aki Kaurismäki (Shadows in paradise, Ariel et La Fille aux allumettes).

Réalisé par : Aki KAURISMAKI

Année de production : 2023

Pays : Finlande

Durée : 81 minutes

Date de sortie : 20.09.2023

  

AKI KAURISMAKI

Réalisateur

PIETU KORHONEN

Son

SAMU HEIKKILÄ

Montage

VILLE GRÖNOOS

Décors

TIMO SALMINEN

Images

AKI KAURISMAKI

Scénario / Dialogues

CASTING

ALMA PÖYSTI

JUSSI VATANEN

  

Les Feuilles Mortes : le quatrième tome ouvrier d’Aki Kaurismäki

SÉLECTION OFFICIELLE

Par Charlotte Pavard, publié le 22.05.2023

  

" Aki Kaurismäki concourt pour la cinquième fois pour la Palme d’or avec Kuolleet Lehdet (Les Feuilles Mortes), déclinaison empreinte d’humanité de son univers tendre et loufoque. Lauréat du Grand Prix pour L’Homme sans Passé en 2002, qui valut le Prix d’interprétation féminine à Kati Outinen, le metteur en scène finlandais évoque, dans ce film en Compétition, les thèmes universels de la solidarité, l’espoir et surtout, de l’amour.

Deux âmes errantes et solitaires (Alma Pöysti et Jussi Vatanen) rêvent l’amour de leur vie : leur rencontre puissante et fortuite dans la nuit d’Helsinki se trouve contrariée par l’alcoolisme de l’homme, des coordonnées perdues, et la vie en général, douée pour poser des obstacles à ceux qui aspirent au bonheur. Cette douce tragicomédie a été pensée par Aki Kaurismäki comme un quatrième volet de sa trilogie ouvrière : dans Ombres au Paradis (1986), Nikander et Llona, éboueur et vendeuse de supermarché, n’obtiennent pas l’ascension sociale espérée en piquant dans la caisse, dans Ariel (1988), la vie rêvée par le protagoniste manutentionnaire ne prendra pas la direction souhaitée, et dans La Fille aux allumettes (1990), le sentiment d’exclusion d’Iris, petite ouvrière reléguée à un rôle subalterne, ne la quittera pas.

La désintégration de la classe ouvrière, l’ascension sociale contrariée : chacun de ces films, aussi désespérés que chaleureux, aborde un thème social, et s’attache à démonter toute aspiration de réalisation de soi. Les Feuilles Mortes, en Compétition au même titre qu’Au loin s’en vont les nuages en 1996, Lights in the Dusk en 2006, et Le Havre en 2011, offre cependant une réelle touche d’espoir et d’émancipation. " (Festival de Cannes 2023)

AA: Aki Kaurismäki got a rave reception in Sodankylä, as we have heard he received in Cannes. The audience was laughing out loud. And perhaps crying silently. I was.

Satu Kyösola, who hosted the screening, reported that Aki Kaurismäki had praised Chaplin in Cannes: "the greatest of all, keeps things simple".

Fallen Leaves is a movie belonging to the Chaplin legacy and the Chaplinesque lineage, along with René Clair and Vittorio De Sica. There is a surface of fairy-tale, nostalgia and escapism, but a solid understanding of reality right beneath. The sense of contemporary working-life, its precariousness and gig economy is deeply felt.

Films that I was mostly reminded of include A Dog's Life, City Lights and Modern Times. Not modern but timeless.

When I saw the trailer I could not help thinking: "yet again". And now, having seen film, it is indeed "yet again", but different. Didn't Cézanne keep painting Montagne Sainte-Victoire? "Repeating oneself": Modigliani? Ozu? 

Fallen Leaves is in fact new in many ways. Russia's Feldzug into Ukraine is a major topic, this is about life in the wartime in Finland which has a long border with Russia.

A new generation of actors brings a fresh atmosphere. Alma Pöysti is one of the brightest talents on the Finnish Swedish scene, wonderful as Tove Jansson. Jussi Vatanen played the most revered character in Finnish fiction, Koskela in The Unknown Soldier, with a fresh approach. He is also a comedian of the school of Stan Laurel.

In each film Kaurismäki has introduced a new approach. Light in the Dusk was a piece of delta blues. Le Havre turned from the focus of the outsider's solitude to the theme to helping another outsider, the refugee. The Other Side of Hope went beyond that: the refugee's concern in saving another refugee. 

Having returned from harbour stories to this "fourth installment in the worker trilogy", Kaurismäki has changed focus and perspective again. Previously, when there was a female protagonist, it was in a tale of desolation and solitude (The Match Factory Girl).

This story is a romance, and there is a couple, but the man (Jussi Vatanen) is farcically inept in matters of dating, and an alcoholic, too. This is Kaurismäki's first film with alcoholism as a serious main theme, having appeared on the side before.

Now it is the woman (Alma Pöysti) who becomes the active protagonist, leading everything. This is the new angle in the worker series. Perhaps it is also a reflection of the times. Men get marginalized, women are taking over.

Again, the dog is essential, the bridge from the physical to the metaphysical, the being of unconditional joy and friendship, carrying a message from beyond.

Music is all-important, right from the title. It provides sentimental escapism that helps endure conditions beneath dignity. We witness the hardening atmosphere of greed, abuse and discrimination.

There is something more, not made explicit, but ubiquitous. We are living like there is no tomorrow, and young people know that they have gotten a raw deal and will lose, perhaps everything, because of the way we live now. The financial crises of 2008 (and others) meant the greatest fraud in world history. Profits were privatized, losses were socialized. Global inequality reached untold heights.

The sequence that made me cry was the one with Maustetytöt singing "Syntynyt suruun, puettu pettymyksiin" ["Born in Sorrow, Clothed in Disappointment"], one of their hit songs, and it has never sounded better. It is one of the greatest musical numbers in the Kaurismäki oeuvre, even in the league of Rauli Badding Somerjoki singing "Paratiisi".

Maustetytöt is a duo, a band apart from the mainstream. To me, they bring the sound of the generation betrayed, a voice that cannot be denied, and are indeed a reincarnation of the Kaurismäki spirit. 

  

There is escapism in Fallen Leaves, but in a sense of a Gegenbild, a counterimage to a depressing reality. Love is real. And we must dream, because it is our hope.

The Natural History of Destruction

Sergei Loznitsa: The Natural History of Destruction (DE/LT/NL 2022).

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION

DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands

YEAR: 2022

DURATION: 112 min

LANGUAGES: English, German / subtitled in English

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English
Viewed at Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 18 June 2023

Lauri Piispa (MSFF 2023): " The horrors of World War II included extensive aerial bombardment. Almost all countries got their share of it, but major German cities in particular were systematically razed at the end of the war. This was formally justified by the need to destroy the war industry, but there was also a thinly veiled motive to take revenge on the German people. The firestorms claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. Today, terror bombings are generally regarded as unnecessary and even a war crime.

Loznitsa’s impressive compilation makes no excuses, but shows the bombings from the air and from the ground; from the perspective of the bombers, victims, rescuers and others besides. The film also contains speeches and explanations of decision-makers and soldiers. Instead of the prosaic historical narrative, the focus is on the essence of destruction and terror against civilians. Needless to say, this topic has not lost its relevance.

In his essay collection On the Natural History of Destruction (which sparked the idea for this film), W. G. Sebald reasoned that only a text sticking to cold facts could capture the horror of bombings. Similar conclusions can also be drawn regarding live images. We see how a bomber going on a mission loads not only the bomb bay and the machine guns, but also a film camera. The night shots taken by these cameras for purely technical military use form the most memorable aspect of Loznitsa’s film. " Lauri Piispa

AA: Sergei Loznitsa's compilation documentary about the fire-bombings of German cities during WWII is a great epic historical testimony, a reminder of the war crimes committed by the Allied to stop even greater war crimes by the Nazi government, yet raising the question about justice and purpose. Was it more about revenge?

We start from pastoral idylls, observe the Hamburg shipyard, Zeppelin aerial footage of peaceful Germany and shockingly move to a landscape resembling abstract cinema: seen from the sky at night, we only see endless flashes in the darkness.

Scenes from ruined buildings and cities, corpses retrieved from the wreckage, rows of invalids, shots of dead children tell us how innocents get to suffer in war. Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts Meistersinger in front of a swastika. Churchill and Göring meet crowds. The croaking Hitler reports on the terror of the Allied and declares Gegenterror as the only remedy.

The First World War brought the experience of industrial massacre to Europe (it was long since familiar in colonial wars). War lost whatever remains of honour, dignity and valour it might have had. World art and aesthetics were never the same, traditional concepts of the beautiful and the sublime became meaningless. Modern art has ever since attempted to come to terms with this broken sense of humanity. We still do not have even basic concepts of aesthetics for experiences such as total war.

Sergei Loznitsa's remarkable film makes us raise such questions. Maybe there will be no answers.

Finnish Filmmakers in Conversation (Sodankylä 2023, hosted by Liselott Forsman)

Finnish Filmmakers in Conversation, L to R: Juha Suonpää, Tommi Korpela, Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Liselott Forsman (moderator), Hanna Västintalo, Mikko Myllylahti (speaking), Jussi Rantamäki, Tia Kouvo. The Small Tent, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, Saturday, 17 June 2023. Photo: Susanna Pesonen.

Finnish Filmmakers in Conversation, L to R: Juha Suonpää, Tommi Korpela, Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen (speaking), Liselott Forsman (moderator), Hanna Västintalo, Mikko Myllylahti, Jussi Rantamäki, Tia Kouvo. The Small Tent, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, Saturday, 17 June 2023. Photo: Susanna Pesonen.

Finnish Filmmakers in Conversation, L to R: (Juha Suonpää, arm only), Tommi Korpela, Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Liselott Forsman (speaking), Hanna Västintalo, (Mikko Myllylahti, Jussi Rantamäki, Tia Kouvo, from behind). The Small Tent, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, Saturday, 17 June 2023. Photo: Susanna Pesonen.

June 17: Finnish Filmmakers in Conversation: Red Carpets Need Original Finns

MSFF 2023: " The Small Tent of the Midnight Sun Film Festival was filled with Finnish film makers on Saturday: actors Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, and Tommi Korpela, director of Lynx Man Juha Suonpää, director of Palimpsest Hanna Västinsalo, director of The Woodcutter Story Mikko Myllylahti, director of Family Time Tia Kouvo, and producer Jussi Rantamäki participated in the conversation, and it was moderated by the Chief Executive Officer of Nordisk Film & TV Film Liselott Forsman. 

Jussi Rantamäki said that Finnish films get more visibility abroad than before and that he is glad that the younger generation does not think too much about what international audiences might want to see but make personal works that become universal.

Mikko Myllylahti underlined the importance of production companies and producers. Film making is difficult and the responsibilities and pressure make the work lonely. Producers help in difficult situations and lend support when there is a crisis in the film making process.

Tia Kouvo also mentioned the role of film schools. Kouvo has studied in Valand Academy in Gothenburg and appreciated how well the students are taken care of there. Everyone’s little voice is amplified, so that it gets heard. Kouvo has been described as a strict director who knows what she wants, and she believes that she learned that at Valand. 

Hanna Västinsalo is a film maker with a doctorate in molecular genetics. In her film Palimpsest she speculates on what a medical trial is like from the participants’ point of view. Her double profession helped a lot in scripting because she has experience in pharmaceutics of genetics. The film tells the story of two 80-year-olds whose trial in gene therapy rejuvenates their bodies. What does a 20-year-old with 80 years of experience do? 

Juho Suonpää’s documentary Lynx Man has been seen abroad in Denmark and Canada and received Nordic Docca Award before the Finnish premiere. “It is often said that you get to the home market from outside,” he commented. 

The panellists said that heading to the international market is also a question of confidence. We need to trust that our original thinking is enough, and you do not need to be an extraordinary genius. The film also needs to reinvent itself and be boldly different from the TV. 

Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen talked about working with Aki Kaurismäki. According to Pöysti the collaboration was a cleansing experience, and she learned a lot about how little is enough: when the vision is clearly thought out and written and the director is skilled and experienced one shot is enough. It was easy to clean everything unnecessary from the acting while shooting. 

Jussi Vatanen said that Aki’s style is precise and original. He said that it was interesting and a big challenge to jump into Kaurismäki’s style that is so familiar to every Finn. Vatanen also praised Kaurismäki’s take on script writing – you just needed to execute it without adding anything extra. " (MSFF 2023)

Images: Susanna Pesonen

Krotkaja / A Gentle Creature (Sergei Loznitsa 2017) in the presence of Sergei Loznitsa

 

Sergei Loznitsa: Krotkaja / A Gentle Creature (FR/DE/LT/NL 2017) starring Vasilina Makovtseva.

A GENTLE CREATURE

DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Ranska, Saksa, Liettua, Alankomaat

YEAR: 2017

DURATION: 143 min

LANGUAGES: venäjä / tekstitetty englanniksi

ORIGINAL NAME: Кроткая (Krotkaya)

CATEGORY: Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English
In the presence of Sergei Loznitsa, hosted by Juhana von Bagh.
Iso Teltta, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) 17 June 2023

Lauri Piispa (MSFF 2023): "The film is named after Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Fantastic Story’ The Gentle Creature but, in terms of its plot, the only reference to Dostoevsky’s description of marriage is the nameless female protagonist.

We learn virtually nothing about the woman (portrayed by the stunning Vasilina Makovtseva). Her husband is serving a sentence in a faraway prison; innocent, she claims. As everything she mails to him is returned without explanation, she travels to the other side of Russia to find out what has become of her husband. She ends up in a strange little town, ‘the zone’, where everything seems to revolve around the inaccessible prison. Thus ensues a desperate attempt to reach her husband.

The circular plot and a grotesque bunch of side characters form a scalding portrait of the spiritual and material decay left behind by the Soviet Union. The film bombards the audience with various literary associations. The Russian critical tradition and the pathos of the common people are present, but fundamentally the question is neither about realistic social criticism nor only about Putin’s Russia, although many of its external characteristics stand out. Beneath the surface of the documentary lurks a subconscious undertone. As in a nightmare, the viewer is tormented by a premonition of the inevitable disaster ahead – which surely comes." Lauri Piispa

AA: Sergei Loznitsa's brutal tale of ordinary violence, corruption and arbitrary use of power. This is the story of a calvary, an ordeal, an absurd voyage through bureaucracy and broken government. Like My Joy, it is a hopeless journey, where an inherently good person is increasingly isolated and lost. Again, the title of the movie is extremely ironic. The movie has nothing to do with F. M. Dostoevsky's eponymous long story and should not be entered into filmographies of Dostoevsky adaptations. It is not even inspired by Dostoevsky.

Twin Peaks S2.E7 Lonely Souls

 

David Lynch: Twin Peaks S2.E7 Lonely Souls (US 1990). "A man is standing in front of a mirror, looking away from it. His reflection shows a completely different figure. Leland Palmer inhabited by Killer BOB. The scene is the beginning of one which reveals the answer to the long-running plot arc for the series." (Wikipedia). Producer and editor: Mary Sweeney.

Morning discussion with Mary Sweeney

Viewed after the discussion at The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023

WIKIPEDIA: EPISODE 14 (TWIN PEAKS)

Episode 14 (Twin Peaks)

Season 2 Episode 7

Directed by David Lynch

Written by Mark Frost
Produced by Mary Sweeney
Edited by Mary Sweeney

Original air date November 10, 1990

Running time 47 minutes

Guest appearances

Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer

Wendy Robie as Nadine Hurley

Al Strobel as Phillip Michael Gerard / MIKE

David Lynch as Bureau Chief Gordon Cole

Fumio Yamaguchi as Mr. Tojamura

Gary Hershberger as Mike Nelson

Catherine E. Coulson as Margaret Lanterman / "The Log Lady"

Carel Struycken as The Giant

Hank Worden as The Elderly Room Service Waiter

Frank Silva as Killer BOB (uncredited)

"Episode 14", also known as "Lonely Souls", is the seventh episode of the second season of the American mystery television series Twin Peaks. The episode was written by series co-creator Mark Frost and directed by series co-creator David Lynch. It features series regulars Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Ray Wise and Richard Beymer; and guest stars Frank Silva (uncredited) as Killer BOB, Hank Worden as The Waiter, Julee Cruise as Singer, and David Lynch as Gordon Cole.

Twin Peaks centers on the investigation into the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the small rural town in Washington state after which the series is named. In this episode, during the ongoing investigation into Laura's death, FBI special agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) and Sheriff Truman (Ontkean) continue to search for her killer, the demonic BOB, who has possessed a human host. Aided by Mike (Al Strobel), Cooper and Truman arrest Benjamin Horne (Beymer), believing him to be inhabited by BOB. Later that night, The Giant (Carel Struycken) warns Cooper "it is happening again," while BOB's real host, Leland Palmer (Wise), murders Madeline Ferguson (Lee).

"Episode 14" was first broadcast on November 10, 1990, on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and was watched by an audience of 17.2 million households in the United States, about 20 percent of the available audience. The episode was well received, garnering positive reviews after its initial broadcast and in subsequent years. Academic readings of the entry have highlighted the theme of duality and the cinematography in the revelation scene.

Plot

Background

The small fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington, has been shocked by the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the attempted murder of her friend Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine). FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has been sent to the town to investigate, and has come to the realization that the killer was possessed by a demonic entity—Killer BOB (Frank Silva). MIKE (Al Strobel), a similar spirit, has spoken to Cooper and his FBI superior, Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole (David Lynch), explaining the nature of their existence.

Meanwhile, Madeline "Maddy" Ferguson (Lee), Laura's cousin, has arrived in Twin Peaks from Missoula, Montana, and helps Laura's friends Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James Hurley (James Marshall) investigate the killing. Donna finds Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen), one of Laura's friends to whom she had given a secret diary, and Donna and Maddy attempt to steal it from him.

Events

Cooper, Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz), Doctor Hayward (Warren Frost) and Mike visit The Great Northern hotel in an attempt to find Bob's human host. Upon the approach of Benjamin Horne, Mike convulses and collapses onto the floor, indicating that Bob has inhabited someone nearby. Meanwhile, Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) visits the residence of Harold Smith and finds that he has committed suicide. Hawk contacts Cooper and Truman, and they arrive at Smith's residence and discover Laura Palmer's secret diary among his belongings. Meanwhile, Maddy announces she is leaving Twin Peaks to return home.

Elsewhere, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and Shelly Johnson (Mädchen Amick) discuss their financial concerns regarding Shelly's catatonic husband Leo (Eric Da Re). Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) confronts her father Ben (Richard Beymer) over his ownership of One Eyed Jacks, a casino and brothel on the Canada–United States border. When Audrey asks him whether he killed Laura Palmer, he denies it but confesses that he and Laura had a sexual relationship and that he loved her. Later, Shelly arrives for work at the Double R Diner and announces to its owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) that she is resigning to care for Leo full-time. Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) and his wife Nadine, who is experiencing amnesia and adrenaline-induced strength, enter the diner. Nadine, believing she is eighteen years old, speaks to Norma, but the waitress, along with Ed, puts on a façade and conceals the truth. Meanwhile, Bobby and his friend Mike Nelson (Gary Hershberger) break open the sole of Leo Johnson's shoe, discovering a microcassette.

Cooper examines the remains of Laura's diary at the police station, finding repeated references to Bob's long-running molestation of her. Cooper also learns that Bob is a friend of Laura's father, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), and finds an entry that seemingly implicates Ben Horne. Audrey then enters and tells Cooper about Ben and Laura's affair. After she leaves, Cooper tells Sheriff Truman about The Giant's message "without chemicals, he points". Cooper recalls when Mike—who becomes active when his human host, Philip Gerard, is not on drugs—spasmed in The Great Northern's lobby when Ben entered. Cooper concludes that Ben is Bob's human host and arrests him.

Later that night, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) crawls across her living room floor and has a vision of a white horse. Cooper and Truman visit The Roadhouse at the behest of the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson). While a band perform, Cooper has a vision of The Giant, who tells him "it is happening again". The Giant sees Leland Palmer fixing his tie, while his reflection in the mirror shows Bob. Maddy comes downstairs and sees Bob standing over Sarah's unconscious body. Bob's visage shifts back and forth between Leland's and his own. He chases Maddy up the stairs, brings her to the living room and repeatedly strangles, punches, taunts and kisses her before ramming her head into a glass picture frame, killing her. Bob places a letter "O" under her fingernails, as he had done with other letters on past victims. Cooper's vision ends, and The Waiter (Hank Worden) tells Cooper he is sorry. Donna and James cry during the band's final song.

Production

"Episode 14" was written by series co-creator Mark Frost, who had written six previous episodes and directed the first-season finale, "Episode 7". Frost co-wrote three further installments—"Episode 16", "Episode 26" and Episode 29"—and all the episodes of the 2017 limited series. This episode was directed by Lynch, the fifth such episode of Twin Peaks; he later directed "Episode 29" and all the installments of the limited series. Lynch has later said he feels he was able to show more on screen in the episode than he expected the network's standards and practices office to allow. He credits this to the unusual imagery used, adding "if it's not quite standard it sneaks through, but it could be that the 'not quite standard' things make it even more terrifying and disturbing."

The cast of Twin Peaks did not know who would be revealed as Palmer's killer for some time. Wise had hoped his character Leland would not be the eventual murderer; as the parent of a young girl he was disturbed by the idea of portraying a man who had murdered his daughter. Wise was called to a meeting with Lynch, Frost, Sheryl Lee and Richard Beymer, during which Lynch told those assembled that Leland Palmer was the killer: while addressing Wise, Lynch said "Ray, it was you, it was always you." However, Wise felt the end result was "beautiful" and that it left him and his character "satisfied and redeemed". Before this meeting, the only people to know the killer's identity were Frost, Lynch, and Lynch's daughter Jennifer, who had been given the information so she could author the 1990 tie-in novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.

Lynch has mentioned that he tried to avoid thinking about the morality of the narrative, or how it would be received by censors or critics, feeling that if he allowed that worry to affect him it would ultimately drive him to create something that made him uncomfortable, preferring instead to simply produce the episode he wanted to and be prepared to defend it if necessary. He has also compared the search for Laura's killer to the central narrative of the 1960s television series The Fugitive, which featured an ongoing search for a one-armed man. Contrasting the two, Lynch stated "each week, you know, they [the writers for The Fugitive] hardly ever dealt with that. And that's the beautiful thing. You keep wondering, 'When will he find this guy and set everything straight?' But then you knew it would be the end."

Cinematography

The climactic murder of Madeline Ferguson in the episode features extensive use of jump cuts to portray Leland Palmer's spirit possession, switching rapidly between actors Ray Wise and Frank Silva. The scene is unusually long for a murder on television, lasting over four minutes. Some of its elements, including the insertion of a paper letter under Ferguson's fingernail and the use of jump cuts to events in the Roadhouse bar, are intended to echo similar aspects of "Pilot".

Erica Sheen and Annette Davison, in their book The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, have drawn attention to the use of mise en scène early in the episode. A scene featuring Ferguson, Leland and Sarah Palmer sitting in the Palmers' living room pans across the family's bric-a-brac. This technique draws attention to the painting with which Ferguson will be assaulted, and it highlights the similarity between Ferguson and Palmer by focusing on "the famous homecoming queen shot" of Palmer while Ferguson's face is visible. Sheen and Davison argued that the scene highlights the "emotional claustrophobia" felt by Ferguson, and that the set surrounding her was deliberately assembled to create this feeling.

Themes

The revelation scene, in which Bob is shown to have inhabited Leland Palmer, has been noted for its sense of duality, a common theme throughout Twin Peaks. In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, David Lavery wrote that upon The Giant's appearance to Dale Cooper, "The Giant has transmuted the public place into something private". Lavery added that the murder scene is "in the living room, the public within the private". He summarized that the ambiguity between the public perception and the private perception—"the outer and the inner"—"reverberates" throughout the scene. In his view, Maddy Ferguson was Laura Palmer's "double" and Leland is "doubled" by Bob. However, Lavery referred to the duality of Leland and Bob as a "subjective formation" and added that the use of jump cuts "could be Maddy's view of Leland just as much as Leland's view of himself".

This scene has also been noted by critic Sue Lafky from the Journal of Film and Video as one of several in the series that suggest incest and necrophilia. She speculated that "Leland/Bob may have raped the dead or dying Maddie", comparing this to the "necrophilic fantasies" that Laura Palmer's corpse evokes, and Ben Horne's unwitting brush with incest when he encounters his daughter Audrey at a brothel.

Broadcast and reception

"It's a promise of sorts that we've still got a reason to be with the show, and it sets us up for the middle portion of this cycle. This good will is carried through episodes 15 and 16, as the killer is finally unmasked, and as the Log Lady tells us in her intro, shifts the queries from who to why."

—DVD Talk's Jamie S. Rich on the episode's place in the series

"Episode 14" first aired on the ABC network on November 10, 1990. The initial broadcast was viewed by 17.2 million households in the United States, making it the fifty-first most-viewed broadcast episode for the week. These viewing figures represented 20 percent of the available audience and 10.4 percent of all households in the country. This represented a significant rise in viewing figures compared to the preceding episode, "Episode 13", which was seen by 11.3 million households. However, the following episode, "Episode 15", suffered a drop in viewing figures, attracting 13.3 million households.

The episode was well received critically. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper noted that fans and critics had begun to lose interest in the series by this point, but he felt that "even at its most strained and obtuse, [Twin Peaks] displays more imagination and effort than almost everything else in TV land." He added that viewers may have been put off by the series' frame of time, explaining that only two weeks of narrative time had elapsed since "Pilot", a slow pace contrasted with the "fast-forward, instant payoff philosophy of most television". AllRovi's Andrea LeVasseur described the installment as "pivotal", noting that it "answers some of the series' long-running questions".

Writing for The A.V. Club, Keith Phipps rated the episode an "A", adding "it's not like there's any shortage of action." He felt the effects used in the episode were effective and frightening while still seeming low-key. In his view, the episode's blending of surrealism and horror was similar to scenes from Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive. Phipps described the climactic murder as "one of the most disturbing moments in the Lynch filmography", adding that it was a recurring Lynchian theme to represent the end of innocence as an actual death. IGN's Matt Fowler included the murder at number 16 in a list of the "Top 20 Creepiest Moments on TV", describing it as "nightmare fuel". Fowler felt the depiction of the killing was "savage" and unusually long for a television scene; however, he added that the rampant speculation as to the identity of the killer meant the revelation would be "somewhat expected".

Keith Uhlich, writing for Slant Magazine, described the episode as "quintessential Lynch, perhaps his finest work", noting that the climactic murder scene was more powerful because of its necessary use of implication and suggestion. However, Uhlich felt the installment was "a tough act to follow", arguing that the only subsequent installments that competed with it were the series' finale and the 1992 psychological thriller film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which is based on Twin Peaks. DVD Talk's Jamie S. Rich described the installment as "a violent, disturbing revelation". Rich felt the entry's supernatural elements assured the audience there was "a grander scheme to the Laura Palmer story", elevating the series' long-running murder plot beyond "just a random night partying with drug dealers gone wrong".

AA: It was a spectactular experience for me to view a Twin Peaks episode on the screen for the first time. I have been a David Lynch convert since Blue Velvet, and I followed Twin Peaks during its first run. I have always held Twin Peaks as one of the greatest achievements in television, and I included Twin Peaks Special Pilot to my 1000 best films of all time in my MMM Film Guide. How well it has stood the test of time, now feeling stronger than ever. The abuse and incest themes of course today have special increased resonance. David Lynch was ahead of his time.

Already the legendary credit title montage... the score by Angelo Badalamenti (1937-2022)... the otherworldly Julee Cruise (1956-2022)... the first shot with the police lineup with their coffees and donuts, with Gordon Cole (played by David Lynch himself) leaving for secret business in Oregon...

This crucial episode was assigned to Mary Sweeney by David Lynch to produce and edit, leading to a collaboration in Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive.

Morning discussion: Mary Sweeney (Sodankylä 2023)

Mary Sweeney in the morning discussion, hosted by Otto Kylmälä, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023. Photo: Susanna Pesonen.

Mary Sweeney in the morning discussion, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023. Photo: Hilma Toivonen.

In English, hosted by Otto Kylmälä

The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023

MARY SWEENEY

Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023): "Mary Sweeney’s versatile career in film has spanned over forty years. Her filmography is characterised by collaboration with film director David Lynch, whose surreal and mystical films, edited and produced by Sweeney, have become modern classics.

As they say, behind every successful man there is a woman, and Sweeney is that woman, whose significant contribution has so enhanced award-winning films and TV series that cruise down the dark roads of dream worlds. As a producer, she enables rare artistic freedom and, as an editor, she cuts abundant and ambiguous material into an emotive experience whilst ensuring that viewers stay on track.

Sweeney began her career as an assistant editor and sound editor on quality dramas such as Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) and Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies (1983). She started working with David Lynch as an assistant editor on the films Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990), after which she quickly progressed to become a key collaborator with Lynch as his producer and editor.

Their decades-long collaboration resulted in the biggest milestones in their respective careers, including one of the greatest TV series of all time Twin Peaks (1990–1991) and the murder mystery Lost Highway (1997), subconsciously inspired by the O. J. Simpson trial. Mulholland Drive (2001), the phoenix that rose from the ashes of an abandoned TV pilot, is considered one of the best films of the 2000s, earning Sweeney the 2002 BAFTA Award for best editing.

In the late 1990s, Sweeney drew inspiration from a true story to write the screenplay for The Straight Story (1999), a gentle film and arguably one of Lynch’s best. The warm and humane drama tells the story of Alvin Straight, a 70-year-old war veteran, who travels hundreds of kilometres on his lawnmower across the states to make amends with his dying brother.

Sweeney’s own directorial debut Baraboo (2009) reflects the compassionately humanitarian tone of The Straight Story, interweaving the lives of six individuals in different situations, set in the dingy motel district of a small town. Against the backdrop of picture-postcard landscapes, the film’s nucleus of warm-hearted reciprocal care conceals an altogether darker undertone and the scars borne by three generations affected by war.

Alongside her filmmaking, Sweeney teaches at the University of Southern California, exploring ‘Myths and Metaphors’ and encouraging students to think beyond rigid dramatic conventions. Her latest venture has brought her into the world of podcasts to collaborate with brain imaging professor Jonas Kaplan on the spellbinding podcast FLOAT, which explores the interconnections between art, creativity, and neuroscience." Otto Kylmälä

MSFF 2023 Resume: 17 June 2023 Aamukeskustelussa Mary Sweeney

" Lauantain aamukeskustelussa kuultiin yhdysvaltalaista leikkaaja-ohjaaja-tuottaja Mary Sweeneytä (s. 1953), joka tunnetaan parhaiten yhteistyöstään David Lynchin kanssa. Sweeneyn mukaan työ Lynchin elokuvien leikkaajana on toiminut, sillä Sweeney seuraa Lynchiltä saatua käsikirjoitusta ottamatta liikaa taiteellisia vapauksia. Sweeney kokee myös, ettei tarvitse eriteltyjä vastauksia siihen, mitä elokuvien mystiset asiat tarkoittivat: “David on runollinen kun miettii elokuvan kieltä, mutta runous kirjoitetaan lopulta leikkaushuoneessa.”

Sen sijaan hänen leikkausprosessinsa pohjautuu elokuvan emotionaaliseen maisemaan. Sweeneyn mukaan elokuvan pitää tuntua aidolta, ja vetää tunteiden kautta katsoja sisään: “Minusta empatia ja unelmointi ovat hyviä piirteitä leikkaajassa”, Sweeney totesi ja kertoi olleensa jo lapsesta saakka samankaltainen unelmoija. Sweeney toteaa myös osaavansa seurata Lynchin logiikkaa: “Leikkauksessa ei ole sääntöjä, mutta on noudatettava sisäistä logiikkaa. Tosin Davidin logiikka ei ole kovin loogista”, Sweeney naurahtaan ja jatkaa: “Mitä syvemmälle pääsin leikkaajan työssäni, sitä paremmin ymmärsin että logiikan tunnistamista ei voi opiskella.”

Sweeney rakastui huumaavasti leikkaamiseen opiskellessaan New Yorkin yliopistossa 80-luvun alussa. Siellä hän koki pystyvänsä hyödyntämään monia eri ongelmanratkaisutaitojaan samaan aikaan. Leikkaamisen taito vaati kuulemma harjaantumista ja useita toistoja ennen, kun hän alkoi olemaan tyytyväinen työhönsä. Hän toimi ensimmäisessä työssään legendaarisen Dede Allenin alaisena elokuvassa Punaiset (1981). Sweeneyn mukaan aikanaan leikkaamisen ajateltiin olevan kuin kodinhoitoa, siivoamista ja järjestelyä. Tämän vuoksi se jätettiin naisten hoidettavaksi. Kun Allen alkoi saada tunnustusta kyvyistään, miehetkin halusivat päästä alalle.  Sweeney mainitsee myös, ettei koskaan tavannut Allenia: “Työskentelin kaksi kerrosta hänen alapuolellaan.”

Lynchin kanssa yhteistyö alkoi apulaisena Twin Peaksin toisella kaudella. Lynchin aikaisempia elokuvia leikannut Duwayne Dunham ei ehtinyt editoida toisen kauden jaksoa, jossa Laura Palmerin murhaaja paljastuu, joten työ annettiin Sweeneylle. 

Sweeneyn tunnettavuus kasvoi myös elokuvan Lost Highway (1997) kautta, jonka tuottajana hän toimi. Tositapahtumiin perustuvan The Straight Storyn (1999) ideaa hän tarjosi itse Lynchille: “Halusin jonkin projektin, jossa David pääsisi näyttämään samaa puoltaan kuin Elefanttimiehessä (1980). Tunnistin itsepäiset, köyhyysrajan alapuolella olevat hahmot omasta lapsuudestani”, sanoo Wisconsinissa maitotilalla kasvanut Sweeney. Hän myös käsikirjoitti elokuvan itse. 

Nykyään Sweeney toimii käsikirjoittamisen opettajana ja haluaisi maalata ja ohjata enemmän lyhytelokuvia. " 

June 17: Morning Discussion with Mary Sweeney

MSFF 2023: " In Saturday’s morning discussion we heard editor, director, and producer Mary Sweeney (1953) best known for her collaborations with David Lynch. According to Sweeney, she has been a good editor for Lynch’s films because she adheres to the script and does not take liberties with it and does not ask questions about the meaning of the mythical elements in the films.

“David is poetic in his thinking of the cinematic language. Poetry is written in editing.” Instead, she relies on the film’s emotional landscape while editing. Sweeney says that the film needs to feel authentic and pull the viewer in through emotions. “Empathy and dreaminess are good traits for a film editor,” Sweeney said and continued that she had been a dreamer ever since her childhood. She received a Catholic education and would empathise deeply with for example the Stations of the Cross.

Sweeney fell in love with editing while studying at New York University in the beginning of the 80s because she felt she was able to use many of her problem-solving capabilities in it, although at first, she felt that her editing was “pretty bad”. In her first job she worked under the legendary Dede Allen on Reds (1981). “I worked two floors down, so I never saw her.”

Sweeney said that at the time editing was understood as housekeeping: cleaning and tidying up, and hence it was left to women. When Allen started to gain respect for her work men wanted to get into editing as well.

Sweeney’s collaboration with Lynch started as assistant on the second season of Twin Peaks. Duwayne Dunham who had edited Lynch’s earlier films did not have time to edit the episode in which Laura Palmer’s murderer is revealed, so Sweeney got the job.

“There are no rules in editing. I recognised the need for logic. David’s logic, so not very logical,” Sweeney explains laughing.

Finally, Sweeney became the producer of Lost Highway (1997) among other films. She offered the idea for The Straight Story (1999) based on a true story to Lynch. “I was looking for projects that would go back to Elephant man side of David. I recognised the stubborn character living in poverty from my own childhood,” says Sweeney who grew up on a milk farm in Wisconsin. She also wrote the script herself.

These days Sweeney teaches screen writing and would like to have more time for painting and directing short films. She was relieved that she was not asked to teach editing, as she finds that the trade is best learned hands on. “The deeper I went into editing the more I understood that the logic is not something you can study,” she said. " MSFF 2023

AA: I am a big aficionado of the Sodankylä morning discussions, and this one was among the best ever. 

Q: What was the first film you saw? 
A: PT-109 (US 1963, D: Leslie H. Martinson) with Cliff Robertson as John F. Kennedy.

Q: Which film would you take to the desert island?
A: Le Scaphandre et le papillon / The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (FR/US 2007, D: Julian Schnabel), starring Mathieu Amalric.

Universumin kaiut - Kaija Saariahon musiikki / Echoes of the Universe - The Music of Kaija Saariaho

Riitta Rask: Universumin kaiut - Kaija Saariahon musiikki / Echoes of the Universe - The Music of Kaija Saariaho (FI 2023).

ECHOES OF THE UNIVERSE – THE MUSIC OF KAIJA SAARIAHO

DIRECTOR: Riitta Rask

COUNTRY: Finland

YEAR: 2023

DURATION: 80 min

LANGUAGES: Finnish, English, French / subtitled in English

ORIGINAL NAME: Universumin kaiut – Kaija Saariahon musiikki

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Finnish Films, Music Films, New Finnish Films, Special Screenings, Subtitles in English
Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 16 June 2023

Joonas Nykänen (MSFF 2023): "This documentary film, with an abundant wealth of composer Kaija Saariaho’s own comments and music, dissects the artist’s life. What was it like to go to a Steiner school as an extremely talented person and grow up to choose a path in music?"

"Due to her gender, Saariaho encounters prejudice along the way. The film examines how it was that this shy talent developed into a great composer. By making the focus Saariaho’s work, rather than her biography, it breaks the cliché of the suffering artist and instead creates a perception of a serene life filled with happiness."

"Saariaho meets young musicians and imparts pithy aphorisms about an artist’s career: talent alone is not enough. In Paris, the young Saariaho found solace away from the stifling atmosphere of her home country at that time. There she also met her partner Jean-Baptiste Barrière. The prolific Saariaho has given us music ranging from operas to chamber music. Echoes of the Universe offers us a new insight into the artist’s life." Joonas Nykänen

AA: I arrived late and Kitisen Kino was already filled to the max, but the compelling sound world of Riitta Rask's movie reached me in front of the tent, and I remained mesmerized on my bench until the end. The music and interview montage of this film is so wonderful that it is a complete artistic experience on the highest level even without images. I learned a lot about and with Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) whose cinematic memorial this is. For instance she saw composition as an entire world, and welcomed structure. Saariaho was deeply influenced by the cinema, for instance Andrei Tarkovski. Her artistic parcours was about reaching ever higher tops, and she was at the peak of her creativity when we lost her to glioblastoma on 2 June 2023 in Paris at age 70.

Monica in the South Seas

Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila: Monica in the South Seas (FI 2023) starring Monica Flaherty, here as a child in Samoa.

MONICA IN THE SOUTH SEAS

DIRECTOR: Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila

COUNTRY: Finland

YEAR: 2023

DURATION: 72 min

LANGUAGES: English, Samoan / subtitled in Finnish

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Finnish Films, New Finnish Films, Puhuttu tai tekstitetty suomeksi
In the presence of Mika Taanila, hosted by Otto Kylmälä.
Viewed at Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) 16 June 2023

Ilpo Hirvonen (MSFF 2023): "After Nanook of the North (1922) had become the first documentary film to achieve wide success, Paramount gave director Robert J. Flaherty the freedom to make his next film anywhere. Known as the father of documentary cinema, Flaherty travelled with his family to Samoa where he shot Moana (1926). 50 years later, the director’s daughter Monica Flaherty returned to Samoa, where she had made her first memories as a 3- to 4-year-old. Monica’s goal was to record the sounds of the environment to create a sound version of her father’s silent film."

"Co-directed by Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila, Monica in the South Seas tells the story behind the birth of this sound version Moana with Sound (1981/2014). At its heart, the film deals with the ambition to reach the past and its sounds, even though the past captured on film is tinted by fiction and western fantasies. The portrayal of the pursuit of lost sound also grows into a broader reflection on the sounds and silences of history, resonating in the film’s polyphonic audio-visual texture." Ilpo Hirvonen

AA: Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila have created a lovely "making of" about Monica Flaherty's 1980s sonorized version of Moana, the pathbreaking work in the history of the documentary film. Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila face the complexity of the documentary value of this movie head on. After all, the Flaherty family's mission was to document something that no longer existed, the ancient culture of the Samoan people that survived only in their memory.

Today, questions and issues from the angle of the new colonial history are necessary to discuss. Moana is a part of the Western culture's passion for South Seas exoticism. Personally, I don't find the Flaherty family offenders. The Samoan people welcomed their love for their traditional culture, and in this film we can see that they still welcomed them in the 1980s in a spirit of mutual reverence.

There were also cultural offenses. Embarrassment was caused for Samoan women of appearing topless. Samoans found the anthropological angles of the film-makers absurd. But the filmed records (including a photograph archive) were highly valued, and during Monica's visit they were meticulously identified. And finally, Samoans found Moana "a true film".

"My father never forgot Samoa".

"Searching for the lost paradise" was the Flaherty family's grand project, never more than here. In the South Seas cycle of Hollywood films, White Shadows in the South Seas showed that we found that paradise, only in order to destroy it. F. W. Murnau in Tabu created yet another poetic vision.

Ricky Leacock's footage of Monica Flaherty's return to Samoa provides the greatest treasure of this movie. Monica was able to revisit people she remembered from her early childhood, and we see their reunion here. The "then and now" montages are profoundly moving.

The greatest artistic rewards in the movie are in the Samoan music and the wonderful songs, sung in unforgettable choral performances. I would love to own a soundtrack album.

Monica Flaherty is the protagonist of this "making of". In our period of revisiting film history from the perspective of "women make movies" we must acknowledge the distinction of Frances Flaherty (co-author of Moana) and Monica Flaherty (who created an authentic sound world to Moana).

My earlier blog comments on Moana:

13 Oct 1985
23 Jan 2009 (Richard Leacock in Helsinki)
9 Feb 2009
9 Oct 2010
28 Oct 2010

Morning discussion: Emmanuel Mouret (Sodankylä 2023)

 Morning discussion with Emmanuel Mouret, hosted by Olaf Möller, translated by Kaisa Kukkola (invisible in the photo, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival 16 June 2023. Foto Jukka Tarkiainen.

Midnight Sun Film Festival resume: June 16: Morning Discussion with Emmanuel Mouret

" This year The Midnight Sun Film Festival presents to the audience director Emmanuel Mouret who has been relatively unknown in Finland until now but has a robust film career in France. Friday’s morning discussion was a profound master class on the essentials of film making, the awkwardness of being human, and the value of putting in effort.

Mouret studied at the famous La Fémis film school in Paris but in the he learned the toughest but also the most defining lessons during a short film production he did  at the age of 19  in which everything went wrong. On the third day of filming, the young director locked himself in his home, because he felt that he did not know how to direct his actors. Pushed by this setback and to better understand the art of acting and the medium of cinema Mouret studied theatre and American screenwriting manuals. With age, studies, and experience he managed to free himself from the weight of film history and the myth of a director who knows everything and never makes mistakes. “I want to be honest: I am a director who does not know what he is doing and cannot hide the fact that he does not know.”

The awkwardness, complications, and contradictions of human life have become an endless treasure trove for Mouret who has depicted the intricacies of love life masterfully ever since his early summer love film Venus and Fleur (Vénus et Fleur, 2004) up until the study of attraction Diary of a Fleeting Affair (Chronique d’une liaison passagère, 2022) that premiered in Cannes last year. As a director Mouret wants to give space to the work of the actors interpreting their fickle characters as well as the viewer’s need to learn yet a bit more about the film’s story and to project their own thoughts and feelings onto it.

Mouret urges the young movie makers and cinephiles to put in effort. Technical effortlessness will not help structure thoughts and optimising does not make for interesting art: “At some point screenwriting manuals advised to give maximum amount of information in as few words as possible. I think that’s dumb! I want to give minimum amount of information in as many words as possible, then you can find something surprising in the midst of it all.”

For Mouret the beauty of cinema and literature is in making seemingly small and even intimate situations and stories passionate and important: “I have always found interesting what philosopher Stanley Cavell writes about how to be good with all that passes through us.” The characters in Mouret’s films may mean well, but contradictions arise when the will to stay faithful to one’s commitments pulls to one direction and the wish to stay true to one’s own needs to a different one. The director does not warm up to Olaf Möller’s suggestion that he might leave relationship studies and start making thrillers but admits that maybe these contradictions that question the conventional morals are in themselves some sort of tiny thrillers – although without guns and car chases.

Even though Mouret’s family did not have a strong culture of going to cinema when he was growing up in Marseille, he has been making up for it by watching films and reading about them ever since his teens. The earliest fragments he remembers are slapstick comedies based on awkwardness: Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Jacques Tati, and Jerry Lewis. His choice for a film he would take to a deserted island is also a joyful one: Roberto Rossellini’s film on Francis of Assisi The Flowers of St. Francis (Francesco, giullare di Dio, 1950). " (MSFF 2023)

Kievski protses / The Kiev Trial (in the presence of Sergei Loznitsa)

Sergei Loznitsa: Київський процес / Киевский процесс / Kievski protses / The Kiev Trial (UA/NL 2022). The public hanging of the Nazi criminals on the Kalinin Square (today's Independence Square), Kiev, 29 Jan 1946.

Київський процес / Киевский процесс
DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Ukraina, Alankomaat

YEAR: 2022

DURATION: 106 min

LANGUAGES: venäjä, saksa, ukraina / tekstitetty englanniksi

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English

In the presence of Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Juhana von Bagh.
Viewed at the School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 SYNOPSIS

The Kiev Trial, also known as the ‘Kiev Nuremberg’, took place in January of 1946 in the Soviet Union, and was one of the first post-war trials convicting German Nazis and their collaborators. 15 criminals, guilty of atrocities, which were later identified by the Nuremberg trials as “crimes against humanity”, faced justice in case No.1679 “On the atrocities committed by fascist invaders on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.” Using unique, previously unseen, archive footage, Sergei Loznitsa reconstructs key moments of the proceedings, including statements of the defendants and testimonies of the witnesses, survivors of Auschwitz and Babi Yar among them. The film lays bare the ‘banality of evil’ and is devastatingly relevant today, as Ukrainian people are once again being subjected to the violence of barbarian invaders.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I came across the forgotten footage of the Kiev Trial when I was working on archive research for Babi Yar. Context. Having gained access to this unique footage, just as powerful as the famous Eichmann tapes, I decided to make a film reconstructing the entire trial. As always, my aim is to immerse the spectators into the atmosphere of the courtroom: to make them feel as if they are witnessing the whole trial from a seat in a public gallery. When I started this project in spring 2021, I couldn’t imagine, even in my worst nightmare, that Ukraine will once again become a battlefield and that innocent civilians will once again be subjected to brutal violence. Only this time the barbarian invaders wear Russian uniforms. We have been thrown 80 years back and it seems that no lessons from our recent history have been learnt... I wish with all my heart that we shall not have to wait for too long before the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity, being committed in Ukraine today, are brought to justice.

Mia Öhman (MSFF 2023): "Babi Yar. Context (2021) depicted the circumstances leading up to the massacre of more than 33 000 Ukrainian Jews. Partly the same but mostly still unseen archive material now gives us front row seats at the ”Kiev Nuremberg,” a war crimes trial held in January 1946.

We are in the bombed-out capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, examining what happened during the German occupation. The Moscow Central Studio of Documentary Film filmed and archived the show trial -type event, and Loznitsa trusts in the power of the images and sound. The true gruesomeness of the events is gradually revealed by the behaviour of the defendants, witnesses and interpreters; the tones of their voices, muffled stammers, extended pauses, strained positions, helpless looks, and the electrified reactions of the onlookers.

At times, one wonders what substances these people were ingesting to keep playing their parts. The witnesses appear in all their candour, forged fearless by their ordeal. The Germans explain how they carried out the decimation of the Ukrainians to make space for their own people. One stresses how he was forced to carry out his duties, and had he not done so, someone else might have with even more deadly consequences. Another one condemns the Nazi regime. All Germans are hanged in the square. After all, no one wants the horror and destruction of war to happen again." Mia Öhman

AA: The Kiev Trial is Sergei Loznitsa's follow-up and companion piece to Babi Yar. Context (2021). The earlier film focused on the infamous "rehearsal for the Holocaust", the newer film on "the Kiev Nuremberg" (it took place nine months before the Nuremberg Trials).

The strength and the focus of The Kiev Trial is in its concentration on the extraordinary official filmed records of the trial itself. The testimonies, given when everything was still fresh in memory, have engrossing immediacy. There is the Claude Lanzmann effect: we see nothing of the crimes committed, but listening to the voices of the witnesses who were actually there, we also in our mind's presence go there, comprehending everything more vividly than an illustrated reconstruction of the unimaginable could achieve.

Some of the footage is repeated from the earlier film, but in this context it, too, gains new meaning and resonance. I am in principle against showing public executions, but displaying the epic footage of the hanging of the Nazi criminals is valid and essential to the fulfillment of justice and this remarkable trial.

Stshastje moje / My Joy (in the presence of Sergei Loznitsa)

Sergei Loznitsa: Счастье моё / Stshastje moje / My Joy (DE/UA/NL 2010).

MY JOY

DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Saksa, Ukraina, Alankomaat

YEAR: 2010

DURATION: 128 min

LANGUAGES: venäjä / tekstitetty englanniksi

ORIGINAL NAME: Счастье моё (Schastye moe)

CATEGORY: Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English
In the presence of Sergei Loznitsa, hosted by Kaisu Isto.
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023.

Mia Öhman (MSFF 2023): "A body is pushed in a ditch, a mixer-full of cement splashed on top. A bulldozer finishes the operation, rolling its tracks over the anonymous man’s anonymous grave, returning him to the ground, for unto dust we shall all return. After this, our protagonist, a truck driver called Georgy, drives along a scenic road while a schlager about war sacrifices plays on the radio, instantly bringing to mind Aleksei Balabanov (1959–2013), whose films featured nasty bursts of repressed violence. Loznitsa’s fiction debut advances with time jumps, yet intuitively smoothly intertwines into a cohesive whole, bearing a kinship to the oeuvre of Alain Resnais, who also started as a documentarian.

My Joy was filmed in Ukraine and features Russian dialogue. This road movie gradually picking up horror elements is a provocation, a journey into Russianness pieced together from real stories, its brutal Soviet past oozing cold sweat through decades to the present day. From the start, an ominous atmosphere fills the air at a police checkpoint – perhaps real, perhaps not.

Georgy’s journey continues, and the characters appearing from the roadside to hitch a ride lead him on a chilling tour into the visionless and timelessly stagnant mental landscape. The story is already metaphorically laid out in the introduction: the anonymous dead is a part of the common land, the common history – the common nightmare." Mia Öhman

AA: Sergei Loznitsa's fiction feature debut about the truck driver Georgi (Viktor Nemets) might evoke parallels with Vasili Shukshin's feature debut There Lives Such a Lad, but it soon turns out that they are diametrical opposites.

The title My Joy ("My Happiness") is an expression of irony of the blackest kind.

This road movie is an account of a descent in Hell, never far from horror. It is a history of brutalization, corruption and prostitution. A parallel work in Loznitsa's oeuvre is Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature (another title of extreme irony).

My Joy is a vision of society, a portrait of the destruction of civil society. The social contract is dead. The government is corrupt, the civil society is moribund. There is no hope for revival.

The only decent person is Georgi, but after a brutal assault and robbery, he becomes braindead, a walking dead, like a zombie. Along his odyssey there is a fleeting encounter that comes into the territory of Tolstoy's Resurrection, a Katyusha / Nekhlyudov exchange, but this underage Katyusha is as evil as everyone else.

Powerfully shot, with an epic map of human faces telling volumes about wasted lives, casual brutality, escapism into victories of the past and sentimental romances.

Ultimately, there is no Gegenbild.

Morning discussion: Sergei Loznitsa (Sodankylä 2023)

Morning discussion: Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Timo Malmi. The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival 15 June 2023. Photo: Linda Maria Saar.

In English, Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Timo Malmi.
The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023.

June 15: Morning Discussion with Sergei Loznitsa

MSFF 2023: " At the Thursday’s Morning Discussion we heard the award-winning Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa who started his career with short films and documentaries but is also known for his long fiction films. The director studied at one of the best film schools at the time and appreciates wide knowledge of art history and artistic expression. He also believes that the serious approach of the school, which moved on a conceptual level, helped him become the director and artist he is today.

In addition to cinema, the discussion dealt with political and social issues that Loznitsa largely focuses on especially in his later works. The director talked about his youth in Kyiv and his experiences with the humiliating Soviet system. He also commented on the current situation that he had acutely predicted already for example in his fiction film My Joy (2010), which screened at the festival on Thursday.

The “pseudo-documentary” My Joy is a collection of stories that Loznitsa heard while traveling around Russia after film school and making portrait-like short films and documentaries. Even though the stories depict a certain historical moment, they are timeless. “I showed this society where all the social institutions are completely destroyed, and connections between people are also destroyed”, Loznitsa explained.

The discussion also touched upon mathematics and music, two abstract fields which – according to Loznitsa – shed light on the order of the universe. Loznitsa did his first degree on the former one, and it has been in his life since childhood as he comes from a family of mathematicians. Music on the other hand plays an important role in Loznitsa’s films along with the rest of the soundscape.

For example, while talking about his early short films, Loznitsa describes the soundscape of The Halt (2000) in which the passive sounds of sleeping are occasionally drowned in the noise of a passing train. The audience also watched an excerpt from the documentary The Natural History of Destruction (2022) that will be screened at the festival again on Sunday. It is considered the most symphonic of Loznitsa’s works and almost all of the sounds have been created afterwards.

In the early bombing sequence of The Natural History of Destruction we mostly see only flashes of light and according to Loznitsa that puts the viewer’s imagination to work. “For me this is pure cinema”, he says. Like other Loznitsa’s films, The Natural History of Destruction does not have a voiceover as he finds that the viewer cannot focus on the story told by the images if they are being commented on. “What we can do in cinema is to tell a story with images, express everything with images, with the help of sound”, he explains.

On a deserted island the director would take Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – one of the first films that defined for him what cinema is all about." (MSFF 2023)

Saint Omer

Alice Diop: Saint Omer (FR 2022).

SAINT OMER

DIRECTOR: Alice Diop

COUNTRY: Ranska

YEAR: 2022

DURATION: 122 min

LANGUAGES: ranska / tekstitetty englanniksi

CATEGORY: Gems of New Cinema, Subtitles in English
Festival premiere: 7 Sep 2022 Venice Film Festival
Sortie en France: 23 Nov 2022
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

The end credit song: Nina Simone's interpretation of "Little Girl Blue" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, 1935, from the Broadway musical Jumbo). The track is from Nina Simone's debut studio album Little Girl Blue: Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club (1957 / 1959).

Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023): "Young writer Rama travels to the small village of Saint Omer to observe the trial of a young mother who drowned her child. In her defense, the woman blames insanity and Senegalese witchcraft, which drove her to her decisive action in the throes of anxiety and hopelessness. During the trial proceedings, Rama is forced to explore her attitudes towards her mother as well as her own budding motherhood."

"The seasoned documentarist Alice Diop directs her debut fiction feature, based on true events, with style and a steady hand. The trial proceedings are filled with much talk and hard facts, but despite the resistance of the prosecutor, the intense courtroom scenes are thrust into the waves of emotions and melodrama. Familiar elements from Diop’s earlier works can be found in this film as well, such as mothers commuting via trains, prejudice against immigrants, and home videos acting as postcards and time capsules for the junctions of family history."

"From the point of view of Rama and Diop, there is a historical layer to this contemporary tragedy, and the core of the event mirrors Euripides’ tragedy of Medea. As a whole, however, the film, like Hiroshima mon amour, is a poetic interpretation of the painful points of recent history. Diop is clearly a masterful successor of directors like Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman, who like her transitioned from documentary filmmaking to fiction."

"Of Senegalese descent, ALICE DIOP (b. 1979) studied the history of colonial Africa at the University of Sorbonne, where her journey towards film took her from visual sociology studies to the La Fémis film school in Paris. An admirer of Agnès Varda, Claire Denis and Chantal Akerman, Diop has directed many award-winning documentary films, of which Vers la tendresse (Towards Tenderness, 2016), is a brave and raw depiction of sexuality, masculinity and tenderness. Nous (We, 2021), which won an award in Berlinale, is a panorama-like depiction of life in the suburbs. Her fictional debut Saint Omer combines elements from Diop’s documentaries into an intensive courtroom drama, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival." Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023)

AA: Alice Diop's fiction feature debut is a powerful courtroom drama about infanticide, a theme that has had huge resonance in classic Nordic literature and cinema, in Finland most unforgettably voiced by the feminist champion Minna Canth in Anna-Liisa. Alice Diop's tale is completely different, because it is profoundly marked by structural racism. There is an overwhelming challenge in trying to make sense of an African legacy and sensibility in the still hidden colonialistic and racist atmosphere of France. The failure of communication is absolute. This was the third festival film I saw today that dealt with Black Lives Matter and also the compelling need to lie to survive in a system rigged against an oppressed minority.

The conclusion of this movie is the most devastating, and all men should see it, because it is about something we do not possess and cannot grasp. I confess that watching it I had for the first time a beginning of finally understanding something that I have in a certain way been aware of for a long time, having read Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe and discovered her concepts "immanence" and "transcendence" (and now I also understand in a way why Beauvoir did not want children).

African magic in this movie introduces a new dimension in the primal bond of the mother and the child. In this film I learned for the first time about "chimeric cells" that bind the mother and the child on the deepest level and the neverending chain of generations created on this most atavistic level, beyond psychology, in the dimension of biology and cytology, something far beyond the unconscious. I recently helped my psychoanalyst friends edit a book about the bond of the mother and the child, Tunteiden syvät vedet [The Deep Waters of Emotion]. Now I'm on my way in understanding better what they were talking about.

Tori et Lokita / Tori and Lokita

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne: Tori et Lokita (BE/FR 2022).

TORI AND LOKITA
DIRECTOR: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
COUNTRY: Belgium, France
YEAR: 2022
DURATION: 89 min
LANGUAGES: French / subtitled in English
ORIGINAL NAME: Tori et Lokita
CATEGORY: Gems of New Cinema, Subtitles in English
Festival premiere: 24 May 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
US festival premiere: 2 Sep 2022 Telluride Film Festival
Belgian premiere: 7 Sep 2022
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

Theme song: the Italian nursery rhyme "Alla fiera dell'est" ["At the Eastern Fair"], an adaptation of the Hebrew Passover song "Chad Gadya" (["One Little Goat"], first printed in 1590). There is an affinity with the English nursery rhyme "The House That Jack Built" (first printed in 1797) (Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index type 2035). Angelo Branduardi's "Alla fiera dell'est" is from 1976.

Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival 2022): "The refugees Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbundu), a little boy and adolescent girl, have fled religious violence in Africa. After pretending to Belgian authorities they are brother and sister, in the hope of increasing their odds for legal working papers, their lie becomes the truth, as they fiercely protect each other while navigating a host of dangers. For 30 years, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, former Telluride tributees and eighttime prize winners at Cannes, have sustained and revitalized the cinematic tradition of humanistic, politically engaged neorealist filmmaking. Here, with rigor and without a trace of sentimentality, the Dardennes portray a society that ruthlessly exploits children while, simultaneously, inspiring us with the indisputable power of unconditional love. Through their careful direction, and the brilliant performances of Schils and Mbundu, we begin to believe that love can conquer all. " –LG (Belgium-France, 2022, 88m)  In person: Joely Mbundu" (Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival 2022)

Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023): "The many films of the illustrious career of brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who captured Sodankylä in 2005 with their sympathetic natures, have already become so familiar to our festival audience that we know we can trust the Dardenne standard. Tori and Lokita does not disappoint: this is an even more ascetic film about immigration, children and youth – as experienced at the grass-roots level of the streets."

"We follow two paperless African refugees in Belgium; Tori, a young boy from Cameroon, and Lokita, a teenage girl from Benin. Their sibling-like bond of friendship helps them deal with everyday challenges in the midst of multi-front threats from petty crime and drug trade."

"It’s impressive how the Dardennes seem to know the multiple facets of their hometown Liège so thoroughly. One can’t help but admire the indomitable Tori and Lokita, as their stories wind up towards their shocking conclusions. There is no indulging in sentimentality, even though their kinship-affirming duets are endearing."

"Two-time winners of the Palme d’Or in Cannes, JEAN-PIERRE (b. 1951) and LUC (b. 1954) DARDENNE have always worked together, both as writers and directors, ”as one author with four eyes.” Without compromise, they have stayed true to their calling, starting in 1975 with social TV documentaries. In 1981, the Dardennes moved into fiction. Such accomplishments of their mature era as Le Promesse, Rosetta, The Son, The Child, The Silence of Lorna, The Kid with a Bike and Two Days, One Night have proved true Jonathan Rosenbaum’s characterization from years ago: “No one else in the world is at the moment making films as instinctively tuned into the life of the modern working class.” Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023)

AA: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne switch to the thriller mode and the chase format in Tori and Lokita, a formidable account of two paperless African immigrants caught in the multiple trap of immigrant smuggling, illegal gig economy, drug traffic and prostitution. A central location is a huge clandestine cannabis greenhouse. Everything is recorded with neorealist objectivity, including the clueless efforts of the society to intervene. Tori and Lokita lie to them because it is a matter of life and death, and the insurmountable chasm of communication is a major theme of this remarkable movie. The heart of the film is the deep love between the children. They are not officially a brother and a sister, yet this is a story of true brotherhood and sisterhood. A haunting film of engrossing warmth and tenderness.

Armageddon Time

James Gray: Armageddon Time (US/BR 2022). 

Midnight Sun Film Festival
ARMAGEDDON TIME
DIRECTOR: James Gray
COUNTRY: USA, Brazil
YEAR: 2022
DURATION: 114 min
LANGUAGES: English / no subtitles
CATEGORY: English dialogue, Gems of New Cinema
Festival premiere: 19 May 2022 Cannes Film Festival
US festival premiere: 2 Sep 2022 Telluride Film Festival
US premiere: 28 Oct 2022 (limited), 4 Nov 2022 (wide)
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

Theme song: the Jamaican reggae song "Armagideon Time" (Willie Williams, 1977 / 1979) covered by The Clash in 1979.

Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival, 2022): "Paul (Banks Repeta), a dreamy middle-class kid, has an urge to be an artist. His loving but conventional and insecure parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) don’t understand. As he wrestles with self-expression, Paul finds inspiration from Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a rebellious schoolmate, and his Jewish immigrant grandfather (Anthony Hopkins), who, since escaping Ukraine during World War II, has lived the best and the worst of the American Dream. Working again with the talented cinematographer Darius Khondji, writer-director James Gray (THE IMMIGRANT, AD ASTRA) builds an intimate cinematic world of moral turmoil and difficult decisions, of the rise of Ronald Reagan, the challenges of race relations and the confusion of class differences fueling the damaged soul of a nation. Gray has created a work of fierce but delicate beauty, in which coming of age means awakening to the painful realities of an imperfect world. –LG (U.S., 2022, 114m) In person: James Gray, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway" Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival, 2022)

Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023): "It is a relief to see an acting giant like Anthony Hopkins once again in a bullseye by a top director – even though James Gray hasn’t gained enough status in Finland to warrant a regular cinema run for this last year’s Cannes selection. This despite the fact that Hopkins’ performance as a wise grandfather is one of his most charming ones."

"The coming-of-age story of Armageddon Time is loosely based on Gray’s own experiences as a schoolboy in 1980 in Queens, New York (the stomping ground of a certain Trump family). We are in the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s expertly characterised presidential term. Paul, the preteen son of the middle-class Graff family with Ukrainian roots, befriends at school a black kid, Johnny, who needs shelter from his poor, broken home – not that the Graffs’ lives are always so amicable."

"Gray doesn’t take the easy nostalgic approach with his intimate depiction of the everyday life in the family, neighbourhood, and school. The colours and shades of Dariush Khondji’s wide angle cinematography seem perfect to melancholically follow this heart-breaking play of injustice."

"Not many American directors with an accomplished thirty-year career have been as overlooked in Finland as JAMES GRAY (b. 1969). That said, this descendant of Russian Jewish grandparents was also side-tracked in the US after his sensational debut film, Little Odessa (1994), directed at the age of 24. But such later works as the cop thriller We Own the Night (2007), obsessive romance Two Lovers (2008), explorer adventure The Lost City of Z (2017), and the sci-fi epic Ad Astra (2019) are more than enough proof of his significant, versatile talent." Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023)

AA: I arrived at Sodankylä in the morning, immediately caught in the magic of the midnight sun festival blessed by a beautiful sunny weather. Twice during the car ride from Rovaniemi to Sodankylä we met small reindeer herds (porotokka) who walked blithely in the middle of the road, without budging. We were the ones who had to budge. It was deeply moving to meet my landlady and her spouse, and after morning coffee at the premises it was time for the first film. It turned out to be a formidable kick start to what proved to be a "Black Lives Matter" theme day.

I missed the beginning, the first half of the festival's sole screening of Armageddon Time, a film that I had already missed in Telluride, but this is a film I must soon see in full. I arrived during the opening speech of Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain), Donald Trump's sister, and managed to see the final scenes with the protagonist's grandfather, Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins) who is in the ultimate stages of cancer. Aaron is a survivor of antisemitic persecution in his native Ukraine, and his final message to his grandson Paul is to be bold and defend his Black friend Jaylin against racist discrimination. "Be a mensch".

The account of the friendship of Paul and Jaylin provides a complex, honest and electrifying insight in ordinary racism. This intimate film's unique epic power derives from the heartfelt, disturbing juxtaposition of European antisemitism and the American oppression of Black people.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: ARMAGEDDON TIME