A documentary, The most beautiful Place on Earth, which, with an aesthetic that focuses mainly on the essential and which makes long moments of contemplation its trademark, points the finger directly at those who, devoid of any independent thinking, allow themselves to be led by the hand by “experts”, deciding to support one or the other party, depending on what is convenient for them. Just as a group of Orwellian quacking geese would do.
In Oskar & Lilli, problematic visual solutions are accompanied by an excellent characterisation of the protagonists and a welcome fairy-tale touch, the most appropriate solution for a drama where hope never dies and where, sometimes, breaking the rules may indeed turn out to be the best choice one can ever make.
The mise-en-scene adopted in With God’s Grace does not aim at an excessively marked or elaborate aesthetic, but – in a long journey from Gambia to Italy, arriving, even if only virtually, in Düsseldorf – substantially focuses on the essential, for a successful example of cinema of reality which, through the story of a single character, tells us, in fact, the story of thousands and thousands of people.
The contemplative Paradise Threatened presents itself immediately as a completely unique film, almost like a virtual visit to a museum displaying the precious works of photographer Heinrich Kühn, one of the most important precursors of modernism.
This tender little Lonely Together is very reminiscent of the films of the French New Wave. Similarly, the apparently superficial dialogues slowly acquire a complex depth that, combined with a meticulous introspective analysis of the characters, sees the staging of a dramatic moment told in a light, graceful way, with even welcome comic expedients.
With an extremely essential mise-en-scène, Thomas Marschall has perfectly succeeded in giving his Ordinary Creatures a surreal and highly alienating character, thanks to figures that are now inexplicably mute and so inexpressive as to seem almost unfriendly, up to scenes with a strong dreamlike atmosphere.
Halfway between the cinema of Catherine Breillat and that of Arnaud Desplechin, Lovecut feels very much the influence of French cinema but, at the same time, creates an entirely intimate and personal dimension in which, in a successful choral structure, there is a deep and never banal psychological analysis of each of the young protagonists.
Enriched by sporadic animation inserts, Gipsy Queen leaves many questions open and deliberately does not give the audience definitive answers. On the contrary, as we approach the finale, it increasingly takes on a symbolic and at times surreal connotation.
Die Revolution frisst ihre Kinder tells us an important chapter in the history of Burkina Faso in the unusual form of the mockumentary, for a highly complex and layered work in which art and politics are constantly intertwined, inevitably merging with each other, without leaving the audience time to realise where the mise-en-scene ends and reality begins.
If, in Brot, we find the individual stories, as well as the amusing anecdotes of each producer, particularly interesting, the most magnetic and captivating moments are undoubtedly those in which the camera lingers on the close-ups and extreme close-ups of the individual doughs, their appearance during the leavening process, passionate and almost frenetic hands kneading, and tender loaves of bread about to become tasty delicacies.