(Reviews of Liverpool Story; Snow Leopard; Palazzina LAF; Mediha; and The Magic Reindeer: Saving Santa's Sleigh)
LIVERPOOL STORY.
Having impressed with the socialist actualities, Dennis Skinner: The Nature of the Beast (2017) and The Big Meeting (2019), Norris Green director Daniel Draper returned home to join photographer Don McCullin in Toxteth for Almost Liverpool 8 (2021). He remained in the city for Manifesto (2022), which was centred on the parliamentary wards of Walton and West Derby. But Draper visits every postcode in Liverpool Story, as the 36 year-old sets out to correct the false impressions given by previous cine-excursions to the banks of the Mersey.
Opening with a caption quoting Henry David Thoreau's famous line from Walden (1854) - `Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.' - a camera descends to the bed of the River Mersey. Muffled sounds can be heard, but the images are clear and the dockland water seems surprisingly clean.
Back on dry land, snow covers tree roots, as we pop into a deli en route to Chinatown for the 2023 New Year celebrations. This is Liverpool the port as the confluence of cultures. But it's also a bustling city forever on the go and we're whisked off to the Philharmonic Hall to watch cinema organist David Nicholas running through a few tunes.
At a wintry Speke, plane-spotters watch a take-off at John Lennon Airport, while men mess about in boats on the flight path. Over a shot of The Matchworks in Garston, a woman muses on the soundtrack about what makes a Scouser and whether those born outside the city are entitled to feel they belong because they share so many values. Hopefully not, however, the kind displayed by the Evertonians chanting `39 Italians Can't Be Wrong', as they make their way through the streets to or from a night game.
A graffito reads `RIP LFC' on the boarded-up window of a bookmaker's, as we eavesdrop on an Italian class and see a cat peer round a door at a fellow feline hunched on the pavement outside a typical Liverpool terraced house. This sense of acceptance is echoed in the voices we hear over shots of the tide rolling on to a pebbly beach of residents who have come from far and wide and found a home in Liverpool. Demonstrators deplore `racist scum' at a Stop the Boats protest, where the debate with a man denying he's a fascist is heated and forthright.
At an inclusivity rally, a Black woman reminds listeners about Liverpool's shameful connection to the Slave Trade. But she also points out that a Scouse accent is a blend of Welsh, Irish, and Norwegian in celebrating the diversity of the city and its people.
Among the many linking shots of church spires, doorways, shopfronts, and architectural flourishes, we drop into a tattoo parlour and an antique shop before gazing up at the imposing façade of the Exchange Station on Tithebarn Street. Then, we're off for a brief dip into the Bluecoat Chambers and the nearby violin repair shop. A fiddle is among the instruments being played by the various buskers in the City Centre, in a montage that reinforces the sense of diversity that suffuses daily life.
A man explains on the soundtrack that he regards the city as a living being and hopes that others will see it in a similar light and feel better disposed to taking care of it. A derelict house is juxtaposed with a clearance site, as the camera latches on to buildings old and new between stops at a barber's shop and a café. We join the crowds watching the St Patrick's Day Parade, as tricolours flutter to remind Liverpudlians of the long connection with the old country. Another band strikes up and Morris men jingle into sight and there's more musical variety on offer at Outpost on Renshaw Street, as live bands get people bopping.
Over shots of rolling brown water, voices reflect on the memories the city holds for them and the connections it retains with passed loved ones. A woman mentions the DNA of the seafaring tradition giving her a wanderlust that is never stronger than the sense of pleasure at returning home. As we see the Liver Buildings on the waterfront and ride the ferry, a man describes peace he felt at scattering his brother's ashes from the Dazzle vessel designed by Sir Peter Blake (who is linked to the city via the Sgt Pepper cover).
Spring is in the air and an underwater shot peers up at a duck swimming past. After a whistlestop tour of grocery shops and takeaways, we hug the touchline with the manager of Granby Toxteth Athletic, as the players seek to put his pre-match and half-time lessons into practice. Once again, there's no time to linger, as trips to a boxing gym, the Liverpool Bridge Club, and the Princes Road Synagogue bring us to the Nelson Mandela mural on the side of the neighbouring Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre. On the corner is the Greek Orthodox church of St Nicholas, but the next stop is Aintree for the Grand National.
A male voice declares that Liverpool sometimes feels like an old lush sitting in the pub and spouting on about how beautiful she was 30 years ago. He doesn't want to wallow and urges the city to keep moving forward, perhaps on the motorbikes being lined up on the pavement outside a dealership. We pop into a launderette and a cobbler's before we gatecrash a sparsely attended Coronation Party and an open mic poetry session.
After exploring a workshop making Christian statues, we pass through the studios of Liverpool Community Radio to glimpse the interiors of the Shri Radha Krishna Temple and the Ganesh Temple. We're then plunged into the mayhem of the Eurovision Song Contest, as Lviverpool stood in for the Ukrainian capital for a week and demonstrated to the continent and beyond what a uniquely welcoming and inclusive place it can be.
Hither and thither again, a meeting is held to cater a Shrovetide gathering, while we slip into a bookshop and a dress shop before finding ourselves on a sun-dappled path, as a passing cyclist hopes that the camera has caught his good side. The good humour continues, as Everton fans celebrate surviving another brush with relegation and a band sings `Can't Buy Me Love' at the Sommerfest. On a larger scale, Sefton Park hosts the Africa Oyé Festival and there's the expected mix of ages and ethnicities in the crowd.
Next, we're off to see a drag stripper at a queer scratch night at SPEW! But a male voice wonders whether Liverpool isn't at its best when it takes off the make-up put on for the benefit of tourists and becomes itself again as darkness falls. Night clouds give way to bright sunlight, as a new day begins at a bakery. People wander round a modern art expedition and the screen goes yellow, as a man declares himself to be a custodian of the city, as he feels a duty to ensure it's okay. Others concur, as we see a range of wonderful buildings, that you get to know Liverpool and its people by walking, looking, and listening, as there's always something new and, sometimes, the occasional thing disappears forever.
A model poses for an art class before Sefton Park Women's Cricket XI takes to the field. We join a service at a Sikh Gurdwara and sit in on an alcohol support group, as a man grumbles on the voicetrack that Liverpool has lost some of its identity because so many shops in the centre are chains with no connection to the community and he worries that globalisation is going to erase what makes the city stand out.
People attend a book signing, but there's a much bigger crowd at a cat show. There's also a healthy turnout at the Chinese Ribbon Dancing class at Pagoda Arts, although temptation lies just around the corner at a chippy. It's strictly eyes front when it comes to the annual Orange Lodge Parade and focus is also needed at the snooker hall we visit after watching some fishmongers and butchers in action.
As some pause to watch an oud group playing in Sefton Park, others wander around the Palm House. The camera picks up some of the expensive properties around Cressington Esplanade, as a woman admits in voiceover that while she's aware that there's lots wrong with Liverpool, she'll defend it to the hilt if an outside dares to criticise it.
After peering over the shoulder of the North End Sketch Club, we watch bespoke tailor John E. Monk with hushed reverence and squeeze into the delightfully cramped Henry Bohn Books. Pride ingratiates itself to one half of the city with a choral rendition of `You'll Never Walk Alone' before we trundle off to a skateboard park and reach a knitting club via a pet shop. Following on from the anthemic theme, Naomi heads to Anfield for match day with her guide dog, Dotty, while others make for the river bank for a day's fishing.
From quiz night at the Hobo Kiosk in the Baltic Triangle, we fetch up at The Cavern, where a variety of tribute acts warble their way through `Some Other Guy', `Honey Pie', `A Hard Day's Night', `I Am the Walrus', and `Please Please Me'. Outside, people sleep rough, as a window cleaner sops shop fronts, while new builds rise up around him, suggesting he is going to need a longer telescopic pole if he wants the contracts.
Over a travelling shot along a dock road, we hear a woman recalling the loss of her brother when she was 12 years old. She ponders the fact that the current occupants of her family home won't have a clue about the sadness she experienced there and which still binds her to the area, as she has never moved away. But people are on the move on the escalators up and down to the Merseyrail platforms that service everywhere from Chester to Southport. It would be easier to get the bus to Calderstones Park to see the Allerton Oak, which is reputed to be the oldest tree in the North West at around 1000 years old.
A neat cut takes us to the workshop of some woodturners before we do a little line dancing. The owner of a shoe shop proudly discusses his stock, as we drop into some more of those local businesses that are the heartbeat of any community street. A Hallowe'en party is thrown for young kids by Kinship Carers, while an older audience gathers to hear the live Scottish music at the famous Caledonia pub.
Over misty views, a man opines that you can hear the waterways flowing under the city if you press your ear to the ground. A rather awkward cut shows us men kneeling in prayer at the Al Rahma Mosque before we earwig on an Irish language lesson and tap our toes to stepdancing class. Our next stop is a gun shop before Ringo Starr beams out from the cover of his Rewind Forward EP in The Musical Box record shop. A cuter link would have shown us The Casbah (which was once owned by Pete Best's mother, Mona). But a bingo session at the Merseyside Society For Deaf People separates the two Beatle drummers and, no, that isn't the tower of St Peter's in Woolton that ends this segment.
As lights reflect in glistening pavements, voices wonder about the future and hope that the young will seize the right to run the city without looking over their shoulders or seeking permission. Fireworks erupt in the nocturnal sky and eyes young and old gaze upwards. They look straight ahead at the paintings in the Walker Art Gallery, but they will have to peer past the scaffolding covering the frontage to see the statue of the Spirit of Liverpool looking out over the city from her lofty vantage point. Dinosaurs lurk next door on William Brown Street, while peace reigns in the adjoining Picton Library. Even the Willis pipe organ in St George's Hall falls silent.
Seagulls hover for scraps and a man claims that they have become more aggressive as people have become more wasteful. Neglect is also a modern disease and the camera alights on tents in the City Centre, as a woman with a degree and a gift for photography laments the toll that alcohol has taken on her life and the lack of help she's had to rebuild a once promising life. She cries thinking of the artists and musicians she has known on the streets who have never been given a fair chance to use their talents.
A pro-Palestinian march weaves its way to the Queen Victoria monument on Castle Street, but life goes on elsewhere in bakeries, garages, shops, and at the Rice Lane Farm, where pigs munch and geese and chickens gaggle and chuck. We see the chapel at the nearby Walton Park cemetery before dashing off to the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre to hear music in the Tung Auditorium. The crowd is more raucous watching the wrestlers at the Fist Club, but we return to the land of the dead to see a headstone being carved.
Moving on from a bait shop, we call at a cycle shop (whose owner has a stark message about polluted water) and a store specialising in dolls houses. Christmas is coming and kids of all ages gather in front of the Town Hall for the annual Santa Dash. Others visit the Christmas Market with its big wheel decked out in fairylights. New Year revellers share their hopes for 2024 and a cloud passes over a bright moon, as `Auld Lang Syne' fades away on a plaintiff piano.
And thus ends an audiovisual love letter that will make every Scouse exile feel tearfully homesick and defiantly proud. This isn't the first `city symphony' to be filmed here, as Anson Dyer made A Day in Liverpool in 1929. It featured such subsequently lost landmarks as the Overhead Railway, which was fondly known as `the Dockers' Umbrella'. Sadly, iconic spots like Richard Wilson's `Turning the Place Over' installation at Moorfields had gone before Draper embarked upon his odyssey. But viewers will note the absence of postcard snaps of such familiar sites as the Three Graces, St Johns Beacon, the Fab Four statue at the Pier Head, Superlambanana, the Mann Island development, the gents in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, and Antony Gormley's `Another Place' at Blundellsands. The cathedral are also denied a close-up, although the Anglican is mentioned in an anecdote, while a shadow on a wall is suspiciously Paddy's Wigwamesque.
This is because Draper and editor Christie Allanson have eschewed the structures that have featured in Hollywood blockbusters and become something of a cliché in the process. Instead, they have honed in on the quotidian and the quirky in seeking to convey the mindset and mood of a city that has often been written off, but refuses to go away. Rather imposing their own opinions and insights, they have given the floor over to others and Amina Atiq, Sam Batley, Dan Chan, Mick Colligan, Naomi Ditchfield, John Gahan, Jane MacNeil, Dave Nicholas, Ilaria Premici, Rita Smith, Elke Weissmann, Yusuf Yassin, and Ali Zeinali prove eloquent, considered, and sincere vox poppers.
For many, this will serve as a corrective to Terence Davies's highly resistible Of Time and the City (2008). But even admirers of that overrated personal history will have to concede that Draper's visuals are absolutely superb and one can only hope that this astute insiders snapshot will be released on disc so that future generations of Scousers can know how their city looked and sounded during all four seasons of 2023.
SNOW LEOPARD.
Director Pema Tseden died of heart failure on 8 May 2023 at the age of 53. The first Tibetan to study at the Beijing Film Academy, he was so feted for his debut feature, The Silent Holy Stones (2002), that he was allowed to make Soul Searching (2009) in the Tibetan language with an all-Tibetan crew. Following festival success. Tseden bolstered his reputation and earned comparisons with Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami with Old Dog (2011), The Sacred Arrow (2014), Tharlo (2015), Jinpa (2018), and Balloon (2019).
Despite launching the Tibetan New Wave, these pictures were dismayingly little seen in UK cinemas. Indeed, Tseden only made the headlines here after being subjected to draconian treatment by the Chinese police at Xining Airport in 2016, after he returned to the baggage area to find a missing piece of luggage. However, his final completed feature, Snow Leopard, has secured a release and it confirms Tseden as a master film-maker and an astute commentator on the clash within Tibet between the forces of tradition and progress.
While driving through Qinghai province in north-west China, a regional TV crew have a run-in with a wild donkey en route to Drigar, a village where Dradul (Genden Phuntsok) is hoping to cover a story that was brought to his attention by an old classmate. Nyima (Tseten Tashi) is now a monk, but he also takes photographs and wants Dradul to report on a snow leopard that has been captured by his brother, Jinpa (Jinpa), who wants to destroy the predator that has killed nine of his rams. However, their father, Aku (Lopsang Choepel), believes that the snow leopard should be released back into the wild, as it has a cub.
Driver Jikba (Juk Pa), cameraman Wang-xu (Xiong Ziqi), and producer Yang-jin (Tso Wangdon) are awed by the sight of the big cat, as it prowls the sheep pen in which it has been confined with the corpses of its victims. But Jinpa throws stones at it and raves when Dradul tries to interview him about his grievance. His father is more measured in claiming that their ancestors had a reverence for snow leopards that they would do well to heed.
They are distracted, however, when Nyima scales the wall and stands in front of the snow leopard because he thinks he can communicate it. As their eyes meet, we see a flashback showing the snow leopard acting under the influence of the full moon in leaping into the pen and savaging several animals before a cloud covers the moon and the cat lies down after its bloody exertions. However, Nyima also thinks back to when he was a younger man and his father had captured a snow leopard and strung it up for a whipping. Feeling sorry for the creature, Nyima had reassured his father that he would do the whipping. But he cut the cat down and they made eye contact before it ran away into the mountains.
Suddenly, Nyima feels himself being lassooed and he is hauled out of the pen by his anxious relatives, who tell him that the snow leopard was about to pounce. They go inside for tea and Dradul ticks off Wang-xu for asking Nyima why he took such a reckless risk. Jinpa is still furious and is further enraged when the local official tasked with assessing his compensation payment puts off the visit and tells him to keep hold of the snow leopard until he arrives. Nyima offers to sell his camera to pay his brother for the rams if he lets the cat go, but Jinpa refuses.
Determined to get the best story (and cross with Wang-xu for turning off the camera when Nyima was in the pen), Dradul cuts short a phone call with his dancer girlfriend and hurries after Jinpa. Having placed barbed wire around the top of the wall, he asks a friend with a JCB to use the scoop to lift the living sheep out of the pen. They haggle over a price, but it soon becomes clear that this is a fool's errand and the digger driver leaves with 500 yuan after only retrieving a single dead ram.
After Niyma and one of the farm workers leaves the ram carcass for the cub to eat, the crew surprise Wang-xu with a birthday cake (although Jinpa grumpily refuses a piece). Dradul gets another call from his girlfriend, who is cross with him for not picking up and doesn't believe he's as busy as he claims. He shows the family a video clip of a snow leopard hunting a goat that escapes by falling into a river. When they show interest, he cues up a BBC documentary clip about a lonely leopard leaving its scent in the hope of finding a mate.
Even Jinpa is intrigued and Nyima goes out to the pen to commune with the leopard, as dusk sets in. He recalls being lost in the mountains on retreat and the snow leopard finding an recognising him. Nyima had given the creature permission to eat him when he died. But the snow leopard sidles up to him and nuzzles his arm in a signal to climb upon his back. It bounds off and deposits the half-dead monk in front of his family, who are praying in the snow for his safe return. Aku looks to the heavens in wonder and gratitude, but Jinpa retains his customary scowl.
The next day, Nyima takes Dradul into the hills to change the film in a infrared camera he's positioned among the rocks. Despite the reporter being out of breath after the climb, he admires the sight of the shimmering Tongri Tsonak Lake. As they drive back, Nyima reveals that he earned the nickname `the Snow Leopard Monk' after some of his footage went viral and he was presented with a state-of-the-art camera to film the local wildlife.
Returning to the farm, they find Jinpa arguing with Dorje (Gengdan), the village headman who has come to assess his compensation claim. He is so frustrated by Jinda's ranting that he calls the local cop, Captain Zhang (Dang Hao), and asks him to come and adjudicate. While they wait, Nyima and Dradul watch footage from the camera of the snow leopard and its cub and the reporter sends it to his girlfriend, who thinks it's cute and accepts that he's on a worthwhile story.
While everyone warms up with a noodle stew, Jinpa and his wife (Deqin Yangzong) take some bread out to Dorje and his assistant. They insist they're fine with their own food, but she coaxes them into eating with her husband. After a couple of bites, the cops arrive and Dorje has to translate for Zhang because he doesn't speak Tibetan. The captain explains that the snow leopard is `a first-class protected animal' and has Jinpa held down after he refuses to release it. Fearing his son is going to be arrested, Aku offers him the cash he has been saving for a pilgrimage to Lhasa to tide him over before official compensation comes through. But Jinpa turns it down and refuses to free the cat, even though he is now at risk of serious trouble.
Aku assures Zhang that the creature will be set free and he drags Jinpa to the pen. Nyima opens the gate and the snow leopard crouches down beside him so the monk can stroke his head. It brushes against him and does the same to Aku, who also pets it. Jinpa refuses to follow suit, however, and the cat growls quietly before slinking off and rushing up the slope to rejoin its cub.
The spirit of Kiarostami is evident throughout this amusing, but deadly serious allegorical satire, as Tseden uses the tension between the farming family and the protective, but violent snow leopard to examine the relationship between Tibet and China. With the language barrier being only one of the many problems, the disconnect between the country folk and the city slickers and the state officials is troubling. But Tseden uses Jinpa's intemperate fuming for balance, as he concedes that the old ways might not always provide modern solutions to the complexities of daily living, especially where human and animal nature are concerned. As Dradul replies when Aku laments that the snow leopard's world is very cruel, `Actually, the human world is just the same.'
The snow leopard means different things to the various characters, with the Buddhist Nyima investing it with a spiritual potency that his brother is unable to see because it threatens his already precarious livelihood. To the cop, it represents another rule to be imposed upon the Tibetan people, while to Dradul its significance is solely newsworthy until he sees the hidden camera footage that gives him a new perspective and helps patch up his romance. The reliance on CGI slightly undermines the big cat's wondrousness and makes its interactions feel faked. But Tseten Tashi responds so humbly (in a monochrome segment that draws on Jamyang Tsering's short story, `Snow Leopard, or The Last Poem') that most will be willing to suspend disbelief and be seduced by the fable's poignancy.
Following the lead of the TV crew by having Belgian cinematographer Matthias Delvaux use a handheld camera, Tseden opts for a busy intimacy that contrasts with the majestic Himalayan vistas. He also uses the outsiders to mirror his own status as a storyteller on unfamiliar territory who wants to understand the issues facing the hot-headed and embattled Jinpa, while also being able to see other sides of the dilemma. With Dukar Tserang's percussive score reinforcing the blurring lines between beauty and bestiality, this is a feature that makes deceptive demands, as seemingly minor incidents bristle with significance. But fate decreed that it also became a sad farewell from a fine film-maker.
PALAZZINA LAF.
Working conditions at the ILVA steel company in Taranto in the 1990s provide the inspiration for actor Michele Riondino's directorial debut, Palazzina LAF. With an acronym meaning `Laminatoio a freddo' (which translates as `cold rolling mill'), this is the latest offering from the ever-astute folk at CinemaItaliaUK and Riondino will hold a Q&A session after the screening at the Regent Street Cinema on Sunday 24 November.
It's 1997 and Caterino Lamanna (Michele Riondino) works on the coke oven battery at the recently privatised ILVA steel plant in Taranto. Girlfriend Anna (Eva Cela)is forever giving him grief about going out, but he is content to take the bus every day and clean the coils, even though several men at the plant have died through accidents and work-related cancer. Union rep Renato Morra (Fulvio Pepe) tries to organise a strike to protest about safety conditions and new rosters, but Caterino isn't a political animal.
While waiting at the bus stop, he is offered a lift by personnel manager, Giancarlo Basile (Elio Germano), who asks after Caterino's eminent uncle. He also suggests that he need not slave away on the battery all his life and offers him the post of foreman and a company car if he keeps tabs on the union activity on the shop floor.
In order to throw his workmates off the scent, Caterino gets a black eye resisting the security at a strike meeting and buddies up with Aldo Romanazzi (Michele Sinisi), who is also being offered a new role by Basile and his sneering superior, Moretti (Paolo Pierobon). Anna is thrilled by Caterino's sudden good fortune and hints that they should go steady.
While they're out driving, however, they see Romanazzi arguing with a cop at a traffic light and he forgets his licence after Caterino sorts things out. When he tries to return it, he discovers that Romanazzi has been transferred to Palazzina LAF and he is so envious of the fact that nobody there does a stroke of work that he asks Basile to transfer him in return for more information on what Romanazzi and Morra are cooking up with a lawyer in town.
Finding himself an office, Caterino steers clear of the others, as they play cards or cook to keep themselves occupied. When Morra comes to report on a law suite, Caterino meets Basile in a bar to pass on the news. He persuades his ailing uncle to let him take over his town apartment so that he can move off what remains of the small family farm (where the sheep are dying from poisoned grass). When the security guards come to confiscate all the LAF leisure equipment, no one suspects Caterino of being the informant, even though he doesn't seem concerned that his fellow inmates fear going stir crazy with nothing to do.
The next day, Basile's secretary, Rosalba Liaci (Marina Limosani) fetches up in LAF for making a mistake on a contract. Caterino is consoling her when Basile arrives and admonishes them all for being so idle when there are jobs available at the plant. He ticks off Franco Orlando (Gianni D'Addario) for burping down phone at him each lunchtime (even though the line isn't connected) and offers him and others work for which they are not qualified, even though they are all skilled in their chosen fields. When Morra comes to put the union case, Basile humiliates him by revealing that he had signed up to such a strategy in a recent agreement and everyone loses faith in the rep's ability to help their cause when he admits that the lawyer has dropped their case.
When Romanazzi invites Caterino to supper with Morra and some of their other workmates, he shows them an abusive flyer that Basile had taken objection to. Morra knows that they haven't been circulated yet and suspects that Caterino is the mole. But he is swept off the premises by security the next day after the template was found on his computer and the PC expert who planted it tells Caterino that he has had enough of spying, as Basile is getting out of control.
When they plan to hand a letter to the archbishop when he comes to say mass at the mill, one of the quieter members of the LAF exiles dictates the contents and Tiziana Lagioia (Vanessa Scalera) volunteers to hand it over. However, Caterino takes a rough draft from the bin and hands it to Basile, who has the LAF contingent closely guarded during the service. When Rosalba tries to pass on the missive at communion, Basile intimidates her before taking the host with a demonic grin.
He has Rosalba fired and, when Caterino comes to protest (having had a nightmare about being Judas in a Holy Week procession through the town), he discovers that someone had reported ILVA to the public prosecutor (Anna Ferruzzo), who comes to LAF and is amazed to find 79 lost souls shuffling on to the corridor to greet her. After she interviews people at the plant, including Basile and Moretti, she presses a case against the company and everyone is aghast when Caterino takes the stand and boasts that he was helping management save ILVA by reporting on activities that could damage the firm. His LAF colleagues are appalled and Anna leaves the courtroom in disgust, as he admits being in cahoots with Basile, but remains clueless that he has done anything wrong, even when the judge advises him to get a lawyer.
Although he goes back to ILVA and rejoins the non-skilled workforce, Caterino has nowhere to go but the LAF building. He keeps coffee and pasta in his locker and a newcomer sees him coughing badly while he shaves in the washroom. Leaving Caterino sat in the office with the red flowers grown in pots on the window still from seeds given to him by Rosalba, he stares blankly into the distance, as captions describe how ILVA was found guilty of workplace violence and how the right to work is still enshrined in the Italian constitution.
Following on from Argentinian documentarist Victor Cruz's Taranto (2021), this is the second film about the ILVA scandal. But Michele Riondino is on familiar ground, as he hails from the Apulian city and his father worked at the plant. Writing with Maurizio Braucci, he also roots the action in Alessandro Leogrande's book, Fumo sulla città, which provided a stark insight into Taranto's recent history.
Although Caterino resembles a Sacha Baron Cohen creation, he has clearly been modelled on Lulù Massa, the exemplary employee played by Gian Maria Volontè in Elio Petri's The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1972), who is adored by the bosses and loathed by his colleagues and the union activists and students hoping to bring about change at the factory where Lulù has worked for half his life.
This won the Palme d'or at Cannes and Palazzina LAF also had a good night at the 69th David di Donatello Awards, as Riondino and Elio Germano took Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, while Riondino was also nominated for his screenplay and for Best New Director. The film even won the prize for Best Song with Diodato's `La mia terra'.
The leads are excellent, as Germano exploits Riondino's ignorance, indolence, and moral indifference to prevent the union from exposing the nefarious management practices. But the ensemble work is equally impressive, as distinctive characters are deftly sketched within the restricted screen time afforded by a script that opts not to delve too deeply into the ethical, social, and political complexities of the situation.
Cinematographer Claudio Cofrancesco also makes fine use of the industrial architecture and the views showing how much the plant dominates the skyline. The closing archive footage shows how closely production designer Sabrina Balestra recreated the LAF environment, while Teho Teardo's score puts a brass band spin on its Morriconean motifs. Moreover, it binds the film to another study of capitalism clashing with the community, Mark Herman's Brassed Off (1996).
MEDIHA.
In August 2014, Islamic State militants attacked Yazidi settlements around the Iraqi town of Sinjar. Some 3000 were killed, while another 7000 were forcibly conscripted or sold into sex slavery. Among the latter were nine year-old Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad from the village of Til Qasab, who lost her father before being separated from her mother and three younger brothers.
Film-maker Hasan Oswald heard about the teenager's plight from a translator while on an assignment in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq. As she was keen to tell her own story, he taught her how to use the camera. But the resulting documentary, Mediha, also follows a bid to track down the 15 year-old's mother and brother who are among the 3000 still missing from the IS onslaught.
First seen filming a butterfly flitting between dandelions, Mediha has spent two years in the Rwanga camp for displaced persons since being reunited with siblings Ghazwan and Adnan, who were rescued by her Uncle Omar Khalaf. As she wanders round the camp, she films her brothers playing with some chicks and shows us video footage of life in Sinjar and explains how the Yazidis are regarded as devil worshippers by Islamic extremists.
Home movie footage contains images of Ibrahim, the father Mediha presumes to be dead, and her mother, Afaf, who looks just like the daughter who finds it hard to talk about her ordeal and would rather retreat into quiet places. As she speaks, however, she wonders how her hearers would react to events that have left her so traumatised that they have changed the way she talks.
Her family and community have told Mehida to try and forget about what happened. But she wants the facts to be known because those in power refuse to listen to the truth and she dreams of being able to testify. For now, however, she is afraid that the man who held her captive will try to find her. She misses her mother and brother Barzan, who are on a list held by Bahzad Farhan, a rescuer who compiles evidence of slave trading by ISIS and who laments the fact that no funds are made available to help him track down the Yazidis still missing.
He comes to visit the family and the boys are pleased to see their rescuer. Omar informs him that another rescuer, Bashar Malallah Murad, had located Barzan (who has had his name changed) before he was taken to Turkey. Mehida recalls caring for him for a month before he was taken away and feels as much like a mother as a sister to him. She now looks after her other brothers and chides them when they don't take good care of their toys.
Returning to their village for the first time in five years, the siblings look around the family home and Ghazwan gets upset when he finds a photo of their father. They also see Barzn's crib and Mediha remembers where she had been sitting when ISIS fighters arrived. It's a sobering visit, with Mediha being harassed for being Yazidi by some boys while watching her brothers swimming, and the siblings head back to Rwanga no longer being able to imagine living somewhere they had always associated with security and love. Over a campfire, the boys vow vengeance on those who hurt them, but Omar persuades them that Yazidis are peaceful people who rise above such things.
As Mehida watches footage of her parents on their wedding day, she admits that she doesn't want children of her own. She worries about what her mother might have been through and Bahzad wonders whether she has been taken to the Al Hol prison camp that houses the women who were abandoned by ISIS after their defeat. He also speculates about whether Afaf has had children with her captor and suggests that she might stay with them because they would not be accepted by the Yazidis and would have no one else to take care of them.
Having made contact with some spies inside Al Hol, Dr Neman Ghafouri agrees to travel to Knanik in North-Eastern Syria to see if she can get some information on Afaf. She worries that she will have had a child or been sold on by her abuser, but she is also dismayed by the UN's failure to locate Yazidi women within the camp, as they have remained in slavery.
Back in Rwanga, Mehida has to stop speaking to the camera when she hears the Adhan and she covers her ears and screws up her eyes because the call to prayer brings back such bad memories. She visits a doctor who diagnoses her with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and gives her medication. The pills make her sleepy and she worries about having nightmares about airstrikes and her ISIS tormentors. Although she likes listening to music, she is not allowed to sing or dance and Mehida envies her brothers, who bear no psychological scars, and play football, swim, and climb tries like normal kids.
While Bashar goes to Ankara to find news of Barzan, Dr Neman travels to Qamishli in Northern Syria to contact a female spy in Al Hol, who is convinced she has seen Afaf (who has been renamed Um Sana) in the camp. It's very risky to film in ISIS territory, but the crew accompany Neman to her meeting after a rendezvous in the bazaar. Meanwhile, Barjas reports that Afaf has had two children and has gone to Turkey with a trafficker, either because she has been brainwashed or wants to stay with her kids. Either way, finding her is going to be more difficult and Neman claims such women are having to make the modern equivalent of Sophie's Choice. Moreover, if they do return, they are made to feel guilty about what happened to them while being forbidden to discuss their pain.
While Ghazwan and Adnan play beheading games for the camera, Mediha has decided to pursue a legal case against her captor. She reveals that she was sold four times from the age of 10 and cried whenever she went to a new person. The captor she is able to identify is Abu Yousef and Mehida describes how she slashed her wrists and took pills in an effort to end her misery. He sold her after about a year, but she is now able to launch a prosecution against him and she looks at the camera with a mixture of bewilderment and relief at having been able to share part of her ordeal.
Time passes and Mediha becomes something of a media celebrity for pursuing her captor. The family also makes news when Omar brings Barzan back from the Turkmen couple who had taken him to Ankara. They agree to let him go in return for immunity. However, while the boy is excited at seeing his siblings, he has become used to his `mother' and pleads with Mediha to be allowed to return to her. She explains how Ghazwan and Adnan also had to readjust to being home and the film ends with her posing her brothers for a portrait.
Closing captions report Dr Neman's death from Covid-19 while rescuing nine Yazidi women from a camp. Afaf was not among them, but the search goes on, as does Mediha's case against Abu Yousef, even though she has little prospect of victory. Such stark facts leaves viewers with little to feel optimistic about where the 3000 missing Yazidis are concerned. But such is Mediha's humbling courage and the selfless perseverance of the rescuers that this heartfelt documentary (which has been co-executive produced by Emma Thompson) can't help but make a deep and lasting impression.
The decision to employ thriller tropes to present the Al Hol visit feels rather misjudged, especially as Henry Ross Bloomfield's score works a bit too hard to generate suspense. But, otherwise, Oswald and editor Kaitlyn Plum ably switch between the efforts of the rescuers and the intimate footage filmed by and featuring Mediha, as she seeks to reconcile herself to the losses and abuse that she has endured at such a young age. They also deftly highlight the bigotry that Yazidis have to put up with (as well as the prejudices they also impose upon returning women like Mediha) and the reluctance of the wider world community to do something constructive about their situation.
Considering she is little more than a girl herself, Mediha's fortitude is self-evident. She has also had to become wise, resourceful, and compassionate beyond her years. Yet she also has a sense of fun, which comes across in the final shots of her dancing. One can only hope that she is able to keep moving in the right direction while occasionally looking back to happier times.
THE MAGIC REINDEER: SAVING SANTA'S SLEIGH.
There's a distinct possibility that a number of the youngsters who saw The Flight Before Christmas (2008) now have kids of their own. It's been 12 years since audiences last encountered Santa's wannabe helper, Niko, in The Magic Reindeer (2012). But Finnish animator Kari Juusonen (this time in conjunction with Dane Jørgen Lerdam) catches up with the flying calf again in The Magic Reindeer: Saving Santa's Sleigh, which is also known as Niko: Beyond the Northern Lights.
Ignoring the warnings of Julius the flying squirrel (Dermot Magennis), adolescent reindeer Niko (Matthew Whelan) is having fun with his half-siblings, Jonni (Harry Weld-Moore) and Lilli (Lucy Smith), when they see the Flying Forces out for a practice flight before pulling Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. Father Prancer (Paul Tylak) is a key member of the team and he's exceedingly proud when Dasher (Roger Gregg) informs his son that he's ready to begin his training to join the squadron. Jonni, Lilli, and their mother, Oona (Susan Slott), are sad that Niko won't be able to spend Christmas with them. But, even though Oona wonders if Niko is still a bit too young to dedicate himself to the annual mission, she realises that he has to fulfil his destiny.
As he has been Niko's guide through life, Julius is upset that he leaves without saying goodbye. But Wilma the white weasel (Aileen Mythen) offers words of comfort and suggests that they tag along to Santa's headquarters to ensure that Niko has settled in. He is excited to be flying with the big boys. However, his automatic inclusion is threatened when Stella (Emma Jenkins) arrives out of the blue and invokes the ancient rule that entitles her to compete with a Flying Forces candidate in three challenges.
Despite Stella's bristling confidence, Prancer assures Niko that he has what it takes to beat an outsider. But the young reindeer helps his rival when she seems set to plummet into a waterfall during the first race and is repaid by being pipped at the post. He vows to focus on the prize during the second trial, which involves passing through the Northern Lights. Despite being warned not to open his eyes once inside the green glow, Niko experiences disturbing visions and seems set to be defeated when Stella plucks him from his reverie and he rouses himself to secure victory by a whisker.
Declaring it too late for the third race, Dasher leads the Flying Forces to their quarters, where they party hard before crashing out for the night. Feeling guilty about Stella, Niko agrees to show her Santa's sleigh, which is kept in a secure vault that can only be accessed by pulling a series of levers in strict sequence. She is touched by his kindness and he is taken by her ambition to become the first female member of the Flying Forces. However, his heart is set on following in his father's hoofprints, as he once won a challenge and is now considered the squad's hero.
Next morning, Niko is woken by the sound of an alarm and he is dismayed to discover that Stella has stolen Santa's sleigh. Humiliated when Dasher and Prancer lecture him, Niko is grateful to see Julius and Wilma, who insist that he can't be blamed for having his kindess betrayed. However, while the Flying Forces head off in different directions to find the sleigh before Santa needs it that night, Niko remembers Stella mentioning something about the frozen northlands and he flies off, with Julius and Wilma loyally sticking by him.
Stella lands with Santa's sleigh to be greeted by her father, Ilmar (Dermot Magennis), who has formed the Storm Forces in the hope of one day triumphing over Prancer. In their youth, they were inseparable best friends until they went up against each other in the Flying Force challenge. Ilmar had caught his antlers in a tree trunk during the deciding race, but Prancer had refused to help him because he was so bent on victory. But Ilmar is now set to exact his revenge by ensuring that Christmas will be cancelled.
Son Morten is desperate to please his father, but resents the fact that Ilmar chose Stella to carry out his master plan. He still has much to learn, however, as does Niko, who gets a pep talk about valuing friendship from Julius, who also highlights the need to learn from mistakes. Niko heeds these lessons as he prepares to fly over the Eternal Sea, leaving Julius to cope with the fact that he has been taken for a long-promised leader by a colony of lemmings after he finds them some tasty moss to eat. They follow behind, as Julius and Wilma are confronted by a wolverine, who falls off a ledge while preparing to pounce because he's allergic to lemmings.
Niko, meanwhile, has found the sleigh in a network of underground caves. He is furious with Stella, but she is ready to help him save Christmas because she feels let down by her father. When Niko boasts about Prancer being a hero, she tells him the truth about the trial and he is disappointed in him that he swears he will never speak to him again. However, Prancer has realised that Niko has gone to the northlands and he and Dasher cross the Eternal Sea to find him.
Outwitting Morten, Stella and Niko hitch themselves to the sleigh and make their escape. Prancer arrives to acknowledge his guilt to Ilmar, but they still lock antlers in the woods, as their offspring fly towards the Northern Lights. Once again forgetting to keep his eyes closed. Niko has a hallucinatory argument with his father and is powerless to stop Morten from stealing the sleigh and setting it on a course for the Moon.
Back in the forest, the reindeer males are too busy rucking for supremacy to notice that they have been surrounded by ravenous wolverines. Luckily, the lemmings have followed Julius and they induce a sneezing fit among the predators and Prancer and Ilmar agree to bury old differences in order to save Niko and Stella, who are flying out of their depth above the Northern Lights in a bid to reach the sleigh. They arrive just in time, with Stella on the verge of unconsciousness as Ilmar reaches her. Still hoping to impress his father, Morten causes all of the presents to fall off the sleigh and they are dispersed over such a wide area that Prancer and Ilmar are ready to give up on trying to retrieve them. But, once again, the lemmings save the day by scurrying far and wide to have everything back in its proper place by the time Santa strides out for his delivery run. As the Flying Forces have agreed to abandon ancient tradition and allow the Storm Forces to pull the sleigh, they head home to spend Christmas with their families and Niko nuzzles his parents and siblings as he savours the joys of the season and the special feeling of being young and carefree.
Pleasingly free of cornball ditties and bantering quippage, this is the pick of the Niko trilogy, even though grown-ups might get more out of its sensible messages than their young charges. The point about success being empty if it damages friendship is well made, as are the lessons on father/child bonds, the need to take the positives from mistakes, and the importance of traditions reflecting changing societal attitudes in order to retain their relevance. But the best part about the screenplay by Juusonen, Marteinn Thorisson, and Hannu Tuomainen is that it doesn't talk down to younger viewers.
That said, they may find the action a bit pedestrian in places and overly involved in others. The business with Julius and the lemmings (which feels like a Minionesque variation on the key idea of Monty Python's Life of Brian, 1979) is amusing, but it does slow the story down, while the bid to retrieve the sleigh from the Moon's pull and save Christmas lacks suspense, despite the danger faced by the reindeer at high altitude. Nevertheless, the happy ending is neatly done (despite not being particularly magical), while the CGI animation is serviceable, although the sequence in which Niko and Stella negotiate the sleigh through some subterranean caverns has the video game feel that has become de rigueur in so many kidpix.
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