Radmila Djurica

Guests of 5th press conference of FEST 2010 were Polish film director  Xawery Zulawski and Jacek Samojlowicz the producer of film“ Snow White and Russian Red“ a charming little film based on a contemporary Polish novel, written by the 19 years old author Dorota Maslowska. The film receieved couple awards in Poland and was invited to be showed on Cannes Film Festival.  „It is hard to describe Polish society after the fall of communism, .I have tried to stay faithful to a book and young author decided to deal with subject of communism fall,“ said Xawery Zulawski  director of this film. The story is set in the imagination of one head. The main character of the film is a man on drugs that looses himself in between reality and imagination. He wants to escape out of it, to realise where he is and what  he is doing there.  The film has a special code language in constant flashbacks of the character’s coherent mind. The film is pretty inventive and it demands open mind in order to understand it. And it can be compered with some of the early work of Danny Boyle and „Trainspotting“.  “ Snow White and Russian Red“ made a great sucess in Poland just as the book.  But this is not a commercial film, it is an art film. Of course, the film has elements of pop culture and the text is actually a comedy. But the director did not treated the film as comedy, even if the film is funny and not romantic. It is hard to define really.

Another guest of the press conference was a Syrian film director Hatem Mohamad Ali, with the film „The Long Night“, the film deals with prisoners and their life after the prison, their psychological cope with rejection, degradation and confussion. Their return home in film is a metaphore for a political change that is almost impossible in Syrian society. Certainly interesting subject to explore.

Also, the guests of the 5th press conference of International Film Festival FEST 2010 were Serbian most wanted film critics and publisists Marko Babac and Milan Vlajcic in the discussion about the new book release „Bosko Tokin, journalist and novelist“ about Bosko Tokin, first Serbian film critic in history, from the period in between First and Second World War, recorded in a book with history dated posters and old newspaper clippings. The book also covers historical bond, Tokin’s friendship with Croatian novelist Tim Ujevic. 

 Do Not Look Back

Another film that captures attention on FEST 2010! A French film “Don’t Look Back” directed by a female director Marina de Van is about woman searches for identity, an initially intriguing and ultimately incoherent mind-puzzle that is. As definitely a mainstream project  “Don’t Look Back” begins as a psychological thriller on a Hitchcockian way, then distracts with special effects, before final fall of a main character into an existential nightmare. The film probably released and shot for its two female leads Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci, shows a beautiful Jeanne (Marceau), a successful biographer who attempts to fictionalize her life and that way deals with unsolved issues from the past. Jeanne is fascinated with the mysteries of her past, but having no recollections of anything that happened before her eight. Her equally gorgeous husband Teo (Di Stefano) and their two kids suspect some kind of mental disorder because of the odd details notice about their apartment and faces of another woman (Bellucci) replacing hers in a video and mirrors. In her mind, Teo’s and the children’s faces transform into a bizarre. Jeanne changes too, her features are shifting from Marceau’s to Bellucci’s face.

In a way this is a female film and I am not sure if the male audience would understand it right. Marina finds an interesting solution to explore and visually shows Jeanne’s changes. The film is a thin line between the nightmare and the just plain neuroses, especially because of the master digital effects. Beside an elegant entertainment, appealing camerawork and a high production values, the film is a distinctive Freudian-feminist identity search and it can be define as a psychological thriller or a parallel-world story. The visual effects in film are most effective element of this psychological melodrama that clearly show one woman acting and moving around and simultaneously resembles two of Europe's most accomplished actresses of our time.