Sporting a hangover from his party, and still with the sounds of the darbuke ringing in my ears (among other things), I share a coffee with Fatih Akin. The Turkish-German director of Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul.
A documentary about that city and its music, it's a distinct change of direction for the director of Head On, the emotionally coruscating drama that won the Golden Bear in Berlin last year. It turns our that there was a very personal reason for that
"Before Head On appeared in Berlin my life was quiet and ordinary. We didn't expect what would happen. But winning the prize was like a earthquake. Suddenly I was getting offers from everywhere - people saying 'why not do this film instead of that, why not work with her instead of working with him'. So I escaped, to do this film. It was the best moment to make Crossing."
A film-maker with integrity, then, who opted to make a personal film about his mother's city, rather then take the lucre being doled out after a hit. How refreshing.
He tells me that while growing up in Hamburg he visited Istanbul every summer with his family and knew the city very well before making his film. "After high school I started to spend more time there and discovered the youth, the subculture, the clubs. In 1994/95 this new pioneer spirit entered into the city, in music, art, politics, and this spirit has continued and informs Crossing the Bridge."
Although the multi-layered music scene is the focus of the piece, he says it was as important to reveal the city, but "especially to find the right view for the city. I didn't want to show a postcard Istanbul - that kitschy flying carpet stuff; on the other hand, I didn't want to show an Istanbul that is very modern, very hip, an advertisement for Turkey. There is something in between the globalised Istanbul and the postcard Istanbul, which is my personal Istanbul, and we tried to catch that."
Akin has to leave me to catch his plane away from London and the Festival, so I hook up with two Brazilian filmmakers whom I have been very keen to meet since seeing their films: Marcos Prado and Sergio Machado.
Usually when you ask a film-maker why they haven't accompanied their film to a festival, their excuse is that they were making another film: the reason Prado was not in Karlovy Vary with his documentary Estamira, in the summer, was that he was in a decompression chamber. "I had a diving accident in Brazil," says the tall and rather dashing producer/director. "Some bubbles were getting into my brain. But I am totally recovered." Good to hear it.
I already knew of Prado as the producer of Jose Padilha's hard news oriented Bus 174. But the Brazilian tells me that while he was producing that film, he was already shooting his own directorial debut: a disturbing, sad, totally engrossing account of an elderly, schizophrenic woman who virtually lives on the massive Jardin Gramacho rubbish dump in Rio, where she is one of hundreds of people collecting rubbish for a living.
"The dump is a barometer of social problems in my country: as the crisis gets bigger, more people go and find they can work at the dump - collecting plastic and metals, home garbage, and selling it to recyclers.
"As a photographer I was developing a photo essay on the dump. I had been visiting there since 1993," Prado recalls. "And then I met Estamira. I asked to take her picture. She said 'Sit down, I want to talk to you. And as soon as I sat, she started to talk about the beyond of the beyond. And I got so fascinated. Estamira has been raped there, she's been stabbed, she's had her stuff stolen, but still she is an inspiring person.
"She is diagnosed as crazy, but she has so many strong views about the world and what she says makes sense. She is a special woman, who lives at the bottom of civilisation - because what can be further down in our civilisation than a dump? She is like a prophet of the dump."
It's good to hear that rather than simply film her story, get his film and move on, Prado has remained a helpful friend to his subject, among other things rebuilding the house she had, but rarely visited, away from the dump. "She came to me one day and said, 'You know Marcus, your mission is to reveal my mission, so do it well. You are my grandson now.'"
An entirely different proposition - but also one that has found a life in international cinemas - is Sergio Machado's Lower City. A vibrant love-triangle drama set in a waterside district in Brazil's Salvador del Bahia occupied by hustlers, gun-toting criminals and prostitutes.
Despite the very particular milieu, Machado tells me that his film has engaged with young audiences wherever he's shown it, for one good reason. "I think that young people are seeing themselves in the film," he says. "What I wanted to show was that when you see somebody from a distance, the first thing you notice is the differences; but when you get really close to them, and break all your prejudices, you see that the essential things are equal - whether you live in England or the United States or Japan or in Brazil.
"Everybody has fears, desires, a visions, dreams and nightmares - the essential things are the same. I wanted to show that these people whom sometimes you don't want to look at - hustlers, prostitutes, transvestites - they are just like us."
Demetrios Matheou