In-Conversation with Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noe has a reputation for making films that you will watch with your hands covering your eyes. But is that fair? Yes, for sure, the world first noticed his talents when he made the medium-length film Carne about a brutal butcher and his mute daughter. He then stretched it out to make his sensational feature film debut, I Stand Alone, which depicts the aforementioned butcher living on the edge. Then in 2002, he made the sensational Irréversible, starring Monica Bellucci, which tells the story in reverse order of two men who try to take revenge after a sexual assault. Enter the Void would continue the visceral filmmaking that became Noe’s signature. Born in Buenos Aires, the director would continue to entrap audiences and break the fourth wall with his films Enter the Void (2009), Love (2015), Climax (2018) and Lux Æterna (2019). He surprised many with his sixth film, Vortex which was a more straightforward tale of dementia. But of course, being a Noe film, the director still plays with the frame and how time functions, disorientating the audience in the process. Following on from his video Q and A at the Festival last year, Noe will be conducting an In-conversation at the Red Sea IFF. Be prepared to have your head repeatedly bashed in by a fire hydrant.
Other movies
NIGHT OF THE ZOOPOCALYPSE
Director: Ricardo Curtis
When a meteor crashes into Colepepper Zoo, it releases a virus that turns infected animals into slavering zombies. The few remaining unaffected must band together to escape the virus, find a cure and - most importantly - defeat the Bunny King, a mad mutant beast who wants to spread the virus beyond the zoo to animals everywhere. Young wolf Gracie teams up with mountain lion Dan to find and warn her pack; Xavier, the movie-obsessed lemur; Frida, the fiery capybara; ostrich Ash and the untrustworthy monkey Felix make up the rest of the squabbling, motley crew. A colourful tale with echoes of the recent global pandemic, the Zoopocalypse is a treat for adult animation buffs as much as children.
SMILE THE PHOTO COMES OUT BETTER
Director: Sherif Arafa
Photographer Sayed Gharib worries when his daughter Tahani moves to Cairo to study medicine, concerns that prove justified when she struggles to fit in with her privileged fellow students. His solution is to follow her to the city, moving close to the school where she studies. While she is falling in love with the son of a famous businessman, Sayed continues to take pictures. He has strong ideas about photographs of people, which reflect his own sense of dignity in poverty but is also his strongest professional principle. They must look happy; no matter how much sadness anyone carries with them, photographs must express joy. Mona Zaki plays in this film with other important Arab actors, including Ahmed Zaki and Leila Eloui.
AÏCHA
Director: Mehdi M. Barsaoui
Aya is the sole survivor of a bus crash on a mountain road. When she realises that nobody knows she is alive, she makes a snap decision to escape her dead-end village existence and become someone else. In thriving, liberal Tunis, she calls herself Amira, a thrilling change until one of those men is murdered and the investigating police start to question “Amira”’s sketchy life story. Fatma Sfar is vivid and immediately sympathetic as Aya/Amira, while narrative twists and nested details gradually reveal that she isn’t the only trickster with something to hide. Aicha was judged Best Mediterranean Film from the Academy of Fine Arts at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
SABA
Director: Maksud Hossain
Saba, 25, lives in Dhaka with her demanding mother Shirin, a paraplegic whose frustrations and rage often find a target in the daughter who cares for her. When Shirin’s worsening condition requires surgery it falls to Saba to find the money to pay for it. Securing a job at a seedy Shisha bar, Saba befriends the manager Ankur and, for the first time, pictures what a life of her own could look like. Maksud Hossain’s debut feature is a close-up look at a complicated bond between mother and daughter that lurches between love and guilt, co-dependence and the longing for autonomy - but it is also a social drama, detailing the hardships that underlay the riots in Bangladesh earlier this year.
