Elvis biopic, Ukrainian docu, Spain’s Oscar entry part of Delhi’s Habitat film festival
Platon Theodoris’s absurdist film The Lonely Spirits Variety Hour (2022), about a verbose intellectual who runs a radio show from his parent’s garage, is one of the contemporary films from Australia that will be screened at the 10-day Habitat International Film Festival (HIFF), which opened in New Delhi on Friday (March 17).
“The whole team and I are thrilled,” Theodoris tells The Federal. Australia is the country in focus at the fourth edition of HIFF. “We’re honoured to be included with such an esteemed bunch of creators, celebrating unique and refreshing Australian perspectives. I can’t wait for the audience in India to experience this hilarious and wonderfully weird cinematic journey,” says Theodoris.
The other films from Australia to be screened at the festival include the opening film, Maya Newell’s documentary The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone, which chronicles the journey of a young trans woman, Georgie, as she prepares to undergo gender affirmation surgery. Australian auteur Ivan Sen’s Limbo, which arrives fresh off the boat to India straight from its Berlinale 2023 premiere, is an intimate study in intergenerational trauma and its ongoing post-colonial effects on Indigenous Australia.
The coming-of-age drama, Sweet As, directed by Jub Clerc and starring Shantae Barnes-Cowan as Murra, an Indigenous Australian girl from a troubled family discovers a passion for photography while participating in a youth retreat. The Survival of Kindness, written, produced and directed by Rolf de Heer, is an allegory for racism, which follows BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert. Her escape leads to a city, recapture and tragedy.
20 countries, over 60 films
Over 60 award-winning and critically acclaimed films from 20 countries will be screened at the festival. These films showcase a wide range: from factual to fantastical, from surreal to sci-fi. “The HIFF is back in its full-fledged form this year, with an exciting line-up of top-notch new cinema from across the world that is bound to be a treat for all film enthusiasts. We have also brought a cutting-edge VR Section to the Festival for the first time. Aspiring filmmakers will not want to miss the unique opportunity provided by Kieślowski Film School Documentary Workshop,” said Sunit Tandon, Director, India Habitat Centre.
The award-winning features include Elvis, the Austin Butler-starrer Elvis Presley biopic, directed by and Baz Luhrmann, which premiered at Cannes and was nominated for multiple Oscars. German director Fatih Akin’s Rheingold, a high-octane adaptation of the swagger and bombast of German rap star Xatar’s 2015 autobiography All Or Nothing, captures the eventful life of the hip-hop rapper, entrepreneur and ex-convict, also known as Giwar Hajabi: from social housing to the top of the music charts.
Alcarràs: Spain’s Oscar entry
Another film to watch out for is Carla Simón’s Alcarràs, which was the Spanish entry at the Oscars this year. The Spanish-Italian film, which premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, is Simón’s second feature film. It depicts a family that spends its summers picking peaches in an orchard in a village in Spain’s Catalonia region, but faces new owners who plan to replace the peach trees with solar panels. It was inspired by Simon’s adoptive mother’s family.
On February 17, it won the Golden Bear award for best movie at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was picked from a field of 18 by a seven-member jury under American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. He said the movie was honoured “for its extraordinary performances, from the child actors to the actors in their 80s, for the ability to show the tenderness and comedy of family and struggle, and for the betrayal of our connection and dependence on the land around us.”
Having earned more than €2.33 million ($2.47 million) in Spain to date, Alcarrás was the biggest sleeper of 2022; it ranks as the fifth highest-grossing Spanish film of 2022. With 11 Spanish Academy Goya nominations to its name, it has been described by Pedro Almódovar as a “masterpiece” and marks the third occasion where a Catalan-language film was chosen by the Spanish Academy for the Oscars – highlighting once again Spain’s vibrant cultural diversity at a delicate moment for Catalonia and Spain relations.
Simón is seen by many as one of the leading figures of the so-called New Spanish Cinema, along with her friends and colleagues like Elena López-Riera, whose The Water played well at the 2022 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, and Locarno entry The Sacred Spirit from director Chema Garcia Ibarra, along with others such as Pilar Palomero — a whole new generation of Spanish film-makers with a keen sense of place, identity and belonging.
The film has led to some previously shuttered cinemas in small-town Spain reopening after the pandemic on the back of its incredible success. Alcarràs is the second in a planned trilogy of films. Simón made her feature directorial debut in 2017 with Summer 1993 — an autobiographical film, which won the best first film award at Berlinale and was Spain’s best international feature entry at the 2018 Oscars. Simón is currently working on her third feature, Romeria, which focuses on the journey of a young woman trying to build family memories.
Other countries, other wonders
HIFF will also screen Perfect Number, which marks the return of the veteran Polish filmmaker, Krzysztof Zanussi, and dwells on his search for philosophical answers in mathematical theories. The Poignant We are Still Here is an anthology film about stories of indigenous heroes from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, who overcome obstacles in their way so they can finally be masters of their own destiny. Winner of the Best Screenplay at Cannes 2022, Boy from Heaven takes us into the heart of a ruthless power struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elites.
This year’s Oscar nominee EO by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski follows a donkey who, on his journeys, encounters good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes. Besides, four films that approach the anarchy of love and its expression across different eras will also be screened. They include films by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai (classic) and Norway’s Joachim Trier (contemporary) to Canada’s David Cronenberg (futuristic).
The documentaries, shorts, and animation films will include Closed Circuit by Tel Inbar (Israel), a documentary that captures the heart-pounding trauma of the 2016 terrorist attack in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market. Winner of ‘Best Documentary Feature’ at The Roxbury International Film Festival and Filmocracy Fest, Hostile by UK filmmaker Sonita Gale, which explores the UK’s complicated relationship with its migrant communities, will also be screened.
Also read: The Elephant Whisperers bags Oscar for Documentary Short Subject
Winner at the Warsaw Film Festival 2022, Region of Heroes by Artur Lerman (Ukraine) is the story of those who heroically and selflessly saved thousands of Ukrainian lives during the Russian occupation. As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, cinephiles can experience the story of Ukrainian resistance on celluloid.
Winner of the Special Jury Award at Roxbury Film Festival and the International Humanitarian Award at Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, The Bengali by Kavery Kaul (USA), a story of a writer from Louisiana, who embarks on a quest to India to look for her grandfather’s descendants, will also be screened. What’s more, there will also be curated packages of documentaries and animation shorts from Poland and Sri Lanka.
Workshops and VR programmes
A four-day documentary workshop by The Kieślowski Film School from Poland will feature a faculty of festival directors, filmmakers and editors, who will teach aspiring filmmakers the craft of filmmaking. Grzegorz Paprzycki, an acclaimed new voice in contemporary Polish cinema and a Kieslowski Film School alumnus, will be one of the workshop trainers. The workshop will have live editing sessions, discussions and practical exercises designed to hone the skills of those eager to venture into filmmaking.
Under Virtual Reality Program, the festival will offer a package of animation, short and documentary films — in the most exciting, experimental themes and forms, including VR and 360° video — with a focus on female and non-binary creators from around the world, which will explore the relationship between the past and the present.
