RESTORING FAMILY HONOR IN KYRGYZSTAN

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, September 1, 2016 --  An Airbus jetliner touches down in an airport in Kyrgyzstan.  Azat, a 20-something Kyrgyz who has been living in the United States for 15 years, has returned to his native country to fulfill an obligation – and to restore his family’s honor.

Azat’s father, Murat, died in the U.S. a year ago. It was his last wish that money he borrowed from people in his village be repaid. But when Azat arrives at the house that his family had occupied, he finds the house abandoned and in disrepair.

Directed by Bakyt Mukul and Dastan Zhapar Uulu, “A Father’s Will” is a story of family, friendship, changing demographics, and ancient custom. After his arrival at the family home and as he goes about contacting those who had lent money to his father, Azat discovers a village nearly frozen in time, with dirt roads and horse-drawn wagons and many young people determined to leave and create a better future.

At first, Azat is met with some hostility from those who lent money to his father. And his initial contact with his father’s brother, Choro, is met with indifference. But Azat persists, and in parallel he begins to restore the family home, an effort which becomes a metaphor for restoring his family’s integrity. He later meets with the elders of the village and explains that his father had been cremated, an unprecedented situation that leaves the elders unsure of what to do. They resolve the situation by giving Murat’s ashes a proper Kyrgyz funeral and burial.

The 114-minute film is both bleak, in its depiction of a tribal society that seems to have not progressed, and beautiful, especially the vistas of snow-capped mountains. Western viewers will find its pacing slow, but perhaps this was a deliberate decision by the directors to reflect how time seems to have stood still in this Kyrgyz village. What’s left unresolved is whether Azat stays or returns to the U.S.

A FAMILY ODYSSEY IN THE WAR-TORN MIDDLE EAST

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, August 31, 2016 – “House Without Roof”, set in Iraqi Kurdistan and Germany, is a deeply felt and moving story of three siblings who journey to Kurdistan to fulfill their mother’s last wish to be buried next to their father.

The film opens with a clip of Jan, Alan and Liya as children cavorting during a photo shoot with their parents. The happiness and joy of that time quickly fades as the story picks up in present day Germany with the mother’s controversial decision to return to Kurdistan.

That decision comes as a surprise to Alan and Liya, but not to the elder Jan, who knew about it but did not tell his siblings. This creates a rift among the three, but the sudden death of their mother forces them to come together again and to honor her last request.

But the rift among the siblings only grows as more family secrets are revealed about their father’s past during the regime of Saddam Hussein, a past that bitterly divides the extended family.

The siblings’ journey to bury their mother next to their father runs a gamut of emotions, from anger and division to reconciliation and love. The three principal actors – Mina Ozlem Sagdic, Sasun Sayan and Murat Seven – are superb in their roles as the siblings as is the supporting cast.

The film was written and directed by Soleen Yusef, who was born in Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. According to the website Filmfest Munchen, Yusef’s family fled to Germany when she was nine years old. She trained as a singer and actress in Berlin – in the film Liya is a singer in a German night club – and enrolled at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in the dramatic directing department. “House Without Roof” is her graduating film.

“House Without Roof” won the Best Production award at Filmfest Munchen earlier this year. 

WHERE NO GOVERNMENT SHOULD EVER GO

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, August 30, 2016 --  Kreso and Sikic are the Croatian equivalent of the odd couple, two government workers who couldn’t be more different in personality and behavior. The two men are paired together, under the auspices of a new Croatian government department called the State Family Inspectorate, to find widows of Croatian soldiers who are living in extra-marital unions so that their late husbands’ pensions can be revoked.

The film, called the Ministry of Love, stars Stjepan Peric as Kreso, an unemployed biologist who takes the job at the new government department reluctantly. His attitude draws the ire of the sandwich-chomping Sikic, who is determined to identify cheating widows and earn a bonus for himself. Sikic is played by Drazen Kuhn. After some misfires with widows that mark the duo as losers in the eyes of the new department, Kreso figures out a ruse that begins to work and eventually puts them at the top of the investigative unit.

But Kreso, who is having his own troubles with his wife, falls for one of the widows, and he begins to question the morality of the Croatian law authorizing the attempt to deprive the war windows of their husbands’ pensions. At the same time, his young son begins to ask his father about his job and what defines what Kreso tells him is the “common good”.

Directed by Croatia’s Pavo Marinkovic, this 103-minute film is funny and touching, with solid performances by Peric and Kuhn.


    Director Pavo Marinkovic at the Imperial Theater in Montreal

Marinkovic, who introduced the film at the Montreal festival, said the deeply unpopular law to revoke the pensions was never put into effect. Ministry of Love is a Croatian-Czech-Romanian co-production.

THE JAPANESE REMARRIAGE MARKET: BUYERS SHOULD BEWARE

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, August 30, 2016 – “Black Widow Business”, a film by 76-year old Japanese director Yasuo Tsuruhashi, is the story of two deadly scam artists who are in the business of stealing the life savings of elderly men lured into marriage.

Toru Kashiwagi, played by the actor Etsushi Toyokawa, runs a corrupt “marriage agency” that caters to widowers looking to remarry. Toru’s 50/50 partner in the schemes is Sayoko Takeuchi, played by the actress Shinobu Otake, a 60-ish widow who charms the older men with her compliant attitude and musings about looking at the stars in the sky. According to the film’s production notes, there are more than 4,000 marriage agencies in Japan that are used by more than 600,000 people each year, and fraud is on the rise.


   Shinobu Otake at the Imperial Theater in Montreal

At the start of the film, Sayoko’s latest prey is 80-year old Kozo Nakase, a former professor, who has two grown daughters, Komomi and Naoko. Kozo falls for Sayoko and marries her, but then Sayoko plots to kill Kozo by tampering with his medication. Kozo eventually dies, and at the funeral Sayoko informs Kozo’s daughters that she will be inheriting all of his large estate.

This outrages Komomi and she contacts a college classmate who is a lawyer. They hire a private investigator and begin to learn the awful truth about Sayoko – the many men she has married have gone missing.

From here, the film unfortunately becomes slapstick and falls apart. The private investigator tries to blackmail Toru, who then manipulates Sayoko’s hyper son into killing the investigator, who botches the assassination attempt and accidentally “kills” Sayoko in a fight. Toru and the son stuff what they think is the dead Sayoko in a suitcase but as they try to load the luggage into a car are tripped up by a police patrol.

In the end, however, no police action is taken and Toru and Sayoko continue to go about their heinous business.

For their parts, stars Shinobu Otake and Etsushi Toyokawa are well cast and convincing in their roles. But they can’t overcome the faults in the plot. A more convincing, and satisfying, ending would have been to have the scheme exposed when the police came on the scene and the two perpetrators brought to justice.