A scene from the film Rafiki, which was banned in Kenya. Photo courtesy of the Cannes press office.

By A. D. McKenzie
CANNES, France, May 19 2018 (IPS)

The usual big-name directors were absent this year from the Cannes Film Festival in southern France, creating space for cutting-edge films from Asia, Africa, small European states, and the Middle East.

Most of these films put the focus squarely on stories about outsiders, highlighting issues of exclusion, disability, racism and gender inequality (including in the film industry). The result was a festival with some of the most engaging movies in the last five years, alongside the trademark glitz.

The winners in the two main categories of the event, which ran from May 8 to 19, exemplified the concentration on the underdog. Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters) by Japanese director Kore-Eda Hirokazu won the Palme d’Or top prize, from among 21 films, while Gräns (Border), by Iranian-born Danish director Ali Abbasi, was awarded the Un Certain Regard Prize, beating 17 other movies. The latter category recognizes films that stand out for their originality, and many critics agreed Gräns was remarkable.

“We feel that out of 2,000 films considered by the Festival, the 18 we saw in Un Certain Regard, from Argentina to China, were all in their own way winners,” stated the jury, headed by Puerto-Rican actor Benicio Del Toro.

“We were extremely impressed by the high quality of the work presented, but in the end we were the most moved by … five films” (including Gräns), the jury added

Full of suspense, Abbasi’s movie tells the story of a “strange-looking” female customs officer who has a gift for spotting, or sniffing out, travellers trying to hide their contraband and other secrets, and it takes viewers on her journey to discover who she really is.

We see her experiencing verbal abuse from some travellers, and we slowly discover the exploitation she and people like her have suffered, while also learning about her origins, and seeing her fall in love and deal with appalling crime.

Based on a short story by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, and with superb acting, the film combines romance, dark humour and the paranormal to deliver a subtle message about the treatment of people who are different and society’s behaviour towards those most vulnerable, among other subjects.

A second film that won a major award in the Un Certain Regard category also dealt with “difference” and the acceptance of one’s individuality. Girl by Belgian director Lukas Dhont is a first feature about a boy who dreams of becoming a ballerina, exploring the journey of a trans-teen with a passion for dance. Victor Polster, the 15-year-old actor who plays the title role with poignant credibility, won the best actor award, while Girl also won the competition’s Caméra d’Or prize for best first film.

A scene from the film Girl. Photo courtesy of the Cannes press office.

However, Rafiki (Friend), a movie that some critics expected to receive a prize, had to be satisfied with the extended standing ovation it received from viewers at the festival. The film – about love between two young women – is banned in Kenya, despite being the first Kenyan film selected for screening at the festival.

Director Wanuri Kahui said she was moved by the appreciation the film received, telling reporters that people are eager to watch a “joyful” and “modern” African movie, away from the stereotypical images of poverty and disaster.

Regarding the ban, she tweeted in April: “I am incredibly sorry to announce that our film RAFIKI has been banned in Kenya. We believe adult Kenyans are mature and discerning enough to watch local content but their right has been denied.”

Apart from the Palme d’Or winner (about a family of shoplifters), the films that generated widespread buzz in the main competition included Arabic-language Yomeddine, directed by Cairo-born A.B. Shawky, and featuring a leper in Egypt, and BlacKkKlansman, by African-American director Spike Lee, which won the Grand Prix, the second highest honour at the festival.

A scene from the film Yomeddine. Photo courtesy of the Cannes press office.

Yomeddine stood out for its choice of subject and for portraying and employing persons with disabilities. Viewer and British actor Adam Lannon called the film “beautiful and brilliant”, adding that it was “excellent” to see “actors with disabilities working on screen”.

The film’s main character, Beshay, is a man cured of leprosy, but he has never left the leper colony where he has been placed by his family since childhood. When his wife dies, he sets out in search of his roots, with his loyal donkey. He is soon joined by an orphan boy named Obama, whom he has been protecting, although he would rather have been alone.

What follows is an uplifting road movie across Egypt, with a series of tear-jerking encounters on the way and echoes of “Don Quixote”. Shawky’s first feature has some flaws in that certain elements seem too predictable, but he scores overall with his appeal for humanity and inclusion.

The director Spike Lee on the set of his film BlacKkKlansman. Photo courtesy of the Cannes press office.

For Spike Lee, anger at racism comes across clearly in his latest film, which is the story of a real-life African-American policeman who managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. Lee incorporated recent events in the United States in the movie, particularly the killing of Heather Heyer as she protested a white-supremacist gathering in Charlottesville.

At his main Cannes press conference, Lee slammed the current U.S. administration, in a speech full of expletives. “We have a guy in the White House … who in a defining moment … was given the chance to say we’re about love and not hate, and that (expletive deleted) did not denounce the Klan,” he told journalists.

Gender issues were also raised at the festival, with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements never far from movie-watchers’ consciousness, as is the global scarcity of female directors. Only one film directed by a woman (The Piano by Jane Campion) has ever won the Palme d’Or, and women have long been underrepresented at the directorial level.

During the event, 82 women working in the movie sector took over the famous red-carpeted stairs to protest that inequality. Their number was an indication that since the Cannes festival officially began in 1946, following World War II, just 82 movies by women directors have been selected for competition. In contrast, 1,645 films by male directors have been chosen.

Led by the five women on this year’s competition jury, including jury president Cate Blanchett and American director Ava Duvernay, the protest coincided with the screening of Les Filles du Soleil (Girls of the Sun), a movie by French director Eva Husson about a group of female fighters in Kurdistan.

This was just one of several protest events. A few days later, black women working in the French film industry also denounced the lack of quality roles. Sixteen women who have contributed to a book titled Noire n’est pas mon metier (Being black is not my profession) made their voices heard on the red carpet.

“We’re here to denounce a system that has gone on too long,” said Senegalese-born French actress Aïssa Maïga, who described how black actresses tended to be cast only in certain roles.

Among the three women directors in the main competition, Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki took home the biggest award – the Prix du Jury for Capharnaüm, about a boy who sues his parents for bringing him into the world.

In a moving speech, Labaki called for everyone to do more to protect children and ensure their education. “A loveless childhood is the root of all suffering in the world,” she said.

By the time the festival wrapped up with a performance from singers Sting and Shaggy on May 19 (the same day as the Royal Wedding in England), it seemed that both filmmakers and the public were yearning for lasting change, and different stories.

Follow A. McKenzie on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

A scene from 'Timbuktu' by Abderrahmane Sissako

By A. D. McKenzie
CANNES, May 20 2014 (IPS)

Forget about ‘Grace of Monaco’. Some of the most noteworthy films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival deal with human rights and the fight for press freedom, and they come from directors who have had to overcome financing, censorship or infrastructure difficulties to tell stories that they believe need telling. 

‘Timbuktu’, by Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, is one of the 18 films in competition for the top Palme d’Or prize at the festival, and this visually striking work already has people talking, not only about the movie but about intolerance and the effects of conflict on civilians.

The film is set against the backdrop of religious extremism in northern Mali after jihadists took over in 2012, forcing women to change their way of dressing and banning music, cigarettes and even soccer.

During the reign of terror, the young parents of two children were stoned to death for the “transgression” of not being married, and Sissako cites that act as the motivation for his film.

The killing was an “unspeakable crime” to which the media “largely turned a blind eye”, the director says in an introduction to ‘Timbuktu’.“I must testify in the hopes that no child will ever again have to learn their parents died because they loved each other” – Mauritanian film director Abderrahmane Sissako

“The video of their killing, which was posted online by the perpetrators, is horrid. The woman dies struck by the first stone, while the man lets out a hollow rasp of a cry,” he states.

“What I write is unbearable, I know this. I am in no way trying to use shock value to promote a film. I can’t say I didn’t know and, now that I do, I must testify in the hopes that no child will ever again have to learn their parents died because they loved each other,” he adds.

‘Timbuktu’ uses poetic techniques to decry repression and the abuse of human rights. Emphasising the humanity of his characters, Sissako shows women resisting tyranny with dignity, and these are some of the reasons the film has gained many backers at the 12-day festival, which runs until May 25 in the southern French town.

Prizes will be announced on May 24, and many expect the director’s courage in bringing this story to the screen to be rewarded.

Souleymane Cissé, a Malian director whose film ‘Yeelen’ won the Jury Prize at the 1987 festival, travelled to Cannes this year to support Sissako. He told IPS that African filmmakers have a harder time than most to get their films made and then to obtain international distribution.

“Besides the issue of conflict, financing is still a huge problem,” said Cissé, director of the Union of Creators and Entrepreneurs of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts of Western Africa (UCECAO). “Even low-budget films have to fight for funding, and up until now there hasn’t been any political will to help because in Africa one doesn’t believe that cinema is an art and an industry.”

With more than 1,700 films submitted for consideration in Cannes and only a fraction chosen for the festival’s official selection, it is a tough game, whether one has a message or not. Still, another film that highlights human rights, and specifically press freedom, is ‘Caricaturistes – Fantassins de la Democratie’ (Cartoonists – Foot Soldiers of Democracy), a documentary “starring” 12 cartoonists from around the world that is being shown in the festival’s “out-of-competition”, special-screenings category.

Directed by French filmmaker Stéphanie Valloatto, the film follows cartoonists in countries including Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, France, Israel and Venezuela, some of whom face risks as they use humour to confront injustice and hypocrisy.

It profiles Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, for instance, who in 2011 was badly beaten by armed forces who tried to destroy his hands in an attempt to prevent him from ever drawing again. He had criticised the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in some of his cartoons.

Doctors managed to save Ferzat’s fingers following a successful campaign to get him out of Syria that was launched by Cartooning for Peace, a non-profit association co-founded in 2006 by the acclaimed French cartoonist Plantu and the former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The organisation, which worked closely with the filmmakers, aims to foster dialogue, promote freedom of expression and recognise the journalistic work of cartoonists. In an interview, Valloatto said the group inspired the film because movie producer Radu Mihaileanu had long admired their human-rights work and Plantu’s campaign for tolerance.

Volloatto was invited to direct because of her experience with documentaries. “Once I got to know Plantu and the work of Cartooning for Peace, I too was really impressed by what they’re doing,” she said.

She describes her real-life characters as “12 loveable lunatics, capturing the comic and tragic in all four corners of the earth.” The film says that the cartoonists “risk their lives to defend democracy, with a smile on their faces and a pencil as their only weapon.”

“The film has good humour as well as a serious message,” says Valloatto. “We hope it will be seen by a lot of people because it may give inspiration for all of us to fight for tolerance and human rights, no matter what sector we work in.”

An ironic footnote to ‘Caricaturistes’ is that a book scheduled to be released at the same time as the documentary was rejected by its French publisher because one of its cartoons was deemed offensive to the Catholic Church. Another company, Actes Sud, stepped in and will launch the book on May 28.

Other films at Cannes that focus on global, humanistic topics include the daring and deep ‘Winter Sleep’, also a contender for the Palme d’Or. This 3-hour-16-minute-long film explores relationships alongside the themes of inequality, the seemingly unbridgeable distance between rich and poor, and the role of religion in life.

By Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the film is set in central Anatolia and uses stunning imagery, subtle humour and engrossing dialogue to keep viewers enthralled. At the end, one is left with questions about what the individual can do to bring about a better world, protect the rights of others and perhaps even achieve personal redemption.

‘Winter Sleep’ has received standing ovations in Cannes, compared with the whistles for ‘Grace of Monaco’ – a misguided tale about a princess. (END)