Wiesbaden — goEast 2007

"Armin"
Return to the Roots
by Sergey Lavrentiev

In his previous film Sorry for Kung Fu (Oprosti za kung fu) Croatian director Ognien Svilicic used a very simple, almost stupid, frame: the wheels of an automobile. He used this shot several times. We did not see the auto itself — just the running wheels. The first time we saw this — we smile, the second time we realize that it's a low budget movie and the director has no money to show how the car is going in and out. The third time we understand: Mr. Svilicic is a director who can turn the absence of money to artistic merit.

"Armin":Father and Son

The way from the Bosnian village to the Croatian capital is too long for the protagonists. They are tired. They are afraid of this audition. The father wants his son to be in the pictures. The son is a little bit shy, but the father acts like a "dumb but clever peasant" wanting to do everything to reach his aim.

Emir Hadgihafisbegovic is one of the great modern European actors and he portrays the father brilliantly. But even if there were another actor in his place, we, the audience would not only understand but even feel the content because of the director's cinematic talent.

Ognien Svilicic

The walking feet are the same at each appearance. Using the Kuleshov effect, the director edits the feet with some different episodes, Svilicic, like his "dumb but clever" hero,  reaches what he wants to reach. This father and son became our friends. We love them. We want them to win. When Armin fails we suddenly understand that it was something during the war which made the guy a "little bit shy". And when neither Armin nor the father tells the German director what really happened, we agree with Mr. Svilicic who also keeps the secret.

I hope every film student knows about the Kuleshov effect. But unfortunately the majority of new directors prefer to use elements from TV advertising and work with a "green screen". I hope, too, that every film student has seen Belissima by Lucino Visconti, but  no one tried to make his own version of this classic. The classic is a classic because each time one can film it in a new way.

It seems to me, nowadays that young directors  know only one name from  film history.  They prefer to be a Croatian, German, Russian, Rumanian … Tarantino and try to kill more people on the screen than even Quentin himself did not do.

So, when in a modern film world you meet the director who tells very simple stories using pure film language; whose style  grows out of great film history, you start think that if there is even one such a director, may be the future of filmmaking is not that bad.

Sergey Lavrentiev
© FIPRESCI 2007

Sergey Lavrentiev, born in 1954 in Russia, began his career as a theatre actor in the 1970s. In 1982, he graduates from Moscow's VGIK and joined the Russian State Film Archive Gosfilmofand. As one of Russia's leading film critics, he has written for "Sovietsky Ecran", "Iskusstwo Kino" and "Kultura", among others, and is considered to be one of the founders of the "new wave" in Soviet film criticism. In the 1990s, he hosted the film dedicated TV program "Kinomarafon". Since 1999, he is artistic director of the IFF "Faces of Love" (Moscow and Sochi), and since 2001, artistic director of the International Children's Film Festival Kinotavrik in Sochi. Since 2002, he is a member of the Russian Oscar Committee.

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