Movies
A slow, yet agreeable Turkish arthouse movie. So far, I haven't had too much luck with Turkish cinema, apart from a handful of random genre films. Their commercial and arthouse selection on the other hand left me wanting, the latter too wrapped up in poverty-drenched drama to get me hooked. Yusuf is a young boy whose father Yakup is a beekeeper. He loves to join his dad when he tends to the bees. When they all disappear one day, Yakup moves higher up into the mountains in search of his livelihood. Yusuf decides to stop talking until his father returns. The longer his father stays away, the more worried Yusuf and his mother get. The cinematography is delicate, while the setting is also less barren than usually the case. The plot is minimal and the characters don't really come to life, but there's a pleasant, comfortable atmosphere that makes it easy to lose yourself in the atmosphere. A bit step up from most other Turkish films I've seen so far.Read all
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
I'm a big fan of anthologies, and this project sounded very promising on paper. Seventy renowned directors give their vision on the future of cinema. With just one minute per short, there isn't much time to make a point, but it's disheartening to see how few of them even managed to stick to the topic. The saddest part was that many of the short didn't even deal with the future, but openly referred to or praised the medium's past. There's also a lot of doom and gloom, with some very basic visions of people not caring enough about arthouse cinema, or playing movies on their phones. Your typical old-man-yelling-at-cloud stuff. There is only a small selection of directors who seem to have understood the brief, and they struggle to make the most of their limited runtime. What remains is a complete mess, with most shorts looking like they were made on people's afternoon off, and hardly anything that stands out. A disappointment.Read all