Festival Reports

Artistic techniques invented by the authors create additional energy for the film. Following the hero's feet, plunging into the shadow of his image on the wall, contemplating the once prosperous, but now almost destroyed spiritual, historical and cultural shrines, the viewer, on the one hand, touches upon the former greatness of Mosul, and on the other, realizes the monstrous consequences of the war.

Most films displayed a high level of proficiency and excellence along with the ability to script and tell a good story at the same time. A good story gets better when the formal concerns of composition, color, lighting and editing are given due attention.

 

Under the COVID-19 situation, the Jeonju International Film Festival was held smoothly with rigorous preventive measures and hybrid screenings both in the theatre and on the online platform. The NETPAC Award jury, comprising Nam Dongchul, Pip Chodorov and Byun Sungchan was able to see and evaluate the films in the theatres.

I relish any opportunity to watch regional Indian cinema. My fellow jury members were Russian film critic/expert on the native cinema of Russian regions, Sergey Anashkin and Indian critic/Artistic Director of the 13th Bengaluru International Film Festival, Vidyashankar N. Jois. We had the pleasure of conversing via email over several weeks until ultimately unanimously deciding our winners

A lot of credit goes to the hard work of NETPAC members that helped introduce Asian/Pacific films to the Western world. I am so very appreciative and proud of NETPAC’s work and of having been a member since the beginning.

We all thought that the outbreak of the virus would be short, but not everything went as we expected. Many festivals waited for a while to make the right decision. Should the festival be held socially-distanced in accordance with health protocols or is it safer to hold a virtual one? Who knows?

The Jury selected from 10 films from eight countries with the top prize going to Reza Dormishian’s NO CHOICE (Iran) for a touching view on a part of society that is mainly disregarded and has become a universal problem.

Whether judging from their production value or auteurist vision, the selected works demonstrated considerable creative ambitions that reflected the social and cultural landscapes of their origins, each exhibiting its own memorable highlights and surprising genius.

Overall, this year’s NETPAC entries were of high quality, directed by veterans as well as newcomers. Their subjects were the ordinary men and women in ordinary jobs, adults having problems with their lives, and the one film of a foreigner trying to make it in the new country.

Our choice was reduced to just two films: 200 Meters (a co-production  between Palestine, Italy, Jordan, Sweden) by Ameen Nayfeh, a talented director, acclaimed for some of his previous works. It tells the story of an individual’s experience who suffers in the battered Palestinian land; and In Between Dying, the second fiction film by Azerbaijani writer and director Hilal Baydarov.