It’s interesting to see a documentary exploring the challenges for a new mother returning to work – and when that new mother happens to be a prima ballerina, the results are especially fascinating. Laura Kaehr’s engrossing documentary Becoming Giulia won the Audience Award at the Zurich Film Festival, and follows the charismatic Giulia Tonelli, an Italian dancer at the Zurich Opera. Shot over three years, it’s an insight into her profession as well as a portrait of parenthood and, as the film evolves, life in lockdown.
Four months after giving birth, Tonelli is preparing to come back to the stage. We see her orderly life at home with her husband, and the time they enjoy with their baby. We see the joy and nerves when she returns to the Opera House. “This is like being back home again,” she says, before adding, “I’ve never been away from the stage this long.
Four months after giving birth, Tonelli is preparing to come back to the stage. We see her orderly life at home with her husband, and the time they enjoy with their baby. We see the joy and nerves when she returns to the Opera House. “This is like being back home again,” she says, before adding, “I’ve never been away from the stage this long.
- 10/25/2022
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
“Neighbours,” the story of a Kurdish Syrian border village where Arabic and Jewish families find themselves pitted against each other but still manage to thwart authoritarian madness, is more than a personal story to writer-director Mano Khalil.
The feature, shot on authentic locations with accurate dialects from the region and its 1980s setting, is screening in the Camerimage Film Festival director debut section – after a decades-long development process. The cinematographer on the film was Stéphane Kuthy.
“The idea of this film came when I was still studying film directing in the former Czechoslovakia,” Khalil says, “with the script completed some 25 years ago.”
The story had to be developed outside Khalil’s homeland in Kurdistan, he explains, because “I made a short documentary called ‘The Place Where God Sleeps.’” The film won an award in Germany in 1993 “and I was arrested in Syria because of that.”
Eventually, like his characters in “Neighbours,...
The feature, shot on authentic locations with accurate dialects from the region and its 1980s setting, is screening in the Camerimage Film Festival director debut section – after a decades-long development process. The cinematographer on the film was Stéphane Kuthy.
“The idea of this film came when I was still studying film directing in the former Czechoslovakia,” Khalil says, “with the script completed some 25 years ago.”
The story had to be developed outside Khalil’s homeland in Kurdistan, he explains, because “I made a short documentary called ‘The Place Where God Sleeps.’” The film won an award in Germany in 1993 “and I was arrested in Syria because of that.”
Eventually, like his characters in “Neighbours,...
- 11/4/2021
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
A farming couple trying to live an ecologically pure and ethical life are stymied by nature and their own uncontainable inner forces in Bettina Oberli’s solid and engaging “With the Wind.” Handsomely shot in the Swiss Jura mountains, the film nicely explores the unpredictable intersection of ideals and passion, making a parallel between mankind’s inability to control the natural world and human fallibility when it comes to keeping emotions in check. Although the male lead gets little scope for development, the female characters experience a meaningful trajectory, resulting in a satisfying drama that could do good business in European markets.
A quote from British writer Rebecca West about our species’ self-destructiveness — “Only part of us is sane,” it begins — acts as a concise introduction for what’s to come, implying a turbulence matched by a rain storm that forms a backdrop to the delivery of a stillborn calf.
A quote from British writer Rebecca West about our species’ self-destructiveness — “Only part of us is sane,” it begins — acts as a concise introduction for what’s to come, implying a turbulence matched by a rain storm that forms a backdrop to the delivery of a stillborn calf.
- 8/13/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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