New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2014 General Forum thread

[Chris Knipp]

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2014: EARLY SELECTIONS

As before the FSLC/MoMA selection committee has announced some "early selections." The whole program will come later. (Feb. 14, 2014)


THE DOUBLE


The Double | Richard Ayoade
UK | 2013 | 93min
Richard Ayoade has built a loyal following with his hilariously off characters, notably the one he plays in the TV series The IT Crowd and those that inhabit his 2010 directorial debut, Submarine. Starring Jesse Eisenberg as both Simon James, a humdrum worker drone, and his gregarious doppelgänger, James Simon, the film is set within both the claustrophobic confines of Simon’s bureaucratic workplace and his paranoid mind.

Of Horses and Men | Benedikt Erlingsson
Iceland | 2014 | 80min
The debut feature by celebrated stage director Benedikt Erlingsson announces the arrival of an innovative new cinematic voice. Set almost exclusively outdoors amid stunning Icelandic landscapes, the film features in equal parts a cast of exquisite short-legged Icelandic horses and human characters—including the terrific Ingvar E. Sigurdsson and Charlotte Bøving as meant-for-each-other but put-upon lovers—illuminating with great inventive flair the relationship between man and beast.

Salvation Army (L'armée du salut) | Abdellah Taïa
France/Morocco/Switzerland | 2013 | 81min
Like the book it’s based on—Abdellah Taïa’s own 2006 landmark novel—the Moroccan author’s directorial debut is a bracing, deeply personal account of a young gay man’s awakening that avoids both cliché and the trappings of autobiography. With a clear-eyed approach, devoid of sentimentality, this wholly surprising bildungsfilm explores what it means to be an outsider, and with the help of renowned cinematographer Agnès Godard, Taïa finds a film language all his own: at once rigorous and poetic, and worthy of Robert Bresson in its concreteness and lucidity.

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness | Ben Rivers and Ben Russell
Estonia/France | 2013 | 98min
As collaborators, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell, two intrepid and nomadic talents of experimental film and art, have created one of the most bewitching cinematic experiences to come along in a great while. In A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, Robert A.A. Lowe, the celebrated musician behind Lichens and Om, gives a strangely affecting, perhaps even trance-inducing performance as the film’s Parsifal figure, a quixotic man who embarks on a quest for utopia—the holy grail of infinite truth, self-knowledge, and spiritual connectedness.

Stop the Pounding Heart | Roberto Minervini
Belgium/Italy/USA | 2013 | 100min
Sara (Sara Carlson, playing herself) is part of a devout Christian goat-farming family with 12 children, all home-schooled and raised with strict moral guidance from the Scriptures. Set in a rural community that has remained isolated from technological advances and lifestyle influence—no phones, TVs, computers, or drunken teen brawls—the subtly narrative film follows Sara and Colby, two 14-year-olds with vastly different backgrounds who are quietly drawn to each other. By presenting an authentic, impartial portrayal of the Texas Bible Belt, Minervini allows for the humanity and complexity behind the stereotypes to show through.

Story of My Death (Història de la meva mort) | Albert Serra
Spain/France | 2013 | 148min
No one else working in movies today makes anything remotely like the Catalan maverick Albert Serra, a cerebral oddball and improbable master of cinematic antiquity. Known for his unconventional adaptations of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (Honor of the Knights) and the Biblical parable of the Three Kings (Birdsong), Serra here stages the 18th-century passage from rationalism to romanticism as a tussle between two figures of legend, Casanova and Dracula.

Trap Street (Shuiyin Jie) | Vivian Qu
China | 2013 | 94min
Notions of surveillance and observation are turned inside out in Trap Street, producer Vivian Qu’s first turn as a director. Noir in tone, and a great representation of the newest generation of Chinese filmmakers, the film is a bold story of who is really watching who that, while firmly embedded in the current cultural context of China, could happen to any one of us.