Hot on the heels of the London Film Festival comes the Leeds International Film Festival (November 1-17, 2024), which attracts filmmakers as an Academy Award Qualifying Festival. It follows what has become the familiar format of strands devoted to shorts, documentaries, sci-fi/fantasy and the official selection of new films, now rechristened Constellation. This year there was a spotlight on the work of Smita Patil and local filmmaker and artist Stuart Croft. My focus was on the Constellation strand, where six films stood out among the thirty I saw.

A Real Pain (USA. Poland | 2024) is Jesse Eisenberg’s latest film as writer/director. He stars alongside Keiran Culkin as Jewish cousins who go to seek their roots in Poland. David (Eisenberg) is the nerdy conformist, while Benji (Culkin) is freewheeling and outspoken. Predictably their contrasting personalities lead to tensions, which are evident from the opening scenes, while Benji’s vulnerability becomes apparent when the tourist party pays the obligatory visit a concentration camp. I have always considered Eisenberg a self-conscious performer, but he has found his niche, even though both leads play to type. What could be a dark film is funny and poignant, recalling the early work of Woody Allen. A Real Pain was screened at Leeds prior to its UK general release. This provides publicity for Disney and attracts audiences to the festival, the screening I attended being sold out. On the other hand the slot could be filled by the work of a new and unknown filmmaker, which is the purpose of the festival.

A theme of the festival was changing notions of the family. This was exemplified in The Ties That Bind Us (Carine Tardieu, France, Belgium | 2024). Sandra (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is in her fifties, a feminist and runs a bookshop. Her life takes an abrupt change of direction when she looks after a child for a neighbour, who is having a baby. The mother dies during childbirth, which leads Sandra into becoming a mother figure for the surviving child. The situation becomes more complex when the child’s father begins a relationship with a doctor, which leaves Sandra’s role in doubt. This is an involving film which eschews easy solutions. As in Rohmer’s films a character’s thoughts and feelings become manifest in a moral dilemma. There is a focus on a single incident and how it changes those involved, though here it is seen from a feminine viewpoint. Each member of the audience will come away with a different opinion of the characters’ responses to their situation. Yet the situation is not unique. Death, divorce and separation mean that the term ‘family’ has always been open to a myriad of interpretations with the nuclear family being a mid-twentieth century construct.

A Muslim drag queen is unusual, but hardly new to the cinema. There was the documentary Muslim Drag Queens (Marcus Plowright, UK | 2015), Joyland (Saim Sadiq, Pakistan |2022), which was screened at the Leeds festival and Wakhri (One of a Kind) (Iram Parveen Bilal, Pakistan, USA | 2023) also screened in Leeds. Layla (Amrou Al-Kadhi, UK | 2024) is set among the East End of London’s queer community. Layla (Bilal Hasma) gives a drag queen performance at a corporate Gay Pride event. There he encounters PR executive Max (Louis Greatorex) and they begin an affair despite the reservations of Layla’s friends. Layla is introduced to Max’s family as a performer, which his father assumes to mean political satire. How have attitudes moved on since Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)? Apparently not too far as Layla hides the relationship from his British-Palestinian family and Max is equally circumspect with his business associates. This double life creates complications, which neither man can control. The characters’ inner lives deserve more attention, but Greatorex provides the ideal foil to Hasma’s exuberant performance.

The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden | 2024) is a grim work, which has attracted attention at festivals. As Chris Fells the Leeds festival director pointed out in his introduction to the film, von Horn used black and white photography because photographs from the period (1918) are in black and white. Colour would seem false. Lynch’s The Elephant Man and Lean’s Oliver Twist were influences and this shows. Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) works in a Copenhagen garment factory. She has not heard from her husband for a year. Becoming the mistress of the factory owner promises a better life, until his mother intervenes. The pregnant Karoline is left homeless and jobless. She attempts to procure an abortion with a knitting needle, but this is unsuccessful. Her husband reappears wearing a metal mask to cover his face, which was disfigured during the war. He finds work in a freak show. Against his wishes she sells the baby to Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who finds homes for unwanted babies –at a price. Dagmar employs her as a wet nurse, but Karoline becomes curious about what happens to the babies. When things seem unable to get any worse for her, they do. The story, which takes on the quality of a nightmare, is based on a real case in 1920s Denmark. This is an immersive film with images that are not easily forgotten.

Italy produces sumptuous films for the festival circuit. This year’s offering is Gloria! (Margherita Vicario, Italy, Switzerland | 2024). It is 1800. Near Venice is a convent for unwanted girls, where the inmates are taught music. Vivaldi taught in such an institution early in the 18th century and the girls are playing his music at the opening of the film. The servant Teresa (Galatéa Bellugi) discovers a piano in the basement. She begins playing syncopated music from the future, but the other girls discover her secret. Lucia (Carlotta Gamba) leads the orchestra and has more traditional composing ambitions, causing rifts between the girls. The music master Perlina (Paolo Rossi) has to provide a composition for a Papal visit, but has little success. The girls hijack the occasion and play Teresa’s music. Too many clichés intrude and the story fails to make musicological sense, but the exuberance of the scene when the girls’ stage their rebellion carries all before it. Vicario is a singer-songwriter. She dedicates her film to the female musicians and composers who were written out of history. This is a way of honouring them.

When the Light Breaks (Rúnar Runarsson, Iceland, Netherlands, Croatia, France | 2024) begins at sunset, when Una (Elin Hall) and Diddi sit together on a headland looking out to sea and dreaming of a future together. The next day Diddi goes to tell his girlfriend Karla that they are breaking up, but before that happens he dies in a fire which engulfs a road tunnel. Diddi’s friends from the band plus Una and Karla spend the day trying to come to terms with their grief. Una and Karla grow close, despite Una’s secret. At the end of the day they look over the sea at another sunset. This is a subtle film relying on expressions as much as dialogue and eschewing melodrama. What makes it notable is Sophia Olsson’s photography, which provides its own hypnotic commentary on events particularly in the final scene, when the camera seems to head towards infinity.

Among other films. Paul and Paulette Take a Bath (Jethro Massey, UK | 2004) is notable for its French sensibility in the Anglo-French writer/director’s first feature. The film opens in Paris with aspiring American photographer Paul (Jérémie Galiana) encountering Paulette (Marie Benati) at the site where Marie Antoinette was executed. They strike up a friendship allowing Paul to indulge Paulette’s morbid curiosity by showing her places associated with crimes. Paulette is reticent about her family, but as the relationship deepens she agrees that Paul should join her when she visits her parents in Salzburg. Paul’s surprise gift is to arrange for them to stay in what he claims to be the young Hitler’s Munich flat. He takes a picture of them in the bath, recalling Lee Miller’s famous photograph. In turn Paulette has a surprise for him. As Benati puts it: ‘When you find someone who helps you feel like a kid again, it creates a special bond. That’s what happens with these two — they find someone to be silly with, to play roles, and to have fun together. Their love story feels like a game, and there’s a sense of freedom in that playfulness.’ (Grechanikova, 2024) This is a film for emotions rather than intellect.

Good One (India Donaldson, USA | 2024) is an understated film from another debut writer/director. Two old friends from college days, Matt and Chris, go on a three-day hike in the Catskill Mountains. Matt’s son refuses to come, but Chris’s 17-year-old daughter Sam (Lily Collias) joins them and events are seen from her viewpoint. Gender roles are soon established: when the three share a twin-bedded motel room, it is Sam who has to sleep on the floor and on their first night camping, she does the cooking. The nature of the characters and their relationship are revealed during the course of the hike as much by Sam’s weary acceptance of the men’s bickering as by the dialogue. A throwaway remark by Matt could change the course of events, but Sam takes it in her stride. The film resembles Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) and Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006) in its structure and setting, but with added sexual frisson though less humour. Donaldson has a distinctive voice and Collias is a name to watch.

Chinese films are rarities in festivals these days, which makes All Shall Be Well (Ray Yeung, China, Hong Kong | 2024) all the more intriguing. Angie and Pat are life partners. They are in their sixties, own a textile business and live in a spacious apartment. Angie is treated as an auntie, until Pat dies suddenly. Then relationships change. The flat is in Pat’s name and several of her family clamour to live there. Then there is probate to be negotiated, which might be a legacy of the British legal system. Aside from the personal story, the film exposes attitudes to same-sex couples, which may or may not be typical, and their treatment within the Chinese legal system: they would only be accepted as a couple if they married abroad. The irony is that a draft will leaves the flat to Angie, but it was never signed.

The Leeds-based filmmaker Stuart Croft died while planning a working based on The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico | 1962). This was reason enough to screen the film, which is as enigmatic as ever. Wealthy citizens attend a dinner only to discover they cannot leave (Phillips, 2013, Holland, n.d.). A similar premise is apparent in Rumours (Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin, Canada, Germany, USA | 2024). G7 leaders meet in the German countryside. In a gazebo by a lake they have a meal and attempt to put together a bland joint statement. A fog comes down and the staff have disappeared leaving the seven leaders isolated and uncertain where to go. Meanwhile the outside world is on fire and bog people roam the countryside in what seems an unnecessary touch. The satire wears thin as melodrama takes over, while Charles Dance is miscast as the American president, given that he plays the role as a patrician English politician in the tradition of Harold Macmillan.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves, USA | 1968) is another film that influenced Croft. Grieves films in Central Park, New York, while a second crew films the director at work. Grieves has his own camera, which he turns on anything that catches his eye. The result is more interesting than enjoyable, but two other films in the festival employ a similar technique. In Loveable (Lilja Ingolfsdottir, Norway | 2024) Maria (Helga Guren) films the breakdown of her marriage, which carries self-absorption to a new level. The breakdown is a Bergmanesque situation, though Ingmar Bergman would have introduced more showing than talking and less psychological jargon. What the four children have to say about their parents’ activities is not shown. It might have given us new insights. The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko, USA | 2024) has a more complex structure. Celine (Dasha Nekrasova) is making a documentary about Covid. Relations are strained with her boyfriend Jay (Peter Vack), though they agree to put themselves in the film. They rent a holiday home, where a suspicious Jay spies on Celine’s phone and makes use of surveillance cameras around the house. How much the technological complexity adds to the story is a moot point. These films offer intriguing experiments, though they are some way behind films on surveillance and voyeurism such as Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Andrea Arnold’s Red Road (2006).

Films from countries without a strong film-making tradition are always intriguing. East of Noon (Hala Elkoussy, Egypt, Netherlands, Qatar | 2024) is set in an isolated community where eccentric showman Shawky (Ahmed Kamal) holds sway over the population. Abdo (Omar Rozeik) is a young musician, who longs for freedom and uses music as an escape from poverty. This is a film of images and mood. Using a non-linear form is a risk, which is not completely successful. I came away feeling that many cultural references had eluded me. Looking towards an international audience entails compromises to make the film understandable in other countries. The Fable (Raam Reddy, India, USA | 2024) is more successful in this respect and has a strong storyline. Events are recounted by a narrator, whose identity is not immediately apparent. It is 1989 and an orchard is run by an affluent Indian family using the pattern established by the former colonial occupiers. Western audiences know about colonialism. A series of fires and the subsequent investigation challenges this cosy arrangement. The film won the Jury prize at Leeds, with nine of the Constellation films in contention. In Betânia (Marcelo Botta, Brazil | 2024) two tourists and their guide become lost among the sand dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park. They are rescued by the villagers on quad bikes. This final section overshadows the opening, where matriarch Betânia moves from the village on the death of her husband, though it does emphasise the villagers’ reliance on tourism.

There were a few disappointments in the festival. It was good to see a film from Vietnam, but Don’t Cry Butterfly (Duong Dieu Linh, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines | 2024) switches abruptly from marital infidelity into horror without hitting either target. Bird (Andrea Arnold, UK, USA | 2024) is set in a run-down council estate. Like Billy in Ken Loach’s Kes (1969), Bailey (Nykiya Adams) finds escape from her surroundings by turning to nature, but where Kes has light and shade, Arnold’s film is unremittingly bleak and not relieved by a moment of magic realism. This is a place you want to leave as soon as possible. British indie film has been at risk of becoming a ghetto for social realism, though other British and joint British films at the festival including Paul and Paulette Take a Bath, Layla and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, UK, Zambia, Ireland | 2024) demonstrate that parochialism is being overcome.

The number of production credits to sit through at the start of every film grows ever longer, revealing the difficulties of funding indie films. India Donaldson is one director who has talked about the problem (Shanfeld, 2024). This situation is unlikely to improve, one consequence being that that filmmakers have to spend more time chasing money than making films. A surprise is the number of films shot in 16mm. There may be artistic reasons in some cases, but cost is the overriding factor. When digital supplanted analogue in the film world, 16mm film stock was sold off cheaply. Increasing costs and manufacturers leaving the market mean that the financial advantage will not apply in future.

Downstream from where Bird was shot and on the opposite bank of the Thames is Southend-on-Sea, which has its own film festival now in its sixteenth year. The offerings included recent foreign releases which never made it to Southend, films with a local interest and older films.

Most countries have film series which do not travel well. Britain had its Confessions films, Russia and East Germany their red westerns and Italy it is the Cinepanettoni films. West Germany had Krimi films, a series based loosely on Edgar Wallace potboilers, but drawing in Germanic film traditions: Dr Mabuse was reincarnated for the series, which appeared from the late 1950s and continued through the next decade. British television companies were wary of foreign material, though the series was distributed to their counterparts in Canada and the USA, which accounts for the American English of the dubbed version. Edgar Wallace: The College Girl Murders (Alfred Wohrer, West Germany | 1967) was the episode screened at the festival. Though ostensibly set in England and involving a Scotland Yard detective, there is nothing English about it except the sight of a Rolls Royce. The body count rises rapidly at a girls’ boarding school after a poison gas gun is wielded and a red monk with a lethal whip technique uses it to strangle victims seemingly at random. The British TV series The Avengers from the 1960s used similar tropes and humour, though the presence of a mastermind with a penchant for wild animals, including crocodiles and snakes to intimidate his victims brings to mind the James Bond films — the franchise began in 1962 with Dr No. The Krimi films are an interesting discovery, though I should not want to watch the whole series.

In The Perfect Secret (Bora Dagtekin, Germany | 2019) three and a half couples (one partner is ill) meet for a dinner party. They seem perfect friends with perfect relationships, who have done well in life. They play a game, setting their phones on to speaker and leaving them in the middle of the table. It seems an innocent amusement, until their secrets are revealed through text messages and conversations. Maintaining tension within a chamber work is difficult, but Dagtekin succeeds. The film was released in six European countries and in Vietnam. It deserved better.

Next Door (Daniel Brϋhl, Germany, USA | 2021) is the actor’s first foray into directing. The film amounts to another chamber work, most of the action taking place in a bar, where actor Daniel passes the time while waiting for his flight to London for an audition. He encounters his neighbour Bruno, whose father was forced out his shabby East Berlin flat, which was transformed into Bruno’s luxury apartment complete with private lift. It becomes clear that Bruno knows a great deal about Daniel, including his wife’s affair and Daniel’s secret liaisons. The divide in German society between east and west overshadows the film with its shots of a utilitarian block of flats and the implication that Bruno learned his investigative methods in the Stasi. There are two problems with this film. The first is that the audience is left to differentiate Daniel the character from Daniel the actor, which becomes difficult when Bruno criticises Brϋhl’s performance in Good Bye Lenin! (2003). The cognitive dissonance is difficult to overcome. The second problem is the slow pace. Running time is ninety-two minutes, but the film feels longer with stretches of repetitive dialogue. The two-hander might work better in the theatre, where there are no distracting reverse shots, however artfully concealed.

Lost in Paris (Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, France, Belgium | 2017) has done the rounds of festivals and follows in the tradition of Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro (1960), not least in having a seminal scene set on the Eiffel Tower. Canadian librarian Fiona (Fiona Gordon) receives a message that her aunt Martha is threatened with going into care. This prompts a trip to Paris, where Fiona literally becomes entangled with the homeless Dom. This launches a series of comic misadventures, a highlight being the scene of Martha’s ‘cremation’. You come out of the screening feeling happy.

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, France | 1965) came five years after the director’s first feature Cleo from 5 to 7. It shares the same concern with a woman’s response to a situation she cannot control. François is a carpenter, who is happily married with two children. He wants this situation to continue even when he has an affair with Emilie, who works in the local post office, but is this possible? The title translated as Happiness should be taken ironically. As Varda puts it, she depicts ‘a beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside.’ (Morrison, 2021) She asks a profound question in a seemingly simple story.

The third French film is Highway Pick-Up (Julien Duvivier, France | 1963). Adapted from the 1934 novel by James Hadley Chase The Postman Always Knocks Twice was first filmed in 1946 by Tay Garnett (and unofficially by Luchino Visconti as Ossessione in 1943). Duvivier harks back to film noir with black and white photography, a criminal milieu, a femme fatale and doubtful morality — familiar territory for Duvivier. Daniel escapes from prison and is taken in by Thomas, who owns an isolated garage-cum-café. Thomas’s wife Maria wants to escape with her husband’s money and seeks Daniel’s help. The plot is set in motion and like a clockwork toy it continues inexorably to the final tragedy, the tension never slackening. Highway Pick-Up was Duvivier’s penultimate film, though it has the look of a film from twenty years earlier. This may offer a clue as to why it is forgotten: it seemed old fashioned when the French New Wave had taken root and Jean-Pierre Melville eclipsed his older rival in crafting crime stories). Duvivier had a chequered career, but judging by the audience response in Southend, he deserves to be reassessed, which is an argument made by Ben McCann (2017).

Girls of the Spanish Steps (Luciano Emmer, Italy | 1952) is another forgotten film, this time in the neo-realist tradition and with a neglected director. It follows the life and loves of three girls, who work for a couturier in Rome and meet for lunch on the Spanish Steps. Like other works of the genre the emphasis is on street life. Emmer stresses women’s role in society, the cramped living conditions and class differences exemplified by the fashion show and the aspirations of the girls who make the dresses. In a reversal of the usual sequence of book to film, the neorealist tradition has been revived in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.

When choosing between the two screenings, I opted for foreign films. Among the British films screened, the oldest was A Matter of WHO (Don Chaffey, UK | 1961), which I have written about elsewhere (Gillett 2019, 127). This is a comedy crossed with a public information film about the dangers of smallpox and the importance accorded to tracing contacts. Premiered at the festival and awaiting a distributor is David and Victoria (James Wilsher, UK), the story of recovering addict David, who takes his estranged daughter Victoria to the seaside. Location shooting took place locally.

Southend is among a host of smaller film festivals across the UK and is unusual in receiving no funding from the local authority, relying instead on local sponsors. It is organised by the enterprising organisation The White Bus, which provides film production facilities along with education and exhibition services in the area, as well as organising the Horror-on-Sea Festival. Some of the most well-attended screenings in the main festival were archive films of Southend, while shorts from the South Essex University Centre students accompanied some of the features. The pity is that more students did not attend, which is something that applies to the Leeds festival. Southend is what Roya Rastegar would term a community festival in opposition to mainstream festivals such as Leeds, though the strong international content in the Southend programme blurs this distinction (Rastegar, 2016, 181-95). Some festivals focus on current releases, but festivals reviving older films, or screening films that are hardly seen on the big screen outside big major cities such as Leeds perform a valuable function. Not all the films screened at festivals are masterpieces, but they present a range of human experiences, which we have the privilege to share. That is why I keep going back.

Notes

Gillett, Philip (2019), Film and the Historian: The British Experience (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne).

Grechanikova, Polina (2024), ‘Venice 2024 (Settimana Internazionale della Critica): Paul & Paulette Take a Bath | Interview’, Film Fest Report, 24 September, https://film-fest-report.com/venice-2024-settimana-internazionale-della-critica-paul-paulette-take-a-bath-interview/ accessed 13 November 2024.

Holland, Norman (n.d.), ‘Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel, El ángel exterminador (1962)’, A Sharper Focus, https://www.asharperfocus.com/Exterm.html, accessed 13 November2024.

McCann, Ben (2017), Julien Duvivier (Manchester, MUP).

Morrison, David (2021), ‘10 films about happiness’, BBC, 20 March, https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-films-about-happiness accessed 17 November 2024.

Phillips, Mairead (2013), ‘The Castaways of Providence Street: On Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel’, Senses of Cinema, 70, https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-castaways-of-providence-street-on-luis-bunuels-the-exterminating-angel/ accessed 13 November 2024.

Rastegar, Roya (2016), ‘Seeing differently: The curatorial potential of film festival programming’, in Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, eds Marijke de Valck, Brendon Kredell and Skadi Loist (Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon).

Shanfeld, Ethan (2024), ‘How ‘Good One’ Director India Donaldson Crafted the Film’s Devastating Twist‘, Variety, 10 August, https://variety.com/2024/film/news/good-one-ending-twist-explained-india-donaldson-1236074343/ accessed 17 November 2024.

Volume 28, Issue 11-12 / December 2024 Festival Reports   agnes varda   julien duvivier   leeds international film festival   southend film festival