<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/664/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/556/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/600/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/664/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/700/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/10/0/601/6480/4320/800/0/75/0/5bb1816_1691680568584-illustration-mantagheye-bohrani-critical-zone.jpeg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Shirin Abedinirad in " critical="" zone"="" by="" ali="" ahmadzadeh."="" width="100%" height="auto">
Faced with the absurdity of war and history repeating itself, cinema fights against stagnation by renewing itself aesthetically. This is the good news to come out of the 76th edition of the Locarno International Film Festival – the first after the death of Franco-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard on September 13, 2022 – held in Switzerland from the 2nd to the 12th of August. In a nod to Godard, a film by Paul Vecchiali (who died January 18, 2023), Bonjour la langue (Hello, Language) – presented in the Fuori Concorso (out of competition) section – pays tribute in its credits to the author of Vivre sa Vie My Life to Live, 1962) and Adieu au langage (Good-bye to Language, 2014). With just one thread of touching and biting dialogue, Bonjour la langue follows the tempestuous reunion of a father (Paul Vecchiali) and his son (Pascal Cervo).
More than one torch was passed on during this year's festival, and it seems that cinema is alive and well with its "new" New Wave: After a week of viewing, it's safe to assume that (at least) half of the 17 films competing for the Golden Leopard – whose jury is chaired by French actor Lambert Wilson – could win the award. Against a backdrop of conflict, the screens at Locarno have revealed new talent seeking to reinvent language and shunning films with an obvious "subject."
There is a feeling of going around in circles, at least geographically speaking, along with a sense of being trapped in a "zone" emerging from several of the most striking works in the competition. A case in point is the rootless wanderings of a singer of Cape Verdean origin (Eliana Rosa), who drags her suitcase through a Lisbon neighborhood as she searches for a new home, in Basil da Cunha's heady Manga D'Terra, in a mix between documentary and musical. Another hectic piece, The Vanishing Soldier by Israeli director Dani Rosenberg, focuses on a young Israeli deserter (Ido Tako) who finds himself trapped in Tel Aviv. We stay stuck to this Buster Keaton-like character in his frantic, tragic yet comic flight, as the Israeli armed forces believe him to be a captive in Palestinian hands. The director's work has a universal dimension, symbolic of a young generation that rejects war and wants to carve out their own lives.
In a devastatingly surreal style in her nightmarish Sweet Dreams, Dutch director Ena Sendijarevic (born in 1987) sketches the daily life of an Indonesian plantation run by a Dutch patriarch, on the eve of the country's proclamation of independence (1945). As the story unfolds, the young Indonesian maid finds herself on the edge of the abyss: is she capable of picturing herself elsewhere, of leaving this place, of loving freely?
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