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Tromsø International Film Festival

January 16 - 21, 2001 (Norway)





There's a lot more to discover at Tromsø than the well chosen competition till
the festival will end on Sunday (finally in Tromsø the word's beginning to make
sense: on SUNday the 21st the sun will come back after four months of disappearance).
Apart from many other seminars and special presentations the festival offers
with "Horizons" a sidebar consisting of a very interesting programme of 18 films
from all over the world. In the first place these are films that haven't been
shown to Norwegian audiences yet, but above all the programme shows the subjective
highlights from world cinema of the year 2000. Asia for instance has a quite
strong presence at the Tromsø Festival. But besides the dominating Asian countries
such as Japan (represented here for example by Sabu's Monday) or Korea
(represented by Barking
Dogs Never Bite from Joon-Ho
Bong) the festival offers also a rarely seen selection of films from Iran,
where the great local filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has obviously helped to raise
a group of young enthusiastic directors.



Nevertheless, Europe forms the main focus in this section of selected arthouse
films - especially films from countries in the East. Eastern Europe is - besides
many Russian productions - mainly represented by two outstanding Czech movies.
Divided We Fall ("Musíme si pomáhat") from successful young director
Jan Hrbejek tells with brillant humour the story about some people pivoting
between collaboration and civilian courage in Prague during the German occupation
in World War II, while David Ondrícek concentrates on the current mid-age-generation
in Prague with Loners
("Samotári"): two excellent examples of the vivacious young film scene in the
Czech Republic.



From the young German cinema, Tromsø shows No
Place to Go ("Die Unberuehrbare"), a multiple award-winning psycho-study
in black and white from Oskar Roehler, the feature debut alaska.de from
Esther Gronenborn and the summer feel-good-movie In July ("Im Juli")
from Fatih Akin. Especially Gronenborn's concentrated study of conditions in
an East German suburb are very convincing with extraordinary camera work and
modern editing. The production is an example of some kind of New Realism, a
direction some young German filmmakers have been going during the last years
- maybe to create a certain distance from the bad relationship comedies German
film has been associated with during the last decade.



The festival programmers didn't let themselves get blinded by names - by acting
or directing stars or award-winning movies from the big festivals of the last
year. They obviously decided on a film by quality - which is not always self-evident
for a festival. So you may search a long time to find a star movie but you won't
have any problems discovering artistically ambitious filmmakers with attention
to the content inspiring films from all over the world. And that's exactly what
I expect from a film festival.

Oliver
Baumgarten

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