There where a lot of women protagonists to be seen in the films of the 62nd festival of Locarno in August 2009: Oriental, European, South-African, women of great dignity and generosity, women in flight from a crashed period of life, women united with men outside of any law. In the international competition I counted 18 films with different faces of different women, beyond the rules of everyday-life or provincial habitudes. For example in the Canadian film La donation by Bernard Èmond, third chapter of a film trilogy with the themes of charity and open attitudes to other people. Jeanne works as a doctoress in a village far from Quebec replacing an aged doctor for a certain time. Her activity not limiting to the healing process of her patients, Jeanne is engaged in personal contacts and in the confrontation with the pains, problems and difficulties of the people. By beginning to change herself radically she discovers a new vision of life.
Another eighteen years old protagonist is Rebecca in the film Complices by Frédéric Mermoud, a French-Swiss coproduction. Rebecca is deep in love with Vincent, a prostitute living outside the rules of legality. Out of love Rebecca participates in Vincents contacts with his clients causing a tragic ending: while she is involved in the murder of one of Vincent’s clients, Vincent himself has to die in the consequence of the gelosy of a secret lover. The love which Rebecca has given to Vincent is recompensed by the activity of a police inspector saving her from jail by hiding the traces and Rebecca’s implication in the murder – while she is expecting a child from Vincent. Never getting to know his own child he had twenty years ago, the inspector’s help represents the love he could not live before, while Rebecca finds in him a father she never met.
Shirley Adams, a South African and US co-production by Oliver Hermanus, a director not quite twenty-five years old, tells the story of Shirley, a strong and respected lady living alone. She manages to heal her son, a disabled boy who had been stroken by a bullett. In the background we see Capetown with its racial diversity and a lot of extreme poverty. At the end of the story we find out that the person who shot at Shirley’s child was a friend of her own childhood. Shirley doesn’t loose her self-command and accepts a profound confrontation with the mother of the guilty man: two persons falling victim to the same hopelessness. Without self-pity the film combines personal motifs with social and political aspects.
In the competition programme there where a number of films with powerful women far from mere walk-on parts, for example in the Iranian Film Frontier Blues directed by Babak Jalali. A group of people lives in a far Iranian village near the Turcmenian frontier in a situation of waiting for better days and hopeless solitude. The earth is dry and waste. Part of the men’s feelings and memories is imagining the presence of women. Hassan, walking around with his donkey, dreams about meeting a woman, an encounter he never experienced before; a storyteller wishes the return of his wife who left him one day with another man in a green Mercedes. Alam is learning English in order to leave his country with his loved girl, but she repudiates him. The women of this film represent expectation, hopeless longing and promises at the same time.
In the context of Manga Impact, a retrospective of Japanese animation films, we saw Summer Wars by Mamoru Hosoda. In this film, a major female role is represented by a ninety years old grandmother, centre of a birthday party organised by her family in traditional Japanese fashion. The real life gets threatened by the virtual city of Oz where several members of the family have to struggle with the destructive playfulness of their own avatars. Offering an exchange between reality and virtuality this film displays a universe in which technology and traditional familiy life can cheerfully exist side by side.
In this 62nd edition of Locarno festival like every year since 1971 an ecumenical jury did its work, composed by members of WACC, SIGNIS, and INTERFILM, with the purpose of awarding a prize and mentioning qualified films of the international competition which show and underline human rights and christian values, films which foster possibilities of a responsible life for human beings in a world with its actual problems.
The prize of the ecumenical jury was given to the Greek film Akadimia Platonos by Filippos Tsitos, a film with a bitter-sweet and ironical view to the Greek prejudices against Albanian and Chinese people. Once again the film features an old woman, the mother of Stratos, a simple minded and racist man, who shelters an Albanian worker by assuming that he could be his son. In consequence of this act of love the identity of the persons in the film as well as their perception of the other are exposed to discussion and scrutiny A special mention the jury attributed to Nothing Personal by Polish director Urszula Antoniak, the story of two persons living in solitude whose encounter confronts them with questions of mutual respect and maintaining their independence but ends tragically.
The unexpected winner of the Golden Leopard was the film She, a Chinese by Xiaolu Guo telling the story of Mei, a young woman, who leaves her remote village in the Chinese countryside in order to live out all her passions, love stories and pains in the Western world. The festival with its 50'000 visitors on the Piazza Grande only, the greatest open air cinema in Europe, had for us, the ecumenical jury, the character of a highly important experience of encountering, being aware of and perceiving women at the center of the silver screen, and, hopefully, as soon as possible also in everyday life.
(Translated by Olaf Schmalstieg)