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Rotterdam 2004, The Trainee Project:
Diversity vs. Déjà Vu
By Matthieu Darras

It happens quite often that a festival competition conjures up, as if by magic, one or more recurrent themes that flow from one film to the other. These trends probably reflect programmers' choices and personalities, but in the case of big internationals festivals, more surely the shared concerns of the worldwide community of filmmakers. Festivals screens then act as wonderful magnifying mirrors of the fears, hopes, crises, changes, etc., experienced by our increasingly globalized societies. For instance, in Cannes, the obviousness with which the 1999 edition dealt with 'violence', the 2001 edition with 'families', or the 2002 edition with 'borders'.

On the contrary, the striking feature of Rotterdam's Tiger Awards Competition this year was the total lack of common topics. Not even three films out of the sixteen could be easily identified as focusing on the same basic issue. This characteristic led me to play a gratuitous game, associating each film to a different theme: racism, frustration, regionalism, unfaithfulness, redemption, handicap, the other, war, virtual/real, feelings disorder, power abuse, childhood, loneliness, feminine emancipation, voyeurism, sexual freedom.

Obviously, this pleasant diversity lends itself much less easily to interpretation than the emergence of one central question. When it comes to the last editions of Cannes, it is possible — if not true — to state that, with the blurring of all kinds of 'borders', society is undergoing increasing 'violence'; a phenomenon against which people try to protect themselves through the disputed but eternal institution that is the 'family'. In this respect, Rotterdam is the place of doubt.

However, we could often experience one same feeling upon leaving Tiger screenings; but it was the rather deceitful feeling of déjà vu. In spite of the artistic successes of more than a half dozen films, in many cases the directors were too much influenced by their generation fellow colleagues or by figureheads of their national cinema. Rather than inventing their own cinema language (something that you might expect from first and second features), it felt like some were adapting proven recipes, which is simply the opposite of what auteur cinema should be. For this reason, the sincerity of How I killed a Saint (Teona S. Mitevska), Días de Santiago (Josué Mendez) and Unterwegs (Jan Krüger); the originality of Peep 'TV' Show (Yutaka Tsuchiya) and Four Shades of Brown (Tomas Alfredson) and the daring of Scent of the Lotus Pond (Satyajit Maitipe) are to be praised.

Matthieu Darras
© FIPRESCI 2004

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