Cinefile

In this month's Cinefile, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams talks to the director of the award-winning French film, La Prière, The Prayer, Cédric Kahn. And she also speaks to Jeroen Eisinga, Dutch art documentary-film maker at the international Paris documentary film festival, Cinéma du Réel which was started 40 years ago by Jean Rouch.

In this month's Cinefile, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams meets Lebanese director Ziad Doueri to talk about his tense movie, The Insult which released on 31 January in France. Miran-sha Na-yik joins in by phone from India to talk about his first feature called Juze (The Child from Goa). Ridley Scott's thriller All the Money in the World caught RFI's Tony Cross' attention this month.

In this month’s Cinefile, Rosslyn Hyams' guests have both made films about feisty women characters. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania's feature film Beauty and the Dogs, is about a rape case that became a national scandal in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the documentary Laetitia, by French director Julie Talon, follows a Women's Thai-Boxing champion.

REVIEW

The bright colour scheme in Kaouther Ben Hania's feature cloaks a dark story, but one that in real-life had a happy ending. "The former president apologised to the young woman and the family... the guilty policemen were sent to jail," recounts the young director who is currently working on a project revolving around the refugee/migrant issues.

The camera follows, and chases after, budding actress Mariam Ferjani in her states of disarray, despair and despondency, quickening and freezing the pace in a sequence of single-take shots from one enclosed space to another corridor. Ben Hania conjures a realistic nightmare sensation as the character Mariam, raped by police, confronts health workers and police in her bid for justice.

If she weren't encouraged by the young man who befriends her, Yusef played by Ghanem Zrelli, by one older police man. Some glimmers of kindness vanish into thin air as other characters "just do their job".

Aala Kaf Ifrit - the original title of the film - has an occasional brush with tedium amid moments of suspense as Mariam is repeatedly hustled, stumbles or runs from one small office to another. The mono-focus on Ferjani's character is at the same time, part of the film's strength and its biggest challenge.

Ferjani was a chance find on the web says Ben Hania. It was a fortunate meeting.

You can hear Kaouther Ban Hania talking about her film with just a click on the photo above.

*****

REVIEW

If you don't like boxing, you may not necessarily dislike Julie Talon's film Laetitia.

Talon herself is not a fan, but she met the Womens' Thai Boxing World Champion when the winner was struggling to come to terms with life after attaining a peak.

The classically composed film is not a tender portrait. Talon candidly shows Laetitia's unpleasant, whining side. She also shows her determination, and how she wavers and fails. Most interestingly, she shows the mettle of her trainer Jean-Marie and all the men who help keep her going, who spar with her, her son's support.

Somewhere along the line, Talon's documentary Laetitia leaves boxing, even competition sport, in the ring, to ask instead more general questions about personal ambition, commitment and choices.

RFI's Rosslyn Hyams presents Cinefile. This month her special guest is director Raoul Peck whose latest film after the documentary on James Baldwin called I am not your negro is a militant feature film, The Young Karl Marx. Cinefile's September Film of the Month is Philippe van Leeuw's, war-thriller called In Syria (Une famille syrienne).

REVIEW

In Syria, also known as Insyriated and In Syria, is economical film shot in an apartment with only a few cautious peeks into a staircase and onto a small courtyard.

The family in the well-kept apartment is isolated. Not a film for sufferers of claustrophobia, it is effective in emotional impact, buoyed by intense sound.

Apart from the standard helicopter buzz, gunfire and mortar explosions inherent in most films about war, the characters are also seen listening intently to marauders moving ominously in the almost-empty building.

The family is headed by an elderly man, a father-in-law, played by Mohsen Abbas who director Philippe Van Leeuw says he imagined as being "an engineer, a teacher, nothing political. Through the window this wise man contemplates the entire life of a community."

However, it's Hiam Abbas as Oum Yazan, who comes across as the leader in her role as mother, daughter-in-law and significantly, as a neighbour.

Diamond Bou Abboud plays Halima, taken in with her baby by Oum Yazan after being bombed out of her place on an upper floor.

They make the most of their roles which dig deep into quotidien 'normality', the drama of vulnerability and the ruthlessness of war. Juliette Navis plays an essential role of messenger as the Asian house-maid who, in spite of water shortages, meets the demands of her demanding employer to keep the place and the everyone in it fed and clean.

Van Leeuw's reference to the contained and efficient classical drama of many cultures, draws on real-life experiences of his crew and actors, and on his own imagination to bring the Syrian war, and others, into our own spheres.

Raoul Peck cast August Diehl to carry the title role of The Young Karl Marx who comes across as likeable, kind and committed. Diehl's 20-something year-old Marx who is exploited by his employers and who lives from hand to mouth, is barely able to look after his family. The author of Das Kapital is however clearly committed to theory as against any direct action.

Peck's film revisits the origins of The Communist Manifesto of 1848 and recalls the conditions of factory workers and the poor in general the 19th century. It leads us to consider how far we've come since then, with two world wars in between, and consequently, how important it is not to slide backwards and lose the human dignity that has been fought for and gained.

Times were indeed hard in the mid-19th century. With smoggy brown and grey tones, mixed with the mists of London, Paris and Brussels, Peck sharply contrasts cruelty and need.

The intellectual Marx, along with his aristocratic-born wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps), and his mate Friederich Engels (Stefan Konarske), whose father owned factories in Britain and Germany, sparked major upheaval in Europe where the Industrial Revolution was steaming ahead. Peck shows the conviction and tenacity of the rich kids who vent their social conscience.

It is an important part of European history that has been exported and often perverted by opportunistic dictators. The film portrays a youthful and serious Marx engrossed in theory, in love, and also in partnership with an angry young Engels, the militant party.

Originally a television-film project for public-funded channel Arte, Peck will now likely get the benefit of both worlds for The Young Karl Marx.