Stanislaus

Women's bodybuilding is completely foreign to me, so for me Gentle was first of all informative and enriching. But the film also managed to win me over story-wise. I was intrigued by the apparent contradiction between the hefty musculature and the fragile soul at the centre of which was the main character Edina, convincingly portrayed by the non-actress Eszter Csonka. I also liked the portrayal of the exceedingly strange relationship between Edina and Kristian (the monkey imitation was eerily convincing). Gentle is ultimately a sad tale of heartbreak, on a mental as well as a physical level.

Working Class Heroes is a kind of tragicomic probe into the (everyday?) life of Serbian workers and heartless developers. On the one hand, the film entertains with its straightforward setting of a construction site; on the other hand, it gives you chills, considering how a worker-developer confrontation can play out, and what the consequences can be. Of the characters, I was most interested in Lidija and Mali, but also in the Professor. The final third managed to both piss me off and delight me beyond belief. Karma is free!

The Tsugua Diaries certainly impresses with its experimental approach to storytelling, but it's also challenging, even unrewarding, in the first quarter. Once you understand the creative play, the scenes begin to fit together like a puzzle. However, despite the unconventional concept and the efforts to insert many humorous moments into the plot, I did not have as much fun as I should have or expected during the screening.

The makers of Two Ships seemed to be looking at American romantic-drama (personally, it reminded me a lot of Woody Allen) and tried to create something similar in Czechia, in Brno and its surroundings, which they succeeded in varying degrees. If it weren't for the mysterious illness, the film would have glided only lightly over the surface. Better three stars!

(Possible spoilers!) Every year there are many LGBT films, but All Our Fears is not lost among them, if only because of the main character Daniel is a gay man, a believer, a villager and a Pole all rolled into one. The film thus clashes on multiple levels, the most prominent of which are the religious and collective ones. The fate of Jagoda is just a sad but quite real reminder of the ever-present problem of senseless hatred towards sexual minorities. It was interesting to see how the media selects "sensational stories from a village". Despite the serious subject matter, the film has more than a few humorous moments, especially provided by Daniel's spirited grandmother. Still, I was quite sick of the behaviour of many of the characters. This film should be a must-see in Poland.

In his film, Gonçalo Waddington portrays quite convincingly a young man whose (not only) social development from childhood to adolescence was utterly distorted by being kidnapped and abused for many years. On the one hand you can sympathise with him, but on the other, his behaviour is reprehensible. Patrick is a graphic example of a man completely uprooted from a normal life who directs the evil that has been done to him at those around him. Chilling!

After twelve years, I got to see Luis Buñuel's iconic surrealist film again, and my feelings about its scenes remained uneasy. On the one hand, Un Chien Andalou is morbid and perverse, on the other – perhaps unintentionally – quite humorous. The sliced eyeball, the animal corpses dragged on the piano, the omnipresent lust and that "stigmatic tingling", it’s as if you are watching some kind of sick dream that scares (and perhaps subconsciously fascinates) you.

Eliza Petkova's film with the very bizarre title A Fish Swimming Upside Down addresses the issue a love triangle, a truly generic theme, and not even the two “surprising” twists help it break out of its template. Basically, this is a kind of probe into the corners of (flexible) sexuality, but it could certainly have been handled better.

Simon of the Desert mixes many religious scenes and symbols with a certain amount of irony and its associated humour. At times I felt like I was watching a Pasolini film. I really enjoyed the scenes with Satan and temptation, they were imaginative and humorously obscene. The biggest weirdness, however, arrives (or rather, lands) with the final time jump. PS: I wonder if Buñuel had a kink with kicking animals (see for example Age of Gold)?

No wonder the Age of Gold caused quite a stir back in its day. The maker of the (slightly more) twisted Un Chien Andalou was inspired by the warped mind of the Marquis de Sade and made a film that is certainly worth seeing, even if it won't appeal to everyone (I was only half convinced). The central couple could not have been more unlikeable, while the interaction between the Man and the Woman was – willy-nilly – a sure source of humour. The final scene with the degenerate like "120 Days of Sodom" with "Jesus" was inserted into the film perhaps a little too forcefully. A kind of foreshadowing of the later Pasolini.