To say the least it is thought provoking and, as done here, very funny.

Endlessly talky, the film works for me as the characters’ — modern Parisians all — speculate on how the new and endlessly changing internet age has affected their lives. Thought provoking because the talk is brainy and challenging.

Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet reunite with seasoned director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper, Carlos) for this dialogue heavy, slyly seductive tale. And the internet.

Set in the world of the latter day bohemian intelligentsia of the Parisian publishing world, Non-Fiction traces the romantic and emotional fallout that results when a controversial writer (Vincent Macaigne) begins blurring the line between fact and fiction, using his real-life love affairs — including a passionate fling with an actress (Binoche) who happens to be married to his editor (Canet) — as fodder for his explosive new novel. Balancing dry wit with keen observations on the tensions between art, commerce, and technology, Non-Fiction is a buoyant, complex, ultra contemporary comedy from a master director at his most brilliant.

Complex subject matter for a sex driven comedy.

Several decades into the digital revolution, there’s still a twinge of discomfort whenever new work from a major auteur dares to invoke the internet. Even worse: when it does so by name. Facebook. YouTube. Snapchat. Such vulgar things become virtually unavoidable in any movie that’s about the modern world, but the transience of social media focused here remains hard to reconcile with the timelessness of great cinema. The film passes wittily by the legacy of a cultural cinematic pantheon that tends to regard modernity as more of an existential threat than a tool at its disposal.-+

Suave French star Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) kicks things off as Alain, a successful book publisher who carries himself with the self-assurance of a mainstream leading man. This very chatty film is barely two minutes old before Alain is grousing about Twitter with his longtime client, Léonard (Vincent Macaigne), a rumpled has-been who can’t stop writing thinly veiled novels about his own sordid affairs — the latest of which Alain is about to reject.

Alain is a traditionalist who can’t understand why anyone would buy a book they can’t hold in their hands.

The rough author, Léonard, claims to be only a traditional author though the internet allows him to reference foreign places as though he’s been there himself. They say write what you know, but these days we learn most of the things we know on Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, Alain’s wife (a vital and prickly Juliette Binoche) seems a bit more comfortable with the forward march of time. An actress on a popular TV series, Selena isn’t as precious about things as her husband — she’s reached the age when people are asking her to play Phaedra, and she knows that her affair with Léonard isn’t going to last forever. She doesn’t even seem to care that Alain is probably sleeping with Laure (a tattooed Christa Théret), the severe young woman who’s bringing his company into the digital age; Selena thinks sleeping around will bring them closer together. Léonard’s wife, Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), refuses to let her politician boss be too open about his personality, but she too is unfazed by the thought of her partner cheating on her. After all, she reads his books.

Titled Doubles Vie (or Double Life) in French, Non-Fiction is a film in which everyone is fucking two people, but only capable of maintaining one vision of the future.

Love and marriage? Such petty things can be flexible.

But art? That must be absolute. We can’t be savages; we can’t give in to the base impulses of convenience.

At one point, Alain likens his heroic defense of hardcover books to the priest in Bergman’s Winter Light, who preaches to an empty church in a town that’s lost its faith; it’s nice that a single iPad can store an entire library, or that Netflix allows you to watch a movie on the subway, but perhaps there’s a moral imperative to give people what’s good for them, even (or especially) if it’s not what they think they want.

The parade of business meetings and dinner parties that clogs the opening 30 minutes eventually gives way to something looser and less on-message.

Broad philosophies thaw into personal neuroses as the film downshifts its various intellectual concerns achieving a human velocity that gets funnier and more self-referential with each line.

Non-Fiction premiered at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival and was at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival before soon being released by Sundance Selects in theaters in 2019.

CREW: Director, writer: Olivier Assayas. Camera (color), Yorick Le Saux. Editor: Simon Jacquet.

WITH: Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi, Christa Théret, Pascal Greggory, Sigrid Bouaziz, Lionel Dray, Antoine Reinartz, Laurent Poitrenaux, Aurélia Petit, Nicolas Bouchaud.

PRODUCTION: An Ad Vitam (in France), IFC Films (in U.S.) release of a CG Cinéma presentation of a CG Cinéma, Vortex Sutra, Arte France Cinema, Playtime production, with the participation of Arte France, Canal plus, Cine plus, Cinecapital, Cineventure 3, Cofinova 14, Indefilms 6, La Banque Postale, Image 11, Manon 18, Sofitvcine. (Int’l sales: Playtime, Paris.) Producer: Charles Gillibert.

‘Non-Fiction’ Review by Peter Belsito was originally published in SydneysBuzz The Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Review by Peter Belsito

Olivier Assayas and Juliette Binoche deliver a very contemporary comedy about modern life and twitter. The characters all freely unload their opinions of our technical computer driven age, life on the internet and how twitter, facebook and texting obsess and drive our daily lives. Dramatically unrelenting observations of these (very interesting!) themes.

To say the least it is thought provoking and, as done here, very funny.

Endlessly talky, the film works for me as the characters’ — modern Parisians all — speculate on how the new and endlessly changing internet age has affected their lives. Thought provoking to say the least because the talk is brainy and challenging.

Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet reunite with seasoned director Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper, Carlos) for this dialogue heavy, slyly seductive tale of sex, lies, and literature. And the internet.

Set in the world of the latter day bohemian intelligentsia of the Parisian publishing world, Non-Fiction traces the romantic and emotional fallout that results when a controversial writer (Vincent Macaigne) begins blurring the line between fact and fiction, using his real-life love affairs — including a passionate fling with an actress (Binoche) who happens to be married to his editor (Canet) — as fodder for his explosive new novel. Balancing dry wit with keen observations on the tensions between art, commerce, and technology, Non-Fiction is a buoyant, complex, ultra contemporary comedy from a master director at his most brilliant.

Complex subject matter for a sex driven comedy.

“Non-Fiction”

Several decades into the digital revolution, there’s still a twinge of discomfort whenever new work from a major auteur dares to invoke the internet. Even worse: when it does so by name. Facebook. YouTube. Snapchat. Such vulgar things become virtually unavoidable in any movie that’s about the modern world, but the transience of social media focused here remains hard to reconcile with the timelessness of great cinema. The film passes wittily by the legacy of a cultural cinematic pantheon that tends to regard modernity as more of an existential threat than a tool at its disposal.

“Non-Fiction”

Suave French star Guillaume Canet (“Tell No One”) kicks things off as Alain, a successful book publisher who carries himself with the self-assurance of a mainstream leading man. This very chatty film is barely two minutes old before Alain is grousing about Twitter with his longtime client, Léonard (Vincent Macaigne), a rumpled has-been who can’t stop writing thinly veiled novels about his own sordid affairs — the latest of which Alain is about to reject.

Alain is a traditionalist who can’t understand why anyone would buy a book they can’t hold in their hands.

The rough author, Léonard, claims to be only a traditional author though the internet allows him to reference foreign places as though he’s been there himself. They say write what you know, but these days we learn most of the things we know on Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, Alain’s wife (a vital and prickly Juliette Binoche) seems a bit more comfortable with the forward march of time. An actress on a popular TV series, Selena isn’t as precious about things as her husband — she’s reached the age when people are asking her to play Phaedra, and she knows that her affair with Léonard isn’t going to last forever. She doesn’t even seem to care that Alain is probably sleeping with Laure (a tattooed Christa Théret), the severe young woman who’s bringing his company into the digital age; Selena thinks sleeping around will bring them closer together. Léonard’s wife, Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), refuses to let her politician boss be too open about his personality, but she too is unfazed by the thought of her partner cheating on her. After all, she reads his books.

Titled “Doubles Vie” (or “Double Life”) in French, “Non-Fiction” is a film in which everyone is fucking two people, but only capable of maintaining one vision of the future.

Love and marriage? Such petty things can be flexible.

But art? That must be absolute. We can’t be savages; we can’t give in to the base impulses of convenience.

At one point, Alain likens his heroic defense of hardcover books to the priest in Bergman’s “Winter Light,” who preaches to an empty church in a town that’s lost its faith; it’s nice that a single iPad can store an entire library, or that Netflix allows you to watch a movie on the subway, but perhaps there’s a moral imperative to give people what’s good for them, even (or especially) if it’s not what they think they want.

The parade of business meetings and dinner parties that clogs the opening 30 minutes eventually gives way to something looser and less on-message.

Broad philosophies thaw into personal neuroses as the film downshifts its various intellectual concerns achieving a human velocity that gets funnier and more self-referential with each line.

“Non-Fiction” premiered at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival and was at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival before soon being released by Sundance Selects in theaters in 2019.

CREW: Director, writer: Olivier Assayas. Camera (color), Yorick Le Saux. Editor: Simon Jacquet.

WITH: Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi, Christa Théret, Pascal Greggory, Sigrid Bouaziz, Lionel Dray, Antoine Reinartz, Laurent Poitrenaux, Aurélia Petit, Nicolas Bouchaud.

PRODUCTION: An Ad Vitam (in France), IFC Films (in U.S.) release of a CG Cinéma presentation of a CG Cinéma, Vortex Sutra, Arte France Cinema, Playtime production, with the participation of Arte France, Canal plus, Cine plus, Cinecapital, Cineventure 3, Cofinova 14, Indefilms 6, La Banque Postale, Image 11, Manon 18, Sofitvcine. (Int’l sales: Playtime, Paris.) Producer: Charles Gillibert.

Prescience stars René Mena, Mike C. Manning, Daytime Emmy nominee Vannessa Vasquez, Primetime Emmy/Golden Globe nominee Linda Gray and Oscar/Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts.

The film was produced by René Mena and written by me, Lashawn Williams, Tyler Frech and James Helsing. James is also the director.

Prescience tells the story of a criminal attorney (played by Mena) who struggles with his sexuality, a cryptic new boyfriend (Manning), unemployment and the disturbing childhood secrets his parents (Gray & Roberts) hold

So …..

What we have here is not a film but a question — what’s it like to be us?

Confused, twenty-something, afraid …. but boldly striding into life.

We follow the life of a millennial — twenty-something young woman…. emphasize the young … who works at an ad agency. We’re in the world of twenty-somethings — impossibly young but adults now, and facing all that grim reality.

It’s one-half hour but full. The creator is also the star. Impossibly young but out in the world.

It’s Samantha Jayne.

For example we see our young female Millennial ask a series of basic questions about “adulting” to her mom over the phone, cutting back and forth during this to many different situations. The sequence ends with the girl insisting to her mom that she is, in fact, an adult.

I have heard of but not seen before films such as this. Made as a very good film but for something else, another purpose besides showing to audiences in theaters. Selling books in this case but really such an original film.

This was a micro-film created to promote the book, Quarter Life Poetry, written by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez.

The book deals with the struggles we face in our 20s.

So in lieu of creating a straightforward book trailer, per the film’s creators,… “we did something that no book has ever done: we created a colorful narrative of micro-films (sequences actually) depicting the kind of, type of demographic who would enjoy Samantha’s book. Millennials are all about sharing stories online, and this is what our film sets out to do.”

Since the film went online, it’s reached millions of millennials who were driven to share the content with friends and pre-order the book. Sales sky-rocketed, and Quarter Life Poetry has maintained bestseller status on Amazon since the videos published.

Order on Amazon here.

The video has been featured on Forbes, Huffington Post, AdWeek, BBC, Washington Post, The Independent, Glamour, Nylon, Shoot Magazine, and many other international media outlets across the web. It also showed at Sundance Film Festival’s Indie Episodic Section.

My biz friend Rob Fleming of Prodigy Public Relations, good company, sent me this.

Quarter Life Poetry — Video Results

‘Quarter Life Poetry’ Reviewed by Peter Belsito was originally published in SydneysBuzz The Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Long Lost stars Adam Weppler as Seth, a 23 year old young man invited to spend a long weekend at a Connecticut mansion with his long lost (since infancy, so no recollection) millionaire half-brother Richard (Nicholas Tucci) who, along with his enigmatic, sex starved live-in girlfriend Abby (Catherine Corcoran), leads Seth down a psychological rabbit hole wherein luxury and temptation are intermingled with treachery and taboo.

When Seth receives a mysterious letter inviting him to spend the weekend at a secluded mansion in the country, he soon realizes the people inside the house may know him better than he knows himself. His half brother is hostile, supercilious and almost threatening and seems to hold secrets about Seth’s origin. But he is angry (at Seth?) and seems to disapprove of Seth, so Seth almost immediately wonders, ‘Why am I invited? What’s happening here?’.

Abby seems to look down on him with impatience when she is not propositioning him sexually or hostilely ignoring him.

The setting is impressive if somewhat remote. A large, beautiful, well furnished multi room mansion in beautiful countryside.

Needless to say this strange world turns upside down by the film’s end.

I can’t reveal more because there are dramatic flips and strange events throughout. I particularly liked the reflections and twists upon the concept of ‘family’ which by film’s end has a different meaning than when it started.

Give this film a look and be disturbed and thrilled. I liked it.

Watch the trailer here.

Directed and written by Erik Bloomquist

Produced By Erik Bloomquist, Adam Weppler, Carson Bloomquist, Nicholas Tucci

U.S. Distribution by Indie Rights.

Awards

Nevermore Film Festival 2019, Won, Jury Award for Best Feature

Erik Bloomquist (producer), Nicholas Tucci (producer), Carson Bloomquist (producer), Adam Weppler (producer)Mainframe Pictures

Eastern Oregon Film Festival 2018, Won, Best Feature, Audience Choice, Won, Curator’s Pick Directors to Watch

Laughlin International Film Festival 2018 Won, Grand Jury Prize

Queen Palm International Film Festival 2018 Won Best Actor (Feature) to Nicholas Tucci; Won Best Writer (Feature) Erik Bloomquist (written by/story by), Carson Bloomquist (story by), Adam Weppler (story by) Mainframe Pictures; Won Best Feature: First-Time Filmmaker; Best Music (Feature) Gyom Amphoux Mainframe Pictures

ReadingFilmFEST 2018 Won Jury Award Best Narrative Feature; Won Jury Award Best Actor to Nicholas Tucci

Sherman Oaks Film Festival 2018 Won Grand Jury Award Best Director, Won Grand Jury Award Best Narrative Feature Film; Won, Grand Jury Award Emerging Talent — Acting Nicholas Tucci, Catherine Corcoran, Adam Weppler

‘Long Lost’ Reviewed by Peter Belsito was originally published in SydneysBuzz The Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Saturday The Hollywood Foreign Press Association held a sold-out panel of film world dignitaries Saturday at the Ace Hotel’s incredibly gorgeous United Artists theater in downtown Los Angeles for the organization’s first Film Restoration Summit devoted to celebrating classic films and the urgent need to put more resources into saving them.

Introduced by HFPA president Meher Tatna, the panel was moderated by Sandra Schulberg, whose IndieCollect organization works to preserve independent films.

The panel was made up of

• Jane Fonda
• Alexander Payne, Director
• Grover Crisp, EVP, Sony Asset Management, Film Restoration & Digital Mastering
• Thierry Frémaux, Director, Institut Lumière, Cannes Film Festival
• Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive
• Sandra Schulberg, moderater and President of the film preservation organization IndieCollect, called this “a crisis that is engulfing us.”

To set the discussion and begin, HFPA president Meher Tatna introduced the panel by warning that “More than 50 percent of films made before 1950 are lost to us forever,”, explaining that the HFPA’s commitment to preserving cinema history through support of film restoration is one of its most important initiatives. She added that the HFPA’s “decades long” support of this mission has already seen more than $6.5 million invested in 125 film restoration projects.

Tatna recalled that the organization has supported restorations such as Ida Lupino’s The Bigamist and Satjayit Ray’s Apu Trilogy.

While the importance of preserving the big-screen experience was a major theme, the event was also dedicated to celebrating films that have been brought back to life through the efforts of organizations such as Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, the UCLA Film Archive, and Institut Lumiere.

The panelists came together to discuss the necessity of stepping up preservation efforts, particularly for silent, independent and international films.

Fremaux took the stage saying it felt bizarre for him to talk about the history of cinema at this moment because he’s in the middle of selecting films for Cannes. “I hope I won’t get confused and give you the Cannes opening night film,” he joked, “which by the way we don’t have, which is a problem.”

The Cannes director also heads Lyon’s Institut Lumiere, devoted to preserving and screening historic films.

He gave audiences a quick refresher on the beginnings of cinema, throwing a bit of shade at Thomas Edison, whose early works were viewed on the small Kinetoscope viewer, as opposed to Louis Lumiere, who was the first to champion projection on a big screen.

“It’s still what we love, being together to watch images on a big screen. Maybe the revenge of Thomas Edison is called Netflix,” he quipped.

Fremaux screened a number of fascinating location-shot films from the Lumiere brothers, shot in the late 1800s and early 1900s, some restored with help from the HFPA.

Fonda, who was honored at the Lumiere film festival last year, admitted that she’s no expert on the issue of preservation. She joked that being asked to be on the panel might be “to punish me because my favorite ex-husband colorized much of MGM’s film library.” Ted Turner was a pariah for the colorization debacle, she recalled, yet she pointed out that he actually preserved the MGM library, which led to the creation of Turner Classic Movies.

“We can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been,” she proclaimed. “Perhaps we ought to put as much into saving film as we do into making it.” Later, as panelists called out the need for her Oscar-winning “Coming Home” to be restored, she almost looked like she was on the verge of pulling out her checkbook.

Fonda noted that this isn’t just about preserving Hollywood classics, but also newsreels and documentary material. “Films were made because filmmakers wanted to make sure what happened would never be forgotten,” she said. “If we allow documents of our past to disappear we end up [without the whole picture]. We can’t know where we are going if we don’t know where we have been.”

“I’m overwhelmed by the amount of material that needs to be restored and preserved and the lack of funding,” Fonda continued. “Most studios are cutting back on archiving … The challenge of indie filmmakers is far greater.”

Emphasizing that the resources available to preserve Hollywood’s film history are “woefully inadequate,” Jane Fonda urged the Hollywood community to “invest as much in saving [films] as making them.”

Crisp, who is executive VP of asset management, film restoration and digital mastery at Sony, explained how the advent of increasingly sophisticated digital techniques means that some films are restored repeatedly — “Easy Rider,” for example, is on its third restoration.

Fonda joked that the filmmakers may have been “too stoned” to properly care for the original film elements.

Crisp also touched on one of the unintended consequences of Hollywood’s move to digital cinema. There are now movies that are shot and displayed in the digital realm — never touching film. But celluloid is still very much a part of archival efforts.

“We always make multiple, photochemical [film] copies and store them in different places around the world,” he said of his archival practices. “We do the same with our digital data, which is like [the digital equivalent of] the camera negative. We duplicate it, separate it.”

He added that they also migrate the digital data to new formats periodically “and check it every few years to make sure it’s still there.” This is because new digital storage formats are being introduced, rendering some of the earlier formats obsolete. (Think, for instance, if you have material stored on a VHS tape while players are no longer available). Additionally, there have already been some reports of digital formats that have lost data after being stored. “This has been going on for almost 20 years now … You have to be careful,” he said.

Underscoring this message to stay alert, Payne admitted that he had already struggled with preserving his first film, 1996’s Citizen Ruth, when he found a sound problem in his archival film prints.

The director was recently invited to select a film whose restoration will be funded by HFPA; he chose 1926 silent film The Black Pirate starring Douglas Fairbanks. Crisp meanwhile is starting a new 4K restoration of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hooper’s Easy Rider, which this year marks its 50th anniversary.

To provide a visual example of the huge difference restoration can make, UCLA’s Horak screened faded, murky scenes from old Westerns side by side with stunning new images that were brought back to vibrant color in the restoration process.

Payne described himself as a regular at Bologna, the Italian preservation-oriented fest, which he encouraged everyone to attend.

The HFPA asked Payne to select a film he wanted to see restored, and he recalled a mentor’s words, “Always save the silents.” So he chose the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks movie “The Black Pirate” as the organization’s next restoration project.

Fremaux said it’s also important to save cinemas, not just films. “We are here in this wonderful theater,” he said, gesturing at the gilded detail of the 1927 auditorium. “Cinemas are in danger — in Rome, there are no theaters in the city anymore.”

Fremaux said later that it’s his generation’s responsibility to preserve the culture, and then teach it to younger people, the way filmmakers like Scorsese and Tarantino are doing. “Then it will be their role to pay attention.”

The event concluded with a screening of the 2014 restoration of Sergio Leone’s 1964 Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars starring a young Clint Eastwood. The restoration was funded by the HFPA and The Film Foundation.

We can also recommend reading — Variety, March 10 article on this by Pat Saperstein, Deputy Editor

and

Hollywood Reporter, March 10 Jane Fonda Calls for Hollywood to “Invest as Much in Saving Films as Making Them” by Carolyn Giardina

PHOTO CREDITS: HFPA/MAGNUS SUNDHOLM and PETER BELSITO, SYDNEYSBUZZ

Jane Fonda, Thierry Fremaux, Alexander Payne and Illustrious Others at the Film Restoration Summit was originally published in SydneysBuzz The Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stieg Larsson’s huge popular “Millennium” series — the high-grade pulp mysteries he wrote as a kind of hobby, and which weren’t published until after his death in 2004 at age 50 — are not much delt with in this documentary feature by The Man Who Played With Fire.

The thing for which Larsson is posthumously world-famous — i.e. his books — is just barely touched on in Henrik Georgsson’s documentary feature.

This documentary biopic concentrates on something even more compelling: Larsson’s life pursuit of tracking extremist far-right groups as an investigative journalist, a personal obsession that made him an expert in a field that’s only grown more politically relevant since his demise.

You get an overview of fascist/nationalist movements in Sweden and Europe over recent decades, which lends this well-crafted effort interest well beyond the strictly biographical.

The film is definitely documentary, including many stock footage sequences of Larssen speaking, writing etc. But throughout — and I’d never seen this before in a ‘documentary’ film they use an actor lookalike to be Larssen. Interesting choice. It works because when they switch back and forth to / between actor and the real Larssen in old footage it seems to work in dramatic context.

Larsson was raised by his grandparents in the countryside while his parents were establishing themselves professionally in the city — apparently not an unusual arrangement in Sweden at the time.

It was that grandfather, a fervent anti-Nazi, who instilled in him a passionate desire to root out and expose Swedish fascist and anti-democratic groups. Few even realized such groups existed at all after WWII.

But they rebounded into public consciousness after 1990 once the collapse of the Soviet Union created a ripple effect of nationalist movements, with immigrants fleeing the resulting ethnic conflicts in areas such as the Balkans. The nationalists involved themselves in terrorist acts and in infiltrating the political mainstream.

Larssen as a working journalist began to focus on this phenomenon.

In addition to his regular employment at a major news agency for more than 20 years, Larsson co-wrote the then-definitive book on such groups, “Extremhögern” (The Extreme Right). When it was published in 1991, co-author Anna-Lena Lodenius retreated from further journalistic investigation of the field in fear for her family’s safety.

But Larsson was unbowed by constant death threats, going on to become editor of Expo, a magazine dedicated to covering right-wing extremism. (Some key “Expo” personnel, forced to live in hiding, are interviewed here in silhouette.)

While he was constantly at risk of violent reprisal, Larsson wound up dying the classic newspaperman’s death: a heart attack in 2004 at age 50, brought on by compulsive overwork, poor nutrition, chain-smoking and lack of exercise.

His work led the way for courageous journalists after him to continue to courageously track, expose and stop the extreme right’s many legal and illegal tactics to infiltrate our world. He did a great job at a time when he worked mostly alone and was always in personal danger from the growing right who knew of his work and always were tracking and threatening him.

“We could use him now,” the film’s Director Henrik Georgsson said. “He would be a strong voice, especially since the success of the books. He would have had a lot of money, and he really would get things done. He wasn’t the kind to just retire or something like that.”

Director:

Henrik Georgsson

With:

Anna-Lena Lodenius, Daniel Poohl, Erland Larsson, Eva Gabrielsson, Ewa Tures, Gellert Tamas, Jennie K Larsson, Jesper Weithz, Katarina Larsson, Peter Karlsson (Swedish, English dialogue.)

1 hour 39 minutes

A Sundance Film Festival shown documentary about Israeli human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel.

She is an amazing force that won’t be stopped.

She has been an outspoken and controversial force in Israeli society having defended Palestinians against many criminal charges in Israeli courts for nearly five decades.

Lea Tsemel calls herself a losing lawyer, because every case she has taken was lost.

But once you watch the documentary called Advocate, then you will realize why she is the most successful, fearless lawyer in the world, known as the devil’s advocate. Her fascinating and quite eventful journey started way before the documentary begins, following her real time as she fights separate cases on court, knowing ahead of time she will lose, but the biggest victory of all is to reduce the sentences.

So who are those people that she defends?

Israel sees them as Palestinian terrorists that must face either death penalty or serve life in prison.

For Lea Tsemel, they are the people who fight for their freedom, including children under fourteen who must not face trial, but they still do because that’s how the system works.

“All what I want is Palestinians to find justice in Israeli court”, she says at some point. And later on she adds, “I am just a very angry optimistic woman”. Because as per her confession, no matter how tough cases are, she sees the person behind any case she works on.

She is a tough fighter for compassion, fairness within the court system.

Frequently subjected to harsh criticism in the press and in the public view, Tsemel remains optimistically steadfast in her belief that justice can be served.

In this impressive documentary, Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche masterfully juxtapose two of Tsemel’s cases, one professional and the other personal.

Currently the defense of a minor accused of attempted murder. This is a 12 year old boy accused of a crime he did not do. The incident in which he was involved has been blown out of proportion by the state demanding severe harsh punishment for this child.

There’s also shown here a past case in which she defended her activist husband from an accusation of treason against the state.

Animated sequences conceal defendants’ identities as Tsemel frankly addresses their best possible chances for acquittal.

Interviews with Tsemel’s adult children reveal her unique ability to see the humanity of those accused.

Advocate is an original, provocative film that both exposes the human fallout of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and provides hope for a peaceful resolution.

Montreal 1992. The film is in Quebecois French and English.

The main character is a troubled boy trying to figure out / escape from his family problems.

Emotionally estranged from his seriously ill cancer-stricken mother, Stan, a strange quixotic 19-year-old, dons a face deforming disguise and joins a therapy workshop for physically disfigured patients in a misguided attempt to reconnect with her.

Desperate to become less shallow, the handsome teenage boy deforms his face with bandages and attends a support group for physically and facially disfigured people.

He is drawn into their plight as the withdrawn deformed ones who yearn for normal lives.

The drama of the film follows Stan’s attempts to get the half dozen deformed individuals to get past their withdrawal and confusion about their situation. When he’s exposed as a ‘fake’ deformed person he refuses to be kicked out of the strange group and instead stays and pushes them to get past their deformity induced withdrawals from the world.

Part autobiographical coming-of-age story, part Dungeons & Dragons fuelled fable, part antitode to our society’s Tyranny of Beauty. The film is done with no makeup, no sfx, no filter.

Written by Alexandre Franchi and Joëlle Bourjolly and directed by Alexandre Franchi, Happy Face is based on autobiographical events as Alexandre grew up witnessing his single mother’s struggle with cancer.

The other characters in the film are real persons with facial and physical deformities and differences playing fictionalized versions of themselves.

I found it a fascinating look into an unknown but nearby world which is shown here with great sympathy and detail and amazing (deformed) actors.

Watch the trailer here.

Feels real, merci and thanks.

Director: Alexandre Franchi

Producersz; Alexandre Franchi, Stéphane Gérin-Lajoie, Claudine Sauvé

Writers; Joelle Bourjolly, Alexandre Franchi

Editors;a Hubert Hayaud, Amélie Labrèche

Designer: Valérie-Jeanne Mathieu

Happy Face was originally published in SydneysBuzz The Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Reviewed at Slamdance Film Festival by Peter Belsito

Montreal 1992. The film is in Quebecois French and English.

The main character is a troubled boy trying to figure out / escape from his family problems.

Emotionally estranged from his seriously ill cancer-stricken mother, Stan, a strange quixotic 19-year-old, dons a face deforming disguise and joins a therapy workshop for physically disfigured patients in a misguided attempt to reconnect with her.

Desperate to become less shallow, the handsome teenage boy deforms his face with bandages and attends a support group for physically and facially disfigured people.

He is drawn into their plight as the withdrawn deformed ones who yearn for normal lives.

The drama of the film follows Stan’s attempts to get the half dozen deformed individuals to get past their withdrawal and confusion about their situation. When he’s exposed as a ‘fake’ deformed person he refuses to be kicked out of the strange group and instead stays and pushes them to get past their deformity induced withdrawals from the world.

Part autobiographical coming-of-age story, part Dungeons & Dragons fuelled fable, part antitode to our society’s Tyranny of Beauty. The film is done with no makeup, no sfx, no filter.

Written by Alexandre Franchi and Joëlle Bourjolly and directed by Alexandre Franchi, is based

on autobiographical events as Alexandre grew up witnessing his single mother’s struggle with cancer.

The other characters in the film are real persons with facial and physical deformities and differences playing fictionalized versions of themselves.

I found it a fascinating look into an unknown but nearby world which is shown here with great sympathy and detail and amazing (deformed) actors.

Feels real, merci and thanks.

Director

Alexandre Franchi

Producers

Alexandre Franchi, Stéphane Gérin-Lajoie, Claudine Sauvé

Writers

Joelle Bourjolly, Alexandre Franchi

Editors

Hubert Hayaud, Amélie Labrèche

Designer

Valérie-Jeanne Mathieu