In this new episode from the 28th Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Alexandros Avranas, winner of the Silver Lion in 2013 for Miss Violence, outlines the mysterious “resignation syndrome” affecting refugee children, which is the main subject of his latest film: Quiet Life. Set in Sweden in 2018, the movie zooms in on a family of four. Sergei (Grigory Dobrygin) and Natalia (Chulpan Khamatova) have been forced to flee Russia with their two young daughters – Alina (Naomi Lamp) and her younger sister, Katja (Miroslava Pashutina). After their asylum application is rejected by Swedish government, Katja falls into a mysterious coma, triggering a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral. A film that asks a very powerful question: what is the society we are leaving to our children?

In questo nuovo episodio del 28esimo Black Nights Film Festival di Tallinn, Alexandros Avranas, vincitore del Leone d’Argento nel 2013 per Miss Violence, ci parla della misteriosa “sindrome della rassegnazione” che colpisce i figli dei migranti e che è il soggetto principale del suo ultimo film: Quiet Life. Ambientato in Svezia nel 2018, Avranas, dopo Miss Violence, pone ancora una volta l’attenzione su di una famiglia. Sergei (Grigory Dobrygin) e Natalia (Chulpan Khamatova) sono stati costretti a fuggire dalla Russia con le loro due giovani figlie: Alina (Naomi Lamp) e sua sorella minore, Katja (Miroslava Pashutina). Dopo che la loro richiesta di asilo viene respinta dal governo svedese, Katja cade in un misterioso coma, innescando una spirale discendente apparentemente inarrestabile. Un film che ci pone davanti ad una domanda cruciale e attualissima: qual è la società che stiamo lasciando ai nostri figli?

🇬🇧 The guest of this episode of HOBO is Signe Baumane, a Latvian animator, artist, illustrator and writer, currently living and working in New York City. She wrote, directed, designed and animated 16 shorts and two animated feature films. Her new work “My Love Affair With Marriage” tells the story of a spirited young woman’s quest for perfect love and lasting marriage. It premiered in June 2022 at Tribeca Festival and has screened at over 90 festivals winning twenty awards. A story about the acceptance of the inner female rebellion told in a very peculiar visual style, which is a combination of two seemingly conflicting influences: the serious, moody, artsy Eastern European and the upbeat, funny, gag-based American animation.

🇮🇹 L’ospite di questo nuovo episodio di HOBO è Signe Baumane: animatrice, artista, illustratrice e sceneggiatrice lettone, attualmente di base a New York. Ha scritto, diretto, disegnato e animato 16 cortometraggi e due lungometraggi. Il suo ultimo film d’animazione “My Love Affair With Marriage” racconta la storia di una giovane donna alla ricerca dell’amore perfetto e di un matrimonio duraturo. È stato presentato in anteprima nel giugno 2022 al Tribeca Film Festival ed è stato proiettato in oltre 90 festival, ottenendo più di venti premi. Una storia sull’accettazione di se stessi, di ribellione contro la propria biologia, raccontata con uno stile visivo assolutamente unico, che è una combinazione di due influenze apparentemente contraddittorie: l’animazione seria, surreale e intellettuale dell’Est Europa e quella americana, più allegra, divertente e principalmente basata sulle gag.

The guest of this episode of HOBO is Varya Yakovleva, a Russian animator now based in Paris. She spent 6 years at The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, a film school in Moscow, then 2 years at the SHAR School-Studio with leading directors and animators. From 2013 she worked with Andrey Khrzhanovsky for a stop motion film called The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks. Nowadays she does her own stuff, mostly animation films, the latest of which is Oneluv: a powerful and visually strong portrait of a woman needing to face unwanted strangers and abuse. The short film took top honors at last year’s Animafest Zagreb.

The guest of this episode of HOBO is legendary Bruce LaBruce, director, photographer, performer, writer and queer provocateur. In his remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, set in a contemporary British context, “the visitor” is represented as a racial minority. A bold choice, considering the xenophobia and paranoia about immigration currently displayed in Europe, not only by the increasingly vocal extreme right wing elements actually gaining political traction and governmental representation, but more vaguely by traditionally colonialist countries that have previously “invaded” other countries of different ethnic majorities as hostile “aliens” themselves. For this re-imagining, it makes sense that the protagonist is a refugee, liberating the bourgeoisie from their sexual repression.

The film is cast and produced in London by a/political, a non-profit arts organization working with artists who interrogate the critical issues and dominant narratives of our time.

The guest of this episode of HOBO is Lei Lei, an experimental animation artist with his hands on video arts, painting, installation, music and VJ performance. His new project, “That Day, on the River”, newspaper clippings, historical photographs and a film about a female basketball player serve as the source material for an exploration of his father’s childhood in provincial China. The film is held together by a conversation between he and his father originally recorded during the production of his animated feature, Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish. During the trip, his father talked with him about his childhood memories in the Fifties and things he wasn’t good at. Through his art, Lei Lei mixes individual and collective memory: the artist’s nostalgia serves as the starting point of a quest for truth regarding history, family, and personal identity. Which is more significant nowadays, the photograph as work of art or as archival image? Which is more important, the picture or the process of image production; the fact that an image is viewed or the context in which it is viewed? It is also a reflection on the image and the status of the author.

One may wonder: what can a three-hour film set almost entirely in a car, shot with a fixed camera from the rear, offer cinematically? The answer is an unexpectedly engaging observation of the rhythms of daily life and a catalogue of suburban worries. The Plains by David Easteal charts the passage of time as the seasons change. The pitter-patter of rain on the windows and the familiar cocoon of the car provide a sense of comfort and safety from the outside elements.

What happens when an agency task at protecting the citizenry and ensuring that the duly constituted laws of the land are adhered to becomes the enforcer of human rights violations? This is the question posed by “When the Waves Are Gone”, the latest film by Filipino master Lav Diaz. The very current shocking Ukraine invasion by Russia and the resultant brutality seems unheard of but it is just a magnification of the human malady that has been with us forever—how humanity has become so accepting to a form of psychosis in approving evil leadership, how humanity has become so helpless to a wall of petrified ignorance. «Putin, Duterte, Assad, Trump... they’ve been with us forever, The Grim Reapers of the world», says the director in this extensive interview recorded during the 79th Venice Film Festival.

Dogborn by Isabella Carbonell had its world premiere at Venice International Film Critics’ Week. The story, penned by Carbonell herself, revolves around two Lithuanian twins struggling to make ends meet. Through brilliant writing choices and excellent direction, the film manages to set up a clear conflict between the two lead characters: the sister (played by Swedish rapper Silvana Imam) who initially seems ready to achieve her goals at all costs, and her brother (portrayed by Philip Oros), who instead is a kind-hearted, silent giant that at has stopped speaking owing to some unspecified past traumas.

Anhell69 by Theo Montoya had its world premiere at Venice International Film Critics’ Week. A funeral car cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells the story of his past in this violent and conservative city. He remembers the pre- production of his first film, a B-movie with ghosts. The young queer scene of Medellín is casted for the film, but the main protagonist dies of a heroin overdose at the age of 21, just like many friends of the director. ANHELL69 explores the dreams, doubts and fears of an annihilated generation, and the struggle to carry on making cinema.

Aus meiner Haut (Skin Deep) directed by Alex Schaad and written by Dimitrij Schaad (presented in the Venice International Film Critics’ Week) won the Queer Lion 2022 awarded by the jury chaired by Rich Cline, journalist and film critic. The intimate, character-driven story sees a young couple – played by “And Tomorrow the Entire World” actor Mala Emde and Jonas Dassler – deciding to visit a remote island, hoping they might be able to solve their problems in a place that literally allows you to be someone else.

A misfit teenager, an anxious mother, and a recent widow see their day interrupted by a mysterious natural phenomenon. As their world descends into chaos, the three women struggle to find their place in life. This is the initial idea of ​​Ordinary Failures, an apocalyptic tale calling for human solidarity directed by Cristina Groșan.

Our journey through International cinema takes us now to Philippines. At the end of April we attended the Far East Film Festival in Udine where we had the chance to interview Filipino director Martika Ramirez Escobar about her feature debut “Leonor Will Never Die” alongside the protagonist of the film Sheila Francisco, a singer and veteran of the theater. Ramirez Escobar has created an exciting and strange film about a retired filmmaker who gets bonked on the head by a television accidentally thrown from a window. Leonor sinks into a coma, and from there the film cheekily takes us inside a writer’s head, entering into her own unfinished script for one of her action movies.

The former players of the Japanese women’s volleyball team used to be known as the ‘Witches of the Orient’ because of their seemingly supernatural powers on the courts. In the Julien Faraut’s film, the formation of the squad in the late 1950s as a worker’s team at a textile factory, right up until their triumph at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, their memories and stern discipline are evoked through modern-day sequences, archival footage, and cartoon images where fact and fable fly hand in hand.

With the distinguished director Sergei Loznitsa, we’ll discuss his new film “Mr. Landsbergis”, which premiered at the 25th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. For the first time Mr. Loznitsa appears as the interviewer in conversation with Professor Vytautas Landsbergis about crucial events from 1987 till 1993. Winner of the top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, this epic chronicle of the early collapse of the USSR is authoritative and detailed even by the exacting standards to which Mr. Loznitsa has accustomed us.

La Paz is the least western capital of the Americas. Located at more than 3600 metres above sea level, the city spreads like a sea of bricks, stones and concrete in the canyons that precede the “altiplano”. Bolivian director Kiro Russo recreates a symphony of the city in the heights with a tale of nightmare and redemption of the working class. El Gran Movimiento won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival Horizons strand in 2021.

In the seconde episode of HOBO we move to Georgia to meet Alexandre Koberidze, who found his second feature “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?" placed prominently within the main competition slate of the Berlinale’s online edition of this year, where it was met with considerable acclaim and the receipt of the FIPRESCI prize. In his film, no single moment is deemed more valuable than any other: the camera drifting gently to gaze at children playing in the park, dogs jauntily sauntering in the streets, a cafe owner hustling for better business, before looping back to develop the central story. In this interview, Koberidze discusses with us his major influences and his peculiar style.

The Chilean director Joaquin Cociña will reveal his sources of inspiration - including Ladislas Starevich, the Russian animator famous for his stop-motion movies with dead bugs - and discuss “Los Huesos”, a movie (co-directed con Cristóbal León) which tries to find an answer to the question: “What would have happened if Chile had been the birthplace of animated cinema?”.