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A majority of film critics and viewers tend to dismiss Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky’s films in their initial assessments, especially in recent decades. Why is that? To answer that question, one needs to know some key facts about Konchalovsky and the three phases of his career. Who is Konchalovsky? F ew know or recall that Konchalovsky was partly responsible for the early masterpieces of Andrei Tarkovsky— The Steamroller and The Violin; Ivan’s Childhood ; and Andrei Rublyev . As a screenplay-writer, Konchalovsky collaborated with Tarkovsky (his film school classmate) as a co-scriptwriter on these films as well as for other directors’ films: Shaken Ajmanov’s The End of the Ataman (1971) and Tolomush Okeev’s The Fierce One (1974). He also contributed, as a screenplay-writer, to his half-brother Nikita Mikhalkov’s film A Slave of Love (1976). Many of these films dealt with children and childhood. This was the specifically highlighted in his own debut film as a director and co-scriptwr...

      “I wanted what the characters don’t say to each other to be more important than what they do say to each other” ---Director Mauro Mancini’s statement to interviewer Davide Abbatescianni, in Cineuropa , after the film competed in the International Critics’ Week at the 2020 Venice film festival D ebut feature films are, in most cases, interesting films because the directors invest a lot of fresh thought as in the prime examples of Welles, Melville, Chabrol, Ridley Scott, Mike Nichols, Spielberg and the Coen brothers. So too, Mauro Mancini’s first feature film Thou Shalt Not Hate makes an unusual impact where spoken words take a back seat and silent actions speak louder. Alessandro Gassmann in the Venice award-winning role of the reputed Jewish surgeon The hate in the film refers to the continuing hatred over generations between the Nazis/the neo-Nazis and the survivors of the holocaust (and their progenies), surfacing in contemporary Italy. The strength of the fi...

A bout Endlessness won the 2019 Best Director award at the Venice film festival and the European film award for the best visual effects supervisor. It is a film that offers value for a contemplative viewer rather than a casual one. It is not a film likely to be on the best film lists of most film reviewers. All his films are based on his own original screenplays, with a distinct style of his own. Andersson’s films offer what a Scorsese or a Tarantino film almost never offers. He creates scenes often using a building structure to underscore ideas. In a typical Andersson film, you will have characters outside a building looking at people inside it and vice versa. His films have individuals who deliver monologues at the camera (the viewer), while others, bar a few, in earshot seem to ignore the spoken words as though they are in a tableaux. These are obvious touches of the theatre of the absurd.   Sometimes in Andersson’s films (e.g.,  You the Living) buildings seem to move as a...

E rmanno Olmi (1931-2018) is not often discussed on the same plane as Orson Welles or Andrei Tarkovsky. Yet they have certain similarities in their body of film output.   Olmi made 20 feature films and bagged over 50 international awards. His best work The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) is as awesome as Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941). Olmi’s film was based on his own original script, which he directed, cinematographed, edited and for which he personally picked an array of non-professional actors. For Citizen Kane , Welles had co-written an original script with Herman Mankiewicz, directed, produced, acted in the main role, and chosen his own cast of professional actors (most of them making their film debuts) and crew.   Olmi’s film won the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival for the best feature film; Welles won a solitary Oscar for the co-written original screenplay. Olmi and Tarkovsky have common streaks, too; both are evidently theistic, Olmi a fervent Roman Catho...

“ Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously.   Hope and despair.   A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself .”     “How easily they talk about prayer, those who have never really prayed.”   ----- thoughts written in the diary of Rev Ernest Toller, via “voice over”,   in First Reformed, scripted by Paul Schrader A ny evaluation of the film First Reformed would be considerably enhanced by some knowledge about the American Trappist monk, theologian, social activist Thomas Merton (1915-68), who had interacted with Buddhist monks, and   studied Hinduism, Jainism, Sufism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and published his thoughts in his bestselling   autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain and other works. In the film First Reformed , the principal figure Rev Ernest Toller (Ethan Hawke) writes a diary (read by "voice over") on his thoughts just as Merton had put his ...

H annah is the second film of Italian director Andrea Pallaoro—and, according to him, it is the second film of a trilogy of films he is making which appear to be having a common   thread of   a woman   internally reassessing her relationship to her family members over time.   One would often expect a female director to grapple with such subjects but here is a male director getting inside the female mind.   All three films in the trilogy are original scripts, all co-scripted   by him and his friend Orlando Tirado, a team that has worked not only on the trilogy but also on an early short film called Wunderkammer (2008) again on that very theme. His debut film and the first of the trilogy was Medeas (2013) which won him awards at Venice, Tbilisi, Marrakesh, Nashville, and Palm Spring international film festivals.   His cinematographer Canadian/American Chayse Irvin won the prestigious Cameraimage cinematography prize and a Special Jury prize at the Nashvi...