At the modern film festival “Bear, Lion and Twig” – even two films from the competition program of San Sebastian | Culture

François Ozon’s bright comic drama Quand vient l’automne and the long-awaited feature debut of director Joshua Oppenheimer, nominated for two Oscars for his previous films, The End, starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay and Moses Ingram. Both films are included in the festival’s “Shine of the Great” program, which also includes more well-known names.

There is no need to introduce the Frenchman François Ozon to the Lithuanian audience – just to remind that this creator can be extremely versatile. The heroines of his latest film “When Autumn Comes” are women of mature age who lead more colorful lives than many of today’s thirties. In the film, the director abandons distance and mannerism and creates a warm and gentle comic drama. According to Ozon, this time he wanted to film actresses of a certain age (Hélène Vincent and Josiane Balasko), to show the beauty of their wrinkles, which arise from the passing of time and life experience. French film critics are already promising that Ozon’s new work will become a big fall hit.

Photo of the organizers/”The End”, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer

The apocalypse and the musical don’t seem like very compatible things, but it was this dissonance that led director Joshua Oppenheimer to make the feature film The End. As the creator says, sometimes only through singing we can say what we feel and keep suppressed inside us, and this musical is about illusion and at least some kind of hope. The movie was inspired by a true story that Oppenheimer learned about a decade ago – a wealthy family was actually looking for a luxury bunker for themselves in case the world accidentally ended.

Filmed in a real salt mine in Sicily, the claustrophobic underground atmosphere of which, as Michael Shannon (“The Shape of Water”) said, made the actors themselves feel not very comfortable, but especially live when performing songs. By the way, Oppenheimer’s starting point was Jacques Demy’s classic musical “Rainguards of Cherbourg” (1964), and the producer and composer of the musical “California Dreams” Marius De Vries created as many as thirteen original songs for this film.

Two more films from “The Great Shining” will mark the beginning of the festival itself – Wim Wenders’ short film “Somebody Comes Into the Light”, which together with Japanese actor and dancer Min Tanaka creates a dialogue between these mature creators. Hong Sang-soo’s film “The Needs of a Traveler” (Yeohaengjaui pilyo), awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, is also, as it were, a performance by one artist, this time the French diva Isabelle Huppert.

Organizers’ photo/”Partenope”, directed by Paolo Sorrentino

The actress mentioned that this director is a master of capturing the present moment and state, which is his unique feature of directing. Huppert says that Hong Sang-soo is able to create such an atmosphere of creative freedom that it is a real pleasure to work with him.

Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope, shown in Cannes main competition, is an ode to the city of Naples. It is a very stylish and extremely beautifully filmed work, the cameraman of which Daria D’Antonio works with the director not for the first time. Since she, like Sorrentino, is a Neapolitan, she was able to show what is absolutely beautiful in the city. As the director himself says, the film is an epic of a modern hero, and the real heroes of today are women, because their journey to freedom and emancipation was extremely long. It is a journey full of obstacles, superstitions, but very brave.

Already on September 26 A pre-screening of the festival will take place at Paupia’s “Fairytale”, during which the audience will be presented with the entire program and will be the first to see Wim Wenders’ short film “Something Enters the Light” and another film from the “Great Shine” program – Michel Franco’s “Memory”. It starred Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain and Peter Skarsgaard, who won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival.

The latter said that Franco can be fierce, as in the film “The New Order”, but also extremely sensitive, delving not only into the subject, but also allowing the actors to control the pace, to complement the character themselves. Franco himself says that he wanted to tell a story about two mature broken people who are given a chance to find love, to be able to be happy again, even though they have been written off by society.

The contemporary film festival “Bear, Lion and Twig” will invite viewers to discover their film from October 4 to 13. In Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Alytus, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, Marijampole, Taurage, Utena and Anykščiai. The festival is socially responsible, so the program will include screenings adapted for the deaf, and when selecting films, the audience of teenagers and seniors will be kept in mind, for whom there will be special screenings. Films will be shown simultaneously in all cities, and screenings with English subtitles in “Skalvija” and “Pasaka” (Vilnius) and “Romuva” (Kaunas).